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."

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.

November 9, 2005 9:38 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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