The new Iron Curtain? Bushco must have his name on a shitlist. This echoes of the Cat Stevens case - sans the lack of an Islamic name of course. Cross posted at Chris Floyd Online
Robert Fisk Refused Entry into U.S.
U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation’s readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night.
According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order.
The controversial British journalist, who is based in Beirut, filed many eyewitness reports on the U.S. invasion of Iraq and criticized Western reporters for “hotel journalism ,” a phrase he coined to describe correspondents who covered the war from heavily fortified hotel suites and offices.
Robert Fisk is a British Journalist, based in Beirut, who currently serves as a Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper in London.
His recent articles bear titles such as “The US forces, like the Crusaders before them, are prisoners in their own fortresses”; and “In Middle Eastern elections, no one bats an eyelid when the leader gets 110 per cent of the vote” which begins, “Democracy. Ah, how the Middle East would love to have some democracy! On the supermarket shelf – and I can assure you, there are plenty of supermarkets in the Middle East – a couple of boxes of democracy would be a good buy, along with three boxes of human rights and four boxes of justice.”
Over the last 35 years he has covered the conflict in Northern Ireland, Israeli invasions of Lebanon, the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Gulf War, wars in Algeria and the former Yugoslavia, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Most recently, much of Fisk’s reporting has been on the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
It is from this experience that he has coined the term “hotel journalism” in criticism of Western journalists who report on the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq from the safety of their hotel rooms rather than the streets of Baghdad. Fisk holds numerous awards for journalism, including two Amnesty International UK Press Awards and seven British International Journalist of the Year awards. His fourth book, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, will be available in November 2005.