Articles by Robert Fisk

We found 126 results.


As India and Pakistan – And America and Iran – Go Toe-To-Toe, Now Is the Time to Recall the Scorched Corpses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert Fisk | The Independent – Microsoft News, 12 Aug 2019

8 Aug 2019 – This week marks only the 74th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the past few days, I’ve had to look hard to find a headline about the two Japanese cities. But, especially in the Middle East and what we like to call south-east Asia, we should be remembering these gruesome anniversaries every month. Hiroshima was atomic-bombed 74 years ago on Tuesday; Nagasaki 74 years ago on Friday. Given the extent of the casualty figures, you’d think they’d be unforgettable.

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(Français) L’évacuation des Casques blancs en Syrie est-elle le prélude de l’ultime bataille ?
Robert Fisk | Arrêt sur info – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Aug 2018

30 Juil 2018 – Grâce à Donald Trump, c’en est fini pour les « rebelles » en Syrie qui ont été trahis par les Américains – sûrement en fin de compte par Trump lui-même au cours des discussions secrètes qu’il a eues avec Vladimir Poutine à Helsinki.

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Look Closely and You’ll See Jared Kushner’s Cynical ‘Deal of the Century’ for Palestinians in Action
Robert Fisk – Information Clearing House, 6 Aug 2018

4 Aug 2018 – Their hearts may be empty but their stomachs shall be filled. Their hopes may be dead but their bank accounts will be in the black. Hindsight is unfair – but it might tell the truth.

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How Long Are We Going to Pretend Palestinians Aren’t People?
Robert Fisk | The Independent – Reader Supported News, 28 May 2018

26 May 2018 – Monstrous. Frightful. Wicked. It’s strange how the words just run out in the Middle East today. Sixty Palestinians dead. In one day. Two-thousand-four-hundred wounded, more than half by live fire. In one day. The figures are an outrage, a turning away from morality, a disgrace for any army to create.

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The Resignation of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Is Not All It Seems
Robert Fisk | The Independent – Reader Supported News, 13 Nov 2017

10 Nov 2017 – He certainly did not anticipate what happened to him. Indeed, Hariri had scheduled meetings in Beirut on the following Monday – with the IMF, the World Bank and a series of discussions on water quality improvement; not exactly the action of a man who planned to resign his premiership

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If You’re Wondering Why Saudi Arabia and Israel Have United against Al-Jazeera, Here’s the Answer
Robert Fisk – Other News, 14 Aug 2017

There are still honourable Israelis who demand a state for the Palestinians; there are well-educated Saudis who object to the crazed Wahabism upon which their kingdom is founded; there are millions of Americans, from sea to shining sea, who do not believe that Iran is their enemy nor Saudi Arabia their friend. But the problem today in both East and West is that our governments are not our friends.

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Amnesia at the UN: The Massacres Samantha Power Conveniently Forgot to Mention
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Dec 2016

It was bizarre to watch Samantha Power at the UN conveniently forget to mention all the massacres done in America’s name. When she talked about ‘barbarism against civilians’ in Aleppo, I remembered climbing over the dead Palestinian civilians massacred at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, slaughtered by Israel’s Lebanese militia friends while the Israeli army – Washington’s most powerful ally in the Middle East – watched.

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The ‘Rebels’ of Aleppo Are No Heroes
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 12 Dec 2016

We refer to them as ‘rebels’ – as if they were the Maquis fighting in the French resistance or Partisans freeing Yugoslavia from the Nazis or, indeed, the insurgents of Warsaw struggling for freedom from the German SS. Which they clearly are not. We know that they have executed their internal enemies, slit the throats of their prisoners and that – well, since Jabhat al-Nusra is al-Qaida (and has since changed its name yet again) – they have flown passenger aircraft into very tall buildings in New York.

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Shimon Peres Was No Peacemaker. I’ll Never Forget the Sight of Pouring Blood and Burning Bodies at Qana
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 3 Oct 2016

Peres said the massacre came as a ‘bitter surprise’. It was a lie: the UN had repeatedly told Israel the camp was packed with refugees.

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We Love to Talk of Terror – But After the Munich Shooting, This Hypocritical Catch-All Term Has Finally Caught Us Out
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 25 Jul 2016

24 Jul 2016 – How come a Muslim can be a terrorist in Europe but a mere ‘attacker’ in south-west Asia? The frightful and bloody hours of Friday night and Saturday morning in Munich and Kabul – despite the 3,000 miles that separate the two cities – provided a highly instructive lesson in the semantics of horror and hypocrisy.

