Christopher Hitchens Gets Altered

Atheist Christopher Hitchens has a reputation for drunken aggression as well as for complete intolerance. His in-your-face stance has won him fans and speaking engagements. After one speaking engagement in a Catholic Church, Hitchens drunkenly attacked a priest right there in the church. Apparently he now has had his own face altered a little after vandalizing a poster in Syria where he was visiting.

The reports vary, but agree on several points. Apparently Hitchens and two friends were either going to, or from, a bar in Syria when they encountered a poster from the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party. Something like this happened: Hitchens grabbed a marker and defaced the poster with "F**K the SSNP", and had the misfortune to be in the presence of someone from the SSNP, who took offense and began to thrash Hitchens. At first it was one on three, and still the SSNP fan kept on thrashing Hitchens, even into the taxi backseat with him, then back out onto the street for more thrashing. Other SSNPers arrived to help the first one (who apparently didn't really need the help) but the Hitchens trio finally escaped in another cab.

At first Hitchens' friends said it was no biggie, Hitch wasn't hurt that badly, but then they recanted that and other parts of their story. In fact the symbol on the poster is not a swastika as they reported, and the SSNP does not appear to be NAZI, since the web page has a picture of Lenin on it.

The symbol is called "zawba'a"; apparently the tolerance part does not extend to Jews.

So it appears that Hitchens vandalized the property of, and obscenely offended, a secular, Marxist, violent group on their home turf, a spectacularly stupid thing to do. He maybe should stick to assaulting Christian priests who won't fight back.