by Felix Quigley
July 10, 2008
Nick Cohen wrote the following
“Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic, they went for the professors and technicians who could make a democratic Iraq work”
Cohen is totally free to write whatever he wants and on whatever subject he likes. 4international will defend that right always.
But when asked to produce evidence for such a dastardly statement as the above Cohen quoted a known liar and then in a most cynical fashion gave a respected Scottish blogger an atrocious (for a journalist) answer.
“Nick Cohen has been one of those who have spread about the lies on Yugoslavia. We have evidence here of one lie.
The exposure of this lie was very simply and economically carried out. It is very comprehensively done leaving Cohen totally exposed and far more of this active exposure of these liars should have been done. In hindsight it must now be recognized that there was need for an organized party (the Trotskyist party of revolution and against all such liars reminiscent of the Stalinists of the 1930s) which could have done the following on a consistent and totally organized basis.
It goes like this. Cohen wrote the following:
“Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic, they went for the professors and technicians who could make a democratic Iraq work”
You see what Cohen has done! He has introduced one lie by a second lie. He prepares the ground by placing the name of Milosevic with and even alongside the names of two monsters. That is lie number one! Then he says that the Serbs “went for” people who would make a democratic Bosnia work.
But this was happening in every newspaper and in every television news we were watching. These journalists like Cohen were at this day after day.
And this time it was different. Only because this one time Cohen was directly challenged by somebody who cared about the truth of what Cohen was claiming. So it started with Neil Clark on his blog down in England and then a different Neil, Neil Craig who blogs in Scotland, saw it on Clark’s blog and had the presence of mind to write to Cohen. It was not that difficult, he did not write an essay to Cohen, he just asked him for evidence, where he got the evidence for the horrific claim above.
And so we come to this blog and 4international. A regular reader Mick Tanzer has written to me recalling this episode which is so full of meaning for us, for Yugoslavia, for Israel, for the whole future of political struggle. Do not be misled, the following contains huge lessons.
[start quote of letter to 4international from Mick Tanzer]
British journalist, Nick Cohen, gets his “facts” on the ex- Yugoslav wars – e.g. Srebrenica – from proven liars like US Newsday reporter Roy Gutman – who admitted he got his “facts” in turn from a Croat woman – Jadranka Cigelj – who worked as a propagandist in Croatian Ustasha Nazi leader Franjo Tudjman’s “Croatian Information Center”!
What follows is Neil Craig and Peter Robert North’s amazing research exposing these paid liars -Cohen and Gutman – for US and NATO imperialism and their proxies: the Croat Ustasha and Bosnian Muslim Nazis.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2007/02/nick-cohen-guardian-columnist.html
(Quote begins here)
Sunday, February 04, 2007
NICK COHEN – GUARDIAN COLUMNIST
Said apropos of nothing much:
“Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic, they went for the professors and technicians who could make a democratic Iraq work”
Which got a mention on Neil Clark’s blog. So I sent:
If like me, you are curious as to which ‘professors and technicians’ Slobodan Milosevic ‘went for’, Cohen can be contacted at nick@nickcohen.net.
Indeed I am. Clearly nobody with the most minute shred of personal integrity, & indeed who was not an out & out obscene Nazi trying to justify genocide, ethnic cleansing & child sex slavery would make such a remark without having some evidence to back it up.
He [Cohen] replied:
Dear Neil,
It’s in chapter 5 if you’ve got the book taken from Roy Gutman’s account of the decaptiation of Mulsim civil society in Prejidor — going for the
judges, teachers etc The Hague hearings backed him up.
All the best,Nick
& I said:
A ) Prejodor is in Republika Srpska not Serbia
B ) Gutman has been proven a liar, not having been to the sites such as Omarska where he said he saw atrocities.
So where is your real evidence?
& he [Cohen]:
Bye now.
So take of that as you will. Perhaps I annoyed him with my reference to obscene Nazis but, since Gutman has acknowledged that he never saw atrocities he said he saw, not having visited Republika Srpska at the time he wrote of seeing atrocities there I submit that his testimony is worthless. If so has Cohen any actual evidence or was my initial assessment spot on? There is no 3rd choice.
// posted by neil craig @ 5:01 PM
[end quote from Mick Tanzer to 4international here]
So thanks to Neil Clark, Neil Craig and not least Mick Tanzer who sent this to 4international. Because unfortunately for Cohen it is not “Bye Now” except in his own rattled brain box but it is really (a little belated admittedely) “Hello! What is this all about Cohen refusing to produce any evidence to a respected Scottish blogger, as we all move into a period of intense world wide struggle due to the crisis in the degenerate system which Cohen and his sidekick Kamm so obviously defend”.
To recap here. Cohen has placed Milosevic in the same bracket as the worst tyrants the world has ever seen, Pol Pot and Stalin no less.
Stalin had a hatred for the intelligentia because Stalin was never able to string in his writings an intelligent sentence together on anything. He hated in this respect Trotsky with a vengeance who could certainly string more than a few thoughts together. This morphed in the period of 1926 to 1929 into anti-Semitism because Stalin consciously used that evil scourge in order to defeat Trotsky, and to banish him from Russian soil. Pol Pot was actually a variant on the Stalinist dogma of “socialism in one country” and has become a byword for tyranny.
So Cohen who knows all of that deliberately placed Milosevic in that company. By doing that he was also launching an attack on Serbs as a whole because Milosevic came to power through democratic election. Pol Pot and Stalin were tyrants who ruled by force.
So that led on to the second lie. Cohen is saying in the above that Milosevic ruled as a tyrant and by force. That is the meaning of his quote. Not a long quote mind you! But he sure packed a lot of slander against the Serbs into it.
What was different here to the tens of thousands of others is that Neil Craig to his great credit wrote directly to Cohen. At that point Cohen’s slander is opened up. Who should Cohen reach for to defend the above but the accepted great liar of the Yugoslav experience, Roy Gutman. This was the “reporter” who was so partisan in his reporting that he should have been asked to wear a special Tudjman and Izetbegovic motif on his lapel. Literally his modus operandi was do not come near me if you are Serbian.
As Craig said in exasperated reply to Cohen:
“Gutman has been proven a liar, not having been to the sites such as Omarska where he said he saw atrocities.”
I will repeat that for the benefit of Cohen, Kamm, Hoare and their ilk “Gutman…proven…liar”. Got that gentlemen of The Times. 4international will have a look at Roy Gutman. He deserves it. So Nik Cohen. Not “Bye now”, not yet!
4international 