Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins believe legal grounds can be established to arrest Pope Benedict for "crimes against humanity" during an upcoming state visit to the UK. They have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Benedict over the systemic cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

This may not be as far fetched as it seems, if nothing else it would certainly be a symbolic gesture. The Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested using a similar legal principle when he visited the UK in 1998. Although on a "state visit", Dawkins believes the Pope may not be able to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest since he isn't the representative of any state recognized by the United Nations.

Timesonline:

They [Dawkins and Hitchens] have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action.

The lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him or refer his case to the International Criminal Court.

The Vatican has gone into a defensive posture over recent allegations of sexual abuse by clerics. Spokespersons deny the Pope was engaged in a cover-up and have referred to a "despicable campaign of defamation". The Pope and others have dismissed discussion of the scandal as "petty gossip".

This week we learned that in his former role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict argued against the defrocking of an American priest guilty of the sexual abuse of boys. The grounds the Pope gave in a letter for not recommending needed action against the predator was the greater "good of the universal church".

Richard Dawkins expresses the disgust many feel: “This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.”

Hitchens said: “This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment."

More on the story - here.

There is a touch of the masochist in Christopher Hitchens. Not so long ago he volunteered to be waterboarded and looks, even on good days, like someone who has been beaten up by a few bottles the night before - but most people wouldn't add "stupid" to his list of character traits.

Seems though while in Beirut at the invitation of the Harri-Saudi group, Hitchens came across a poster for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and decided to deface it - allegedly with the words "fuck the SSNP".

The Abu Muqawama blog has an update on the incident:

Sounds as though Hitchens was in the wrong area and was being watched when he began scrawling. This is a bit like going pubbing in a loyalist area of Belfast back in the day and defacing a UDA poster with local hard men loitering outside a pub watching. Hitchens may not have been heard from again - so all things considered he got off fairly lightly.

But poster defacement wasn't the only provocation offered by Hitchens. He also got into a brawl with backers of the pro-Syrian SNPN. Word is Hitchens insulted their swastika-like flag and received gashed knuckles and bruises in the subsequent brawl. Although I have to admit, it's hard to imagine Hitchens "brawling". He looks so out of condition you wonder if even a lively TV debate might do him in.

The Angry Arab news service says he has been left with a bit of a limp. Nothing I'm sure that a few scotches won't take care of.

Martin Amis had some harsh words for Muslims in his essay, The Age of Horrorism. Amis has his supporters - notably novelist Ian McEwan and author Christopher Hitchens. Both have defended him against charges of racism.

There's nothing terribly surprising about what Amis had to say about measures required to deal with Muslims. He was simply stating what a lot of his fellow countrymen think. What is surprising is that those urbane members of the middle classes who share Amis' bigoted views have managed to keep the zipper on it for so long.

England is and always has been infected with deep seated class-based prejudices and ingrained racism. Muslims are just the latest addition to the list of bogeymen.

The Irish have long been the recipients of practiced condescension. When the IRA was perceived as the number one threat, the Irish-in-England were the targets of the type of suspicion and hostility now reserved for Muslims. None of that was particularly new incidentally, the Irish have been the favorite whipping boys of the English for ages. Less than a century ago you could come across cartoons in Punch magazine that depicted the Irish as ape-like hoodlums, wielding obligatory shillelaghs.

So when Martin Amis took the lid off a very old can, there wasn't a lot that was surprising - we're just dealing with a new scapegoat. His disparaging views of Muslims, Islamists in particular, prompted an old friend Eric Alterman to pose the question: "When did Martin Amis – whose early journalism is among the best I've ever read – become such a jerk?" It looks as though Amis may be infected with the Mark Steyn virus. Its highly contagious these days.

This is a sampling of Amis' complaints and nostrums for misbehaving Muslims:

"The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children..."

It would help if the author's understanding of Islam inspired confidence. Even his mate Hitchens has commented that Amis incorrectly conflates Islamism with Islam. He also appears to have a rather vague understanding of the distinctions within Islam. He describes Sunnis as 'legalistic' and refers to the Shia as 'dreamers, more poetic and emotional' - a description more suited to Sufis.

The English, or at least a significant number of them, simply don't get it. Despite hurtling downhill from their perch at the head of an Empire, they continue to incubate a type of conditioning that doesn't wear off easily after centuries of viewing the non-English part of the human family as various species of underling.

Unlike English Christians, those Muslims who have come to be known in recent times as Islamists, didn't lord it over two fifths of the globe for the better part of two centuries. They didn't engage in the imperial exploitation of native peoples on the major continents, nor did they create a mercantile system geared to exploiting and ripping-off overseas resources in order to enrich the merchant classes back home. That honor goes to the Christian English.