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The EU Refugee Rescue Mission Is a Triumph of Humanitarianism – Not That You’ll Hear about It
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 16 May 2016

If Operation Sophia was designed to ‘tackle the root causes’ of the refugee crisis, we need to talk about justice, dignity and freedom for the people of the Middle East.

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A Plan Must Be Made for ‘Life after Isis’ in the Middle East
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 22 Feb 2016

In the Second World War, Allied leaders planned for the post-war world – a ‘United Nations’ – years before the conflict ended. We must do the same for the Middle East. I cannot stand the old clichés about “when the guns fall silent”. But schools and universities are going to be more deadly to Isis than any air-strike. That’s how you deal with nightmares.

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‘Regrettable’ Is As Far As UK Criticism of Saudi Arabia Is Allowed to Go
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 18 Jan 2016

It was instructive, also, to hear Kawczynski refer to executions as “certain domestic actions”, as if slicing heads off human beings was something to be kept within the family – which is true, in a sense, since the Saudi authorities allow their executioners to train their sons in the craft of head-slicing, just as we Brits used to allow our hangmen to bring their sons into the gallows trade.

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‘We Remain Blindfolded about Isis’ Says the Man Who Should Know
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 16 Nov 2015

So immediately after the Paris massacres, I sought for reason, clarity and wisdom from a man who spent four and a half years in the hands of Muslim kidnappers – 54 months wearing a blindfold, always waiting for death. Brian Keenan was held by Shia Muslims loyal to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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A New Book Reveals the Horrifying, and Fascinating, Details of Daily Life under Isis
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 9 Nov 2015

It details all of Isis’s cruelty, but places it in the context of a very bloody history.

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At Least One Country Agrees with Netanyahu: Saudi Arabia
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 9 Mar 2015

Who can the Saudis trust when they find themselves on Netanyahu’s side? In their golden palaces, the Saudis fear. They fear the Iranians. They fear the Shia. They fear Isis and al-Qaeda. They fear the Muslim Brotherhood. They fear American betrayal and Israeli plots. They even fear the “power” of tiny Qatar.

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Shah Suleyman: The Truly Byzantine Origins of Turkey’s Operation to Rescue a Long-Dead Body from the ‘Islamic Caliphate’
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 23 Feb 2015

To begin this wondrous tale at the start. Shah Suleyman was the king who drowned in the Euphrates River in 1236. He was the father of Ertugrul, who lived by the Sea of Marmara and whose own son, Osman, founded the Ottoman empire, which lasted for 700 years and ended after Ottoman Turkey made the fatal mistake of supporting Germany in the First World War.

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An Old Hand Is at Work in Yemen’s Bloody Civil War
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Jan 2015

Yemen is not Syria. But America’s skewed comprehension of the Middle East has now produced a remarkably similar scenario.

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Saudi Arabia’s History of Hypocrisy We Choose to Ignore
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 19 Jan 2015

The Saudis are special, aren’t they? Fifteen of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were Saudis. Osama bin Laden was himself a Saudi. The Taliban were financed and armed by the Saudis; the Taliban’s Organisation for the “Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice” was identical to the Saudi-Wahabi religious police in Riyadh and Jeddah.

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Charlie Hebdo: Paris Attack Brothers’ Campaign of Terror Can Be Traced Back to Algeria 1954
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 12 Jan 2015

The six-year Algerian war for independence, in which perhaps a million and a half Arab Muslims and many thousands of French men and women died, remains an unending and unresolved agony for both peoples. Just over half a century ago, it almost started a French civil war.

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When Will Palestinians Learn? Turning to International Law Isn’t the Answer — Just Ask America and Israel
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 5 Jan 2015

If Palestine’s request is ‘entirely counterproductive’, what does that make Israel’s slaughtering of civilians last summer?

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CIA ‘Torture Report’: Once Again Language Is Distorted in Order to Hide US State Wrongdoing
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 22 Dec 2014

The whole process of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is now called “EIT”. Like WMD – another whopper in our political vocabulary – the whole filthy business is wrapped up in a three-letter abbreviation.

