Apr 20, 1997 From: DP <quicknes@interlog.com> Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna,soc.culture.yugoslavia,alt.current-events.bosnia, soc.culture.croatia,soc.culture.usa,soc.culture.jewish,alt.journalism.criticism, alt.news-media

Subject: Be Strong Be Serbian

Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 18:31:57 -0500

If all us Serbs did what you do, maybe we wouldn't have all these enemies in the first place!!

Keep Of The Fight For The Honor Of The Serbian People

dd chukurov wrote: > http://www.srpska-mreza.com/forums/open/messages/67.html

> OPEN LETTER TO - The Pulitzer Commission

> Journalism Building, Room 702

> Columbia University

> New York NY 10027

> Sirs and Madames:

> Your award to Roy Gutman of the once esteemed Pulitzer Prize is an > execrable abandonment of integrity which can be righted only by the > resignation of the commission and a public inquiry into your obscene > witch hunt against a brave people.

> You and your honoree have colluded with neo-Nazi Croatia in the > satanization of a whole nation in as vile a publication as The > Confessions of Maria Monk, against the Catholics, or The Protocols of > the Elders of Zion , against the Jews. To engage in Jew-bashing or > Afro-bashing is no longer politically correct in the salons and > universities, but the Serbs are fair game for murderous racism. > Indeed, you should be sued for slander, defamation and fraud.

> Failing the moral correction of resignations, full disclosure of the > deals struck, and the dealers, as well as an apology to the Serb people, > your commission, and your university will go down in history as a > brothel fouler by far than any honest whore house.

> I enclose a simple analysis that reveals Gutman's Witness to Genocide > as a hoax orchestrated by a cowardly, incompetent, dull-witted bunch of > the yellowest "journalists".

> John Peter Maher Ph. D.

> Chicago

> ^Lc the annotated gutman.

> letter from a translator and grammarian

> john peter maher, chicago. 1995

> Roy Gutman. 1993. witnesss to genocide . 1

> Roy Gutman's Witness to Genocide is false witness. Janet Cooke got > dumped for her hoax, but at least, presumably, she wrote her own hoax. > Roy Gutman is next. Although the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of > Witness to Genocide speaks American English, one must infer from the > text of "his" book that someone other than Roy Gutman wrote at least > parts of "his" book. But what of the Pulitzer judges? Who are they? What > of their integrity and independence? Who are Gutman's sponsors? Since he > is a weapon in the war that wrecked Yugoslavia and started the mayhem > there, could the prize have been stage managed by the wreckers in order > to lend credibility to "Gutman's" false Witness?

> How do we know that Gutman did not author the whole text of Witness? > Easy. Foreign language teachers have fun haranguing their pupils > about those treacherous lookalike but meandifferent words. The French > teachers call them "false friends," or faux amis. To cite some > politically incorrect or post-graduate examples, take for starters the > word "preservative." In English this refers to chemical additives that > retard spoilage of foods. Elsewhere in Europe "preservatives" are > condoms. -- At table once in an Alpine village I had to interpret for an > American lady who had just nonplussed her Italian hosts with her recipe > for home-baked bread -- "I never use preservatives."

> In English "pollution" is dirtying the overall environment.2 > In continental pollution one soils one's personal environment, bed or > personal linen, with an ejaculation in wet dream or other episode.

> If Gutman ever proofed this book, if he read it at all, then he is > not competent to spot the faux amis and other "finger prints." I refer > to Serbophobic passages typical of Ustasha sources which punctuate the > book. We must wonder who his handlers are, who recruited him. Tedious, > but tell-tale examples of faux amis now follow, indicating that no > American, but a Yugoslav hand wrote at least several passages of > Witness. That hand unwittingly left his/her signature all over the > document.

> Reporters' sources, as persons who should remain anonymous, are > identified by initials. This is a practice of European journalism, > rather than American. Then, a "helpful" phonetic spelling is given by > someone whose mother tongue is not English for the region called Krajina > ('frontier'). That author, whose instinct is to give the "continental > value ("ah ") to the letter a, wrote "kray-eena". English readers would > rime that with "pray, Lena," but since the Serb name really rimes with > "cry, Lena " an English speaking writer would have spelt it "krah-yeena" > or "cry-eena".

