Christopher Hitchens on Russia and its Neighbors (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

This is the same guy that cheer leaded the Iraq war?

Happy birthdays, Hitch.

The only thing that is missing is the NATO expansion politics..

I can still remember how Bertrand Russell foresaw how it was bound to be a failure. Due to the egotistical behaviour from the top of that facist regime. And nothing has change. Now we have a war with a country with A weapons! On the one side! I wonder why we seems to be stuck with a half world of almost insane people in power!.

He knew a lot and his passing is a loss

It's really too bad, he would be 72 today.

Hitch saw the issues for Russian neighbours 11+ years before the attack on Ukraine. What a mind he was.

I miss intellectuals like Hitchens. Clearly smart without needing to prove anything and humble enough to admit when he isn’t smart enough on a certain subjects

Is it me or does this interview seem to be spliced, the interviewer has difference in sound and also lighting?

In the light of 2022 in Ukraine, this turned out to be a pathetic, hollow analysis.

My heart 🖤
miss u Hitch

This completely superficial a-hole was a cheerleader for the onslaught on Iraq.

I miss Hitch.

I think to be fair, Hitchens reading of the Russian narrative was and continued to be shared by any sensible individual even prior to 2014. What Europe did about it was acquiesce, even engage to the point of economic dependency with Russia.

Governments are run by humans and humans are generally lazy and act willfully blind to issues which might require them to think four moves ahead; quietly hoping the issue will not erupt or escalate during their watch.

There is no Monday morning quarterbacking here; just the unsurprising unfolding of events latently released by the future to the present.

They said Chris was paranoid, myself included, or at the very least unhelpful; but he was right all along, as we now see

Christopher, your powerful work lives on. I wish I discovered you sooner!

Christopher Hitchens supported using The American Military industrial complex to destabilise Governments he and he’s friends didn’t like
An arrogant intellectual who paid no price for he’s ideas
I highly recommend listening to Col Douglas Macgregor than this arrogant discredited man.

If he had lived today, he'd have ripped into putin like a hungry lion.

Wow Christopher predicted putins behaviour perfectly.

We miss you, Hitch.

Visonary . My word this man is so badly missed . ' PERSONAL POWER' the description I was always looking for , right on every account PUTIN , THE RUSSIAN CHURCH , PEOPLE GO MISSING ........................good lord MR HITCHENS knew what would happen . This is prophecy .

this should be properly subtitled and watched by many.

"A nuclear free world" is a nonsense now. 24th Feb 2024, one year after the Ukraine invasion.

Maybe if Russia stopped invading others' land and started focusing on improving itself inwardly as it is already and has been for a long time the largest country in the world, Russians wouldn't have to stay so pessimistic about everything. But that also requires them to stop being so passive about the tyrant that is running their country into the ground.

I was, as always, imagining what he would have said. George Orwell is a bestseller in Russia after the war. Read Christopher's book's, they have the power to make empires fall.

Why bother to discuss such bitter topics? There's a bunch of PG Wodehouse books next to his head!

Like Hitchens but he sold out his later years to the west for a paycheck to support his family after his death

If I could resurrect anyone……

"it is our responsibility to prevent any bullying" along those lines. Responsibility.

Hitchens became a neocon who inexplicably assumed that the west is the best and should be policing everybody else and spreading “democracy.”

Democracy = a country controlled by shadowy oligarchs and bankers.

Hitchens is the epitome of the dumb person’s intellectual

NATO is the problem.


Lol jk, ppl really think that

Who else is here in 2023 for a dose of intelligent perspective on the shit called russia?
I miss you mr Hitchens

Hitchens was such a disappointment later in life. He became a complete neocon. His younger self would be disgusted by the things he was saying. Really sad.

Spot on.

"Forgetting" a technology is not so far-fetched. For example, we cannot now easily rebuild the engines for the rockets that took Americans to the moon. There are also computer systems whose software (as it were) is programmed in a language alien to today's developers. Many more trivial examples of machines that are left in the dust because we have moved on to solid state and then digital versions can easily be located. So it is not outside the realm of possibility that the fundamental expertise required to build and (perhaps more importantly) maintain a thermonuclear arsenal can be sunsetted into a kind of purposeful senescence such that "relearning" how how to build the "Big Boy" and "Little Man" from scratch would require an effort equal to some percentage of the initial attempt. HOWEVER, this may not be a state of affairs to be wished for. Any future advanced technological civilization will require the considerable output of nuclear power in order to carry on with day to day activities of human flourishing. Carbon-fuels are deader than the dead dinosaurs of which they are constituted. Wind, solar, and geothermal will be in the mix but they are largely regional and opportunistic sources of power. And because the knowledge base required for producing energy from nuclear fuel is so closely associated with the processes that build "The Bomb", we are likely to always be using Damocles' Sword for plowsharing whilst pretended that it can't also slit our throats.

he is prophet

Such a shame the man isnt here, i do wonder what he would make of Brexit and now Putin/Ukraine, Israel/Hamas.

Absent in the comments here is a reverence for that partial display of the vast library on which Hitchens built his vast knowledge and the conclusions and opinions drawn from it. And to think the image is one small slice of what he consumed in his life-time. The lesson is clearly one of being a voluntary, willing, relentless learner far beyond the superficial and distorted propaganda that schools and of course media provide. Yet sadly now because of technology shifts we are raising an entire generation that will never read a book on any topic and will only know what they choose to watch that they might passively come to find by happenstance or accident. Seeking information and therefore an ability to actually have a valid thought on anything will never occur to them as they complain about the sorry state of affairs on which they think they victims.

He was right. But I like how the Western intellectuals roast Russian expansionism while conveniently ignoring British and US aggression against sovereign nations. The US and the UK paved the way to illegal occupations. In 1838 there wasn't Taliban, these people are just looters, but hard to admit for them.

The Evil Empire as is. The root of global terrorism. This is Ruzzia!

CC is engaged, and I have all volumes on my headset and laptop set on MAX. Yet, I cannot hear this interview. I note the video was posted thirteen years ago. Is there anyone out there who can improve the volume, especially on Christopher Hitchens voice? Thank you.

I wish he was still here to make sense of this global madness today 😢

When and where was this recorded? Why isn’t a date provided at the beginning?

This man is ever so nauseatingly overrated. Not missed.

We didn't listen. WE DIDN'T LISTEN!

This dude has been thoroughly discredited with originally his being a Communist, then supporting Bush and the war in Iraq.

So that was said in 2010, now in 2024 we can say he was spot-on

flipping obama

Obama got played by Putin.