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

Pakistan Is the Enemy

We know that Pakistan's intelligence service is aiding terrorists. What are we going to do about it?
By Christopher Hitchens

In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Lt. Milo Minderbinder transforms the mess accounts of the American airbase under his care into a "syndicate" under whose terms all servicemen are potential stakeholders. But this prince of entrepreneurs and middlemen eventually becomes overexposed, especially after some incautious forays into Egyptian cotton futures, and is forced to resort to some amoral subterfuges.

More: http://www.slate.com/id/2304641/

Hitchens in Houston, October 8, 2011

Atheist Alliance of America

"Christopher Hitchens has confirmed his intent go attend the AAA Convention in Houston on October 8th, to receive the Richard Dawkins Award for Freethinker of the Year. He will also be available to sign copies of his new book "Arguably", which will be for sale at the Convention."

http://atheistallianceamerica.org/

Inside the Orgone Box

The New York Times - Sunday Book Review

Christopher Hitchens reviews

ADVENTURES IN THE ORGASMATRON
How the Sexual Revolution Came to America
By Christopher Turner

In the classic confessional memoir “The God That Failed,” Arthur Koestler describes some of the characters who made up the constituency of his Communist Party group in Berlin in the early 1930s: “Among other members of our cell, I remember Dr. Wilhelm Reich. He . . . had just published a book called ‘The Function of the Orgasm,’ in which he had expounded the theory that the sexual frustration of the proletariat caused a thwarting of its political consciousness; only through a full, uninhibited release of the sexual urge could the working class realize its revolutionary potentialities and historic mission; the whole thing was less cockeyed than it sounds.”

Read More