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Last updated on August 6th, 2017 at 05:39 am
Robert Fisk rails against:
… the internet hate machine, the circle of hell in which any political filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent without any recourse to the law, to libel lawyers or to common decency … There is no end to the internet’s circle of hate.
It’s a circle, Bob; they tend not to have ends. Fisk seems unusually worked up about this for someone who claims to avoid the internet (“Instead of searching the internet for information or references, I prefer to go to the field”), so maybe he’s hearing about this “circle of hate” deal from someone else. By the way, Fisk would like to remind everyone that he is daring:
I had dared to ask the ‘Why’ question; Why had 19 Arabs flown aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania?
Take any crime on the streets of London and the first thing Scotland Yard does is look for a motive. But when we had international crimes against humanity on the scale of New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the first thing we were not allowed to do was look for a motive. How very odd.
How very odd that Fisk needs to ask why Arabs flew an aircraft into Pennslyvania; it was because passengers forced them.
- Wow. No one else asked why 19 terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, etc., except Robert Fisk. I find it incredible that someone with that deep a level of delusion isn’t tucked away in a room with padded wall. His devolution into a raving street person is nearly complete.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 04 25 at 11:28 AM • permalink
- He wasn’t looking for a motive, he was looking for an excuse.Posted by Patrick Chester on 2007 04 25 at 11:28 AM • permalink
- That should be “padded walls.” He’ll need all four padded, I should think.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 04 25 at 11:29 AM • permalink
the first thing we were not allowed to do was look for a motive. How very odd.
Yes, a mystery, that. Six years later, and still we have no clue why they did it. If only they could have told us, perhaps through videotaped messages, or letters, or interviews with Arab reporters. Ah, well. Perhaps Robert could do some field work and find those elusive answers.
- I don’t hate Fisk. I simply think he’s a complete unadulterated ass. And a biased and incompetent journalist.Posted by wronwright on 2007 04 25 at 11:49 AM • permalink
- “Take any crime on the streets of London and the first thing Scotland Yard does is look for a motive.”
Hogwash. The first thing Scotland Yard (or any law enforcement agency) does when investigating a crime is to look for evidence.
Motive often doesn’t become an issue at all. For example, if the crime is robbery, it’s pretty obvious what the motive was.
What Fisk may be thinking of is the use of motive in murder investigations when the killer’s identity isn’t known. By examining who might have a motive to want the victim dead, the police are able to identify suspects. This was not at all relevant in the case of September 11; we already knew who the killers were. So Fisk is talking nonsense.
- Don’t you just love this shit? I have mates making sage statements like:
9/11 didn’t happen in a historical vacuum you know?
As if the real or imagined grievances of a pack of barbaric sand nazis is worth giving a flying root about.
It takes all my strength not to ram my pint glass into certain peoples’ fat heads.
- Fisk is a flagellant who is upset that incompetent airport security staff, hapless peons of the furtive RWDB masters, have yet to detain him and subject him to hours of degrading questions on his rather evenhanded Wikipedia entry.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 04 25 at 12:19 PM • permalink
- This is a bit confused – hey, it’s Fisk.
He fingers Turkish government diplomats, or agents, in creating the problem for this Professor and lays the blame at .. ta-daaah … the American government – oh and the Wimpy Canadians as well, this time.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 04 25 at 12:32 PM • permalink
- In US jurisprudence, the prosecution is not required to prove, or even demonstrate, motive (although most prosecutors believe most jurors want to hear it and act accordingly). Although understanding motive may be critical to “knowing thine enemy”, in the end, it’s largely irrelevant. Fisk looked for motive because he sought to mitigate the terrorists’ crimes by holding the victim accountable. Typical leftist mindset. And, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to Dershowitz as “Al”.
For the record, Taner Akcam’s current Wikipedia entry makes no mention of alleged terrorist connections, but does describe both detentions (and Akcam’s more detailed account is provided by Juan Cole). The Internet’s never-ending circle of hate aside, I do find it disturbing that customs officials would include allegations made through Wikipedia and/or Amazon book reviews in their travelers’ profiles.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 04 25 at 02:38 PM • permalink
- #15 Kyda Sylvester –
Fisk looked for motive because he sought to mitigate the terrorists’ crimes by holding the victim accountable.
Exactly right.
It’s akin to looking for the root causes of the Holocaust, or the famines caused by Soviet collectivization or The Great Leap Forward. They’re so horrific, they do not require a look at root causes. Unless you support them.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 04 25 at 02:57 PM • permalink
- Fisk speaks truth to coward once again.Posted by Some0Seppo on 2007 04 25 at 03:49 PM • permalink
- “9/11 didn’t happen in a historical vacuum you know?”
Ironically, usually uttered by people whose knowledge of actual history approximates a vacuum.
As for Fisk, Andrea’s pretty much got it…if just one or two things had gone differently in his life, he’d likely be raving on street corners while carting around a sandwich board with demented scribblings on it. Instead he gets to scribble in The Independent. Close enough, I suppose.
- #‘s 11 & 19. No, I agree with Fisk here. The hijackers obviously knocked down the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon in solidarity with the long-suffering people of Haiti, the Cherokee Indians and the victims of the Dresden bombing. And while I can’t be certain, I think they were also protesting capital punishment and the glass ceiling for women in corporate America.Posted by tim maguire on 2007 04 25 at 06:00 PM • permalink
- This I lifted froma post on Andrew Bolt’s blog >
Posted by El-Ninyo of Brisbane Q on Wed 25 Apr 07 at 12:18pm
On this day of “Lest we forget” Forum readers may be interested in this forgotten bit of information. It was 1987! At a lecture the other day they were playing an old news video of Lt. Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Administration.
There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning! He was being grilled by a senator; “Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?”
