STOP NATO: ˇNO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- URL for this article is http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/treanor/hrw.htm www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] The so-called non-governmental organization 'Human Rights Watch' has launched a public campaign accusing Macedonian forces who are fighting terrorists of rampant abuses. Do we dare ask: WHY 'HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH' IS GUNNING FOR MACEDONIA By Jared Israel [2 June 2001] Followed by Paul Treanor's most revealing examination of the HRW European Section leadership. They are not who you thought they were ... Human Rights Watch has made the news the last few days with public accusations that Macedonia is racist and brutal towards Albanians. These charges are reminiscent of claims made against the Serbian government during the fall and winter of 1998 and the winter of 1998-1999. The reports are invariably anecdotal relying on supposed anonymous, eyewitness (that is, unconfirmable) accounts of beatings and other abuses. Names are withheld: "...because they fear further retaliation from the Macedonian police, and have in some cases been warned by their abusers not to discuss their maltreatment. (HRW Report on Macedonia) Two problems with this sort of account. First problem: We have to accept the honesty of HRW on faith. As we shall prove below, HRW is in essence the U.S. foreign policy elite. The people who dropped humanitarian cluster bombs all over Kosovo. Still feel comfortable trusting them? How do we know that HRW 'investigators' actually interviewed the people it claims they interviewed? If these people were interviewed, how do we know that HRW has accurately reported what the alleged people said? Second problem: since names are withheld, how do we know who was actually talked to (if anyone) and whether they told the truth? If these people do exist, how do we know they are not KLA terrorists (called 'NLA' when they're attacking Macedonia) or their families, friends or supporters? Any of these people would have an interest in slandering Macedonian forces. HRW's reports constitute a public trial for whomever they attack - in this case, Macedonian security forces. But unlike a proper trial, in this one only the witnesses for the prosecution are heard. The HRW is manifestly biased. Its reports use clever wording to trick readers into assuming that the guilt of Macedonian forces has already been proven when this is the very thing the HRW is supposedly investigating. For example consider this sentence: "[They]have in some cases been warned by their abusers not to discuss their maltreatment." Very cute. By telling us that "the victims have been warned to be silent" (a completely unproven and possibly fabricated accusation) HRW tricks our minds into assuming that Albanians must in fact be victims. How can they not be victims if they are being warned? I call this kind of trickery the "Do you still beat your wife?" argument and it has been used by HRW as well as the Western media and an assortment of experts, including some supposed critics of Western foreign policy, to 'prove' the guilt of Serbs in Serbia, of Macedonians, of Mr. Miloshevich, of Bosnian Serbs, and so on. (For example, in the case of Slobodan Miloshevich, we have been hearing for eight months that "investigators have still not located Miloshevich's stolen money." The failure to prove guilt (that is, finding no money) is cleverly worded to make it sound like evidence of guilt ("still not located"). Still not located takes for granted that the money is out there somewhere and we'll find it sooner or later. The impression created by HRW, that "those poor Albanians are being abused again by the nasty Slavs," undercuts potential public opposition to U.S. policy in the Balkans. Indeed, it creates a public relations pressure on Washington to 'help the rebels' or at least "get the Macedonians to compromise." This is peachy for Washington since the 'rebels' are in fact Washington's proxy Army. Washington loves being pressured to support its children. Why is HRW effective? There are several reasons. Let's consider two: First, its reports are given wide exposure in the mass media; second the press fosters the impression that HRW is some kind of issue-oriented activist group, you know, two dozen dedicated college kids and a starving attorney ferreting out the facts. They have to be motivated by idealism; why else would folks go traipsing around Macedonia in the middle of a war? Below is Paul Treanor's description of HRW's European Section Steering Committee. It turns out the HRW leadership is comprised of America's foreign policy elite. As Mr. Treanor says: "It is not a association of "concerned private citizens". HRW board members include present and past government employees, and overlapping directorates link it to the major foreign policy lobbies in the US. Cynically summarized, it is a joint venture of George Soros and the State Department." HRW is a "forward strike force" for U.S. government intervention. Masquerading behind the appealing title of 'Human Rights' it