CIA / INTEL AGENCIES

PEPE ESCOBAR—Washington’s wishful thinking cum P.R. offensive boils down to selling itself as the primus inter pares of the West as a revitalized global leader. Why the Global South is not buying it can be observed, graphically, by what happened for the past eight years. The G7 – and especially the Americans – simply could not respond to China’s wide-ranging, pan-Eurasian trade/development strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The American “strategy” so far – 24/7 demonization of BRI as a “debt trap” and “forced labor” machine – did not cut it. Now, too little too late, comes a G7 scheme, involving “partners” such as India, to “support”, at least in theory, vague “high-quality projects” across the Global South: that’s the Clean Green Initiative , focused on sustainable development and green transition, to be discussed both at the G7 and the US-EU summits. Compared to BRI, Clean Green Initiative hardly qualifies as a coherent geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy. BRI has been endorsed and partnered by over 150 nation-states and international bodies – and that includes more than half of the EU’s 27 members.

Marxism is a scientific type of Socialism and science learns from its mistakes. Therefore it’s logical and positive to engage in criticism and self-criticism and to keep in mind that the great socialist and progressive thinkers who came before us didn’t have the luxury of following any pre-existing model of socialism. They erred more often than not due to the fact that they were pioneers in uncharted territory. It shouldn’t surprise us they made mistakes but neither should we exaggerate those mistakes or use them to diminish their great successes and achievements. It is easier for us to see farther for we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

CIA was interested enough in Kutner that the CIA’s top lawyer agreed to a lunch meeting. For some reason, before the lunch took place, Kutner called Oakley. According to CIA documents, Kutner asked the agency to fund his “World Habeas Corpus Centers,”66 which he hoped, with CIA backing, could be established around the world.

Kutner attempted to entice CIA with a proposal that celebrated the tough stand on human rights in communist countries taken by a “human rights” conference held in the capital of one of the most repressive cold war torture states—the U.S.-backed Shah’s Iran. It is an irony surpassed only by, perhaps, the idea of a worldwide archipelago of CIA-backed “human rights” centers.

The CIA saw the propaganda value in such an organization, but Oakley told Kutner that the organization would probably harm the project more than help it.

nvestigative journalist and academic Alan MacLeod, often associated with FAIR.org and Mintpress, brings this unsavory (but amply expected) business to the public’s attention. Of course, you won’t see this on MSNBC or CNN, or the NYTimes. Nor on PBS Newshour. What a swell guy this fellow Luis Kutner was. Impeccably liberaloid, but a fervent Zionist, he apparently developed a progressive cover for his real work helping imperialism’s major projects and agencies, and working as a “human rights lawyer” for world known fascists and reactionary figures. His sordid links with the CIA and the FBI are well documented. The CIA-controlled Wikipedia itself is clear (well it cannot be denied and Wiki needs to maintain some credibility anyhow) about Kutner’s repellent character. It says matter-of factly that he was known for, “Snitching on Fred Hampton and reporting him to the FBI, leading to Hampton’s eventual assassination in Chicago. Development of the living will and advocacy of world habeas corpus.” Kutner eventually won the post of Chief Justice of the World Court of Human Rights, itself another propaganda tool in the Cold War and thereater like Amnesty International and HRW used to shame and embroil people and institutions marked as “enemies” by the US State Department.

One US military leader has called Israel “the intelligence equivalent of five CIAs.” An Israeli cabinet minister likens his country to “the equivalent of a dozen US aircraft carriers,” while the Jerusalem Post defines Israel as the executive of a “superior Western military force that” protects “America’s interests in the region.” Arab leaders have called Israel “a club the United States uses against the Arabs,” and “a poisoned dagger implanted in the heart of the Arab nation.”