Christopher Hitchens: The Last Great Debater?

Those who have wasted their time checking out this chum bucket of random thoughts and opinions have probably figured out that I enjoy a good political debate with both sides of an issue.

Sadly this seems to be a lost art. Especially among the forces of the political left. Their debates seems trapped in a mindset where if your slick and cleverly presented, then you can spew whatever you feel like to affirm your position, whether it's true or not.

And if they can't be slick, they scream.

And scream.

And scream.

Thankfully there's one voice out there who hasn't yet fallen into this trap. His name is Christopher Hitchens. A transplanted Brit, now living in the USA, who's become a daring and literate voice for rational thought.

That's not to say that I agree with him on everything, I don't even agree with myself on everything. But at least where we disagree he tries to convince you with reasoned and coherent arguments, not hurl a cavalcade of crackpot theories based on shoddy evidence like most political pundits these days.

He writes a regular column called Fighting Words for Slate Webzine. There he writes about the big issues, and he's also disturbed by the Political Left's slide into fascist apologism.

Check him out.

You won't agree with everything he says, but at least he's talking...

...and not screaming.

And now for something silly...

A guy named Doug is sitting in his kitchen nursing a whopper of a hangover. His roommate Fred comes into the kitchen also nursing a hangover.

"That was some party we crashed last night," said Fred.

"It was," moaned Doug, "but I think I left my wallet there."

"Oh, crap" said Fred, "I don't remember the address."

"Neither do I," said Doug, "but I do remember that it was on the west side, and it was a lime green house with a purple door."

"That's right," said Fred, "and the weirdest thing of all was that they had a brass toilet."

"They can't be that hard to find," said doug, "let's go."

After driving around the west side for an hour, the two buddies finally found a lime green house with a purple door.

"This has to be it," said Doug as he knocked on the door.

"I'll make sure," said Fred.

The purple door opened and they were greeted by a woman in a bathrobe.

"Hello Ma'am," said Fred, "did you throw a party here last night?"

"Yes we did." answered the woman.

"And do you own a brass toilet?" asked Fred.

"Hey Harold," called out the woman, "I found out who shit in your tuba!"

The Manchurian Candidate: The Remake that Should Have Been Made

A few months ago Hollywood released a big budget remake of the Cold War paranoia classic THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.

The original was about a Korean War soldier who has been brainwashed by the good old global communist conspiracy to pave the way for a commie controlled presidential candidate. But since this is the new millenium and the old Soviet Bloc is dead and Communist China's a major market the remake had to make a few changes. Now the threat isn't a foreign enemy, but those pesky satanic Republicans.

Now I think that the Hollywood folks blew it with this one. They let their blatant Republicans are Evil mindset ruin what could have been a great political satire.

HERE'S THE STORY THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE

An American soldier from a politically connected family (played by Robert Redford) goes to VietNam where he's kidnapped and brainwashed by Red China agents to run for president and destroy America. 30+ years pass and their candidate, a decorated veteran, anti-war activist and senator, is poised to win the White House.

And the Chinese suddenly realize their mistake.

They don't want America destroyed anymore. They want America fat and happy and contentedly buying up Chinese made goods. They send their best agent (played by Jackie Chan) to stop him. But they don't want to assassinate him, instead the plan is to use the old playing card inducing trance gag to get him to say something stupid on the campaign trail. The trouble is, the poor Chinese Agent doesn't know which one will set him off.

***

Round off the cast with Chris Rock as a foul-mouthed vice-president, Angela Lansbury as the mother, and Christopher Walken as his mentally crippled army buddy and you would have a movie I'd pay money to see. Think of all the opportunities for slapstick and political satire you can have with this film.

It would have to be better than SILVER CITY.

Worse than who...? Part 2: Son of Worse than Who?

Yesterday I rambled about how irresponsible and ignorant it was to compare George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler, and how it was a sign of the increasing decay in the thinking and moral superiority of the western Political Left. Now I'm going to try to debunk some other myths, namely those countries & leaders who are always cited by the left as being better than the USA & Pres. Dubya. So let's go down the list.