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Iran Is Shifting from Pariah to Possible Future Policeman of the Gulf
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 1 Dec 2014

Iran’s crisis – our crisis with Iran, if you like – is about that great and historic nation’s future geo-strategic role in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

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With US-led Air Strikes on Isis Intensifying, It’s a Good Time to Be a Shareholder in the Merchants of Death
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 20 Oct 2014

Last month American warships fired $65.8m worth of Tomahawk missiles within just 24 hours of each other. So who is winning the war? Isis? Us? The Kurds (remember them?) The Syrians? The Iraqis? Do we even remember the war? Not at all. We must tell the truth. So let us now praise famous weapons and the manufacturers that begat them.

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John Kerry’s Rhetoric on Isis Insults Our Intelligence and Conceals the Reality of the Situation in Syria
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 22 Sep 2014

Anyone who has studied Syria knows the moderate opposition doesn’t exist.

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All This Talk of an ‘Apocalyptic’ Threat Is Simply Childish
Robert Fisk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Aug 2014

The word movie is the clue. Chuck Hagel and Martin Dempsey were pure Hollywood. It only needed Tom Cruise at their press conference to utter the words “Mission impossible”. Who writes this God-awful script? Can’t the US Defence Secretary and his joint chiefs chairman do better than this?

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(Português) Bombardeios dos EUA no Iraque: A Hipocrisia Suprema
Robert Fisk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Aug 2014

A pergunta persiste: os Estados Unidos teriam feito o mesmo se os refugiados do norte do Iraque fossem palestinos? Bombardeariam os agressores?

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Bombs Away! US to the Rescue – But Only of Certain Minorities, Not Muslims
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 11 Aug 2014

He wouldn’t bomb Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s bloody caliphate when it was butchering the majority Shia Muslims of Iraq. But Barak Obama is riding to the rescue of the Christian refugees – and the Yazidis – because of “a potential act of genocide”. Bombs away. And thank heavens that the refugees in question are not Palestinian.

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Note to UK Airport Police: An Israeli Terrorist Is the Same as a Syrian One
Robert Fisk – Belfast Telegraph, 4 Aug 2014

Now, I think it’s a good idea that the lads in blue are keeping their eyes open at Heathrow for British citizens who’ve been fighting in the Middle East. I don’t want to bump into a chap who’s been firing missiles at Christian families in Syria or into a chap who’s been firing tank shells into the homes of Palestinians in Gaza.

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Dress the Gaza Situation up All You Like, but the Truth Hurts: The World Is Starting to Turn against Israel
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 4 Aug 2014

There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic. That has changed dramatically.

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What If It Had Been 35 Palestinian Dead, and 800 Israeli?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 28 Jul 2014

Sunday 27 July 2014 – Many hundreds of thousands of people – I wish I could say millions – around the world want an end to this impunity. Impunity is the word that comes to mind. Eight hundred dead Palestinians. Eight hundred. That’s infinitely more than twice the total dead of flight MH17 over Ukraine.

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Gaza: Médecins Sans Frontières Official Likens Job to ‘Patching Up Torture Victims in an Open-Air Prison’
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 21 Jul 2014

Comments by Senior Médecins Sans Frontières Official Expose Ethical Dilemma of Humanitarian Work in Conflict Zones.

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The True Gaza Back-Story That the Israelis Aren’t Telling This Week
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 14 Jul 2014

OK, so by this afternoon [9 Jul 2014], the exchange rate of death in two days was 40-0 in favour of Israel. But now for the Gaza story you won’t be hearing from anyone else in the next few hours. It’s about land.

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Jailing of Al-Jazeera Journalists: A Proxy in the War between Qatar and Saudi Arabia
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 7 Jul 2014

Must journalists endure the threat of imprisonment as well as the threat of death or serious injury? It is not just the outrageous, unfair, trumped-up crudity of the charges against the three Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to years of imprisonment in Cairo.

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Yet another Betrayal of the Palestinians
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 28 Apr 2014

25 April 2014 – Dead in the water. Just as the entire world predicted – with the exception of Messrs Barack Obama and John Kerry and, I suppose, our favourite “peace” envoy Tony Blair – the whole fandango of an Israeli-Palestinian “peace” has collapsed again.

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The 1915 Armenian Genocide: Finding a Fit Testament to a Timeless Crime
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 7 Apr 2014

As the last survivors die out, academics must consider how best to create a lasting memorial to the 1.5 million who were murdered.

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Sinister Efforts to Minimise Japanese War Crimes and Portray the Empire As a Victim Must Be Exposed
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 7 Apr 2014

The “comfort women”, the Japanese military’s repulsive euphemism for the victims they turned upon with such sexual sadism, were gang-raped, used as prostitutes and often butchered by Japanese soldiers during their occupation of Korea and China in the late 1930s. These women – the few ageing survivors and the many dead – are a symbol of Japan’s wartime disgrace.

