http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-scars-of-the-past-reveal-britains-doomed-empire-in-hong-kong-1824966.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-scars-of-the-past-reveal-britains-doomed-empire-in-hong-kong-1824966.html <p>Up on Diamond Hill, the British Second World War pillbox looks like one of Enver Hoxha's frontier bunkers, a dome of pre-stressed concrete with rectangular gun slits, the last remnant of Britain's imperial disaster in Hong Kong, a reminder of that most terrible of Christmas Days in 1941. And here, amid the detritus of that ferocious Japanese victory, Kipling hits it to a T: </p> Robert Fisk Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisks-world-hatchets-and-hostages-ndash-the-old-days-of-maos-revolution-1820380.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisks-world-hatchets-and-hostages-ndash-the-old-days-of-maos-revolution-1820380.html <p>Who remembers Anthony Grey? I do, because while he was beginning his calvary in Peking, I was covering the antics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution's men in London for the Sunday Express. At one point, these Maoist diplomats emerged from their London embassy brandishing sticks and hatchets, and a copper chased after one unarmed Chinese attaché as he ran off to the local Tube station. </p> Robert Fisk Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/armistice-day-the-great-war-and-the-words-we-mustnt-forget-1818092.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/armistice-day-the-great-war-and-the-words-we-mustnt-forget-1818092.html ]]> <p>Why has the Great War of 1914-18 remained so central to our lives? The Second World War produced its crops of names, easy to remember, like punctuation marks: Dunkirk, the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, el-Alamein, Stalingrad, Normandy, Dresden, Hiroshima. But somehow those earlier 1914-18 slaughters, their geographical location so scarred into our historical conscience, are wounds that will not close. Or wounds whose terrible consequences cannot be erased. Ypres, Verdun, the Somme have a doom-like quality that have fully retained their semantic origins. The very name of the Somme has an assonance which still fills us with despair. Just as Passchendaele seems to include the very word "passion" in English and French, the Somme is like "sombre", the funereal mood of the graveyard.</p> World Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/free-podcast-download-the-lost-art-of-reportage-1818070.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/free-podcast-download-the-lost-art-of-reportage-1818070.html ]]> <p> Was there a golden age for international correspondents? Are current affairs now largely brought to us in dumbed down soundbites? Who now sets the framework for coverage of world events? </p> Press Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:56:13 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisks-world-the-german-lawrence-of-arabia-had-much-to-live-up-to-ndash-and-failed-1816593.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisks-world-the-german-lawrence-of-arabia-had-much-to-live-up-to-ndash-and-failed-1816593.html <p>His name was Captain Leo Frobenius and he was the German Lawrence of Arabia, tasked to start an Arab Muslim insurgency against British rule in Sudan and Egypt. Colonel Lawrence's mission, of course, was to persuade the Arabs of the Gulf to rebel against the German-allied Turkish army of the Ottoman empire. There were a few differences. A colonel Lawrence may have been; a captain Frobenius was not. His military rank was a fraud. And unlike Lawrence, the secret Frobenius mission in 1915 was a hopeless failure. </p> Robert Fisk Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-america-is-performing-its-familiar-role-of-propping-up-a-dictator-1814194.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-america-is-performing-its-familiar-role-of-propping-up-a-dictator-1814194.html <p>Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.</p> Robert Fisk Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-the-truth-about-the-middle-east-is-buried-beneath-the-headlines-1812300.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-the-truth-about-the-middle-east-is-buried-beneath-the-headlines-1812300.html <p> Amira Hass was spot on when she said last week that her lifetime women's award was an award for failure. The West Bank correspondent of the Israeli paper Haaretz eloquently explained herself on al-Jazeera's English channel. She received an award for failure, she said, because despite all the facts that she and her journalistic colleagues had explained about Israeli occupation in Palestine, the world still did not understand what occupation meant and still used words like "terror" and "war on terror". Amira was absolutely correct. Most of our Western press and television are as gutless as ever when they have to participate in what Noam Chomsky described as "the manufacture of consent".</p> Robert Fisk Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-beiruts-history-cant-be-reduced-to-a-mere-heritage-trail-1808432.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-beiruts-history-cant-be-reduced-to-a-mere-heritage-trail-1808432.html <p> They've just discovered a bit of Beirut's Crusader castle. Most of the other great coastal cities of Lebanon – Tripoli, Batroun, Jbeil (for which read Byblos) and Sidon – have their castles in various states of perfect preservation or decay, but the Ottomans and then the Lebanese commercial elite managed to destroy the great keep that guarded the port of Beirut, the first to use as a quarry for their own walls, the latter out of greed. </p> Robert Fisk Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100