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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.

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
Bought
Response
Pistachios
Thoughts
Lebanese
Knew
Typically
Lying
Request
War
Answered
Problem
Nuts
Owners

More quotes by Robert Fisk

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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.
Robert Fisk
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U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.
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At the end of the day, bin Laden's interest is not Washington and New York, it's the Middle East. He wants Saudi Arabia. He wants to get rid of the House of Saud.
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People turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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President Bush cruelly manipulated the grief of the American people - and the sympathy of the rest of the world - to introduce a 'world order' dreamed up by a clutch of fantasists advising the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.
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I do not make stories up, full stop.
Robert Fisk
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It's very easy to start a war but the muftah, as the Arabs say, the key to switch off a war, is very difficult to find.
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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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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'we didn't know - no one told us.'
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
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At the end of the day, Osama bin Laden's interest is not Washington and New York, it's the Middle East. He wants Saudi Arabia. He wants to get rid of the House of Saud. There's a great deal of resentment, even inside the royal family, at the continued military presence of the United States there.
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The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea what liberation means.
Robert Fisk
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Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk
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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.
Robert Fisk