• FRANCE. Pres. Jacques Chirac has been basically canonised by the American Left for his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. But do they really know his motives? Probably not. It seems France was up to its hairy armpits in the UN oil for food/weapons/palaces scam, and French corporations were making billions in profits from illegal oil and weapons deals with Saddam Hussein. Their opposition was actually based more on greed than any moral superiority. Meanwhile, French policy is to keep its Muslim population (about 10% of the total pop of France) encased in vast ghettos overrun with crime, racism, and Islamic fundamentalism. There they are denied jobs, education and only the most basic access to France's vast social infrastructure. They've also instilled laws banning Islamic headscarves in public buildings like schools and hospitals. A gesture that would be shouted down as a flagrant violation of the constitution if attempted in the USA. Also France is currently engaged in a series of 'Peacekeeping Operations' in Central Africa. It's amazing that they only seemed interested in peacekeeping in areas where they can prop up a puppet warlord to take control of the blood diamond trade.
• RUSSIA. First Russia goes to war with Chechnya to secure an oil pipeline and over 20% of the Chechen population is killed. Russian troops also engage in atrocities that make the idiocy of the Abu Ghraib prison look like a Mormon Church picnic. And in the face of increasing violent & sadistic Chechen terrorism Pres. Vladimir Putin has pretty much suspended their fledgling democracy in the outer provinces, personally appointing their governors and ministers. He's also seized control of all media outlets and intimidated the others to squash criticism of his reign. Now the reason he opposed the downfall of Saddam is that he too was making immense profits from illegal dealings with the Baathist Regime.
• CANADA. The shining light of the north where the government banned the Fox News network because a commentator criticized our then Prime Minister. It's also the place where a CBC journalist was demoted from a national political posting to covering the Vancouver criminal court because the government somehow got access to a private e-mail where the reporter, to gain the confidence of an informant, expressed sympathy with the informant's political beliefs. Police have also ransacked another reporter's home and office. Why? It seems she dug up some embarrassing info about government incompetence and they wanted to quash the story. It's also the country where an innocent woman, who faces death in her home country for working for the UN, is denied refugee status, while a family of Al Quaida sympathizers and financiers are welcomed back with open arms after they are driven out of Afghanistan where they fought for the Taliban.

If the Bush administration tried anything like the actions I described here, the media and the oppostition would be on them like stink on a turd. You can't even claim that Bush is worse than Bill Clinton. Approximately 1,000,000 people died in Rwanda. Clinton could have stopped it, but National Security pundit and media darling Richard Clarke joined with him to develop a policy where they stopped aiding the anti-genocide effort, and even blocked attempts by others to do it.

Their reasoning: Clinton and Clarke believed that Rwanda didn't have any resources they wanted and were worried that ending the genocide would result in thousands of Rwandans emigrating to the USA. So they not only did nothing, they literally hindered anyone else from doing anything. Now that's good moral thinking.

It's okay not to like Bush. But stop and think about why, before you leap to any conclusions.

Know the facts, not the spin.

Worse than who...?

I like to cruise through political opinion sites when I surf the web because I'm a news junkie and I enjoy intelligent political debate. Sadly that's rather lacking on the web these days. The other day one such opinion spewer tossed in the line "George W. Bush is worse than Hitler."

I think that illustrates not only the inflammatory rhetoric of the American Left, but also a total and complete ignorance of the realities of world history. Adolf Hitler ordered the murders of 20,000,000+ people. Most of those people died solely on the basis of their religious or political beliefs.

Josef Stalin's reign of terror over the old Soviet Union killed over 40,000,000+ people. And they're still counting how many poor people were slaughtered during the reigns of China's Mao Zedong and his ideological successors. Let's not forget the ongoing occupation of Tibet.

So, how bad is old Dubya compared to these people? Well, let's make a list of what it takes to be worse than Hitler and see how he adds up.

1. Number of forced labour camps started by George W. Bush= 0
2. Number of Americans executed for their religious & political beliefs= 0
3. Territories forcibly annexed into USA & populations enslaved= 0
4. Number of protestors shot & killed at Republican Convention= 0
5. Number of people gassed to death on the orders of the President= 0

I think I made my point. Comparing a wartime President with a war-starting lunatic does nothing but belittle your arguments and trivialises the atrocities of one the worst criminals of the 20th Century.