> Many more such loci constitute internal evidence betraying the hand of > an author who is not a native speaker of English, i.e. not Roy Gutman.

> E. g. :

> 1. p. xiii. "I learned this ... on meeting released prisoners in > Britain, some at the Karlovac in southern Croatia" -- This whole > sentence, though grammatically correct, is stylistically wooden, > foreigner's English. What is more, the incorrect use of the definite > article is typically Slavic. (In the Slavic family only north Russian > dialects and Bulgarian have a definite article.) We say The Hague, yes, > but not the Washington for the city, as opposed to an eponymous bar or > ship; or the restrictive construction "this was not the Washington that > I left in 1956." > 2. p. xix. "well primed..." With us a pump or a bomb or a carburetor3 > is primed , and a lecture is well-prepared. This is a foreigner's > pleonasm.

> 3. p. xxiii. " ... power aggrandizement ...". As the Italians say, "non > si usa" -- Though not grammatically incorrect, this compound simply is > not used in English stylistics, at least not by native speakers. If and > when it occurs, the language drudge detects a foreign author. -- I > fondly remember a Bulgarian-American weekly during the Cold War, whose > author had a striking penchant for such variations on themes by Roget. > -- Whenever President Eisenhower and his opposite numbers in the Kremlin > got together, the press gang invoked the phrase summit conference, > which, was at first someone's fresh and topical allusion to Sir Edmund > Hillary's conquest of Everest. Now, in the age of the other Hillary, > that rhetorical cadaver, truncated, lingers on as summit. The monotony > of summit conference our Bulgar editor attempted to dispel with the > coinages apex parley and vertex colloquy , but they faded into an > oblivion deeper even than that of the coeval Edsel car.

> 4. p. xxxv. " tampered elections ... " The perfect participle of this > verb is not used attributively, but only predicatively. With apologies > to those brought up to believe that prepositions are nothing to end a > sentence with, our elections are not tampered, but tampered with. > 5. p. 20. "... two armored tanks crashed into the main square... ". > The Italians and French would do this too: cf. char arme and carro > armato. Oklopno vozilo "armored vehicle" lurks behind this one. The > Serbo-Croatian language has borrowed German krachen (verb) and Krach > (noun). This does not mean what it looks or sounds like in English. Our > crash, literally used, refers to a noisy collision of speeding vehicles > or other objects out of control, and, figuratively, to such an event as > a stock market fiasco. In German a wall can fall mit einem Krach "with a > crash, bang". In Serbo-Croatian krah only adverts to such crashes as hit > Wall Street or a marriage. -- Those tanks, if Roy Gutman had penned the > prose, would only have (noisily) crashed into each other (in, not into) > the square. Any tanks that Gutman saw and heard would have roared into > that square. The pen was wielded here by an author equating German Krach > and English crash. Zagreb is full of Germanophiles.

> 6. p. 28. Although our kids may well hang out at the Youth Center, we > would not say "Officer, did you see four youths go into that center?" > We would say "four kids, boys, guys, young fellows, or such. In Ireland > or Britain they would be lads. The author of Witness writes of "one > blanket for four men or youths ..".

> 7. p. 30. "Watchmen" is used by Gutman's helper where guards would be > proper. Guards watch the military perimeter, twenty four hours a day, > at that, while watchmen guard the factory at night.

> 8. p. 84. Witness's real author wrote "gas bombs." Tear gas grenades, > or canisters , is what the American Gutman would have written.

> 9. p. 41. "Arm to arm" is a lookalike, a faux ami, of Serbo-Croatian > rame uz rame. However rame really translates "shoulder." Gutman would > never have written that men marched "arm to arm." An English speaker > would have written shoulder to shoulder. -- Mistranslation of French > e.g. would yield elbow to elbow, literally translating coude a coude. > --Moreover, this locution evokes the solidarity of veterans, for > example, marching in a parade on Fifth Avenue (as used to happen in the > USA), or along the Champs Elysees.

