Rewatching the Parenti vs Hitchens Iraq War Debate



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27 thoughts on “Rewatching the Parenti vs Hitchens Iraq War Debate”

  1. Loved that bit of Parenti fan-fiction about our futur socialist revolution and the great man's place in the history of the New United Socialist States of America. Glorious stuff, comrade!

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  2. Even with Hitch as his debate opponent, the mic/sound system couldn't help but get a few swings in at Parenti!!! Aside from U.S. imperialism, the microphones and sound systems of where he speaks must be his biggest and most determined enemy.

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  3. When I recommend books to people showing interest in socialism I recommend Parenti. If you hook them with Parenti they will come back to Marx, Lenin, etc. Marx is daunting and can discourage folks in the early stages of their political development but Parenti speaks in plain language that everyone understands. He was crucial for me in my development.

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  4. Hitchens… I remember taking him seriously at one time. When he, Sam Harris and the lot ousted themselves as pro intervention shills, I started to abandon them.
    In Hitchens' case it was strange, he had a great take on Palestine being the victim of Israeli settler colonialism but quickly jumped to defending Israel as a bastion of "Western values" despite all of the evil shyt they did and continue to do, he was really a pos in the grand scheme of things.

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  5. I used to have tendencies as a teen which nowadays would be seen as 1980s Trotskyist; I used to be brainwashed to believe that the 1989 events in Eastern Europe were "revolutions" due to constant propaganda from Bourgeois media calling themselves "left-of-center", in a country where leftists fought against the CIA-backed junta, as if they were like the "Carnation Revolution" in Portugal, BUT I therefore thought that for whatever reason the previous Socialist governments had become Right-Wingers, just like Social-Democrats become Right-Wing as they keep winning elections forever (in Greece for example) because they have "no competition", so I thought those were "stolen Leftist revolutions", they replaced a Right-Wing authoritarian single-party Social-Democracy, with Western-backed Right-Wing neo-liberals/neo-fascists because the masses were tricked to install the Western model instead of a "REAL Socialism" model due to not knowing better or not having the potential or the conditions not being correct (now I know they didn't have organisation or desire). So, I thankfully didn't become a CIA-talking-point idiot, but susceptible to narratives like "Hungarian Revolution was actually Anarchist, they wanted to re-establish the Soviets, Lenin unfairly removed power from."

    I got better, I now know that the CIA funds and/or misinforms certain "leftist" tendencies, like the aforementioned "Hungarians/Ukrainians are actually Anarchist not Fascist" folks, not just Right-Wing conspirators and enemies of Democracy, but admittedly the Eastern governments had their problems, otherwise they wouldn't be overthrown with so little resistence from the public. If Hoxhaism wasn't so isolated and ossified maybe it would be the real model of Socialism.

    PS: I'll die laughing in "bombing Aghraba" having support among the American populace. What has Aladdin ever done to you?😭

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  6. I remember all that mock populist neocon stuff all too well. That's one reason I have no time for all the current right-populist nationalist guff. Many of the same cast in both too. I can't stand being lied to and manipulated.

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  7. Hitchens recently wrote an article in one of the main UK newspapers about how Hitler was a socialist, and therefore left wing. I would therefore take anything he has to say about politics in the light of this knowledge: that Hitchens knows nothing.

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  8. Eddie, you may be confusing Christopher with his late brother Peter. Peter Hitchens was a socialist and a campaigner against imperialism and Western wars of aggression. He experimented by having himself waterboarded, to see if it was torture or not – he concluded that it most definitely is torture. Christopher Hitchens however is firmly of the right, an execrable little know nothing who puffs himself up & pretends to be an expert but really couldn't care less about the truth. I've heard it said many times, the wrong Hitchens died.

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  9. Mesopotamia is often referred to as the "cradle of civilization" because it is one of the earliest civilizations in human history, dating back to around 4000 BCE. Mesopotamia is located in the region of modern-day Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and was home to several ancient civilizations, including the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.

    The Mesopotamian civilizations made many important contributions to human history, including the development of writing, the invention of the wheel and plow, and the creation of complex systems of government and law. They also built impressive architectural structures such as ziggurats and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

    Overall, Mesopotamia played a crucial role in the development of human civilization, and its legacy continues to influence modern society in many ways.

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