I like to think of myself as a political centrist. I don't subscribe to any set ideology, but I'm frightened by the turn the American Left is taking. The Left used to be the voice of progressive thinking. Now it's become the main apologist for people who would gladly cut their throats and sell DVDs of their horrible deaths on the streets of the Middle East.

As much as the Political Right has based itself on an ideal and idyllic past that never really existed, the Political Left has based its beliefs on certain key myths, they are:

• All the problems of the world are the fault of Western Liberal Democracies (WLDs). Which is ironic, because WLDs are the only places where these people can express their views without fear of being shot, or burned alive.
• All leaders of WLDs are warmongers. Now this is fascinating. You'd be hard pressed to find any historical precedent for a WLD in the past century that started a war without some sort of provocation. And France and Vietnam doesn't count, because France at the time wasn't really a liberal democracy, it was failed empire trying to reclaim lost glory after being shamed by Hitler's fascist dictatorship.
• If it's a populist movement among poor people, than it must be better than a WLD. Not exactly. Populist movements among the world's poor has produced men like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ceaucescu, Castro, Papa Doc Duvalier, Milosevic, and Ho Chi Minh. WLDs aren't perfect, and even less so when it comes to the treatment of the poor. Yet their treatment in a WLD is still light years ahead of the glorious 'worker's paradises' started by the men I just listed. The whole point of a WLD is that it has checks and balances on who holds power and for how long via constitutional governance. Also, a WLD can evolve and change to make life better for its people. Global Jihad, the current poster-child of the left, is about creating a quasi-feudal theocracy where women are property, tolerance is non-existent and the rule of law depends on the whim of a handful of zealots. I can't bring myself to think that's somehow a better way to live, even if the alternative is a Republican.
• You can appease a dictator into changing his ways by giving him whatever he wants. Sorry, the more you try to appease a dictator, the more he wants, it's basic human mathematics. It failed with Hitler, it failed with Stalin, and it going to fail with Kim Jong Il and the Ayatollahs of Iran.
• Terrorism is justified by past abuses people have suffered. I'm sorry, but nothing justifies crashing airplanes into office towers, or machine gunning schoolchildren. Gandhi didn't do anything like that, and he liberated hundreds of millions of people. If the poor Palestinians had a Gandhi instead of an Arafat they'd be running their own country, or living in peace side by side with the Israelis. Not living in squalid poverty while their 'Glorious Leader' makes millions selling concrete that's supposed to be used to build Palestinian housing to the Israelis so they can build their 'security wall.'

I hope the Political Left gets off this crazy downward spiral and realise that they've got a good thing going in the old WLDs. Sure, they're not perfect, but it's the job of the Left to come up with new ideas to improve them, not embrace those who seek to destroy them and plunge the world into a dark age.

LET'S PLAY THE NAME GAME!

There's a lot of chatter in the news lately about militants, insurgents, rebels and terrorists. Now the big news agencies have been using those terms all willy nilly, so I'm gonna set you all straight with a series of definitions for this screwed up age.

• If you make speeches calling for the downfall of a government or rival nation but don't do anything about it, then you are a RADICAL.
• If you make speeches calling for the death of people that result in the deaths of people but you don't get your own hands dirty with the actual killing, then you are a MILITANT.
• If you are hiding in the hills waiting to attack a legitimate military target, on behalf of a legitimate cause, for a legitimate military objective, then you are a GUERILLA.
• If you are waiting in the hills waiting to attack and rob any target you can get, then you are a BANDIT.
• If you are trying to oust an oppressive regime, or hostile occupying power so you can create a democracy based on individual liberty and the rule of law, then you are a REBEL.
• If you are trying to oust a regime or occupying power so you can curry favour with who you think will be the next dictator, then you are a FASCIST.
• If you kill innocent civilians in the name of an impossible cause, but your real reason is to terrify people into accepting your brutal & sadistic worldview, then you are a TERRORIST.
• If you think MILITANTS, BANDITS, FASCISTS, & TERRORISTS are actually REBELS for the sole reason that they are anti-American/anti-western, then you are an IDIOT.