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Were It Not for the French, Hezbollah Would All Be Syrians Fighting on Their Own Government’s Side Inside Their Own Country
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 3 Mar 2014

And you thought the Middle East was a difficult place to understand. Try living here.

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Ukraine’s Future Is Tied Up With Syria’s – And Vladimir Putin Is Crucial to Both
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 24 Feb 2014

No one in the Middle East will be studying Ukraine’s violent tragedy with more fascination – and deeper concern – than President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

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Now It’s Middle Eastern Regimes Fighting Al-Qa’ida, while the US Ties Itself Up in Knots
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 6 Jan 2014

And so, for the first time in recent history, it seems that the “war against terror” – and specifically against al-Qa’ida – is being fought by Middle East regimes rather than their foreign investors.

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Is The Hague Making a Mockery of Justice so the CIA and MI6 Can Save Face?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 4 Nov 2013

Investigating an alleged double standard over two prominent Libyans accused of crimes against humanity.

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A Syrian Solution to Civil Conflict? The Free Syrian Army Is Holding Talks with Assad’s Senior Staff
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 7 Oct 2013

Secret Approach to the President Could Reshape the Whole War – Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war.

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Gas Missiles ‘Were NOT Sold to Syria’
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 30 Sep 2013

While the Assad regime in Damascus has denied responsibility for the sarin gas missiles that killed around 1,400 Syrians in the suburb of Ghouta on 21 August, information is now circulating in the city that Russia’s new “evidence” about the attack includes the dates of export of the specific rockets used and – more importantly – the countries to which they were originally sold.

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Assad’s Troops May Be Winning This War in Syria’s Capital – Untouched by Obama’s Threats
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 23 Sep 2013

Some questions are familiar. Why use gas when so much more lethal weaponry is being flung at rebel forces across the country? If the government wanted to use gas, why not employ it north of Aleppo where not a single government soldier or official exists? Why in Damascus?

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Cairo Massacre: After Today, What Muslim Will Ever Trust the Ballot Box Again?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 19 Aug 2013

14 Aug 2013 – This marks a tragic turning point, from which it will take Egypt years to recover.

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Any Other ‘Statesman’ Who Negotiated Peace like John Kerry Would Be Treated as a Thief
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 19 Aug 2013

Has John Kerry no shame? Any other “statesman” – who told an occupied people that if they didn’t make peace their occupiers would steal even more of their land, would be regarded as an outcast, a fellow thief.

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The Lebanese Army Fears Rise of the Sunni Muslim Salafists
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 17 Jun 2013

10 June 2013 – As Shia Hezbollah fighters rush to Assad’s aid, Lebanon is fighting a desperate battle to stop the menacing advance of Sunni rebels in the opposite direction.

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Iran to Send 4,000 Troops to Aid President Assad Forces in Syria
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 17 Jun 2013

World Exclusive: US urges UK and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing conflict. For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. The US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East [including Al Qaida].

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Syria and Sarin Gas: US Claims Have a Very Familiar Ring
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 6 May 2013

It all comes back to that most infantile cliché of all: that the US and Israel fear Assad’s chemical weapons “falling into the wrong hands”. They are frightened, in other words, that these chemicals might end up with the very same rebels, especially the Islamists, that Washington, London, Paris, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting. And if these are the “wrong hands”, then presumably the weapons in Assad’s armoury are in the “right hands”.

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When George Bush Invaded Iraq, Life Imitated Art
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 8 Apr 2013

Born-again Christians often don’t realise their ‘God-given’ right to invade Iraq destroyed one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East.

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World Focus: The Eyes of the World Are Trained on Israel – But Will There Be Anything to See?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 25 Mar 2013

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Public Speech-making will be at least a super-tourist – with 10,000 armed Israeli and American tour guides in Jerusalem alone. Now that, Mr President, is the wall. No, not That Wall, we’re talking about the Ottoman palisade on each side of the city’s Damascus Gate.

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The Cost of War Must Be Measured by Human Tragedy, Not Artefacts
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 18 Mar 2013

What does heritage matter in the face of such tragic desolation? What is a child’s life worth against all the antiquities of Syria?

