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Robert Fisk

Tunisian leader and founder of the moderate islamist party Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi (AP)

Rached Ghannouchi says he doesn’t want an Islamic state in Tunisia. Can he prove his critics wrong?

When Rached Ghannouchi met Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali - before Mr Ghannouchi wisely exiled himself to London as an enemy of the dictatorship - a very odd thing happened.

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Inside Robert Fisk

The ordinary victims lost in the noise of Beirut bombing

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

They found a part of a hand in rue Ibrahim el-Mounzer today, along with some intestines – no one doubted ownership of the thumb that was discovered, still pressing the button of a mobile phone.
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The legacy of imperialism still haunts every street in Rome

Monday, 22 October 2012

It is as rare as a Roman inscription, as poor quality as a cheap reproduction, but it is the real thing – "L'Unita', 17 August, 1924" – and the headline is heavy with menace: "The body of Giacomo Matteotti recovered at Riano Flaminio."
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Full story is not being told about violence in Syria

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

How the government howled. With the help of a neighbouring state, 'terrorists' were trying to destroy the government and its army, blowing up and murdering its supporters.
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Plucky Turkey standing up to evil Syria? It's not as simple as that

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

How the government howled. With the help of a neighbouring state, "terrorists" were trying to destroy the government and its army, blowing up and murdering its supporters.
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Fine prose shines through thickets of propaganda

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Lawrence Durrell and the Middle East? Yes, we've all read The Alexandria Quartet. But Shakespeare could produce Macbeth and the grotesque Titus Andronicus. Eliot could write Gerontion, yet turn patriot in The Defence of the Islands.
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Benjamin Netanyahu's warning reveals his moments of memory loss

Monday, 1 October 2012

Israeli President "Bibi" Netanyahu on Guy Fawkes. The super-terrorist plans to blow up parliament and the King; the very nation will be liquidated.
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These 'savages' created some of history's finest art

Monday, 1 October 2012

On sale outside the Louvre's spanking new exhibition of Islamic art this weekend was a magazine headline to engage any reader.
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US had fed the al-Qa'ida scorpion and now it had bitten the United States

Monday, 17 September 2012

A Damascus friend of mine called this weekend and was pretty chipper. "You know, we're all sorry about Christopher Stevens. This kind of thing is terrible and he was a good friend to Syria – he understood the Arabs.
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'No one in Syria likes violence...But people know there is no going back'

Monday, 10 September 2012

The Syrian general opened an envelope and upended its contents on his desk.
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In Maaloula, the past has relevance to Syria's tragic present

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Sunday is a good day to drive to Maaloula. There are fig and olive trees and grapes by the road and, for a time, you can forget that Syria is enduring an epic tragedy.
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Syria's road from jihad to prison

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

They came into the room one by one, heads bowed, wrists crossed in front of them as if they were used to wearing handcuffs.
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Assad’s media man who wants to handle ‘the truth’

Monday, 3 September 2012

When Syrian gunmen stormed Damascus last month, an angry, middle-aged and bespectacled man appeared on state television with a harsh message for Syria's “enemies”.
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Syria: Truth will no longer be a casualty of civil war, says President Assad's media supremo

Friday, 31 August 2012

When Syrian gunmen stormed Damascus last month, an angry, middle-aged and bespectacled man appeared on state television with a harsh message for Syria's "enemies".
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Inside Daraya, Syria: How a failed prisoner swap turned into a massacre

Wednesday, 29 August 2012

The massacre town of Daraya is a place of ghosts and questions. It echoed with the roar of mortar explosions and the crackle of gunfire yesterday, its few returning citizens talking of death, assault, foreign "terrorists", and its cemetery of slaughter haunted by snipers.
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'We believe that the USA is the major player against Syria and the rest are its instruments’

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

The battle for Damascus could be heard inside the Foreign Minister's office yesterday, a vibration of mortars and tank fire from the suburbs of the capital that penetrated Walid Muallem's inner sanctum, a dangerous heartbeat to match the man's words.
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Robert Fisk: The Syrian army is far from squeaky clean

Monday, 27 August 2012

Every day, a new massacre is reported in Syria. Yesterday, it was Daraya. Slaughter by Syrian troops, according to those opposed to Bashar al-Assad. Slaughter by Bashar's "terrorist" opponents, the Syrian army said, producing the wife of a soldier whom they said had been shot and left for dead in a Daraya graveyard.
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Aleppo's poor get caught in the crossfire of Syria's civil war

Friday, 24 August 2012

In Aleppo, the rich have already left, the middle classes stay at home and the poor suffer.
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'Syria's rebel army? They're a gang of foreigners'

Thursday, 23 August 2012

A victorious army? There were cartridge cases all over the ancient stone laneways, pocked windows, and bullet holes up the side of the Sharaf mosque, where a gunman had been firing from the minaret. A sniper still fired just 150 yards away – all that was left of more than a hundred rebels who had almost, but not quite, encircled the 4,000-year-old citadel of Aleppo.
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'No power can bring down Syrian regime'

Wednesday, 22 August 2012

You know it's all true when the taxi driver turns off the motorway towards Aleppo. In front lies a mile of empty road, disappearing into the heat haze on its way to one of the oldest cities in the world.
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Syrian general vows to clean Aleppo from 'terrorists' in 20 days

Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Mortars crashed into the middle-class streets around us and a T-72 tank baked in the heat under a road viaduct, but Bashar al-Assad's most senior operational commander in Aleppo – a 53-year-old Major-General with 33 years in the military and two bullet wounds from last month's battles in Damascus – claims he can "clean" the whole province of Aleppo from "terrorists" in 20 days.
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