Beyond Left & Right

As interesting evidence of the interesting political contacts and alliances that are being made amid the Gore implosion we offer the enthusiastic support offered by Mitchel Cohen for Justin Raimondo. Cohen is a Brooklyn Green anarchist. Raimondo is a libertarian, one of the crew who run the Antiwar.com website. Readers may recall that one of the present writers attended a springtime conference put on by Antiwar.com called "Beyond Right and Left." Not so long ago Raimondo put up on the Antiwar.com site an attack on Ralph Nader, for being a wuss on foreign policy. Relevant portions of Raimondo's attack went as follows:

"When Ralph Nader entered the presidential sweepstakes as the candidate of the Green Party, I thought: At last, we will hear from the American Left on the vital questions of war and intervention. A well-known and much respected public scold, Nader, I knew, would get major attention, and in spite of my own political views, which are quite conservative, I have always given him a kind of grudging respect: here is one socialist who realizes that he is living in America, for god's sake, not 18th-century Russia, and looks to Williams Jennings Bryan instead of Vladimir Illyich Lenin as a model to be emulated.

"As the heir of the old 'progressive' movement that took root in the American West and Midwest, Nader, I thought, would represent all aspects of that tradition, which not only wanted to 'bust the trusts' but also railed against the war profiteers who dragged us into two world wars. I anticipated rhetoric in the spirit of, say, Senator George W. Norris, Republican of Nebraska, whose speech against U.S. entry into World War I underscored the distinctly anti-oligarchical flavor of the antiwar Left in those days. The warmongers were the men of the trusts, he declared, 'Concealed in their palatial offices on Wall Street, sitting behind mahogany desks, covered up with clipped coupons--coupons stained with mothers' tears, coupons dyed in the lifeblood of their fellow men.'"

But then Raimondo cited a recent interview with Nader on "Alternative Radio" on February 23, with one exchange going as follows:

Q: "People will want to know your views on sanctions on Iraq, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Chechnya, and Kosovo. You've got to be prepared to answer those questions."

Nader: "They'll be answered in terms of frameworks. Once you get into more and more detail, the focus is completely defused. The press will focus on the questions that are in the news. If Chechnya is in the news, they'll want to focus on that. We should ask ourselves: What kind of popular participation is there in foreign and military policy in this country? Very little indeed. We want to develop the frameworks. For example, do we want to pursue a vigorous policy of waging peace and put the resources into it from our national budget as we pursue the policy of building up ever-new weapons systems?

As Raimondo sarcastically comments:

"IN TERMS OF WHAT? Say what? Everybody knows Nader's a policy wonk, but isn't this taking it a bit too far? If U.S. troops get into a firefight with Serbs on the Yugoslav-Kosovo border, does he really plan on answering the question of where he stands 'in terms of frameworks?' And this business of how getting into detail 'defuses' the focus is nothing but a crock--and shows a contempt for the language, as well as elementary logic, that one would expect of Bush or Gore: being in focus means getting down to the details. And what, exactly, is a mere 'detail' in Nader's considered opinion--the decimation of Yugoslavia, the murder of an entire generation of Iraqis, the prospect of a war for Caspian oil?

"These are not 'details,' but major issues that cannot be evaded by appeals to 'popular participation' and exhortations to 'wage peace.' By reducing a moral question that transcends politics--what constitutes a just war?--to a question of pure process, democratic or otherwise, Nader thinks he can get away with in effect taking no position at all."

This is a well-merited attack from a conservative libertarian, and it drew an enthusiastic assent from the left-wing green anarchist Mitchel Cohen, who circulated Raimondo's commentary with this preface: "Here's a very important article on Nader that many might have missed, from Justin Raimondo, the chief voice of Antiwar.com--one of the main websites to emerge during the bombing of Yugoslavia, and funded, to some degree, by the Libertarian Party. Although Raimondo totally misses the vital participation of the Greens in the U.S. in the movement against the bombing of Yugoslavia and sanctions against Iraq--and the important role we played internationally on these issues--his critique of Nader is very sharp and, in my view, valid."

Cohen, by the way, is currently the target of an appalling bout of judicial fascism. Last July 4, he was part of a demonstration at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, in support of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. Like many other demonstrators Cohen was arrested for failing to obey an order by a U.S. Park Ranger. This brought him and the others into a U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. In the past, these orders to disperse by a cop or a park ranger got thrown out or drew at most a $25 fine. But in this post-Seattle phase, cops and judges are running amok. Those who pled guilty drew $250 fines, plus $25 to be paid to a victims' restitution fund. Cohen and a few others contested the charges and, by way of revenge, the judge not only imposed these fines, but confined Cohen and his friends to the southern district, lifted Cohen's passport, and put them all under conditions of probation (meaning urine tests, home searches without warrant or cause, and prohibiting all contact with convicted felons) for twelve months.

Aside from Cohen (Brooklyn Greens) the activists seeking a new trial for Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier included: Clark Kissinger (Refuse & Resist), Frances Goldin (Mumia's literary agent), Marcy Gayer (Greens), Jane Jackson, Paul Magno and Kim Lamberty (Catholic Worker), and Joe Brown (Washington, D.C.). They are now appealing their April conviction.

The prevention of contact with convicted felons (including Mumia) makes Frances Goldin's job especially difficult. She is Mumia's literary agent and holds his Power of Attorney!

In addition, Cohen and the others are required to submit detailed financial reports on where all their money comes from and how they spend it, and they're supposed to sign away their right to privacy and grant the government access to all medical, psychological, and financial records. No sooner had these restrictions been imposed than Clark Kissinger's wife was visited by FBI agents at work and was served with a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury, supposedly relating to an investigation of a former employer. She was also ordered to produce all her financial records (which include joint accounts with Clark) for the last ten years. This was plainly a federal fishing expedition, using every legal mechanism to bring pressure on a key leader in the Mumia movement and find out everything possible about his finances and personal activity.