launches propaganda forays against targets chosen to advance the open and/or hidden goals of U.S. policy. Right now Washington has covertly sent its KLA terrorists to attack Macedonia while pretending to support Macedonian independence. Hence the current HRW focus on Macedonia. HRW precedes the flag. Here is Paul Treanor: WHO IS ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Helsinki Steering Committee By Paul Treanor This is the Europian section of the Board of HRW, which is split into sections approximately by continent. The section was established in 1978 (in the late 1970's human rights became the main issue in Cold War propaganda). The unit in the organisation is called the Europe and Central Asia Division. It is affiliated with the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, which co-ordinates the "Helsinki committees". Source: HRW Board of Directors & Advisory Committees Jonathan Fanton, Chair An academic and foundation man. Former Vice President of the University of Chicago, in 1982 appointed as President of the New School for Social Research, now the New School University. He is active in building US academic contacts with eastern Europe, directed at the new pro-western elites, see the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS) page. Alice H. Henkin, Co-Vice Chair Director of the Justice and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, an elite think-tank. Note their report Honoring Human Rights: From Peace to Justice proposing United Nations mission strategies later used in Kosovo. Peter Osnos, Co-Vice Chair George Soros' publisher. He is Chief Executive of Public Affairs publishers. Morton Abramowitz A link to the US Foreign Policy establishment, one of several at HRW. Abramowitz was U.S. Ambassador to Turkey (1989-91) and Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (1985-89), among other posts: see his personal details at the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR, where he is a Fellow. The CFR is the heart of interventionist US policy since 1921 (and hated by the isolationist right). He directed the CFR Balkan Economic Task Force, which published a report on "Reconstructing the Balkans". Barbara Finberg A donor of HRW, see the list below. A retired vice president with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who donated $1 million to Stanford University. Felice Gaer Human rights specialist at the American Jewish Committee and chair of the Steering Committee for the 50th anniversary of the UN Human Rights Declaration, see this biography: "Ms.Gaer is Director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights. Author, speaker, and activist, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Directors of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, a member of the International Human Rights Council at the Carter Center, ...Vice President of the International League for Human Rights." According to this JTA report, Gaer praised Madeleine Albright for her "outstanding human rights record". Felice Gaer was also a non-governmental member of the United States delegation to a United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva, where (according to the Voice of America) she denounced Sudan, saying the the U.S. "cannot accept those who invoke Islam or other religions as justification for atrocious human rights abuses." However, more interesting is this speech at the Geneva meeting, where she suggested the UN should no longer investigate prison rapes in the US: "we would urge the Special Rapporteurs to focus their attention on countries where the situation is the most dire and the abuses the most severe." Michael Gellert Vice Chairman of the Board at Fanton's New School for Social Research. Investment manager and Trustee of the Carnegie Institute. Gellert is a director of Premier Parks Inc., owner of the Six Flags and Walibi theme park chains. Also a director of: High Speed Access Corp., Devon Energy Corporation, Humana Inc.. Paul Goble Director of Communications and political commentator at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Cold War propaganda transmitters that survived the end of the Cold War. From their website "Free Europe, Inc., was established in 1949 as non-profit, private corporations to broadcast news and current affairs programs to Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain. The Radio Liberty Committee, Inc., was created two years later along the same lines to broadcast to the nations inside the Soviet Union. Both were funded principally by the U.S. Congress, through the Central Intelligence Agency, but they also received some private donations as well. The two corporations were merged into a single RFE/RL, Inc. in 1975." It is still funded by the US Government, through Congressional appropriation. Bill Green Former Republican member of Congress, a trustee of the New School for Social Research (where Fanton is President), with many other public and business posts: see the biography at the American Assembly, an academic/political think-tank. Stanley Hoffman A pro-interventionist theorist (of course that means US intervention, not a