Category Archives: Writing

Salman Rushdie: Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair, Feb 2012)

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Laughter and Hitchens were inseparable companions, and comedy was one of the most powerful weapons in his arsenal. . .

Behind the laughter was what his friend Ian McEwan called “his Rolls-Royce mind,” that organ of improbable erudition and frequently brilliant, though occasionally flawed, perception. The Hitch mind was indeed a sleek and purring machine trimmed with elegant fittings, but his was not a rarefied sensibility. He was an intellectual with the instincts of a street brawler, never happier than when engaged in moral or political fisticuffs. . .

On his sixty-second birthday – his last birthday, a painful phrase to write – I had been with him and Carol and other comrades at the Houston home of his friend Michael Zilkha, and we had been photographed standing on either side of a bust of Voltaire. That photograph is now one of my most treasured possessions; me and the two Voltaires, one of stone and one still very much alive. Now they are both gone, and one can only try to believe, as the philosopher Pangloss insisted to Candide in the elder Voltaire’s masterpiece, that “everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”

It doesn’t feel like that today.

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The 2012 US presidential campaign begins: A cynical exercise in duping the people

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The January 3 Iowa caucus, the first contest for the Republican presidential nomination, marks the official beginning of 2012 US election campaign, an exercise in mass deception whose purpose is to legitimize the individual whom the financial aristocracy chooses as its political champion for the next four years. . .

As for the candidates themselves, it would be hard to come up with a more reactionary collection of corporate flunkeys, religious fanatics and influence peddlers. . .

The election provides the illusion of choice, but there are no fundamental differences between the two corporate-controlled political parties. Both the Democrats and the Republicans defend the wealth of the super-rich and the worldwide interests of American imperialism.

From the standpoint of working people, it does not matter in the slightest whether Barack Obama is reelected to a second term in the White House or replaced by any of his Republican challengers. The next president, whatever his name or party, will function as the representative of the political, military and corporate elite that controls all the levers of power. . .

US elections have increasingly become a media spectacle aimed at distracting the population while the political establishment shifts further and further to the right. . .

Both [big business parties] are committed to the defense of corporate interests and obey their real masters in the financial oligarchy, regardless of what they say to the voters in the course of an election campaign.

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Quote: Smedley Butler, On U.S. Military Adventurism

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Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940)
Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, Outspoken Critic of U.S. Military Adventurism, Most decorated Marine in U.S. history at the time of his death.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
~ Socialist newspaper Common Sense, 1935

Quote: Charles Darwin

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Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 March 1882)
English Naturalist, Author, proposed the Scientific Theory that
Evolution resulted from a process that he called Natural Selection.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

Quote: Christopher Hitchens, On Censorship

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Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)
English-American, Literary Critic, Journalist, Author,
Essayist, Polemicist, and Outspoken Anti-theist

Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be okay because you’re in the safely moral majority . . . my own opinion is enough for me and I claim the right to have it, defend it against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, anyplace, anytime; and any anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

New York Times reports on Catholic Charities pull-out [no pun intended] in Illinois

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For the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, the outcome is a prime example of what they see as an escalating campaign by the government to trample on their religious freedom while expanding the rights of gay people. The idea that religious Americans are now the victims of government-backed persecution is now a frequent theme not just for Catholic bishops, but also for Republican presidential candidates and conservative evangelicals. . .

But now most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in Illinois are closing down rather than comply with a new requirement that says they can no longer receive state money if they turn away same-sex couples as potential foster care and adoptive parents. . .

Society is evolving, but the Catholic Church is refusing to evolve with it. These states have chosen to recognize some of the basic civil rights of their LGBT citizens. They have also decided it is not legal or appropriate for a state to be funding discrimination against them. 

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