<< BAD THINGS DONE ~ MAIN ~ BUS-RIDER PROCESSES INFORMATION >>
I WILL STEAL FISK’S SHOES
Robert Fisk explains the rules of engagement:
“If you bomb our cities,” Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, “we will bomb yours.” There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s “war on terror” and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned.
Is that how it works? Once a threat has been issued—even a dramatically stupid one, in which Osama claims as “ours” cities that aren’t and weren’t “his”—the blame for subsequent events lies with the threatened rather than the threatener? Very well; if you, Fisk, keep writing this crap, I will employ a squadron of expert footwear bandits to steal all your shoes. Do you know what it’s like to live without shoes, Robert? To wake every morning knowing that the shoes you had the night before are now in a foreign port being busted down to spare parts by criminal gangs operating under the direction of international shoelords?
There you go. You have, as they say, been warned. Fisk’s piece also contains the following strange confession:
I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with “hostility”. And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.
Note that none, aside from Fisk, joined the purser on his suspicion tour. I think he’s told us rather a lot about himself there.
(Via reader Scott D.)
UPDATE. Derek Catsam:
Yesterday I talked about al Qaeda’s whitewashing of its own history with the claims that its actions were aimed at British withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many seem to be buying this line, apparently utterly unaware that al Qaeda long ago declared war on the west, well before we had a military presence in those countries. Today Robert Fisk of the Independent muddles history, misunderstands chronology, and confuses causality with correlation ...
(Via InstaPundit)
He’s lucky they didn’t beat him up. He would have deserved it.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 07 09 at 01:39 PM • permalink“And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist”
Robert Fisk who hates all ‘anti-arab racists’ but became one before he remembered that he was nice and liberal. But not before he self-fisked himself. Luckily no one else was looking…Oops, he went and published it.
I can’t make sense of that drivel. Is everyone to aspire to the status of Sweden? Because the Islamists haven’t set their sights on it yet? Because they make a good profitable living being unobtrusively on the periphery of panglobal Western civilization, but don’t have to lift a finger in its maintenance?
Sorry Fiskie, you can cower and grovel and lick spittle and retreat. Not me.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2005 07 09 at 01:45 PM • permalinkSo his entire post-9/11 oeuvre has been driven by guilt over looking sideways at some Arabs on a plane? Interesting.
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2005 07 09 at 02:19 PM • permalinkCrispytoast — The Islamists already have their foothold in Sweden. There are whole neighborhoods in many cities where “decent” people (the local euphemism for non-Muslims) don’t go anymore.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 07 09 at 02:22 PM • permalinkSo what is the nimrod’s point?
And what city belongs to Bin Laden? Is there a BinLadenville I don’t know about? BinLadenburg? BinLadenshire? Binladenfield? St. BinLaden?
We warned guys like BinLaden, continue to shoot at our planes, bomb our cities, attack our embassies, attack our ships and threaten our people and we will come after you.They should have taken Fisk’s advice. They were warned.
there weren’t any pogroms against Muslims in the States after 9/11
Y’know, as an American, I’m still waiting for an apology for those ignorant predictions. Christ, we had rallies for American Moslems. They didn’t have any for us, but I digress.
Meanwhile, anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe exceeded anti-Moslem hate crimes in America by a factor of - um, what’s a thousand times zero?
“Note that none, aside from Fisk, joined the purser on his suspicion tour. I think he’s told us rather a lot about himself there.”
Actually, I think Robbie boy is simply lying (again).
9/11 has just happened, how many aircraft pursers are going to make public announcements like that, that might panic the passengers?
How many aircraft pursers are going to quietly seek out the one gutless left wing ‘journo’ on the plane (who was famously beaten up by refugees) and ask for his expert help in spotting and potentially restraining a group of terrorists?
Give me a break, given the long and proud record of little Robbie being a tad careless with the truth, I think we can put this one down as being a trifle less than accurate too.
Posted by Harry Buttle on 2005 07 09 at 08:02 PM • permalinkSo the Muslims owe us a another city now? Do we get to pick? I vote Mecca… Ka’aba/W-88, interesting matchup…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 07 09 at 09:24 PM • permalinkGive me a break, given the long and proud record of little Robbie being a tad careless with the truth, I think we can put this one down as being a trifle less than accurate too.
When a anti-west “journo” is so well known for lying that even other less than reliable anti-west journo’s openly question his claims, you know he’s not worth worrying about.