These are the things that piss me off...(Part 1)

1. SUVs. The most flagrant case of false advertising I ever encountered. They contain the word sport, but try to drive them off-road and you'll flip over. They contain the word utility, but they're as practical as brassieres for bulls. The only accuracy in their name is that they are a vehicle, just a poor excuse for one. The only purpose is to create a false sense of security/machismo for the dead-eyed suburbanites vain and shallow enough to waste good money buying them and keeping them gassed up. They are not the solution to a problem, they are a problem.
2. Hypocrites. Say what you mean, and mean what you say dammit! Don't just talk the talk, walk the walk.
3. Media Bias. No, I'm not talking about FoxNews, because I can't watch FoxNews, it's illegal in Canada. I'm talking about the channels that I do see that ignore major stories and simply let certain assumptions go unchallenged because they come from the Democratic Party in the USA and the Liberal (in name only) Party in Canada. If FoxNews does follow a more conservative line than the other nets, then that's probably because Rupert Murdoch sees it as an under-exposed point of view.
4. France. A wonderful country with a long and rich history of starting wars and destruction and then blaming other countries for the problems they start. They started the VietNam war, because they felt bad about their shameful performance in WW2, and thought reconquering their empire would make them feel better. Then they blackmailed the USA to prop up their puppet regime, and then condemned the USA as 'evil imperialists.' Now they're back at it. They blocked the UN from stopping Saddam, because French interests were making billions from the misery of the Iraqi people. Now they're blocking the UN from quelling the Darfur genocide, because they have a deal, in partnership with China, to explore for oil in Darfur, once those poor farmers are out of the way. Their also using their foreign legion to prop up their fave African warlords in order to control the blood diamond trade, and then have the unmitigated balls to call them Americans 'aggressive imperialists.'
5. The Death of Political Debate. You can't have a good political argument, based on reason and facts anymore. Now you have to yell and scream and spew the same bullshit over and over again. Just because you're screaming doesn't make you right.
6. The Death of the Political Left. I fancy myself a centrist who enjoys taking on both sides of an issue to find the truth. But things from the left side of the spectrum have gotten positively wingy. They're so wrapped up in opposing those satanic Republicans that they're endorsing people like Saddam Hussein, Usama Bin Ladin, and Muqtada Al-Sadr. People who endorse the deliberate mass murder of men, women and children and would gladly kill all the lefties they could get their hands on. 'Why would they support these people?' you might ask. Well it's simple. The terrorists and their allies want to destroy all western liberal democracies and the left thinks liberal western democracies are the root of all evil. In the 30's they blamed the coming of WW2 not on Hitler, but on Churchill for opposing his militarisation of Germany. They blamed the Cold War and its inherent troubles on the Western Democracies, because decent and nice people like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong couldn't possibly do anything wrong. What used to be the voice of progressive thinking, have become apologists for fascism.

WHAT ME BIASED, Part 2: The Saga Continues

More stories ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media:

1. In 1971 John Kerry's organization VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST WAR held a secret meeting in Kansas City, MO. The purpose of this meeting was to vote on whether or not they should assassinate members of congress they didn't agree with. At first Kerry denied attending the meeting, but both the FBI's surveillance records and Kerry's Missouri chairman say he was there. The Kerry Aide states that Kerry voted against the assassination program. The question I'd like to ask is: If the NRA held a secret meeting to vote on assassinating pro-gun control politicians, wouldn't the press be all over any Republican involved like stink on a turd whether they opposed the assassinations or not?
2. The United Nations Oil for Food Program was more like the Oil for Palaces and Weapons Scam. It seems that many people in the so-called Pro-Peace countries like France, Germany, Russia, and were making massive profits supposedly trading food for oil. Even people linked to UN secretary general Kofi Annan made millions brokering these deals that left Iraqi children starving and fuelled Saddam's orgy of palace building.
3. The media claims that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Quaida. That's a lie. Sure, Saddam didn't order the 9/11 attack, and I doubt that he was personally involved in that operation, but he did frequently give aid and safe harbour to Al-Quaida terrorists, and in exchange Bin Ladin helped found a terrorist/guerilla cell that fought the rebellious Kurdish peoples in the north.
4. Some sources claim that Syrian agents and Sudanese Janjaweed militia-thugs have used poison gas on African Muslims in the ongoing Darfur genocide. I'd like to find out if this report is true, and if it is, WHERE DID SYRIA GET THE POISON GAS? Possibly second hand from Iraq?
5. During the war Saddam Hussein ordered his generals to use biological and chemical weapons against Coalition forces. His generals told the field officers that those weapons were in the hands of other units, then told those other units that the first guys had the WMDs. Is it just me, but doesn't that sound like a clique of general's either selling off the WMDs themselves or the resources to produce those WMDs to other countries,like Syria, and pocketing the cash. Don't blame Bush for believing in the existence of the WMDs, it seems Saddam was convinced he had them too.
6. Why do the press keep claiming that the USA is alone in Iraq, and the few times that the do acknowledge the 30+ other countries involved in the effort they call them the 'Coalition of the Bribed & Coerced.' Apparently an international coalition isn't truly international without the approval of France. Don't disrespect people willing to fight & die by your side just to win the approval of the French.
7. Why is nobody interested in the story behind the story of the Darfur Genocide. France is blocking every attempt to sanction the Sudanese government for their genocidal policies. Why? It seems that there's oil under Darfur, France has a contract to get it, and those farmers are in their way.

