SBS Dateline: Fighting Faith

Watch it on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o97qHxX12Y

"The annual Texas Freethought Convention draws atheists, agnostics and humanists from around the world, and this year Christopher Hitchens is the star attraction.
David Brill meets the renowned writer and thinker, as he battles cancer and uses the last of his strength to denounce religion as immoral."
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601379/n/Fighting-Faith

HitchFry Update!

Intelligence Squared
Three ways to watch it Live - Two ways to watch it later.

More info
http://hitchfry.intelligencesquared.com/

SocraticMama

via Why Evolution is True

Anne Crumpacker’s new website on secular parenting dedicated to Hitchens.

"If you’re a regular here, you’ll surely remember the story of Mason Crumpacker, the eight-year-old Texas girl who asked Christopher Hitchens to advise her on good books to read. It was a touching story, complete with Mason’s heartfelt thank-you letter to Hitch and a narrative of the episode written by Anne Crumpacker, Mason’s mom."

More http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/anne-crumpackers-new-website-on-secular-parenting/

What Will They Think of Next?

Why the crazy Iranian plot to pay Mexicans to kill the Saudi ambassador isn’t so implausible.
By Christopher Hitchens

There may conceivably be a reason to doubt the truth of the Obama administration’s claim that the “Quds Force” of the Islamic Republic of Iran went into the free market for murder in order to suborn the killing of the Saudi ambassador to the United States. But neither the apparently surreal nor the apparently flagrant nature of the thing would constitute such reasons.

Read More http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/why_the_crazy_iranian_plot_to_pay_mexicans_to_kill_the_saudi_amb.html

The New Libya’s First Mistake

Muammar Qaddafi should not have been killed, and his surviving son should be captured.
By Christopher Hitchens

Surrendering to a feeling of deep impotence and slight absurdity, I borrowed an iPad on Thursday afternoon and used it to send my first-ever message by this means. It was addressed to one of those distinguished Frenchmen who have been at the fore in pressing the outside world to remove Muammar Qaddafi from the obscene toadlike posture in which, for more than four decades, he has squatted on the lives of the Libyan people.

Read More http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/muammar_qaddafi_should_not_have_been_killed_but_sent_to_stand_tr.html

Hitchens - Fry LIVE on FORA.tv

WATCH IT LIVE NOVEMBER 9, 2011

EVENT PASS £5.00 GBP (Watch Live! Plus 30 Days Unlimited Viewing)
Don't miss this chance to hear famed public intellectual and truth-teller Christopher Hitchens and his good friend, actor and writer Stephen Fry as they discuss politics, literature and, as Hitchens puts it, "the things that make life worth defending – foes like faith and false consolation."

More Info http://fora.tv/conference/hitchens_fry

The Village Voice Bookshop 2009

The Village Voice is an English-language bookshop in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the heart of literary Paris.
http://www.villagevoicebookshop.com/

Part 1.

 

Hitchens - Fry Update

WATCH THE EVENT LIVE AT CINEMAS AROUND THE UK

Due to the huge demand for this sold out event, there will be live HD screenings in selected cinemas across the UK.

More Info:
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/fry-hitchens/_nocache

Romney’s Mormon Problem

Mitt Romney and the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormonism.
By Christopher Hitchens

I have no clear idea whether Pastor Robert Jeffress is correct in referring to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more colloquially known as the Mormons, as “a cult.” There do seem to be one or two points of similarity. The Mormons have a supreme leader, known as the prophet or the president, whose word is allegedly supreme.


Read More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/is_mormonism_a_cult_who_cares_it_s_their_weird_and_sinister_beli.html

Submit your video to the Hitchens project

At reddit a video tribute project has been launched.

Here's the plan:
1. Make a short video. Aim for about 1 min length, give or take. Say anything you like, keeping in mind the nature of the effort. The only thing we ask is:

2. Close your video by raising a glass. It has been pointed out that Johnny Walker Black is Hitchens' drink, but obviously use what you like.

3. Email your video to thehitchappreciation@gmail.com. Use any means you like to send the file, but YouSendIt and WeTransfer are recommended if your regular email doesn't cooperate. YouSendit.com has minimal registration requirements, and WeTransfer has a 2G capacity and no registration. Speaking of file submission specs:

4. Keep the file size as small as is reasonable for now. We don't know how many submissions we will ultimately get. Quicktime & mov have been offered as desirable submission formats, but obviously the editors will do their best to work with whatever you're able to turn in.

