CHI C'E' DIETRO A "HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH"?
I legami tra i personaggi piu' influenti di HRW ed i centri decisionali
della politica estera statunitense, spiegati con nomi e cognomi.
Dalla lista stopnato@...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Who is behind Human Rights Watch?
The backgrounds of the Board members at Human Rights Watch (HRW),
Europe-Central Asia section, with info on HRW and its sources of
funding.
HRW is founded on the idea that the values of the United States are
universal, and that the US must impose them on the rest of the world. As
the largest human-rights lobby, it is partly responsible for the
increasingly expansionist US foreign policy.
---------
No US citizen, and no US organisation, has any right to impose US values
on Europe. No concentration camps or mass graves can justify that
imposition. But Human Rights Watch finds it self-evident, that the
United
States may legitimately restructure any society, where a mass grave is
found. That was always a widespread belief in the United States, but it
is
fast becoming a consensus among the foreign policy elite. Human Rights
Watch itself is part of that elite, which includes government
departments,
foundations, NGO's and academics. 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 summarised, it is a joint venture of
George Soros and the State Department.
Human Rights Watch is an almost exclusively US-American organisation.
Its
version of human rights is the Anglo-American tradition. It is
"mono-ethical", recognising no legitimate ethical values outside its
own.
(Redistribution of wealth is a well-known example. In the Anglo-American
human-rights tradition, seizure and redistribution of the property of
the
rich is unethical. The tradition recognises no inherent value in
equality,
which could override property rights).
Although I do not believe that ethical values are culturally specific,
it
is true that one ethical tradition has become associated with the United
States. That includes the universal rights set out in its Declaration of
Independence and its Constitution. In a sense the US was "designed" as
an
interventionist power: interventionist human-rights organisations are a
logical result. They express the belief of most US citizens, that their
values are superior to all others.
Human Rights Watch operates a number of discriminatory exclusions, to
maintain its character.
Firstly, it is linguistically racist. Although it publishes material in
foreign languages to promote its views, the organisation itself is
English-only.
Secondly, the organisation discriminates on grounds of nationality. As
the
list below makes clear, non-Americans are systematically excluded at
board
level. The organisation apparently recruits employees only in the United
States, in English. (US readers of this site may be unfamiliar with
multilingual cross-border employment, but it does exist in Europe).
Third, the organisation discriminates on grounds of social class. Again,
the list makes clear that board members are recruited from the upper
class, and upper-middle class. Although I traced almost all the board
members professions, there are none from middle-income occupations - let
alone any poor illegal immigrants, or Somali peasants.
Human Rights Watch can therefore claim no ethical superiority. It is
itself involved in practices it condemns elsewhere, such as
discrimination
in employment, and exclusion from social structures. It can also claim
no
neutrality. An organisation which will not allow a Serb or Somali to be
a
board member, can give no neutral assessment of a Serbian or Somali
state.
It would probably be impossible for an all-American, English-only elite
organisation, to be anything else but paternalistic.
---------
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Helsinki Steering Committee
This is the Europe 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".
Note also that 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: see my site on Vesna Pesic or the PER site.
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
Medecins du Monde, founded by Bernard Kouchner in 1980. Kouchner is now
the UN Representative ( the "governor") in Kosovo. Despite the name,
Medecins 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
---------
HRW DONORS
>From the HRW website, this 1995 list is is the latest available online.
DONORS OF $100,000 OR MORE
Dorothy and Lewis Cullman
The Aaron Diamond Foundation
Irene Diamond
The Ford Foundation
The Lillian Hellman & Dashiell Hammett Fund
Estate of Anne Johnson
The J. M. Kaplan Fund
The Fanny and Leo Koerner Charitable Trust
The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The John Merck Fund
The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
Novib, The Dutch Organization for Development Corporation,
The Overbrook Foundation
Oxfam
Donald Pels
The Ruben and Elisabeth Rausing Trust
The Rockefeller Foundation
Marion and Herbert Sandler, The Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
Susan and George Soros
Shelby White and Leon Levy
DONORS OF $25,000 - $99,999
The Arca Foundation
Helen and Robert Bernstein
Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Nikki and David Brown
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Compton Foundation, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Davis
The Dr. Seuss Foundation
Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller
Jack Edelman
Epstein Philanthropies
Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de L'Homme
Barbara Finberg
General Service Foundation
Abby Gilmore and Arthur Freierman
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
Katherine Graham, The Washington Post Company
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
Hudson News
Independence Foundation
The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust
The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
Robert and Ardis James
Jesuit Refugee Service
Nancy and Jerome Kohlberg
Lyn and Norman Lear
Joshua Mailman
Medico International
Moriah Fund, Inc.
Ruth Mott Fund
Kathleen Peratis and Richard Frank
Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation
Ploughshares Fund
Public Welfare Foundation, Inc.
Anita and Gordon Roddick
Edna and Richard Salomon
Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg
Margaret R. Spanel
Time Warner Inc.
U.S. Jesuit Conference
Warner Brothers, Inc.
