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A glimpse into Hitchens's morning routine

What's the first thing that Christopher Hitchens checks when he wakes up in the morning?

Brave enough to find out? Watch this Reason video.

The new Christopher Hitchens: Grinch and songster

An especially Merry Christmas to Reason for bringing us this Hitchens spectacular.

Christopher Hitchens: why religion is poison

Christopher Hitchens takes to the FORA stage once more in this debate. Listen as he expounds on God as dictator and explains why religion is sadomasochistic.

If you can not see this video, click here

Alice Fishburn

Ahmadinejad v. Hitchens? Now there's an idea

If you can't beat them, steal their rhetoric. In today's Slate Ann Applebaum ponders Ahmadinejad's portrayal of himself as the epitome of democratic values. Read on:

His goal is to undermine the American and Western democracy rhetoric that poses an ideological threat to the Iranian regime. Last winter, when he invited a host of dubious Holocaust-deniers to discuss the Holocaust in Tehran, he claimed it was in order to provide shelter for the West's "dissidents"—that is, for Western thinkers "who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust." This week, he declared that his visit to New York will help the American people, who have "suffered in diverse ways and have been deprived of access to accurate information." Thus, the speech at Columbia: Here he is, the allegedly undemocratic Ahmadinejad, taking questions from students! At an American university! Look who's the real democrat now!

She then points out a possible American retort:

Nevertheless, it would have been wrong, once he'd been invited, to ban Ahmadinejad from speaking. To do so would have both granted him far more significance than he deserves and played right into his "I'm the real democrat here" rhetoric. Instead, the university should have demanded genuine reciprocity....Ahmadinejad speaks in New York, Columbia sends a leading Western atheist—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or, better still, Ayaan Hirsi Ali—to Qum, the Shiite holy city, to debate the mullahs on their own ground.

Who would you send to debate Ahmadinejad? Suggestions welcome

To read a transcript of Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University last night, click here

Alice Fishburn

Hitchens vs God

You may have noticed that we're big fans of Christopher Hitchens here at CC Towers. In our latest offering from Fora, he discusses his latest book God is Not Great.

Murad Ahmed

Christopher Hitchens on Karl Rove and George Bush

Fabulous, fabulously funny, interview with Christopher Hitchens in New York Magazine on religion, including this on Karl Rove:

I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

And this on George Bush:

He claims that Jesus got him off the demon drink. He doesn’t believe it. His wife said, “If you don’t stop, I’m leaving and I’m taking the kids.” You can say that you got help from Jesus if you want, but that’s just a polite way of putting it in Texas.

Lots more. But there's one question he doesn't answer. If there isn't a God, how come Christopher Hitchens was created?

Blessed are the peacemakers?

It is hard to better Christopher Hitchens's account of the DUP/Sinn Fein deal:

I suppose I can understand why people are glad when they see Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting down together and consenting to "power sharing" in Northern Ireland — and just in time for Good Friday, too, as if to consecrate a Protestant-Catholic brotherhood just on the verge of the various feasts of the resurrection. But the phony photo-op still made me want to spew.

There will be no return to life for the thousands of people who were murdered in these men's quarrel, and it seems indecent to me that we should be thanking them for their mercy in calling off the bloodshed, let alone calling it off on condition that they alone are declared the winners.

or his view of the two main protagonists:

Both have been photographed carrying coffins at political funerals — funerals that were at one time the main cultural activity in each of their "communities." One day, their private role in filling those coffins will be fully exposed. In the meantime, they are the recognised and designated peacemakers. If you can bring yourself to applaud this, you are a masochist clapping a well-matched pair of sadists.

Realignment - the latest step

One of the consequences of 9/11 has been a realignment of politics, as a part of the left makes common cause with the mainstream of the right.

Want an example?

Here's Christopher Hitchens writing in the journal of the New York conservative think tank, The Manhattan Institute and saying nice things about Mark Steyn.

Christopher Hitchens's three options on Iraq

In his Slate article Christopher Hitchens provides this useful rule of thumb:

If, when reading an article about the debate over Iraq, you come across the expression "the realist school" and mentally substitute the phrase "the American friends of the Saudi royal family," your understanding of the situation will invariably be enhanced.

And provides these choices:

Iraq has only three alternatives before it. The first is dictatorship by one faction or sect over all the others: a solution that has been exhausted by horrific failure. The second is partition, which would certainly involve direct intervention by all its neighbours to secure privileges for their own proxies and would therefore run the permanent risk of civil war. And the third is federalism, where each group would admit that it was not strong enough to dictate terms to the others and would agree to settle differences by democratic means.

It's hard to argue with that. Hitch chooses the third. And it's hard to argue with that too.

A Christopher Hitchens polemic

Christopher Hitchens is on fine form with a slashing attack on O.J. Simpson, his book and (gulp) "the Murdoch Empire". His very effective polemic in the Wall Street Journal is worth a read.

Robbie Millen

Nobody does it better

Here's Hitchens:

I am glad that all previous demands for withdrawal or disengagement from Iraq were unheeded, because otherwise we would not be able to celebrate the arrest and trial of Saddam Hussein; the removal from the planet of his two sadistic kids and putative successors; the certified disarmament of a former WMD- and gangster-sponsoring rogue state; the recuperation of the marshes and their ecology and society; the introduction of a convertible currency; the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan (currently advertising for investors and tourists on American television); the killing of al-Qaida's most dangerous and wicked leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and many of his associates; the opening of dozens of newspapers and radio and TV stations; the holding of elections for an assembly and to approve a constitution; and the introduction of the idea of federal democracy as the only solution for Iraq short of outright partition and/or civil war. If this cause is now to be considered defeated, by the sheer staggering persistence in murder and sabotage of the clerico-fascist forces and the sectarian militias, then it will always count as a noble one.

Read all of it.

Surely not

In a spectacular profile of Christopher Hitchens (sadly not available online), the New Yorker has this to say about his brother Peter, the British columnist. Peter is

a churchgoer who is unpersuaded by Darwin

Somebody please tell me that this isn't true.

Ready, aim, fire

The Pope, outraged Muslim demonstrators..... Christopher Hitchens could have turned his guns in either direction. He turns them on the Pope.