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John Kerry wants the Gulf to support the Syrian rebels. But which rebels? The soft, safe ones? Or those horrible, ‘terrorist’ Islamists?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 11 Mar 2013

John Kerry has had a miserable time of it in the Gulf. He has to love them all – the kings and princes and emirs – and he needs their support against Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Because, of course, they are sending cash and weapons to the rebels. But which rebels? The soft, secular safe guys of the Free Syrian Army or the horrible ‘terrorist’ Islamists who are also fighting Assad and who, give and take a few thousands square yards, have just captured the Syrian provincial capital of Raqa?

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Alawite History Reveals the Complexities of Syria That West Does Not Understand
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 4 Mar 2013

Never once has a Western newspaper shown a map of Bradford with Muslim and non-Muslim areas marked off, or a map of Washington divided into black and white people. No, that would suggest that our Western civilisation could be divvied up between tribes or races. Only the Arab world merits our ethnic distinctions. The problem, of course, is that Syria – as secular and assimilated as any Arab nation before its current tragedy – doesn’t lend itself to this neat distribution of religious minorities.

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War on Terror Is the West’s New Religion
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 25 Feb 2013

But All the Crusading and Invading Simply Plays into Al-Qa’ida’s Hands – Just Ask the French

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From Algeria, a Lesson in How to Bypass Democracy
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 28 Jan 2013

Our Middle East Correspondent on the Bouteflika regime, Pentagon folly, the many faces of Assad, and precious lessons from an old handbook in his Beirut briefcase.

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Algeria, Mali, and Why This Week Has Looked Like an Obscene Remake of Earlier Western Interventions
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 21 Jan 2013

We are outraged not by the massacre of the innocents, but because the hostages killed were largely white, blue-eyed chaps rather than darker, brown-eyed chaps. Odd, isn’t it, how our “collateral damage” is different from their “collateral damage”.

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Could Saudi Arabia Be Next?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 7 Jan 2013

Nobody can predict which way the ‘Arab Awakening’ will turn this year. But Robert Fisk has ventured a very tentative punt or two…

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(Português) Uri Avnery: Fúria e Humor de um Pacifista Israelense
Robert Fisk, The Independent – Outras Palavras, 3 Dec 2012

Uri Avnery dispara: Netanyahu quer estado judeu do Mediterrâneo ao rio Jordão; mas isso levará a beco sem saída.

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The Latest War with Hamas Over Gaza Proves Benjamin Netanyahu Is Leading Israel into Isolation
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 3 Dec 2012

Israelis are congratulating themselves on the success of their Iron Dome missile shield. But across Israel these past years has fallen a different kind of iron dome, one that isolates the country rather than protects it, which shields its people from the realities of the Middle East, from Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world.

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Uri Avnery, One of Israel’s Great Leftist Warriors, Wants Peace With Hamas and Gaza – But Does the Knesset?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Nov 2012

Old [TRANSCEND member] Uri Avnery is 89 but he’s still a fighter. In fact, the famed writer is still one of the great old leftist warriors of Israel, still demanding peace with the Palestinians, peace with Hamas and a Palestinian state on the old ’67 borders – give or take a few square miles. He still believes Israel could have peace tomorrow or next week.

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As Israel and Hamas Open the ‘Gates of Hell’ in Gaza, All the Journalistic Clichés of War Are Here Again
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Nov 2012

‘Surgical air strikes’, ‘rooting out terror’, and ‘cyber-terrorism’ cannot conceal reality. Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Here we go again. Israel is going to “root out Palestinian terror” – which it has been claiming to do, unsuccessfully, for 64 years – while Hamas, the latest in “Palestine’s” morbid militias, announces that Israel has “opened the gates of hell” by murdering its military leader, Ahmed al-Jabari.

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We Are All Israeli’s Now: Its Brutality, Unlike Syria’s, Is Fought in the Name of the West’s War on Terror
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Nov 2012

Who set the precedent when it comes to “collateral damage”? The West did. We Westerners set the precedents in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq – trains, bridges, TV stations, wedding parties, blocks of civilian apartments, you name it – and now the Israelis can trot along behind and produce, whenever necessary, the same tired list of excuses we invented for NATO.

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(Portuguese) Israel Conspira Contra Si Mesmo
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Nov 2012

Robert Fisk alerta: num Oriente Médio transformado, operação militar brutal de Telaviv ameaça, a médio prazo, própria existência do país.

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The Case of the Swedish Weapons in Syria
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 12 Nov 2012

How did warning flares from a small town near Gothenburg find their way into the weaponry of the anti-Assad resistance?

