More on Hitchens; and More Chalmers Johnson on America Empire

Two pieces this morning that deserve wide attention:

1. Jacques Berlinbau (author of The Secular Bible) has penned a stinging critique of Hitchens' God is Not Good in the Chronicle of Higher Education. What makes it interesting is that Berlinbau is a committed, nuanced, and articulate secularist.
2. Jonathan Freedland's piece, "Bush's Amazing Achievement" in the most recent New York Review of Books. The "amazing achievement" is how the disastrous effects of Bush Jr.'s foreign policy has brought about the strange world in which both WTO protesters on the street and foreign policy wonks inside the Beltway are all agreed: the neocon project for a "New American Century" is bad news (what we might call a dis-angelion, to play with the New Testament language for "good news"). On this, both Noam Chomsky and the editors of The National Review seem to be agreed. Of particular interest is Freedland's attention to Chalmers Johnson's new book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.