Peter & Christopher Hitchens: Alcohol, Conspiracy, Homosexuality - Live Call-In - Part 9 (1994)

May 31, 1994 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww....

Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/christopher-hitchens-and-peter-hi...

The name Balfour Declaration is applied to two key British government policy statements associated with Conservative statesman and former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. - The first is the Balfour Declaration of 1917: An official letter from the British Foreign Office headed by Lord Arthur Balfour, the UK's Foreign Secretary (from December 1916 to October 1919), to Baron Rothschild, who was seen as a representative of the Jewish people. The letter stated that the British government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." - The second is the Balfour Declaration of 1926, recognizing the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire as fully autonomous states.

The Kurds are an Ethnic-Iranian ethnolinguistic group mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Substantial Kurdish communities also exist in the cities of western Turkey, and they can also be found in Armenia, Georgia, Israel, Azerbaijan, Russia, Lebanon and, in recent decades, some European countries and the United States (see Kurdish diaspora). Most speak Kurdish, an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch. The Kurds are classified as an Iranian people.

A profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output." However in early 2008 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. Hitchens admits to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind."

George Galloway, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil for Food program, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay," to which Hitchens quickly replied, "Only some of which is true." Later, in a column for Slate promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on September 14, 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a "popinjay" (true enough, since its original Webster's definition means a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

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[Ellesime89]

Is there a part 10 or is this it?

[thefilmarchive]

@Ellesime89 It might have continued for a couple of minutes longer, but this is all I have

[tylerdurden4495]

I don't blame Chris for drinking his entire life. 90% of life is indeed mundane and filled with dullards.

[natuankur]

hahaha......christopher kicks ass on the homosexuality issue......

[huwrj]

hitchens always fighting in the kurds' corner

[benehan]

great videos i like the way you explain some of the more ambiguous issues in the description. keep up the good work!

[gamerunknown]

@DazedSpy2

Also, the slippery slope fallacy is thus called because it's a fallacy. Personally I have no problem with bestiality in a country that consumes meat. If one holds the principle that animals can be used for the pleasure of humans without any concern for their capacity to feel pain, that should guide all legislation. But it'd be equivocation / a straw man to conflate homosexuality and bestiality. Roosa et al. 1999 found sexual abuse of children caused depression.

[gamerunknown]

@DazedSpy2

The issue of consent is raised in issues where there is a high potential for exploitation of children. We seek the consent of a parent or guardian for even trivial things such as conducting research on children that is already cleared by an ethics board, because children have a diminished capacity for decision making (theory of mind, prefrontal cortex development for planning for the future). Sex carries a high potential for exploitation and parents may be complicit.

[DazedSpy2]

@gamerunknown ofc theres a slippery slope, you just dodged it from mere assertion. WHY is consent required? Is sex inherently damaging to children or animals that partake in it with humans? Whether you like it or not the actual truth of the matter is no, it not always is. The matter of consent is something we in fact ignore in most instances with animals and children, so why [arbitrarily] worry about it now? It's root is Christianity, and its coherent limited to that world view.

[richardcadbury]

8:33 Christopher is refering to ppl who probably include his brother Peter. We now know (from his memoirs) that Christopher had gay experiences at school and university.

Are we really to believe that Peter (with similar nature and nurture) derives his dodgy views on homosexuality from the Christian religion, or do they reflect something a little closer to home?

[ZiggyOsiris]

@BYL3RxTIND3R $50 says you're a pissed off kid who would never dare to repeat any of that to anyone within arm's reach.

[ForrestBri]

@BYL3RxTIND3R Did you go to school?