December Obituaries – Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il
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Will the next issue of the Standard be packed with obituaries? Since Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il have all died within a short period of time.
There was a comment by a Party member on Hitchens on Richard Dawkins’s site in 2008 here. Not very charitable for an obituary but then by all accounts Hitchens wasn’t in to being charitable.As to King Jong II, what can we say other than that he is being succeeded by his son King Jong III (and that he was guilty of dragging the name of socialism through the mud in support of the dynastic state-capitalist dictatorship in North Korea)?
According to the Spring 2003 issue of the American army journal Parameters:
Quote:Since at least the mid-1990s, there has been a widespread view among Korea observers that, because of severe economic decline, food shortages, and related problems, regime survival has replaced reunification as Pyongyang’s most pressing objective. Further, these observers argue, despite its rhetoric, North Korea realizes that reunification through conquest of South Korea is no longer possible. There are also some who argue that the North Korean leadership has recognized the need to initiate substantial change in order to survive in the international community and is embarking on economic reform, reconciliation with South Korea, and reduction of military tensions.http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/03spring/hodge.pdf Just like any other capitalist state in fact.
ALB wrote:There was a comment by a Party member on Hitchens on Richard Dawkins’s site in 2008 here. Not very charitable for an obituary but then by all accounts Hitchens wasn’t in to being charitable.Did anyone else read the subsequent comments by this member (NMcC)? I thought they were fucking hilarious and spot on but others may take a less charitable view
Christopher Hitchens was a member of the “International Socialists” (IS) from 1966 to 1976. This wasn’t the worst of the Trotskyist groups (after all, they did recognise Russia to be a form of state capitalism). When he joined, IS was even flirting with the non-Leninist views of Rosa Luxemburg. After May 1968 , which Tony Cliff analysed as failing because of a lack of a vanguard party, Cliff decided that his organisation needing “Leninization”. Which happened, culminating in the foundation in 1977 of the SWP as a classic Leninist vanguard party. After ceasing to be a Trotskyist Hitchens seems to have still retained a soft spot for Luxemburg as in this book review dating from June this year. But his support for the US invasion of Iraq ruined his reputation with the ex-Trotskyist left, as that other ex-Trotskyist Tariq Ali explained on the BBC the other day.
Hitchens and Ali going head to head on the US invasion of Iraq.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVXkfnatg9Mhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLyhea6vVqM
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