Here’s what Australia’s leading rumour journalist Paul McGeough (is a journo who mainly reports gossip, rumour and his own opinion - but about serious issues instead of sex and aliens, still called a tabloid journalist?) had to say about Robert Fisk when he was caught trying to exaggerate the Iraqi build-up in the run up to the liberation:“Robert gets a bit windy from time to time, Mark. I was on the same bus as him and we saw some tanks, you wouldn’t say that we saw an army of tanks.
We saw two or three tanks on that bus run. We saw multiple rocket launchers. We saw a convoy of two or three trucks of soldiers pausing to wash and eat by a creek. But we didn’t see an army forming up for war.”Give me a break, given the long and proud record of little Robbie being a tad careless with the truth, I think we can put this one down as being a trifle less than accurate too.
Maybe the story’s mostly accurate, but he invented the purser that accompanied him? After all, admitting that he was the only one scanning the aircraft for shifty Ay-rabs might be a tad too strong even for Fisk.
What kind of airline actually has “pursers” aboard, anyway? Or am I just not getting the right meaning of the word?
I’m presuming that Fisk is still upset that the “Arab Street” didn’t rise in all it’s fury against the Coalition of the Willing. In fact, they seem to be quite receptive.
Also, of course, the predictions of thousands of dead US military taking Baghdad or the millions of dead and/or displaced Iraqis (didn’t the Red Cross eventually get a whole one Iraqi family into one of their refugee camps?) going sour probably have Fisk in a perpetual snit. (Although I don’t know how we’d tell Fisk in a snit from his normal attitude.)
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 07 10 at 12:32 AM • permalinkFull marks to Harry Buttle (#13).
Fisk is a bullshit artist. Why would the purser on board an aircraft ask some pasty fat no-hoper to wander around an aircraft looking for “hostile eyes”?
If there was a real concern, (which I doubt), wouldn’t the crew start looking for police officers or soldiers among the passengers?
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 07 10 at 03:28 AM • permalink#19 Pedro:
Fisk is a bullshit artist. Why would the purser on board an aircraft ask some pasty fat no-hoper to wander around an aircraft looking for “hostile eyes”?
1) It was in first class and the nonce in 1A has been a right old pain all the flight
2) Who would the Arabs attack first? The Fiskmeister or the Purser. The Purser was always safe.
3) Maybe the Purser was a Telegraph reader.
If you bomb our cities…?
Or does it go something more like this:
“If we find you offensive, and you don’t stay right away from us, we will declare war on you, and incite our followers to kill all of you. We will declare you The Great Satan, and we will declare most of the world’s inhabitants to be Infidels. Regardless of their religion or belief in God.”
Further:
“We will carry out attacks on your interests, and engage in recruitment, training, the instigation of sleeper cells in your countries. We will use the petrodollars to fund the expansion of Islamic interests, including schools, mosques, and political groups.”
Eventually:
“We will directly attack your institutions, such as the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - perhaps, God willing, even the White House. Any retaliation will be looked upon as further evidence that you are not submitting, and will be used as the excuse for further attacks upon your cities. We are angrily righteous, easily upset, and implacably opposed to everything you stand for. We will not rest until the caliphate has been re-established and the world is brought into its correct alignment and sharia law is enforced in all countries.”
In Conclusion:
“Do not hold out hopes that moderates amongst us will help you. They are weak, and we despise them too.”Today Robert Fisk of the Independent muddles history, misunderstands chronology, and confuses causality with correlation ...
No, he does not. He understands perfectly. He also understands that many British people do not understand…so he helps them along by filling in the gaps with his special version of history.
OBL and Fisk, 2 way relationship.
Nick Cohen at the Observer:“In his intervention before last year’s American presidential election, bin Laden praised Robert Fisk of the Independent whose journalism he admired. ‘I consider him to be neutral,’ he said, so I suppose we could all resolve not to take the tube unless we can sit next to Mr Fisk. But as the killings are indiscriminate, I can’t see how that would help and, in any case, who wants to be stuck on a train with an Independent reporter?”
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
And so Fisk’s actual experiences in the Arab world, talking to its tinpot dictators and militarist fanatics and sex-mad imams, momentarily triumphed over his doctrinaire training in West-hating and Marxist brown-people-condescending-to. Then he quickly recovered and was back to being an idiotarian who knew that it was all America’s fault and no Arab should be credited with having free will and a moral sense of his own.