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Do not know if anyone will read this now. I was deeply disappointed and honestly disgusted by = Robert Fisk =. As a postscript to the comment above I should say why. He appeared to treat the immensely painful and often heroic struggle against the criminal armed gang lead by Bashar al-Assad that is running Syria , as if it was some kind of cafe discussion session, in which he was delighted to show, in his own egomaniacal estimation, how knowledgeable he was about the strange ways of the Middle East and it's people.
His status as a western reporter unafraid to report Israel-Palestine without the usual Zionist distortions, has given him cover, for his corrupt journalistic practices ( see www.hughpope.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/i-dont-read-hugh-pope-robert-fisk ). Most of his critics have been right wing fanatics with a moral blindness about apartheid in Israel. A catalog of Fisk's crimes against journalistic standards are in the March issue of well known the British investigative magazine "Private Eye" ( see www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=street_of_shame ).
Looking back at Fisk articles on Syria he was a believer back in 2000 that Bashar was a reformer. Then when the Damascus Spring ended after a year, he claimed that Bashar was still a reformer but he a powerless figure head who was being forced away from reform. The recent leaked emails and documents reveal this view to be false. Bashar and his clan have learnt well from [neighbor] Israel about the power of propaganda. Bashar's public face is just that.
Robert Fisk now expects us to believe him, when he says the Syrian Democratic Uprising is going to be crushed like the Islamist uprising in Hama in 1982 was (by Hafez Assad), and Syria is not going to end up as a war of mass murder "against the people" as waged by the Algerian government in the 1990s. Fisk has suggested in other articles that revolutions do not work, and the "Arab Spring" will be a very slow process of incremental change. If the people are patient enough not to ask for too much change too quickly, then decent rulers like Bashar will trickle out their rights over time.
This is utter unhistorical nonsense. Europe won it's democracy when autocratic regimes felt threatened by the people and needed their support to survive. The threat of the French Revolution being repeated lead to reform throughout Europe. The division of power between land owners and new industrialists, lead to restrictive parliamentary democracies extending the electoral franchise to recruit more supporters. The threat of the European revolutions of 1848 lead to further reforms. The struggle between European nations for military supremacy eventually (after WW1 and WW2) lead to governments implementing fully the rights of the people, in an effort to mobilize the masses behind government war efforts. Since the C18 and C19 there has been a revolution in armed conflict in which technology has overtaken numbers. This means dictatorships can subdue their populations will smaller armies. Consequently the threat of the "people" has diminished.
There is no way Middle Eastern dictatorships are going to evolve into democracies without the active support of outside democracies. People in Syria know that if they give up the struggle there is not going to be a better opportunity to oust the internal colonization of the Assads.
Robert Fisk needs a long holiday. Nickolas Van Dam like his inspiration Patrick Searle is an academic and lobbyist in too closely a dependent relationship with his subject. Apologist in other words.
His status as a western reporter unafraid to report Israel-Palestine without the usual Zionist distortions, has given him cover, for his corrupt journalistic practices ( see www.hughpope.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/i-dont-read-hugh-pope-robert-fisk ). Most of his critics have been right wing fanatics with a moral blindness about apartheid in Israel. A catalog of Fisk's crimes against journalistic standards are in the March issue of well known the British investigative magazine "Private Eye" ( see www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=street_of_shame ).
Looking back at Fisk articles on Syria he was a believer back in 2000 that Bashar was a reformer. Then when the Damascus Spring ended after a year, he claimed that Bashar was still a reformer but he a powerless figure head who was being forced away from reform. The recent leaked emails and documents reveal this view to be false. Bashar and his clan have learnt well from [neighbor] Israel about the power of propaganda. Bashar's public face is just that.
Robert Fisk now expects us to believe him, when he says the Syrian Democratic Uprising is going to be crushed like the Islamist uprising in Hama in 1982 was (by Hafez Assad), and Syria is not going to end up as a war of mass murder "against the people" as waged by the Algerian government in the 1990s. Fisk has suggested in other articles that revolutions do not work, and the "Arab Spring" will be a very slow process of incremental change. If the people are patient enough not to ask for too much change too quickly, then decent rulers like Bashar will trickle out their rights over time.
This is utter unhistorical nonsense. Europe won it's democracy when autocratic regimes felt threatened by the people and needed their support to survive. The threat of the French Revolution being repeated lead to reform throughout Europe. The division of power between land owners and new industrialists, lead to restrictive parliamentary democracies extending the electoral franchise to recruit more supporters. The threat of the European revolutions of 1848 lead to further reforms. The struggle between European nations for military supremacy eventually (after WW1 and WW2) lead to governments implementing fully the rights of the people, in an effort to mobilize the masses behind government war efforts. Since the C18 and C19 there has been a revolution in armed conflict in which technology has overtaken numbers. This means dictatorships can subdue their populations will smaller armies. Consequently the threat of the "people" has diminished.
There is no way Middle Eastern dictatorships are going to evolve into democracies without the active support of outside democracies. People in Syria know that if they give up the struggle there is not going to be a better opportunity to oust the internal colonization of the Assads.
Robert Fisk needs a long holiday. Nickolas Van Dam like his inspiration Patrick Searle is an academic and lobbyist in too closely a dependent relationship with his subject. Apologist in other words.
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Well said !!!!!!
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