kalikshama
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Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit
Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died on Thursday in Houston. He was 62.
The cause was pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer, Vanity Fair magazine said in announcing the death, at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Mr. Hitchens, who lived in Washington, learned he had cancer while on a publicity tour in 2010 for his memoir, “Hitch-22,” and began writing and, on television, speaking about his illness frequently.
“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.
He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion.
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In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens - 
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This is for Christopher's family, friends and all of those who admired him. 
This is for all the fundie religious kooks who (inevitiably) will proclaim his death to be "God's justice" and take sadistic glee in their false belief that he is now burning in hell (the "justice" of a "loving" god, don't ya know 
). 
This is for Christopher himself... for a life that positively impacted others, and thus was a life well spent.
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