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[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
***
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