Edie and Lew Wasserman
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
Malcolm Wiener and Carolyn Seely Wiener
The Winston Foundation for World Peace
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
I legami tra i personaggi piu' influenti di HRW ed i centri decisionali
della politica estera statunitense, spiegati con nomi e cognomi.
Dalla lista stopnato@...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Who is behind Human Rights Watch?
The backgrounds of the Board members at Human Rights Watch (HRW),
Europe-Central Asia section, with info on HRW and its sources of
funding.
HRW is founded on the idea that the values of the United States are
universal, and that the US must impose them on the rest of the world. As
the largest human-rights lobby, it is partly responsible for the
increasingly expansionist US foreign policy.
---------
No US citizen, and no US organisation, has any right to impose US values
on Europe. No concentration camps or mass graves can justify that
imposition. But Human Rights Watch finds it self-evident, that the
United
States may legitimately restructure any society, where a mass grave is
found. That was always a widespread belief in the United States, but it
is
fast becoming a consensus among the foreign policy elite. Human Rights
Watch itself is part of that elite, which includes government
departments,
foundations, NGO's and academics. 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 summarised, it is a joint venture of
George Soros and the State Department.
Human Rights Watch is an almost exclusively US-American organisation.
Its
version of human rights is the Anglo-American tradition. It is
"mono-ethical", recognising no legitimate ethical values outside its
own.
(Redistribution of wealth is a well-known example. In the Anglo-American
human-rights tradition, seizure and redistribution of the property of
the
rich is unethical. The tradition recognises no inherent value in
equality,
which could override property rights).
Although I do not believe that ethical values are culturally specific,
it
is true that one ethical tradition has become associated with the United
States. That includes the universal rights set out in its Declaration of
Independence and its Constitution. In a sense the US was "designed" as
an
interventionist power: interventionist human-rights organisations are a
logical result. They express the belief of most US citizens, that their
values are superior to all others.
Human Rights Watch operates a number of discriminatory exclusions, to
maintain its character.
Firstly, it is linguistically racist. Although it publishes material in
foreign languages to promote its views, the organisation itself is
English-only.
Secondly, the organisation discriminates on grounds of nationality. As
the
list below makes clear, non-Americans are systematically excluded at
board
level. The organisation apparently recruits employees only in the United
States, in English. (US readers of this site may be unfamiliar with
multilingual cross-border employment, but it does exist in Europe).
Third, the organisation discriminates on grounds of social class. Again,
the list makes clear that board members are recruited from the upper
class, and upper-middle class. Although I traced almost all the board
members professions, there are none from middle-income occupations - let
alone any poor illegal immigrants, or Somali peasants.
Human Rights Watch can therefore claim no ethical superiority. It is
itself involved in practices it condemns elsewhere, such as
discrimination
in employment, and exclusion from social structures. It can also claim
no
neutrality. An organisation which will not allow a Serb or Somali to be
a
board member, can give no neutral assessment of a Serbian or Somali
state.
It would probably be impossible for an all-American, English-only elite
organisation, to be anything else but paternalistic.
---------
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Helsinki Steering Committee
This is the Europe 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
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".
Note also that 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: see my site on Vesna Pesic or the PER site.
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
Medecins du Monde, founded by Bernard Kouchner in 1980. Kouchner is now
the UN Representative ( the "governor") in Kosovo. Despite the name,
Medecins 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
---------
HRW DONORS
>From the HRW website, this 1995 list is is the latest available online.
DONORS OF $100,000 OR MORE
Dorothy and Lewis Cullman
The Aaron Diamond Foundation
Irene Diamond
The Ford Foundation
The Lillian Hellman & Dashiell Hammett Fund
Estate of Anne Johnson
The J. M. Kaplan Fund
The Fanny and Leo Koerner Charitable Trust
The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The John Merck Fund
The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
Novib, The Dutch Organization for Development Corporation,
The Overbrook Foundation
Oxfam
Donald Pels
The Ruben and Elisabeth Rausing Trust
The Rockefeller Foundation
Marion and Herbert Sandler, The Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
Susan and George Soros
Shelby White and Leon Levy
DONORS OF $25,000 - $99,999
The Arca Foundation
Helen and Robert Bernstein
Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Nikki and David Brown
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Compton Foundation, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Davis
The Dr. Seuss Foundation
Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller
Jack Edelman
Epstein Philanthropies
Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de L'Homme
Barbara Finberg
General Service Foundation
Abby Gilmore and Arthur Freierman
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
Katherine Graham, The Washington Post Company
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
Hudson News
Independence Foundation
The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust
The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
Robert and Ardis James
Jesuit Refugee Service
Nancy and Jerome Kohlberg
Lyn and Norman Lear
Joshua Mailman
Medico International
Moriah Fund, Inc.
Ruth Mott Fund
Kathleen Peratis and Richard Frank
Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation
Ploughshares Fund
Public Welfare Foundation, Inc.
Anita and Gordon Roddick
Edna and Richard Salomon
Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg
Margaret R. Spanel
Time Warner Inc.
U.S. Jesuit Conference
Warner Brothers, Inc.
Edie and Lew Wasserman
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
Malcolm Wiener and Carolyn Seely Wiener
The Winston Foundation for World Peace
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