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Brief
response to Mr. Cohen's Yahoogroups release of 2/12/02:
When Bill Clinton was caught in the Gennifer Flowers affair, he went onto "60 Minutes," admitted he wasn't perfect, apologized and asked for understanding. When Mr. Cohen is revealed to have acted terribly by the article we published yesterday, not surprisingly he only attacks with more lies and innuendo -- as he did in his 2/12/02 Yahoogroup column today. He calls Jeff Nelson a "cancer on the movement" -- but gives no specifics as to why. He claims Mr. Robbins insists on flying first class -- which is false. In the last 15 years, Mr. Robbins has taken more than 1,000 flights to and from speaking engagements. Not a single one was first class. In fact, upon learning about Mr. Cohen's outlandish charges, John Robbins' travel agent, Wendy Simon, wrote the following: > My name is Wendy Simon. I own and run Pacific Harbor Travel in Santa
Cruz, Mr. Cohen complains bitterly that organizations sometimes pay Mr. Robbins to appear when he has to travel long distances, while they refuse to pay Mr. Cohen. Sponsoring groups are willing to pay Mr. Robbins because he typically draws large crowds. As well, Mr. Robbins frequently appears for free, as he did last September for VegSource and for WorldFest. More than half of Mr. Robbins' speaking engagements over the last two years have been done pro bono, usually for fund raisers for non-profit environmental, hunger relief, peace, animal rights, vegetarian and other social change groups. Mr. Cohen complains bitterly that "Mr. Robbins' limo" isn't available to him -- when in fact it was a limo belonging to a dedicated vegan, Mark Glover, who volunteered his time and car to WorldFest to drive their speakers to and from the airport. To read the full "limo" story and find out that in fact, Mr. Cohen WAS given a ride to the airport, despite his Fantasy Island-eque piece of drama, click here. Mr. Cohen is calling Mr. Robbins a sell-out when Mr. Cohen himself boasts of spending $6,000 per month with a PR firm to promote himself -- not to promote good in the community or to feed people or save animals, but to promote Robert Cohen. Mr. Cohen claims Mr. Robbins rides around in stretch limos all the time. This is false. He has only been in a stretch limo a few times in his life. These rare occasions have only occurred when such services were donated by Mark Glover, and when major national shows such as Oprah chose to send one for him. The irony is that Mr. Cohen makes this false complaint while complaining that he can't have a stretch limo ride himself. This would all actually be very funny if Mr. Cohen's intentions weren't so cruel. It is interesting that he would accuse VegSource of being "only about money" -- when everything we do is for free: creating websites for free for noted individuals and organizations, like ChristianVeg, JewishVeg, MadCowboy, American Vegan Society, Farm Sanctuary, and many many more. Those sites were created by our employees at our expense. And unlike Mr. Cohen, we have never paid a dime to promote ourselves, but instead donate to various charities. Our priorities are different from Mr. Cohen's. He claims email exchanges between he and Mr. Robbins and myself attached to the article we published yesterday have been altered, but as usual offers the reader no evidence to back this claim. They have not. Many people were copied on these exchanges as they occured, who can verify these are the full emails. As for removing posts on VegSource, we removed an entire discussion board because our guests were deeply offended by Mr. Cohen and his conduct, and we didn't want to leave all their anger sitting out there. You would think Mr.Cohen would be grateful that we removed all those negative comments about him, rather than objecting to our doing so. The misstatements in Mr. Cohen's column are too numerous to correct, but it is entirely predictable that he has responded with more name-calling, innuendo, and nothing that can be independently verified. He has even chosen to drag my wife into this. As recently as last week, Mr. Cohen told two employees of EarthSave that it is his "goal" to destroy EarthSave, which threat he is unfortunately attemping to make good on. It's also unfortunate that Mr. Cohen does not simply apologize for his conduct, rather than spewing more rage and nonsense. It's very sad. The letters we have received at VegSource relating to this issue have a common theme: Mr. Cohen needs help. When many people come forward to object to his behavior, it is like the family of the alcoholic who intervenes and says, "No, you cannot do this to yourself anymore, or to others."
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