Robert Fisk Quotes
I've never seen a single demonstration in Pakistan, in the streets of Gaza, in the West Bank, in which the people have come out with signs saying, "Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system." I'm sure they'd like those things, but it's not what they demand in the demonstrations. In the demonstrations, they talk about justice, they talk about an end to Israeli occupation.
Barsamian, David. "Robert Fisk." The Progressive, vol. 65, no. 12, Dec. 2001, pp. 32-35.
This paraphrased quote originated with Martin Luther King, Jr. See related quote.
He and 8 others were executed by the military dictatorship which controlled Nigeria. It was led by General Sani Abacha who was the chief “goon” to whom he was referring. His observation is fundamental of protest activities in countries of high illiteracy. Printed literature is relatively impotent in an oral, illiterate country. But “literature in the streets” is the oral protest of large groups of people. Because he was so effective at organizing this, he was executed on trumped up charges and his bidy hidden from his followers and relatives. See {586598} and {586597}.
He had written this text on a newspaper when he was jailed in Birmingham for violating a court order not to demonstrate. A common tactic of the Southern segregationists was to have local segregationist judges issue injunctions against civil rights demonstrations on the grounds that they would promote violence. These were generally unconstitutional, but King and others were jailed until the legal appeal could even be heard.
There was a large contingent of whites who showed up—many invited and expected and many who came on their own.
This is a classic Egyptian political technique. Egyptian political leaders espouse democratic values and endorse human rights, but control and regulate the actual exercise of rights so that “unacceptable” groups or people can never really assemble or protest. They make an application to demonstrate and find themselves arrested or “detained” so the Egyptians can say that no one is refused the right to assemble. Their permit was not denied.
Robert Fisk was a writer and journalist who held British and Irish citizenship. During his career he developed strong views, and was especially critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. His stance earned him praise from many commentators, but was condemned by others.
