STOP NATO: �NO 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 inquire as to: WHY 'HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH' IS GUNNING FOR MACEDONIA - Part 1 of 3 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. (In addition this is an Imperial trial, since, as we shall see, the prosecutor/judge is none other than the U.S. Imperial Elite.) 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. (1) 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. A REVEALING ANECDOTE One of several recent HRW dispatches which have been produced to provide the Western media with anti-Macedonian propaganda includes an unintentionally revealing anecdote. The writer describes a situation in which there was no obvious conflict. Nevertheless, he says, there were clear signs of Macedonian abusiveness: "It would have been easy to miss the tell-tale signs had the first policeman I approached not reacted so violently. There was little fighting in this northern corner of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia yesterday and the refugee convoy of tractors and ancient cars looked much like any other blocking the country’s roads recently. Yet the young officer was agitated. He swore and brandished his Kalashnikov, with a finger on the trigger to make sure I had got the point. After checking that we did not have a camera, he ordered me out of the area. “'You bastards, this is all your fault,' he yelled, directing a string of abuse at my Macedonian interpreter, who was accused of being a traitor to his country." ('London Times,' May 30, 2001) The writer then suggests that the reason the young officer has angrily yelled, "You bastards, this is all your fault," is that he is afraid the stalwart HRW investigator will uncover and report Macedonian crimes. Nonsense. As anyone who has dealt with thuggish policemen or soldiers knows: they don't engage in verbal criticism. They don't yell, "This is all your fault." They yell other things, or they beat you and throw you in jail for assault. What did this officer mean? Obviously he'd figured out whom he was dealing with: The American; the interpreter; the vehicle; the identification. HRW. People in Macedonia have guessed why U.S. organizations are flooding their country. From the OSCE (which fronted for U.S. Intelligence in Kosovo just prior to the NATO bombing) to HRW to the more modest NGOs funded by the U.S. government and Soros Foundation (basically the same thing), they all carry out one or more of the following tasks: Perform liaison work with the terrorists and/or Sabotage resistance to the terrorists and/or Push local Albanians into working with the terrorists and/or Provide anti-Macedonian propaganda for the Western media. [See footnotes 2 and 3] When the officer said, "You bastards, this is all your fault," what he meant was: absent U.S. sponsorship of the fascist Kosovo Liberation Army, there would now be no crisis in Macedonia. And he is right. --Jared Israel 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. CONTINUED PART II ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