A new book by Amitav Ghosh titled Sea of Poppies, explores the role of the British in the Indian opium trade. Ghosh brings to light much new information that had been whitewashed, including the truth that the Raj in India was essentially financed by the opium trade.

Novelist, Ian McEwan, recently chimed in claiming in an interview with the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, that he 'despises Islamism'.

Of course Islamism is offensive on a number of levels. It does have totalitarian inclinations. It is a male-dominated culture. It is anti-gay and in other ways intolerant. It is doctrinaire and legalistic. But McEwan fails to mention that a great many European Muslims, are equally turned off by Islamist excesses.

Making Muslims the target of scorn and suspicion is somewhat ironical when you look at the social mayhem in communities in the UK that are mostly white and Christian. Take Corby in Northants as an example. The ethnic breakdown in Corby is 98.4% white. Asian or Asian British 0.6%. On the religious front 69.4% Christian and 0.2% Muslim.

Residents of Corby and other towns with a high incidence of youth related crime have complained for years about delinquent behavior that includes arson attacks, car theft, fire bombings, street fights and drunken youths yelling at all hours of the day and night. A resident of Corby named Jane Colman who was interviewed by the London Telegraph secures her front door with two bolts, a chain and a Yale lock. There is much about English society that could be tagged 'uncivilized' and not a lot of it has to do with Muslims.

Amis overstates the case and undermines his credibility by focusing on the Muslim community in such a prejudicial fashion. He has been overly influenced by those who have made it their business to hype the threat posed by Islam to European (American) civilization.

Theories about a global Islamist network have been wildly exaggerated. Hitchens' talk of "Islamofascism" feeds into the type of paranoid mindset that promotes views of the war-on-terror that are really little more than the stuff of fantasy. One of the best books of recent years that takes aim at the poppycock and nonsense churned out by the Bush administration is R.T. Naylor's "Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and Misinformation in the War on Terror."

During an appearance on the US cable news channel MSNBC, Christopher Hitchens traded a few barbs with Andrew Sullivan on the topic of Obama and religion.

Sullivan is gay. At one point Hitchens tossed out a remark, apparently aimed at Sullivan's sexuality.

SULLIVAN: Two things. One, it's important to clear up that he [Wright] did not say "The Jews are going to get you" in some conspiratorial, classic anti-Semitic fashion. I think that's just —

HITCHENS: He [Wright] thinks only Jews are going to object to [Rev. Louis] Farrakhan and [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi. Excuse me?

SULLIVAN: No, he didn't say "only."

HITCHENS: No, but —

SULLIVAN: Again, you keep playing with that quote. We're happy to have it on the record. And now you've made me forget my second point, which is —

HITCHENS: Oh, well, don't be such a lesbian. Get on with it.

Clearly a cheap shot - the type of goading remark that gets yelled from the back of the school bus. Some have argued that it's evidence of homophobia, but it was basically a snarky response of the off-hand variety, the type of comment Hitchens throws out when he's lubricated. He feels a need to keep up the bad boy image.

In an email to the UK paper The Independent, the sender, allegedly Hitchens (the paper refers to the sender as "the commentator"), offered this rationale:

"Don't know what came over me: the dear boy did suddenly seem extremely sapphic, yet I think my intuitions must have been scrambled all the same, since what I was actually thinking was: 'Andrew really wants to have Barack Obama's fucking child'. Clearly some confusion of categories on my part."

During the show, Sullivan gave no appearance of being insulted. Nor did he bring up Hitchens' remark when commenting on the MSNBC show at a later point. However it is part of a pattern we've been seeing with Hitchens, who is rapidly becoming a parody of his former self.

He can still put in a decent showing from time to time when going to bat for atheism, but the contrarian positions have become tediously predictable, as has the bad boy act. Hitch most of all risks becoming an aging parody of his former more engaging self.

Recent online discussions about Obama and the race factor brought to mind Hitchens' column,"Identity Crisis" that appeared in Slate in January.

Hitchens' objections to placing "emphasis on shade" makes it ironic that he sort of does. In a reference to Obama he says - "And why is a man with a white mother considered to be black anyway?" That's hardly the point. The point is that Obama has chosen to articulate himself as African-American. Nor incidentally is Obama's African-American identity easily pigeonholed, despite Hitchens' best efforts with Trinity United... "a sub-standard and shade oriented place."

Then we we get this:

"Last week happened to be the week that the nation of Kenya—birthplace of Obama's father—was convulsed by a political war that contained ghastly overtones of violent and sadistic tribalism. It would sound as absurd to a Kenyan to hear praise for a black candidate as it would sound to most of my European readers to hear a recommendation of a "great white hope." A white visitor to Kenya might not be able to tell a Kikuyu from a Luo at a glance, but a Kenyan would have no such difficulty."