Taliban invasion of the US). Professor at Harvard, see his biography. Note that his colleagues include Daniel Goldhagen, who openly advocated occupation of Serbia, to impose a US-style democracy: see A New Serbia. Robert James Also on the Board of Human Rights in China, another Soros-funded organisation. Jack Matlock US Ambassador to the Soviet Union during its collapse, 1987-1991. Author of Autopsy On An Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Random House, 1995). Member of the large Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council is more than a pro-NATO fan club: it supports an expansionist US foreign policy in general. Note their recent paper (in pdf format) Beyond Kosovo, a redesign of the Balkans within the framework of the proposed Stability Pact. The Atlantic Council list of sponsors is a delight for corporate-conspiracy theorists. Yes, it is all paid for by the Rockefeller foundation, the Soros foundation, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, Exxon, British Nuclear Fuels, the US Army and the European Union. Conspiracy theorists will also be delighted to see that Matlock attended the 1996 Bilderberg Conference. Herbert Okun Career diplomat, former Special Advisor on Yugoslavia to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Deputy Co-Chairman of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia. Member of the Board of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS) and its affiliate the Committee for National Security (CNS) which gives this biography: Ambassador Herbert Okun is the U.S. member and Vice-President of the International Narcotics Control Board, and Visiting Lecturer on International Law at Yale Law School. Previously, he was the Deputy Chairman on the U.S. delegation at the SALT II negotiations and led the U.S. delegation in the trilateral U.S.-U.K.-USSR Talks on the CTBT. From 1991 to 1993 Ambassador Okun was Special Advisor on Yugoslavia to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Personal Envoy of the U.N. Secretary General, and Deputy Co-Chairman of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia. He also served as Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN from 1985 to 1989 serving on the General Assembly, the Disarmament Committee and the Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Amb. Okun was also U.S. Ambassador to the former German Democratic Republic. He was from 1990-97 Executive Director of the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, "a non-profit organization providing voluntary assistance to help establish free-market financial systems in former communist countries", see his biography at International Security Studies at Yale University, where he is also a board member. This Corps is a de facto agency of USAID, see how it is listed country-by-country in their report. Although it is not relevant to Human Rights Watch, this curriculum vitae gives a good impression of the kind of international elite created by such programs. Okun is also a member emeritus of the board of the European Institute in Washington, an Atlanticist lobby. It organises the European-American Policy Forum, the European-American Congressional Forum, and the Transatlantic Joint Security Policies Project. Okun is a special advisor to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict funded by the Carnegie Corporation. (It links pro-western international elite figures advocating a formal structure for control of states by the "international community"). Okun was a member of a Task Force (including Bianca Jagger and George Soros) on war criminals: see their report . Although it also demands "UN Sanctions Against States Harboring Indicted War Criminals" it is unlikely that the Task Force members meant the man quoted at the start of their report, President Clinton. A curiosity: this human rights supporter is accused of an attempt to destroy the right to free speech, in his post at the International Narcotics Control Board: see A Duty to Censor: U.N. Officials Want to Crack Down on Drug War Protesters in the libertarian Reason Magazine. Jane Olson Also co-chair of the California section of HRW, see this biography. One of the few who are simply human rights activists, although her views are clearly 100% acceptable to the US Government. She was appointed a member of the U.S. delegation to the 1991 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Moscow. Again note, that US citizens consider it normal to travel to Europe, to decide on that continents Security and Cooperation - but there is absolutely no "Conference on North American Security and Cooperation", where Europeans arrive to tell Americans what to do. She is also a member of the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, one of many small globalist groups, advocating peace and some vague form of world government. Barnett Rubin Academic and Soros-institutes advisor. Director of the "Center for Preventive Action" at the Council on Foreign Relations.The center is funded by the US Government through USIP, and by the Carnegie Corporation as part of their program Preventing Deadly