At The Christopher Hitchens/Tony Blair debate over the resolution "Religion is a force for good in the world"

The pre-debate survey indicated the majority of the crowd agreed with Hitchens' opposition of the resolution. Given the ample ammunition to support his position, Blair was on the defensive for most of the night in front of a crowd in liberal downtown Toronto. In fact, Blair spent a lot of time reiterating that while religion is responsible for a great deal of the world's ills, it does not mean that all people of faith are bad, or that faith in of itself need be an evil.

Blair acknowledged that the scriptures themselves are a source of a great deal of the evil perpetrated in the name of religion. It is a source of concern to him and one that requires great introspection from organized religion. As an analogy for the closed-mindedness of some religious people, Blair relayed how a Labour party member came up to him after an election loss and said, "We've had four elections and the public has voted against us four times. What's wrong with them?"

Speaking of closed minded people that don't get it, the single disappointment of the night for me was the imperceptible presence of James Clark's deceptively-named, "Toronto Coalition to Stop the War" who failed to turn out in noticeable numbers at an outdoor protest.

Read the whole thing at The Propagandist

UPDATE: Here's me beside Hitchens

Link to debate videos here.

Marxist/Islamo-fascist alliance to attempt to disrupt the Blair-Hitchens debate

Canada's supporters of terror are upset that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Iraq, murdering Kurds by the tens of thousands, having prisons being used as sex-slave dungeons for his friends and private army, playing cat and mouse with the US and British Air Forces in the no-fly zone, and trying to acquire more and more dangerous means of posing a threat to the world.

These people support terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and want to enact policies that would give the Taliban a free rein to repress women in Afghanistan while hiding behind deceptive names like "Toronto Coalition to Stop the War." Their idea of "stopping the war" apparently is a combination of surrender to al Qaida and launching missiles at Israeli civilians.

And they're really, really mad at Tony Blair because he's one of the guys responsible for there being one less bastion of terrorism in the world in Iraq. So they plan to protest his appearance at the Munk Debate in Toronto next week where Blair will be debating Christopher Hitchens on the resolution "religion is a force for good in the world".

Some of them think they might get close enough to actually lay hands on Blair to make a citizen's arrest for "war crimes." According to their facebook group, they even consider Hitchens an accessory to "war crimes" for "humanizing" the Iraq war.

Psychiatric assessments aside, these people are not only deluded but potentially dangerous, and I hope security is tight at the event.

It's too bad things have come to this, but there are a lot of nuts in the world.

Featured comment from reader Hortensio: "A debate between Hitchens and Blair must be particularly insulting to them, seeing the anti-Galloway and the toppler of Saddam sharing the same stage. Hitchens once said of this sort of faux pacifist that they aren't anti-war, but pro-war for the other side. They probably haven't got over the stinging accuracy of that comment yet."

UPDATE: "Toronto Coalition to Stop the War" isn't a very accurate description of James Clark's supporters of anti-western terrorists and warmongers. Feel free to post your suggestions for a better name in the comments section.

"Coalition to stop the war unless it kills Canadians, Americans, Brits and Jews"  is more accurate but less catchy. Let's see what we can come up with.

Win front row tickets to see Christopher Hitchens debate Tony Blair on November 26

The semi-annual Munk Debates series is featuring its most high profile event ever.

On Friday, November 26, Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens will be debating the proposition,

"Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world."


I'm sure you can guess who is taking the pro and who the con.

This event, which will occur at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, was sold out immediately upon becoming available and tickets are very, very highly sought after.

But you and a friend could end up in the front row. If you have a friend (or enemy) with whom you want to debate the same proposition, go to the Munk Debates website and you can create your own head-to-head debate using the website's technology.

Each week, between now and November 25, one debate will be selected to win front row seats to the Blair/Hitchens debate. You can enter the contest through this link.

Christopher Hitchens on anti-Semitism

Here is Hitchens' piece in this month's The Atlantic about anti-Semitism

Christopher Hitchens: "I see no reason not to take out the Iranian regime"

Hitchens discusses the need to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities and remove the regime in this video:




A fascinating article about Benjamin Netanyahu and the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran here from The Atlantic

Christopher Hitchens talks about dying

Hitchens, one of the real thinkers of our age, is dying from esophageal cancer.

In this video, he discusses his mortality with Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg and Hitchens' best friend, novelist Martin Amis.

New Threats to Freedom

There's a new book out that hopes to initiate an interesting conversation about the greatest threats to freedom in the Western World.

New Threats to Freedom includes essays from a number of prominent thinkers like David Mamet and Christopher Hitchens discussing the repression of academic freedom from the Left, the anti capitalist agenda of a new generation promoted by neo-Marxists, the culture of dependency on government that is being created and more.

Editor Adam Bellow discusses the book here:

 

This video is part of the New Threats to Freedom series and shows a disturbing incident where a university funded a group that disrupted a student's comedy performance for the express purpose of denying his right to free speech: