Yes it's sad to see him battling stage four cancer, then again he always replies with 'there is no stage five.' lol It is understandable to eventually see democracy as one of the most important causes in todays fight against totalitarianism, and it isn't a surprise to see the path Hitchens walked to get to that point. I guess like many, I used to be a socialist or far leftist myself during my later teenaged years. I was pro-Palestinian, an apologist for Trotsky/Marx, had oppositional views towards several wars America has fought, and bought into a lot of Chomsky and Zinn. In the end I saw much of that as naive, and counter-intuitive.
Free masonry has been around for a very long time, and has had similar treatments to the jews during the second world war. All conspiracy theories evolve from a religious base or religious thinking, and usually they come from christians or muslims. I'm neutral in view towards them, because so far I haven't seen any real convincing evidence for or against their group in society. Sure a lot of places are opening up with Masonry symbols, then again they have been around for centuries. Some of the most famous and oldest US presidents were also Masons.
Christianity is a benign religious movement compared to the over-shadowing islamist one, but go back more than 50 years ago and you'll see they were as bad as each other. Catholics and prodestants had a hand in sponsoring 20th century fascist movements more than any other group; basically they were in bed with them. Then of course there is the inquisition, colonialism, racial eugenics, and similar movements that had a christian backing or rational behind them. Thankfully all of those movements are just about dead.
NATO is simply the extension of the domestic, foreign, and defense policies of the signatory countries; so yes some amount of resource focus would be present, that's undeniable. It depends on your perspective on that particular point, whether you see it as a negative thing, or if you're a realistic and see that it would ultimately be suicidal not to do it. If only every country in the world had their own oil reserves, iron deposits, agricultural booms, precious resource mines, etc... then there would be no problem.
An interesting perspective worth considering is that resources would no longer be fought for once we move into the space age, and start mining planets hostile to life for all of the previous and rare resources we fight for here, and we would only need to keep the earth as a base for agricultural development. The amount of any chemical-based resources is at least a million times more common in space than here, with the possible exception of oil; which can be replaced with synthetics and other renewable forms of energy.