Conflict. "Preventive Action" means intervention. He is a member of the centers South Balkans Working Group, and edited a 1996 Council on Foreign Relations study Towards Comprehensive Peace in Southeast Europe: Conflict Prevention in the South Balkans. Rubin is an Afghanistan specialist, also on the Board of the Asia division of HRW. He authored and edited several works on Afghanistan. Rubin apparently has a curious attitude to the Taliban, seeing them as a bulwark against Islamic radicalism . See this letter to NPR, entitled Afghanistan Whitewash: While the Lyden-Rubin conversation made no mention of US support for the Taliban, they referred several times to US "pressure" on the Taliban to now respect human rights. This is a total white wash which distorts the historical record beyond recognition. Rubin is on the Advisory Board of the Soros Foundation Central Eurasia Project. He is an advisor of the Forced Migration Project of Soros' Open Society Institute, and he is also on the Board of the Soros Humanitarian Fund for Tajikistan. Perhaps most interesting is that the U.S. Institute of Peace (a de facto government agency) gave him a grant to research "formation of a new state system in Central Eurasia". Barnett Rubin articles on Central Asia This may be repetitive, but note once again that there are absolutely no Foundations or Institutes in Central Asia, which pay people to design "new state systems" in North America. For people like Rubin "human rights" mean simply that the US designs the world: at the same time, the US might accept the Taliban, if it was a strategic interest. See this article at the Soros Central Asia site, The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan, advocating a de facto colonial government in Afghanistan financed by oil revenues. Rubin is also a member of the US State Department Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. The Final Report of this Committee also sums up what the United States can do, when it finds religious freedom has been infringed. The list begins at "friendly, persuasive: open an embassy" and ends with "act of war". Rubin was also involved in the 1997 New York meeting, where the United States attempted to create a unified Yugoslav opposition, with among others Vuk Draskovic. (The effort failed at the time, and ever since). Leon Sigal NOTE: I can find no website matching this info on "Leon Sigal" to HRW. I assume it is the same person, although I do not understand why an expert on Asian issues is on the board for the European division of HRW. Consultant to the Social Science Research Council, member of the Board of Advisors at Globalbeat Syndicate, part of the New York University Dept of Journalism. See their article on Lessons From The War In Kosovo. >From Globalbeat: He is a former member of the Editorial Board of The New York Times, where he wrote frequently on nuclear issues, and is the author of many books and articles on both international security and media issues. Sigal authored Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton University Press 1998). He is a Project member of the Committee on Nuclear Policy. Malcolm Smith no information yet George Soros >From the Public Affairs site, the biography of George Soros, financier of HRW and of numerous organisations in eastern Europe with pro-American, pro-market policies. George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930. In 1947 he emigrated to England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics. While a student in London, Mr. Soros became familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his philanthropic activities. In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. Mr. Soros currently serves as chairman of Soros Fund Management L.L.C., a private investment management firm that serves as principal investment advisor to the Quantum Group of Funds. The Quantum Fund N.V., the oldest and largest fund within the Quantum Group, is generally recognized as having the best performance record of any investment fund in the world in its twenty-nine-year history. Mr. Soros established his first foundation, the Open Society Fund, in New York in 1979 and his first Eastern European foundation in Hungary in 1984. He now funds a network of foundations that operate in thirty-one countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, as well as southern Africa, Haiti, Guatemala, Mongolia and the United States. These foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. Mr. Soros has also founded other major institutions, such as the Central European University and the International Science Foundation. In 1994, the foundations in the network spent a total of approximately $300 million; in 1995, $350 million; in 1996, $362 million; and in 1997, $428 million. Giving for 1998 is expected to be maintained at that level. In addition to many articles on the political and economic changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Mr. Soros is the author of The Alchemy of Finance, Opening the Soviet System, Underwriting Democracy, and Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve. Mr. Soros has received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research, the University of Oxford, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Mr. Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world. Soros Foundations Network Open Society Institute Staff Directory Privatization Project Open Society Institute Budapest Donald J. Sutherland Also on the advisory board of the World Policy Institute. Ruti Teitel Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York Law School, see his biography. In the last few years he has specialised in the Constitutions of eastern European countries, and advised on the new Ukrainian constitution. William D. Zabel George Soros legal advisor, on foundation and charity law. A estate and family financial lawyer for the rich at Schulte, Roth, and Zabel. His biography lists his involvement with these Soros Foundations: "Newly Independent States and the Baltic Republics, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Central European University and Open Society Fund". See this biographical article originally from the National Law Journal: When fate knocks, rich ring for Zabel He is a trustee of Fanton's New School of Social Research, and member of the Advisory Board of the World Policy Institute at the New School. Zabel is a director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights is one of the partners in the "Apparel Industry Partnership", a group set up by the Clinton administration and the US clothing and footwear industries to defuse criticism of conditions in their factories. The (not particularly radical) US trade union federation refuses to co-operate with it. Zabel is also on the Board of Doctors of the World, the USA branch of Médecins du Monde, founded by Bernard Kouchner in 1980. Kouchner is now the UN Representative ( the "governor") in Kosovo. Despite the name, Médecins du Monde is a purely western organisation, see the affiliate list. Warren Zimmermann US Ambassador to Yugoslavia during its break-up, author of Origins of Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers. A Cold-War career diplomat, long active in US human rights campaigns against eastern Europe. See this site for an extreme pro-Bosniac assessment of his book by Branka Magas, alleging he appeased Milosevic: "In the event, by pursuing Yugoslavia's unity rather than supporting Slovenia and Croatia in their demands for either the country's confederal transformation or its peaceful dissolution, the United States helped ensure its violent break-up". (I think it is logically consistent with US values and interests, that the US supported one policy around 1990 and another in Kosovo. The real problem is that so many people in Europe expect the US to design their states and write their Constitutions. It is because of this attitude, that people like Zimmermann, and organisations like HRW, can flourish) Zimmermann is now a professor of Diplomacy at Columbia University. If you think the "amoral diplomat" is a stereotype, look at his Contemporary Diplomacy course. This is his assignment for the young future diplomats: Imagine that you are a member of Secretary Albright's Policy Planning Staff. She has asked you to write a strategy paper for one of the following diplomatic challenges: --Dealing with NATO expansion and with the countries affected; --Crafting a more energetic and assertive US approach to the Israeli-PLO deadlock; --Raising the American profile in sub-Saharan Africa; --Developing a US initiative to improve relations with Cuba; --Forging an American approach to Central Asia and its energy wealth; --Making better use of the UN and other multilateral organizations like OSCE; --Weighing the relative priorities between pursuing human rights and keeping open lucrative economic opportunities; --Increasing interest in, and support for, US foreign policy among the American people. With Barnett Rubin, Zimmermann is a member of the Advisory Board of the Forced Migration Project at Soros Open Society Institute. With Felice Gaer, Zimmermann is also on the Board of the quasi-commercial International Dispute Resolution Associates. (Peacemaking has become big business, but IDR is also funded by the US Government through the USIP). He is a Trustee of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs *** Send this article to a friend! FUNDRAISING APPEAL May 31, 2001 EMPEROR'S CLOTHES URGENTLY NEEDS YOUR HELP! Our only source of money is contributions from people like you. We are several months behind on our long distance and overseas phone bill. All but local service has been turned off. We use long distance for interviews, to consult writers and translators and for information. That's how we maintained an open line to witnesses outside Mr. Miloshevich's house when it was attacked March 28th and 29th. We posted the only accurate reports in the world. Our phone bills are very high, over a thousand dollars a month. We are now so far behind that long distance and overseas service has been turned off. Getting information is difficult, sometimes impossible. We are in danger of losing phone service altogether. 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