Ollie replied, “Yes, I did, Sir.”
The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, “Isn’t that just a little excessive?”
“No, sir,” continued Ollie.
“No? And why not?” the senator asked.
“Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir.”
“Threatened? By whom?” the senator questioned.
“By a terrorist, sir” Ollie answered.
“Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?”
“His name is Osama bin Laden, sir” Ollie replied.At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn’t pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn’t. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?” the senator asked.
“Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of”, Ollie answered.
“And what do you recommend we do about him?” asked the senator.
“Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth.”
The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that was shown of the clip.By the way, that senator was Al Gore! Terrorist pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986.
- If Fisk had ever been an honest reporter determined to examine the root causes of events in the ME, he would long ago have suffered the fate of DANIEL PEARL.
But he chose the path of dishonesty for self aggrandisement and intellectual recognition by his Marxist peers.
In the end there is payback for this as VDH points out in his latest post on Imus.
- I’ll save you the trouble – here’s the linky.
- Shouldn’t someone ask, “Why does Fisk hate us?”Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 25 at 07:18 PM • permalink
- Keep up the Fisking, bloggers! Even Fisk is noticing that he’s getting exposed in a way the MSM refuses to do -because they employ too many just like him.
‘Circle of hate’ sounds like a Freudian slip coming from Fisk. It describes the vanishing plughole circles of the leftist bloggers’ analysis and reasoning.
- I figure that, unlike dogs who chase their tails, Fisk can actually stick his nose up his own ass. Thus he goes around in circles (of hate? nah, just ignorance and self-loathing, I expect) because he can do no else.Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 04 25 at 08:00 PM • permalink
- There are a few people I’d like to see Nemesis visit sooner than later.Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 04 25 at 08:17 PM • permalink
Israeli historian Efraim Karsh, in a Commentary Magazine book review, commented on what he saw as Fisk’s carelessness with facts:
It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein’s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was Minister of Defence, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al-Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.[28]
From the wiki entry.
It is not possible to be called a journalist with such appalling fact checking. Wait, what fact checking!?!?!
Any shmuck can google these facts – can someone email him google’s home page please?
“Take any crime on the streets of London and the first thing Scotland Yard does is look for a motive.”
Hogwash. The first thing Scotland Yard (or any law enforcement agency) does when investigating a crime is to look for evidence.
Motive often doesn’t become an issue at all. For example, if the crime is robbery, it’s pretty obvious what the motive was.
What Fisk may be thinking of is the use of motive in murder investigations when the killer’s identity isn’t known. By examining who might have a motive to want the victim dead, the police are able to identify suspects. This was not at all relevant in the case of September 11; we already knew who the killers were. So Fisk is talking nonsense.
—————————————————————-
#’s 11 & 19. No, I agree with Fisk here. The hijackers obviously knocked down the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon in solidarity with the long-suffering people of Haiti, the Cherokee Indians and the victims of the Dresden bombing. And while I can’t be certain, I think they were also protesting capital punishment and the glass ceiling for women in corporate America.
Just thought those two posts were good enough to be repeated.
- Didn’t Fisky watch Osama’s caveman special (as Mark STeyn called his first video after the 9/11 attack)? Osama said he was mad at the USA because, among other things, we were mean to Saddam for starting the Gulf War and refusing to obey the conditions under which he was allowed to stay on his blood-soaked throne, because we protected Saudi and the Gulf Emirates from Saddam’s threats, and because in 1492 the Spaniards completed the reconquest of Spain from the Imperialist Arab conquerers who, unlike the British in India, were unwilling to peacefully relinquish their colonies to the indigenous inhabitants, but would respond only to force. And those were his less delusory reasons for attacking the USA. He has more that are even further out in cloudcuckooland.
Maybe Fisky should do some of that reserach he keeps talking about. He’s had almost six years to do it, what’s keeping him? But here’s a clue for him to put 9/11 in historical context. It was the Muslim world’s thanks to the USA for our stopping the Serbs from doing to the Bosnian Muslims and the Muslim Kosovars what the Muslims want to do to Israel’s Jews. So you can see why they hate us.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2007 04 25 at 09:26 PM • permalink
- The planes were flown into the WTC because the terrorists realised they couldnt get “Qantas” style service from the hosties in the toilet. Damn depressing that, so they killed themselves and everyone else to get their virgins in the afterlife.Posted by surfmaster on 2007 04 25 at 10:02 PM • permalink
- Bonmot
W.C.Fields?
Reality-distortion field?
Septic drain field?
Left field?Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 04 25 at 10:08 PM • permalink
- Scotlsand Yard: You’re nicked! Why’d you murder that geezer, old son?
IC6 Male: Well, Old Bill, he was a wildly successful bloke, who lived in comfort, had an inquiring mind, tolerated all manner of freedoms, believed in individual liberty, freedom and responsibility. As you well know, I am a demented dervish who practices an intolerant death mantra from the 9th century, and , well, his lifestyle just really pissed me off.
Scotland Yard: As you were, my son. Have a nice day.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 25 at 10:38 PM • permalink
- Fisk is an idiot. A pompous jackass who believes that he has the moral upper hand, and sees it as his duty to convert or cast down those who do not follow him. He sees others as the ignorant rabble, those who are not wise enough to follow his path, and glories in his own goodness and humility. No wonder he didn’t get upset over his famous beating; it gave him yet another opportunity to prove what a kind and wonderful person he was. If those Afghanis hadn’t done it for him, he would have doubtless managed to get himself injured somehow.
His is one of the worst and most disgusting kinds of condescension. I hope somebody hits him over the head with a clue-by-oar.
Posted by Tungsten Monk on 2007 04 25 at 11:05 PM • permalink
- Kaleidoscope of contempt.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 25 at 11:33 PM • permalink
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