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Regardless of Whether Obama or Romney Wins, America’s Relations with the Arab World Will Change
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 5 Nov 2012

28 Oct 2012 – After last week’s Obama-Romney love-fest for Israel, the Arabs have been slowly deciding which of the two men would be best for the Middle East. It looks like Barack Obama is their man; but the problem – as always – is the sad, pathetic and outrageously obvious fact that it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

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Plucky Little Turkey Standing Up to Evil Syria? It’s Not as Simple as That
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 15 Oct 2012

The Long View: Turkey is funnelling weapons and armed men across the border into Syria. When it comes to international law, to moral compromise, to sheer hypocrisy, the Western powers take the biscuit. La Clinton raves on about Syrian depravity when Syrian shells slaughter a Turkish woman and her four children – which they did – but gives succour to the gunmen who torture and kill and suicide-bomb the regime’s supporters inside Syria.

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Benjamin Netanyahu’s Warning Reveals His Moments of Memory Loss
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 1 Oct 2012

Not since the last set of cartoons flourished in the UN Donkey House has the world been so gobsmacked.

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Al-Qa’ida Cashes In As the Scorpion Gets In Among the Good Guys
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 24 Sep 2012

The United States supported the opposition against Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, helped Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour cash and weapons to the militias and now America’s Libyan “friends” turned against them. The US had fed the al-Qa’ida scorpion and now it had bitten America. And so Washington now supports the opposition against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was helping Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour cash and weapons to the militias (including Salafists and al-Qa’ida) and would, inevitably, be bitten by the same “scorpion” if Assad was overthrown.

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The Provocateurs Know Politics and Religion Don’t Mix
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 17 Sep 2012

So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed “terrorists” and a fake desert. The Western-Christian perpetrators then go into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death – outrageous Muslim revenge thus “proving” the racist claims of the trash peddlers that Islam is a violent religion.

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The Forgotten Massacre
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 17 Sep 2012

Thirty years after 1,700 Palestinians were killed at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, Robert Fisk revisits the killing fields. The memories remain, of course.

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Inside Daraya – How a Failed Prisoner Swap Turned Into a Massacre
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 3 Sep 2012

If these stories are true, then the armed men – wearing hoods, according to another woman, who described how they broke into her home and how she kissed them in a fearful attempt to prevent them shooting her own family – were armed insurgents rather than Syrian troops.

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‘They Snipe At Us Then Run and Hide In Sewers’
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 27 Aug 2012

Our writer was given exclusive access to the Assad Generals accused of war crimes as they seek to defeat the rebels in Aleppo. “They snipe at us and then they run and hide and in the sewers. Foreigners, Turks, Chechens, Afghans, Libyans, Sudanese.” And Syrians, I said. “Yes, Syrians too, but smugglers and criminals,” the general said.

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Syria’s Ancient Treasures Pulverized
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 13 Aug 2012

The priceless treasures of Syria’s history – of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned “Dead Cities” of the north and museums stuffed with antiquities – have fallen prey to looters and destruction by armed rebels and government militias as fighting envelops the country.

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(Portuguese) Guerra de Mentiras
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 6 Aug 2012

Enquanto Qatar e Arábia Saudita armam e financiam os rebeldes sírios para derrubar a ditadura alauíta-baazista-xiíta de Bashar al-Assad, Washington não faz nenhuma crítica contra essas nações. O presidente Barack Obama e a sua secretária de Estado, Hillary Clinton, dizem que querem democracia para a Síria, mas o Qatar é uma autocracia, e a Arábia Saudita está entre os mais perniciosos califados ditatoriais do mundo árabe. Os governantes de ambos os Estados herdam o poder de suas famílias, assim como fez Bashar.

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Syrian War of Lies and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 6 Aug 2012

While Qatar and Saudi Arabia arm and fund the rebels of Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite/Shia-Baathist dictatorship, Washington mutters not a word of criticism against them. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, say they want a democracy in Syria. But Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan’s dark ages.

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The Children of Fallujah – The Hospital of Horrors
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 30 Apr 2012

Special Report day two: Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe – what lies behind the torments in Fallujah General Hospital? In al-Hadidi’s office, there are now photographs which defy words. How can you even begin to describe a dead baby with just one leg and a head four times the size of its body?

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This Is Politics Not Sport. If Drivers Can’t See That, They Are the Pits
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 23 Apr 2012

Supposing it was Assad shelling out £40m for a race. Would Ecclestone be happy to give him a soft sporting cover for his repression? When the Foreign Office urges British motor racing fans to stay away from Bahrain, this ain’t no sporting event, folks, it’s a political one. The Bahraini authorities prove it by welcoming sports reporters but refusing visas to other correspondents who want to tell the world what’s going on in this minority-run, Saudi-dominated kingdom.