> 10. p. 49. "... in an interview before Meho's..." Cf. "a picture of > Kissinger" (no possessive; it depicts Kissinger) vs. "a picture of > Kissinger's" (K. owns it). > 11. p. 51. Pseudo-Gutman wrote ".. genitals plucked out." But Gutman, > as a speaker of idiomatic English, knows that, while our eyes are > plucked out, our genitals are cut off.

> 12. p. 55. No one plays baseball in Bosnia, but the author of Witness > wrote "they removed four baseball bats from a bag." -- Baseball bats in > Cuba, si, or Japan, but in Bosnia? Maybe the CIA is also issuing this > equipment -- but to Muslims not to Serbs -- in addition to General Issue > M-16s, rations, and T-shirts (out of Egyptian army stocks)? A nice > American writer would have written: "the bailiff removed the heckler," > but "they took four clubs out of a bag."

> 13. p. 55 and p. 57 (yes, twice): Gutman would never have written "his > back was blue and red from the blows." English speaking backs are > beaten black and blue.

> 14. p. 72. In English we, Gutman included, use the archaic preposition > before in the phrase "it happened before my very eyes." Here in fact we > also use the word very in a very old fashioned way. In prose about > concrete situations we prefer the phrasal unit "in front of (the > house)." But in Witness a Croat or a Bosnian Muslim hand translated pred > mojim ocima as "in front of my eyes."

> 15. p. 74. Serbo-Croatian underspecifies the limbs: ruka and noga, are > respectively 'arm/hand' and 'foot/leg'. Serbo-Croatian speakers add > specifying terms as needed. Someone unaccustomed to the overly specific > English usage wrote "the soldiers ... hung him by his neck, legs and > hands". Roy Gutman or his brothers and siblings would have written hands > and feet or arms and legs.

> 16.. p. 96 "...Serb ill-wishers came by." I suppose they had absolutely > no ruth, either.

> 17. p. 137 "hangars where grain was stored". Grain indeed is warehoused > in hangari in Yugoslavia. But planes are not parked in the silo.

> 18. p. 137. A Serb death camp had "outdoor latrines." Serbs' access to > air freshener is of course blocked by the Security Council sanctions, > and it's easier anyway to dig out of doors.

> 19. p.145 (photo opposite). Chasing McDonald's statistics ("over 10-70 > thousand raped"), "Gutman" trips over English phraseology in testimony > about the Serb commander at the Omarska "death camp," accused by > Jadranka Cigelj of raping her. The accused is quoted as saying "I would > not lean a bicycle against her, let alone rape her." The anonymous hired > hand of official Bosnia-Herzegovina has here mixed up his/her > phraseological equivalent of Serbo-Croatian's construction "a kamo li". > The printed text of Witness would have it that the commander would > rather have raped her than park his bike against her. This is gapping > the bridges. Real English is "he doesn't take care of himself, let alone > others." The commander and Gutman, if Gutman had written this passage, > would have said "much less. -- Jadranka Cigelj, by the way, is Gutman's > most notorious, known, "source". She has been identified as a paid > employee of the Croatian government information ministry. 4

> 20. (p. 97) I have saved one of the choicest nuggets of "Gutman's" book > for last; pen your own one-liners for this one:

> "A guard came into the room looking for scapegoats."

> Gutman's Witness to Genocide is false witness, is more than Janet Cooke > rediviva. It is an update of The Confessions of Maria Monk, virulent > anti-Catholic tract printed in the early 1800s by Harper's, using > a front company so as not to lose the Catholic trade, while at the > same exploiting the Protestant market. Gutman's Witness rivals the very > work that than Janet Cooke rediviva. It is an update of The Confessions > of Maria Monk, virulent anti-Catholic tract printed in the early 1800s > by Harper's, using a front company so as not to lose the Catholic trade, > while at the same exploiting the Protestant market. Gutman's Witness > rivals the very work that aimed at the extirpation of his own nation, > The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. > ---------------

> February 27, 1995