Robert Fisk

 I have just learned from BBC World Service that Robert Fisk has died at the age of 74. 

He was one of the cadre of great journalists which made the original Independent newspaper such a pleasure to read. As time went on, one realised that he had his obsessions, though, contrary to the impression that the hard-liners in the Israel government and their supporters in the West put about, he was not anti-Semitic. Rather he was anti-colonial and anti-imperial, the American empire being a prime target. He never let his sympathies get in the way of the facts, though. Latterly he backed up his reports with his  own photographs. He was particularly keen on collecting physical evidence in the form of spent munitions of the assistance which the US gave to client states committing war crimes.