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Madness Is Not the Reason for This Massacre
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 19 Mar 2012

I’m getting a bit tired of the “deranged” soldier story. It was predictable, of course. The 38-year-old staff sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar this week had no sooner returned to base than the defence experts and the think-tank boys and girls announced that he was “deranged”. Not an evil, wicked, mindless terrorist – which he would be, of course, if he had been an Afghan, especially a Taliban – but merely a guy who went crazy.

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The Heroic Myth and the Uncomfortable Truth of War Reporting
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 5 Mar 2012

Like other correspondents, Robert Fisk has risked his life to ‘witness history’. But after almost four decades, he feels ambivalent towards his profession. – “Funny, though, that the newsrooms of London and Washington didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm to get their folk into Gaza as they did to get them into Homs. Just a thought. A very unhappy one.”

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The Fearful Realities Keeping the Assad Regime in Power
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 5 Mar 2012

Once a Roman city, where the crusaders committed their first act of cannibalism – eating their dead Muslim opponents – Homs was captured by Saladin in 1174. Under post-First World War French rule, the settlement became a centre of insurrection and, after independence, the very kernel of Baathist resistance to the first Syrian governments. By early 1964, there were battles in Homs between Sunnis and Alawi Shia. A year later, the young Baathist army commander of Homs, Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Tlas, was arresting his pro-regime comrades. Is the city’s history becoming a little clearer now?

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The Demise of the Dollar
Robert Fisk - The Independent, 30 Jan 2012

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading. Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

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Bankers Are the Dictators of the West
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 19 Dec 2011

It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard “experts” who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

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Sanctions Are Only a Small Part of the History That Makes Iranians Hate the UK
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 5 Dec 2011

It’s a weird irony that Iranians know the history of Anglo-Persian relations better than the Brits. This was not a myth but a real, down-to-earth conspiracy. The CIA called it Operation Ajax; the Brits wisely kept their ambitions in check by calling it Operation Boot. They were successful. Mossadegh was arrested – by an officer assiduously done to death in the 1979 revolution – and the young Shah returned in triumph to impose his rule, reinforced by his faithful SAVAK secret police whose torture of women regime opponents was duly filmed and – according to the great Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal – circulated by CIA officers to America’s allies around the world as a “teaching” manual. How dare the Iranians remember all this?

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(Italian) Le Sanzioni Sono Solo Una Parte Dell’Odio Dell’Iran Per il Regno Unito
Robert Fisk – Centro Studi Sereno Regis, 5 Dec 2011

È ironico che gli iraniani conoscano la storia delle relazioni anglo-persiane meglio dei britannici. Non si tratta di una leggenda, ma di una cospirazione bella e buona. La CIA la chiamò Operazione Ajax; i britannici, saggiamente, tennero a freno le proprie ambizioni con la dicitura Operazione Boot. Ciò fu coronato dal successo. Mossadegh fu arrestato – da un ufficiale che nella rivoluzione del 1979 patì una morte truculenta – e il giovane shah ritornò in trionfo per imporre la sua regola con l’appoggio della fedele polizia segreta SAKAV, le cui pratiche di torture inflitte alle donne oppositrici furono doverosamente filmate e, secondo il giornalista egiziano Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, diffuse dai funzionari della CIA agli alleati degli Stati Uniti in tutto il mondo come manuale didattico. Come osano gli iraniani ricordarsi di tutto questo?

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Why the Middle East Will Never Be the Same Again
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 26 Sep 2011

The Palestinians won’t achieve statehood, but they will consign the ‘peace process’ to history. The US has lost its purchase on the Middle East. It’s over: the “peace process”, the “road map”, the “Oslo agreement”; the whole fandango is history.

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For 10 Years, We’ve Lied to Ourselves to Avoid Asking the One Real Question
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 12 Sep 2011

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

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Baha Mousa inquiry: It’s Not the Brutality That Is ‘Systematic’. It’s the Lying About It.
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 12 Sep 2011

It was Baha Mousa’s dad I will always remember. On an oppressively scorching day in Basra, Daoud Mousa first spoke of his son’s death, telling me how the boy’s wife had died of cancer just six months earlier, how Baha’s children were now orphans, how – not long after the British Army had arrested Baha Mousa and beaten him to death, for that is what happened – a British officer had come to his home and stared at the floor and offered cash by way of saying sorry.

