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And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

Robert Fisk

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Robert Fisk
Age: 74 †
Born: 1946
Born: July 12
Died: 2020
Died: October 30
Historian
Journalist
War Correspondent
Writer
Humans
Damascus
Take
Operating
Things
Stops
Double
Hear
Hours
True
Human

More quotes by Robert Fisk

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At Baalbek Nuts I bought pistachios from the Lebanese owners, who answered my request for their thoughts on the war with the typically Lebanese response of no problem. It's a lie, as we all knew.
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Fundamentalism is not bred in poverty. There are plenty of poor countries in the world that don't have violence because amid the poverty there is a kind of justice and in some countries a democracy.
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I do not make stories up, full stop.
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Individuals in various countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia listen to the tapes of bin Laden. They gather in groups of four or five. They feel they want to do something to express their support for what they've heard. The idea that they were taking orders is a particularly Western idea.
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The violence stems from injustice, because people feel they have been treated unfairly in the Middle East, whether that means military occupation, starvation under U.N. sanctions, whether it means that they have a dictatorship imposed on them, propped up by the West. This is why people turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.
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Osama Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do in response to this attack 9/11. I'm sure he wanted America to attack Afghanistan. Once you do what your enemy wants, you are walking into a trap, whether you think it's the right thing to do or not.
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In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,' a Syrian officer explained to us. 'Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return.
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A businessman admits that he 'let go' an employee because he was a Sunni Muslim. You simply have to look after yourself, he explains. I am shocked, like a good Westerner should be.
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It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.
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And history`s fingers never relax their grip, never leave us unmolested, can touch us even when we would never imagine their presence.
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When you have a crime against humanity that is so awesome in scale and death, it is more than permissible to look around and say, who recently has been declaring war on the United States? Of course, the compass points straight to bin Laden.
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Bin Laden was constantly revolving in his mind the fact that he had got rid of the Russians therefore, the Americans can be got rid of, too. And where better than in the country where he knows how to fight?
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Bin Laden is not well read and he's not sophisticated, but he will have worked out very coldly what America would do.
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Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, But bin Laden says what we think. These people believe that bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth.
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Some of the guys in the Northern Alliance are war criminals. One of the Northern Alliance commanders ran a slave girl network in Kabul in 1994. Remember that there was a period when every woman on the streets was at risk of being raped. This was the Northern Alliance period of glory.
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When I saw the pictures of New York without the World Trade Center, New York looked like a shadow of itself.
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The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.
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In just one year in Bosnia, thirty of my colleagues died. There is a little Somme waiting for all innocent journalists.
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The word 'democracy' and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria.
Robert Fisk
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Bin Laden was very keen to point out to me that his forces had fought the Americans in Somalia. He also wanted to talk about how many mullahs in Pakistan were putting up posters saying, We follow bin Laden. He even produced a sort of Kodak set of snapshots of graffiti supporting him.
Robert Fisk