What me biased?

A recent CNN/Gallup poll gives old Dubya a 13 point lead in the popular vote, and Kerry's image is slipping among the American voter despite almost universal support from the big media conglomerates.

They've given Kerry and his campaign an practically free ride only reacting to things that grow beyond their control to the point where they can't control it anymore. They ignored the $200,000 campaign by the Swifties until internet interest spread nationwide while they treated the $60 MILLION+ campaigns from Democratic surrogates MoveOn and ACT like they were the gospel from on high.

But interest in the Swift-Vets grew too big, so they tried every tactic to disprove or at least distort the Swift-Vets story. But sadly, the fog of war keeps the issue a he said/they said situation. So being unable to disprove the Swift-Vets claims they went back to ignoring them. Completely ignoring new ads featuring Kerry's own words where Kerry states to a Congressional hearing that he either condoned or participated in wartime atrocities like rape, village burning and the mutilation &/or murder of innocent civilians.

Sadly, there's a lot of other stories they choose to ignore.

1. Nobody in the mainstream media's gone anywhere near John Kerry's 'Peace Conference' with reps of Viet-Cong and North Vietnam in Paris in the early 70's. As a member of the US naval reserve at the time he was in violation of the Logan Act which could have meant a sentence to Leavenworth Military Stockade. Maybe his wealthy family's influence kept him out of trouble?
2. Also, the mainstream media ignores the 50+ times he claimed that spent Xmas of 1968 on an illegal mission in Cambodia under the orders of the Luciferian Richard Nixon. An event that was seared...seared into his memory. The fact that Nixon wasn't inaugurated until January of '69 has absolutely nothing to with fairness and accuracy in reporting. Apparently it wouldn't sell to the party apparatchiks to accuse Pres. Lyndon Johnson of sending him on illegal missions.
3. Where the hell did Steve Bing, the producer of Kangaroo Jack, get $16,000,000 to give to the Kerry Campaign and various Democratic Party surrogates like MoveOn and ACT? That's a question I'd like to get answered. So far there was one story on that fact on ABC and then it was pulled over whether a friend of Bing's was really a hitman, or just a racketeer.
4. Why don't they demand the release of Kerry's complete naval records, the way they're demanding Bush's National Guard records? Only one things stands in their way, which is the consent of John Kerry. But like his Senate committee attendance records he wants them kept secret.

The latest strategy the Dems are using is to try to slander Dubya by getting Dan Rather and Kitty Kelly to pounce on ancient rumours of bad behaviour.

BIG MISTAKE

You can't accuse a man of having a wasted (in more ways than one) youth, when the man you're trying to slander practically ran on the premise that he was a wastrel until Jesus and the love of a good woman saved his sorry ass. I got to use the word 'wastrel' in a blog. WHOOPEE!

Meanwhile John Kerry's youth is being presented as his best qualification for the Presidency. That makes it fair game, and complaining about your opponents asking questions about it is just whining. And if there's one thing people don't like is a whiner.

