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Behrouz Boochani: ‘I Was Not a Victim. I Was a Fighter’

“When people approach you as a person from a refugee background, no matter if you are a writer or not, they approach you with an image that they have about you,” he says. “That image is victimisation. “ I was not a victim. I was a fighter. I was fighting. I wrote two books about that system. I wrote many articles about that system.” “I am not working just as a witness,” Boochani says. “To make colonisers angry, that is my job. It is not about sending a message.” Messages, he insists, are “white, comfortable” things to want.

Robert Fisk (1946-2020)

Robert Fisk, the revered foreign correspondent for The Independent, his knowledge and insight of the Middle East is perhaps unrivalled among contemporary commentators. Fisk, who has met Osama bin Laden three times, talks about his experience of covering conflict throughout the region, the Middle East's history and the possibilities for its future.  Here is part of a talk I recorded at the Institute of Education at the book launch of Fisk's  Wars for Civilization,  London 13 October 2005.  He was a vigorous opponent of the new-fangled concept of “embedded journalism”. Latterly, however, his own embedded reports on the continuing civil war in Syria, which tended to absolve the Assad regime of some of the worst crimes credited to it, provoked a backlash, even among his anti-imperialist acolytes. Obituary

Modern Social Thought

"So long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx, will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the frangmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment."  — Mark Mazwoer, Columbia University,  reviewing Gareth Stedman Jones's book  Karl Marx, Greatness and Illusion , the Financial Times, 5 August 2016.
"Fittingly for the fact that Assad has maintained his firm grip on power, an emotionally charged story of a child and his fate satiates the middle-class, very white desire to carry the weight of the evil world on our shoulders, albeit without consequences or responsibility. Oh what a dreadful place the rest of the world is!" The white perspective
From the archive You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to. — Humbert Wolfe Robert Fisk's crimes against journalism
The report is written by a liberal institution. Contrary to the report, in my opinion the Guardian and the Daily Mirror , are not left-wing (itself a loose term). The Guardian , for example, gives voice to some left-wingers, but it is generally liberal. The last few decades has made anyone who is not (neo)liberal, a left-winger. The dominant press of the 5 families have redefined what a left-winger is.  Journalistic Representation of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press