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Hitchens whooped in Beirut
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mises



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:16 pm    Post subject: Hitchens whooped in Beirut Reply with quote

Quote:
As a professional provocateur and vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens has been engaged in countless verbal punch-ups with his ideological opponents, most of them conducted from the safety of a TV studio.

However, when the controversial author, journalist and broadcaster defaced a political poster on a visit to Beirut last week, he found himself at the wrong end of a bruising encounter that has left him walking with a limp and nursing cuts and bruises.

Hitchens had been drinking on Beirut's main boulevard, Hamra Street, on Saturday afternoon with two other western journalists after attending a rally to commemorate the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. They spotted a poster for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a far-right group whose logo bears an uncanny resemblance to the Nazi swastika, and Hitchens decided to act.

"They would be better off calling themselves the Syrian National Socialist party, and that's what they are", he said, speaking to MediaGuardian.co.uk today after arriving in the UK by plane. "I couldn't tear it down but I got my marker out and wrote on it, effectively telling them to '*beep* off'."

Hitchens' political statement was witnessed by a group of SSNP activists, who have a strong presence in Beirut. "With amazing speed, in broad daylight on this fashionable street, these guys appeared from nowhere, grabbed me by the collar and said: 'You're coming with us'. I said: 'No I'm not'. They kept on coming. About six or seven at first with more on the way," he said.

He described how he was knocked to the floor, ended up with his shirt covered with blood after he cut his arm in the fall, and "skinned" two fingers on one hand. Hitchens added that was walking with a limp for several days after. "They were after me because I was the one who had defaced the poster," he said.

After scrambling to his feet and "picking up my glasses and my notebook", Hitchens and his companions flagged down a taxi, but a member of the gang who had assailed him jumped in and they climbed back out on to the street, escaping to the safety of a busy coffee shop. A crowd confronted their assailants and the three men managed to escape.

The journalists then caught another taxi to a waterfront hotel "to throw them off the scent in case we were followed", although not before Hitchens had "taken a punch to the face through the car window". They returned to their own hotel later that afternoon.


Hitchens said he had been shaken by the attack. "I've just got off a flight. What shook me is how nearly it could have got fantastically nasty. We could have been hurt or taken away. These militias have their own private dungeons. I wouldn't fancy spending time in one of those."

He stayed on in Beirut to deliver a scheduled talk at the University of American in Lebanon yesterday evening, where he was confronted by another group of SSNP members. "By that time they had worked out who I was and where I was going to be," he said. "So I took along some very nice comrades from the Popular Socialist Party to sit near me. [The rival activists] were outnumbered."

Hitchens added that his hosts had offered to take him to hospital but he had refused. "I'm too old to take chances. If you get kicked in the head or the stomach you should get yourself checked out but I didn't get a blow to my head or anything."

He is recovering in London today before flying back to his Washington home tomorrow and insists he is bloodied but unbowed. "It was a scrape. It wasn't 'honours even' but it wasn't a rout."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/19/christopher-hitchens-beirut-attack

Like or hate the guy, that was a gutsy move in Beirut. (I'm sure the booze was not a factor...)
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Live by the blowhard, get the sh*t kicked out of you like a blowhard.
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mises



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought you'd like that.
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caniff



Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I like him, even if I don't always agree with him. He's got a set of balls and will tell virtually anyone to screw off. That gets props in my book.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

caniff wrote:
I like him, even if I don't always agree with him. He's got a set of balls and will tell virtually anyone to screw off. That gets props in my book.


It doesn't in my book. Its great to have actual courage. But the man is more bluster than bravado.

I'm glad he wasn't seriously hurt, but I can't say I'm upset to see this much happen to him. I wouldn't wish him serious ill, but man, what he did was a touch reckless, no?
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Gopher



Joined: 04 Jun 2005

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good.
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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

He made a politically controversial act in public in a politically volatile country. Why is this more than a blurb under an ad for panty hose on page 46?
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mises



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I sure wouldn't walk around belligerently drunk in bloody Lebanon.
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JMO



Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hitchens isn't scared of taking a punch. I like it. He would be a fun guy to go on a night out with.
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Blockhead confidence



Joined: 02 Apr 2008

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A well-executed campaign for Brand Hitchens
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ED209



Joined: 17 Oct 2006

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Should have been titled; "Drunken Brit Vandal Flees Local Justice!"

He's the Rab.C.Nesbit(Scottish Philosopher) of secularism and this is why I love him.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Blockhead confidence wrote:
A well-executed campaign for Brand Hitchens


Also very true.
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Jandar



Joined: 11 Jun 2008

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kuros wrote:
caniff wrote:
I like him, even if I don't always agree with him. He's got a set of balls and will tell virtually anyone to screw off. That gets props in my book.


It doesn't in my book. Its great to have actual courage. But the man is more bluster than bravado.

I'm glad he wasn't seriously hurt, but I can't say I'm upset to see this much happen to him. I wouldn't wish him serious ill, but man, what he did was a touch reckless, no?


So you support the Syrian Nazi party and their thug tactics?
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samcheokguy



Joined: 02 Nov 2008
Location: Samcheok G-do

PostPosted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I dare the above poster to go to a bar on the DE/MD border and say "down with racist biker gangs!" You are against racist biker gangs right?
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Rteacher



Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA

PostPosted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think they should have a big, high-profile atheist convention in Saudi Arabia after which they carouse and descend on the public streets like drunken fools ...

The public floggings that ensue would be front page news for sure. Cool
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