How can Blair possibly be given this job?

Robert Fisk
The Independent
23 June, 2007

I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create “Palestine”. I checked the date – no, it was not 1 April – but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being “our” Middle East envoy.

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A Front Row Seat for the Bloodbath in Lebanon

Robert Fisk
Counterpunch
May 22, 2007

There is something obscene about watching the siege of Nahr el-Bared. The old Palestinian camp–home to 30,000 lost souls who will never go “home”–basks in the Mediterranean sunlight beyond a cluster of orange orchards. Soldiers of the Lebanese army, having retaken their positions on the main road north, idle their time aboard their old personnel carriers. And we–we representatives of the world’s press–sit equally idly atop a half-built apartment block, basking in the little garden or sipping cups of scalding tea beside the satellite dishes where the titans of television stride by in their blue space suits and helmets.

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Our Need for Beauty in the Midst of War

Robert Fisk
The Independent
12 May, 2007

During the 1975-90 civil war, a clammy joke regularly made the rounds on both sides of the Beirut front line. God, the old saw went, created Lebanon as the most beautiful country on earth. But it looked so like Paradise that God became jealous – so He put the Lebanese there.

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