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Why I Had To Leave The Times
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 18 Jul 2011

When he worked at The Times, Robert Fisk witnessed the curious working practices of the paper’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. Despite their jocular exchanges, the writer knew he couldn’t stay… “He is a caliph, I suppose, almost of the Middle Eastern variety.”

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Who Cares in the Middle East What Obama Says?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 6 Jun 2011

President Obama has shown himself to be weak in his dealings with the Middle East, says Robert Fisk, and the Arab world is turning its back with contempt. Its future will be shaped without American influence.

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Lots of Rhetoric – But Very Little Help: Obama’s Speech
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 23 May 2011

Well, this weekend is Netanyahu’s weekend and the Israeli settlements – more were flagged only hours before Obama spoke – will go on as before. And by the time Obama ends up swearing eternal loyalty to the Israelis, the Arabs will forget yesterday’s posturing. And the reference to the “Jewish state” was obviously intended to make Netanyahu happy.

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Why No Outcry over These Torturing Tyrants?
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 23 May 2011

It is all about our fear of Saudi Arabia. Which also means it is about oil. It is about our absolute refusal to remember that 9/11 was committed largely by Saudis. It is about our refusal to remember that Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban, that Bin Laden was a Saudi, that the most cruel version of Islam comes from Saudi Arabia, the land of head-choppers and hand-cutters. Yes, our other friends. The Saudis.

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Was He Betrayed? Of Course. Pakistan Knew bin Laden’s Hiding Place All Along
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 9 May 2011

I met the man [bin Laden] three times and have only one question left unasked: what did he think as he watched those revolutions unfold this year – under the flags of nations rather than Islam, Christians and Muslims together, the kind of people his own al-Qa’ida men were happy to butcher? While the Arab dictators ruled uncontested with our support, they largely avoided condemning American policy; only bin Laden said these things. Arabs never wanted to fly planes into tall buildings, but they did admire a man who said what they wanted to say. But now, increasingly, they can say these things. They don’t need bin Laden. He had become a nonentity.

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America’s Secret Plan to Arm Libya’s Rebels
Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent – The Independent, 7 Mar 2011

Desperate to avoid US military involvement in Libya in the event of a prolonged struggle between the Gaddafi regime and its opponents, the Americans have asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi.

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Mohamed Heikal: ‘I was sure my country would explode. But the young are wiser than us’
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 21 Feb 2011

The old man’s voice is scathing, his mind like a razor, that of a veteran fighter, writer, sage, perhaps the most important living witness and historian of modern Egypt, turning on the sins of the regime that tried to shut him up forever. “Mubarak betrayed the republican spirit – and then he wanted to continue through his son Gamal,” he says, finger pointed to heaven. “It was a project, not an idea; it was a plan. The last 10 years of the life of this country were wasted because of this question, because of the search for inheritance – as if Egypt was Syria, or Papa Doc and Baby Doc in Haiti.”

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A New Truth Dawns on the Arab World
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 31 Jan 2011

The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinian “Authority” – one has to put this word in quotation marks – was prepared, and is prepared to give up the “right of return” of perhaps seven million refugees to what is now Israel for a “state” that may be only 10 per cent (at most) of British mandate Palestine.

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The Brutal Truth about Tunisia
Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent – The Independent, 24 Jan 2011

Bloodshed, tears, but no democracy. Bloody turmoil won’t necessarily presage the dawn of democracy. The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn’t meant to happen. Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.

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WikiLeaks Exposed US and Hillary’s Hopelessness
Robert Fisk – Belfast Telegraph, 3 Jan 2011

That Clinton should want her State Department slaves to play secret agents on the poor old UN shows what an utterly worthless institution the US State Department has become.

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Now We Know. America Really Doesn’t Care About Injustice in the Middle East
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 6 Dec 2010

It’s not that US diplomats don’t understand the Middle East; it’s just that they’ve lost all sight of injustice. Vast amounts of diplomatic literature prove that the mainstay of Washington’s Middle East policy is alignment with Israel, that its principal aim is to encourage the Arabs to join the American-Israeli alliance against Iran, that the compass point of US policy over years and years is the need to tame/bully/crush/oppress/ ultimately destroy the power of Iran.

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The Shaming of America
Robert Fisk – The Independent, 1 Nov 2010

Robert Fisk delivers a searing dispatch after the WikiLeaks revelations that expose in detail the brutality of the war in Iraq – and the astonishing, disgraceful deceit of the US.

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