Learn more: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/ld7ll/ok_you_can_now_submit_your_video_to_the_hitchens/

Christopher Hitchens in conversation with Stephen Fry

Southbank Centre / Royal Festival Hall
November 9, 2011. 8.30pm

"In this special event for Intelligence Squared, Hitchens will be in conversation via satellite in Washington with his friend Stephen Fry who'll be on stage live at Royal
Festival Hall. This is a chance to hear one of the great public intellectuals of our age discussing politics, literature and, as he puts it, 'the things that make life worth defending - foes like faith and false consolation'.

Tickets and Info:
http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/christopher-hitchens-in-conversation-with-stephen-fry-61898

Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list

Why Evolution Is True has a great post on Hitchens encounter with 8 year old Mason, who wanted to know what books she should read.

Read it here.

"I’m not going to quit until I absolutely have to"

Photos by Brett Buchanan, photographer and multimedia producer, at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston 2011 .

http://www.brettbuchanan.com/2011/10/hitchens/

Hitchens and Dawkins at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston 2011

Texas Freethought Conv:
The Dawkins/Hitchens speeches and Q&A will be available soon in professional quality video. The actual conference DVD set will be on sale soon, but the Dawkins/Hitchens event will be a FREEBIE on behalf of the RDF, TFC, AAA and the professional film crew who make their living helping our movement.

Believe Me - It's Torture

BBC Radio 4
By Christopher Hitchens. A selection of the polemical journalist's essays. Read by Roger Allam.

Listen here (15 minutes). Available for 7 days.

Honouring Christopher Hitchens

Text of speech presenting the Richard Dawkins Award on behalf of Atheist Alliance of America, Houston, 8th October 2011

"Today I am called upon to honour a man whose name will be joined, in the history of our movement, with those of Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Paine, David Hume. He is a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know. And I live in Oxford, his alma mater and mine."

More: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643452-honouring-christopher-hitchens

Lord Haw Haw and Anwar al-Awlaki

What the execution of a World War II traitor can teach us about assassinating American-born terrorists.
By Christopher Hitchens

The first thing to say, when reviewing the question of what America should do about those of its citizens who advocate the murder of random numbers of its civilians, is that it is flat-out astonishing to see the debate being conducted at all. Faced with jeering, sniggering, vicious saboteurs who hide from the daylight and pop up on blog and cheap CDs, calmly awarding religious permission for the capricious taking of life, what do we imagine Vladimir Putin would do?

More: http://slate.me/nz2OgY

A Voice, Still Vibrant, Reflects on Mortality

Hitchens, journalist Matthew Chapman, Dawkins, Carol Blue

By Charles McGrath / The New York Times

HOUSTON — Christopher Hitchens, probably the country’s most famous unbeliever, received the Freethinker of the Year Award at the annual convention of the Atheist Alliance of America here on Saturday. Mr. Hitchens was flattered by the honor, he said a few days beforehand, but also a little abashed.

Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/books/christopher-hitchens-on-writing-mortality-and-cancer.html?ref=books

Hitchens makes first public appearance in months

By Geoff Berg

"Hitchens’ speech did not disappoint. He talked about his illness and noted that over the last year, he’d been coming to Houston regularly for treatment, presumably at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He was emphatic that though his “time” is rapidly approaching, he wouldn’t stop doing his best to shed light on the fraudulent claims made by religion, a line that brought the crowd to its feet."

Read More:
http://blog.chron.com/partisangridlock/2011/10/christopher-hitchens-makes-first-public-appearance-in-months/

Hitch isn’t done yet

PZ Myers reports from the Texas Freethought Convention

"Christopher Hitchens was granted the Richard Dawkins Award tonight at the Texas Freethought Convention. He was looking frail and thin, his voice was husky, but he was amazingly strong."
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/09/hitch-isnt-done-yet/

Dawkins and Hitchens on stage: http://yfrog.com/hw2knvwj

Book of the Week - Arguably

BBC Radio 4
A selection of the polemical journalist's essays. Read by Roger Allam.

First up 'Believe Me - It's Torture.' Hitchens confronts the issue of whether waterboarding is torture, by being waterboarded himself.


Starting Monday October 10, 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sz17

Citizen Enemies

Those who protest the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki have to say what they would have done instead.
By Christopher Hitchens

Probably because it mainly provides the kind of short-term cinematic satisfaction that characterizes the Hellfire terminus, the flashy ending of al-Qaida’s main media star has only led to the reopening of some pressing questions about the nature of the jihadi menace.

More: http://slate.me/p67NQA