Stephen Cohen's death is the loss of a singular Voice of Sanity

Submitted by Linda Wood on Sat, 09/19/2020 - 3:30pm

Caitlin Johnstone expresses what has been most important about Stephen Cohen's hard work against the merchants of death.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/09/19/stephen-cohen-has-died-remember-...

Caitlin Johnstone
September 19, 2020

Stephen Cohen Has Died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War.

... In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding.

I don’t know how long Cohen had cancer. I don’t know how long he was aware that he might not have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.

... Cohen has for years been correctly predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth, even while his own life was nearing its end.

And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions to continue to increase.

We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our doing so.

Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us all.

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Stephen cohen
Russia
nuclear war
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Comments

Submitted by Roy Blakeley on Sat, 09/19/2020 - 4:51pm
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It's a cliche, but a truthful one, that he was a voice of sanity and reason. He will be sorely missed.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 09/19/2020 - 5:10pm
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mimi and i'd been discussing it on one of my threads, and i'd offered this send off to him as he travels his next journey.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b2QRg_xCbk]

RT's coverage has kindly provided some of his earlier columns and interviews.

Stephen F. Cohen, pre-eminent contemporary American scholar of Russia & USSR, friend of Gorbachev & advisor to Bush, dies at 81’, 19 Sep, 2020, RT.com

rest in truth & power, professor cohen.

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Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Sat, 09/19/2020 - 8:30pm

Openly and often. The right even wrote a book called "Some Dare Call it Treason."
Nothing to imagine. That's how it was.

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Submitted by The Voice In th... on Sat, 09/19/2020 - 8:49pm

@Battle of Blair Mountain
Or am I thinking of another book?

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 09/19/2020 - 10:02pm
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I wish the Russia Gaters would stop and think where this Russian hostility is going to go. How is it that they don’t know about the troop buildup in countries that border Russia? Or that those noble Ukrainians who need our weapons are the same neo Nazis that they say Trump loves?

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Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 12:59am
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than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But it's much too soon for most people to realize that, and especially those maddened by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by MrWebster on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 1:32pm

@TheOtherMaven God told Abraham after a negotiation if 10 good men could be found, god would spare Sodom and Gomorrah. The tale is now that the existence of 10 good men is preventing god from giving humanity a Biblical ass whopping. We are down to nine.

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Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 09/20/2020 - 6:58am
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Here's one from last year with a transcript...
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/13/ukrainegate-impeachment-saga-worsens-...

Paul Jay had a 5 part series with him a couple of years ago that was great although Paul is a bit adversarial. Here's the first part with links to the other 4
https://therealnews.com/stories/is-russian-meddling-an-attack-on-america...

Part 4 he talks of his personal history and background...

I went off to the University of Birmingham in England for a year in 1958-’59. And I had $300 left, the equivalent in pounds. And it was my intention before I came back the United States, like all boys who read Hemingway, to go and watch the bulls run in Spain. I had saved the $300, right? That’s what those of us who read Hemingway wanted to do. And then go home after a year. I’m walking in the working class district of Birmingham one day, and I see an enormous sign that you can spend a full month, four weeks, in the Soviet Union for exactly $300 in pounds. So I think to myself, so I can go to Spain for three days, or I can go to the Soviet Union for 30 days for the same amount of money. So I got on the ship to Russia, the Soviet Union.

Turned out to be a Fabian Society pensionair. So I’m like 19, and everybody else is 60, 65, 70. So I carried a lot of bags. But for nearly five weeks I drifted with this group across the Soviet Union. I couldn’t speak Russian. But this was a society emerging from the Stalinist terror. Remember, Stalin died in ’53. Khrushchev gave his denunciation of Stalin in ’56. So three years later, by accident–my Russian friends say no, no, no, no, it was sud’ba. It was your fate–by accident, because I didn’t go watch the bulls run, I ended up in the Soviet Union. And there was something about this society awakening from this long terror, small things and big things, that intrigued me.

Now, how oblivious was I, Paul? I go back to Indiana University–my own university. I did not even know that they had one of the leading Russian studies programs in the United States. That’s how little interested I was in Russia before I didn’t go to Spain. Are you following the story I’m telling you? So I go back to Indiana. And now I’m interested in Russia. So I decide I’ll take a couple courses. And that’s where I met my great mentor, and I think the greatest Russianist of his generation, Robert C. Tucker, who wrote books about Marx, but also–he didn’t finish it–a two volume biography of Stalin. Still the best biography, no matter what anybody says, that we have of Stalin. And Tucker–I went to Tucker and said, you know, I went to Russia by accident. He said, “Well, if you’re interested, learn the language.” And he became my mentor.

Sorry he passed on.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”