The odd thing about Hitchens is that despite his protestations against racism and the excesses of colonialism, he uses language that a colonial governor would be entirely comfortable with. Some readers pass this off as a product of his English background. I recall reading his Vanity Fair editorial on the the Uganda genocide and I thought he came off at times like a slightly demented polemicist who ought to have been cast in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Daniella Boston's review refers to Hitchens' "colonial romanticism":

"Hitchens's Vanity Fair editorial -- an "African nightmare" set among "bronze Nubian Nephertiti" beauties and crazed self-professed prophets -- reeks of a colonial romanticism almost akin to the racism found in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Contrary to what Hitchens might have us believe, the tragedy unfolding in Uganda is not some fantastical, antediluvian myth set in his self-concocted 'Dark Continent.' "

Hitchens would have been right at home knocking 'em back in a European club in Nairobi back in the day, pith helmet by his elbow and ceiling fan clicking rhythmically overhead. I can hear him holding forth about the horrors of racism even as a small bare-footed Kikuyu boy earning slave wages fills up his glass. The transition from rabble rousing Trotskyist to neo-con apologist isn't as mysterious as some might think. On some level, notwithstanding the masks-of-expedience, Hitch feels at home in an old boys club where his talents are indulged, if not always applauded. Call it an English thing.

It's hard to entirely buy Hitchens' pitch on race, as it is hard at times to buy his pitch on religion. He claimed the Democrats were really the religious ones, while he was in bed with the representatives of the religious right. How laughable is that? His talents as a polemicist don't always succeed in distracting readers from the unsettling contradictions that have come to define him, but that he appears to be blithely unaware of for the most part.

In "identity crisis" he says this of Obama:

"The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a "breakthrough," the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought."

Obama's "identity" isn't soley contingent on race. He doesn't identify with his blackness in a sort of post-60's "us-against-the- oppressor" fashion. While embracing the historical black American struggle for freedom and rights, Obama brings a vision that into play that is inclusive - despite Hitchens' obvious skepticism on the uniter claim. In many ways Obama has succeeded in transcending "categories of identity" that have defined others. That's part of the magic that has led to his broad-based appeal.

Other image-related perceptions that have little to do with race also inform Obama's identity. He gets teased by detractors who think he has a fem side. He is far from your typical armored politico. People have referred to his empathy and grace. These perceptions also figure into Obama's identity and appeal - offering a welcome relief from the macho man bluff of the current cowboy-in-chief.

Hitchens is being a bit myopic in his handling of this question. I suppose you could ponder why he sees it the way he does, but then we'd end up talking more about Hitchens than Obama and that would require a lot more ink.

Christopher Hitchens and Jay Richards debated "Atheism vs Theism and the Scientific Evidence of Intelligent Design" recently at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford U.

"Intelligent design" isn't a term Hitchens acknowledges. In order for intelligence to "design" ... intelligence has to be exercised. This in the minds of some demonstrates the hand of God at work. That nature has inherent design features doesn't of necessity "prove" the existence of a deity.

Hitchens made the point that centuries of "barbarism, misery, ignorance, slavery and early death" hardly leads one to believe in a beneficent designer God. Richards responded by describing God as the "definition of goodness and love". However his all-loving deity for some reason turned a blind eye to the holocaust and the other epic atrocities that scar human history. His argument from science was equally unconvincing.

Hitchens pointedly asked Richards if he believed that Jesus was born of a virgin and if he also believed that Jesus resurrected from the dead. Richards replied "yes" on both counts, to which Hitchens responded :

“I rest my case ... this is an honest guy, who has just made it very clear [that] science has nothing to do with his world view.”

And that's the crux of it. How can people like Richards try to enlist science in their quest to "prove" God, when they also believe biblical fairy tales? It makes it appear that they are only using science as a partisan tool, reducing it pretty much to a pseudo-science.

There were a number of other fallacies in Richards' argument. He described God as "a transcendent, eternal, personal being." The problem with this glorious picture, is that the God of the bible was in fact more like a mean spirited psychopath, than anything approximating Richards' description. The biblical deity described himself as "a jealous God" and routinely called for the slaughter of those he deemed unworthy. It wasn't enough to slaughter the fighting men - the women, children and livestock had to be wiped out also to satisfy his craven lust for vengeance.

Although Hitchens made a strong showing, he won by default. The glaring flaws and contradictions in Richards' argument guaranteed it. Attempting to prove "God" verges on silly. Hitchens summed it up rather nicely when he said :

“The world as we know it works as the world might be expected to work if it did not have a designer. We can finally grow up if we resign ourselves to this increasingly inescapable truth.”