I'm not even a Republican or an American, I'm a politically independent Canadian who likes things like public healthcare. The media's handling of the Democratic Party scares me, because what the hell else are they sitting on?

The 60 Minutes Memo Debacle... One Paranoid's Opinion

You'd have to be living in a cave to have missed the brouhaha about the 'Lost Dubya National Guard Memos' presented by Dan Rather on venerable TV newsmag 60 MINUTES.

Now most evidence is pointing that these documents were forgeries. Something Dan Rather is fighting tooth and nail from admitting, because if they are fakes, then he'll have to fess up as to where he got them.

And word on the street says that Rather got the controversial documents from researchers working for the Kerry Campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Folks in the DNC are both denying this, and claiming that they were victims of an elaborate hoax, masterminded by the Mephistopheles of the Republican Party: Karl Rove.

Now they think that accusing Karl Rove of making the fakes will make him and his master Dubya look bad. They're wrong.

If it is true, & they were taken on Mr. Rove's wild ride, then they look like idiots for falling for it in the first place. I maybe a little more paranoid than the average person, but if such juicy documents landed on my lap out of the blue from unnamed 'Retired Military Officers' I'd be smelling a rat from a mile away.

VOX POPLAR'S FIRST RULE OF POLITICS: "If you're going to sling sh*t, make sure it isn't going to come back and hit you in the face."

This incident shows an alarming level of naivete in the high ranks of the DNC, and can only make their candidate look bad. They'd been Punk'd with a scam that even a child could see through.

Smooth move, it just might cost you the election.

The Real Reason People Hate America...

Okay kiddies, it's late and I'm exhausted, but since this is the season we remember the tragedy of the 9/11 Terror attacks, and the ongoing conflict in Iraq, I've decided to let you in on a little theory I have.

It's a theory about the real reasons people hate America, Americans and everything they stand for.

It's not America's policies, or the actions, or even their beliefs.

It's quite simple really.

It's ethnic prejudice based on historical mythology.

Take a look at countries where anti-Americanism is the most prevalent and what do you think they all have in common. All, at different times, have tried to conquer the world, or at least their small part of it.This imperialism leads not to the everlasting glory their past rulers had promised, but to ever decreasing returns and eventual ruin. And yet, here is the good old USA, a nation built, not on some nationalist identity, but literally a melting pot with ingredients taken from all over the world.

These ingredients often clash, and often have troubled relationships, but they still ended up working together to create the world's first hyperpower. A hyperpower that can not only has both guns & butter, but maintains a standard of living that is the envy of the world.

What really sticks in the craw of the old crumbled empires is that this hyperpower is made up of the descendants of the people who were stomped down during their imperialist days. The ancestors of the USA were at different times conquered, subjugated, enslaved and exiled to a hostile and forbidding land.

What do these old world rejects do?

They build a nation unlike any other in history. A nation that makes the old world empires with their failed ambitions and self-destroyed institutions look at themselves with self-loathing.

But this self loathing is rationalized as anti-Americanism, because nations with such long and glorious histories could not possibly be dismal failures while the descendants of history's losers become the most powerful nation in the world. One the eve of America's entry into WW2, a famous British author (whose name escapes me) expressed doubt that they'd ever join in the effort against Hitler, because he honestly believed that American's were the descendants of 'indentured servants, slaves, convicts, and draft dodgers' from Europe's imperial conflicts.

This fellow was the classic example of someone raised on the mythology of the "glorious past of his nation." One where their ancestors acted horrendously in the name of imperial vanity. What all Americans want, deep down, is for everyone to have the good life that they enjoy. But the ancient imperial powers, ironically propped up with Yankee dollars either through trade or the Marshall Plan, consider this the insolence of a bastard puppy pretending to be a purebred champion like them.

Ask anyone in the world with Anti-American views and you can be assured of two things. First they will attribute qualities to the Americans, not based on actual historical facts, but interpretations based on how their own ancestors acted in history. Second, they will declare that Americans are somehow inferior creatures who could only have achieved their great lifestyle by forcibly extracting it from others, and not by any hard work, intelligence, or creativity on their part. (Which, ironically, is how the Anti-American's ancestors achieved their early success.)

Like I said, it's late where I am, I need sleep, and I'll probably talk more about this later.