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Patrick Cockburn

Patrick Cockburn Biography

Journalist

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“«Cuando Estados Unidos, Gran Bretaña y sus aliados invadieron Iraq en 2003 dieron comienzo a una revolución. No era esa su intención, pues su objetivo era acabar con Sadam Hussein y su régimen, y no se apercibieron de la radicalidad de lo que estaban haciendo. La invasión y ocupación del país suponía un cambio revolucionario porque ponía fin a la dominación suní, vigente sin solución de continuidad durante cientos de años bajo los otomanos, los británicos y tras la independencia. Los americanos disolvieron el Ejército y los cuerpos de seguridad, que habían sido los principales instrumentos de control suní sobre el 80 por ciento de la población, que era chií o kurda. (...) Las potencias invasoras nunca asumieron el hecho de que la identificación del nuevo gobierno post-Sadam con los americanos y con un antiguo poder imperial como Gran Bretaña lo deslegitimaba desde el primer momento a ojos de los iraquíes».”

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Book:The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East
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“Schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder are often spoken of by laypeople – I used to do it myself – as if they were definitions as precise as those for hepatitis or appendicitis. In reality, the names are no more than those given to a collection of symptoms observable at a certain moment in time.”

Mental Heath
Book:Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son's Story
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“Muqtada belongs to the most famous religious family in Iraq, which is the al-Sadr family. He's really the third in line. [Muqtada's father] drew his power from the first really important al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir, who was executed by Saddam in 1980, together with his sister. So it's really a family of martyrs, and that's why Muqtada suddenly emerged from nowhere with the fall of Saddam.”

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Author:Patrick Cockburn
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“Despite the fact that there's billions of dollars sitting in the Iraqi government reserves, somehow they are incapable of getting it out to the people. There are a very large number of people here who are on the edge of starvation. For those sort of people - a sizable chunk of people - that service makes them regard Muqtada as a sort of god.”

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Author:Patrick Cockburn
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“One of the problems with the media covering this place is that there are stereotypes of news, one of which is "war rages" and the other is "peace dawns." And there isn't much in between. When I talk to foreign journalists, often they are gritting their teeth because they've been asked for a piece about how shops are reopening and restaurants are reopening and so forth - happy pieces. And it just ain't so.”

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Author:Patrick Cockburn
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“There's a lot of expectation in the Middle East that post-Obama there will be a sort of tougher U.S. line on Assad, there will be more intervention and so forth. But I don't know if that's going to be fulfilled. If there is more intervention, then I think it's going to go the same way as these other interventions that we've seen in Iraq, we've seen, to a degree, in Syria, we've seen in Libya, you know, that they do really badly. They make bad situations worse.”

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Author:Patrick Cockburn
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