MR. JONES, MEET MR. FISK

Do you want to know what’s happening, Mr. Jones? Do you really want to know? Then tune in to Robert Fisk this morning. “You know?” he quotes a CIA officer, “Torture works.” In an interview on Democracy Now!, Fisk, who may be the most intrepid, most illuminating reporter working in Iraq and the Middle East, notes: “We are becoming the criminals. We are the criminals now. … We have no further moral cause to fight for.” He shouldn’t be missed, nor his new book, “The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.”

Fisk’s skill at connecting past and present is unbeatable. Note his remarks about the French authorities who are dealing with the crisis of the French uprising. He reminds us of their old Vichy connection and the fact that many of them are the same ones who sent tens of thousands of Jews to their fate in the Nazi death camps. Note, too, Democracy Now!’s perfect pairing of a scene excerpted from “The Battle of Algiers” — it’s a news conference in which a military officer defends the use of torture — with a scene from a White House press conference starring spokesman Scott McClellan on the same subject. As soon as DN! posts the interview, the first of a two-parter, we’ll provide the link.
— Tireless Staff of Thousands
Postscript: Well, it looks like Democracy Now! won’t be posting a link to download a video of Fisk’s interview, at least not at the moment. Here’s what’s posted. Maybe they’re still working on it.
PPS: Ahh, here we go: the excerpt from “The Battle of Algiers” and the video of Fisk, beginning with the White House press conference.
Hmm … To appreciate the full impact of Fisk’s remarks — about the uprising, the French leadership, the relevance of the Algerian war, excerpts from the film, what is now likely to happen in France, the routine use of torture by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the purpose of journalism — it’s best to have what he said in sequence. For that, watch this 33-minute segment, which has now been posted. It includes an interview with the Iranian-born author Behzad Yaghmaian.

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