Just got a postcard from Robert Fisk...

...which was a slightly surreal start to the day. Now before anyone thinks it's completely random it was in a response to a letter I'd sent him earlier in the year. The letter was sent in early april so I'd all but forgotten about it. He doesn't take email correspondance and letters are sent care of the Independent offices as he lives and works out in the middle east for the most part. I really wasn't expecting a reply but I got one and as it was he took the time to reply to my letter from his holiday in Ireland. Almost feel guilty about sending it now, I have a mental image of him sitting with a towering pile of letters to reply to while he's meant to be relaxing on holiday.

I'd asked him about Irans president and how he was labeled, by himself included, a holocaust denier. I'd been familiar with a bit of a furore about comments the guy had made re the Holocaust and they were certainly ambiguous but in a general climate of Iran bashing I wasn't sure what he'd said, at least as far as the direct quotes I'd seen in print could be taken that way unless you had an agenda to be outraged and/or make the guy look like a dangerous lunatic. Which of course he quite possibly is.

So I'd basically decided to write to Robert Fisk as he's one journalist I consider to be knowledgeable and have integrity. Now obviously given the answer is on the back of a postcard it's not exactly detailed but he basicaly said why he could be labelled a Holocaust denier. If not so much the words Irans president said but the people he invited over, prominent Holocaust deniers and the head of the Klu Klux Klan. Now whatever he did say publicaly or thinks privately one is almost certainly judged by the company one keeps.