Ett militärt angrepp från USA:s sida mot Iran skulle vara ett folkrättsbrott på samma sätt som kriget mot Irak var det. Det skulle få förödande konsekvenser för Irans folk och för världsfreden. Det skulle också utgöra ett hinder för demokratirörelsen i Iran, eftersom regimen skulle kunna använda fienden utifrån för att tysta de dagliga regimkritiska protesterna. Vi kräver också att den svenska regeringen kraftfull tar avstånd från USA´s krigsplaner och att inget svenskt stöd ges till USA. Även hot om angreppskrig är att betrakta som brott mot internationella lagar. Vi kräver att den svenska regeringen i EU och FN snabbt agerar för att dessa institutioner tar avstånd från och fördömer USA´s krigsplaner.Läs hela.
måndag, maj 29, 2006
Vänsterpartiet om Iran
Vänsterpartiet har antagit ett uttalande om USA:s angreppsplaner mot Iran. Bra. Pentagons lögnmaskineri är i full gång och hundratusentals människors liv och framtid riskeras åter för USA:s behov av kontroll över Mellanösterns olja. Andra politiska partier tiger skamligt tyst i denna livsviktiga fråga. Från uttalandet:
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23 kommentarer:
Som vanligt är Ali naiv och politiskt okunnig. Du har väl åtminstone släktingar på långt håll i Iran! De dagliga protesterna är redan tystade. Har det möjligen undgått dig?
Sen vem bryr sig om FN? En korrupt organisation som inget får gjort. För att citera Göran den helige, alla skall vara med, t o m diktaturer i frågor om mänskliga rättigheter. Hur korkad får man bli i försvaret av "folkrätten"?
"dagliga protester" HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..........
.........Ge vilken fattig terroriströrelse som helst pengar utbildning i samhällsomstörtande verksamhet och löften om militärt och ekonomiskt stöd och vips så har vi "dagliga protester"
HAHAHAHAHAHa.....Glömde du inte "spontana" också din pissliberala rasist?
Nej, Iranierna har sett vad västmakterna åstadkommit i den vägen i östeuropa och hur många miljarder man pumpat in i den "fria" verksamheten att man vet vad som väntar, förutom Israel-initierade provokationer förekommer naturligtvis dagliga bombdåd av israeliska och brittiska agenter liknande de i Basra och Irak syftande till splittring och inbördeskrig.
Västmakterna har uppenbart inte lärt av sin blodiga historia och kommer att dö långsamt i ökensanden, dö för ett stulet land enbart för judar.
How the West and Free Press Have Accepted, Approved and Underwritten Israel’s Long-Term Ethnic Cleansing and Institutionalized Racism,
In Violation of All Purported Enlightenment Values, and With Mind-Boggling Hypocrisy
By Edward S. Herman, March 2006
One of the most dubious clichés of the humanitarian intervention intellectuals and media editors and pundits is that human rights have become more important to the United States and other NATO powers and a major influence on their foreign policy in recent decades.
David Rieff writes that human rights “has taken hold not just as a rhetorical but as an operating principle in all the major Western capitals, “ and his comrade in righteous arms Michael Ignatieff claims that our enhanced “moral instincts” have strengthened “the presumption of intervention when massacre and deportation become state policy.” [1]
This perspective was built in good part on the basis of the experience--and misreading--of developments during the dismantlement of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, where the propaganda line was that NATO had reluctantly and belatedly entered that conflict to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by the Serbs, and had done so successfully. This was allegedly an intervention rooted in Blair-Clinton-Kohl-Schroeder humanism, supported and pressed on these leaders by journalists and human rights protagonists.
There were many things wrong with this explanation and analysis of recent Balkans history, one of the most important of which was that NATO intervention was not late--it came quite early and was a primary cause of the ethnic cleansing that followed as it encouraged a breakup of Yugoslavia in a manner that left large unprotected minorities in the newly formed republics, thereby assuring ethnic conflict; it sabotaged peace agreements within these new states in the years 1992-1994; and it encouraged non-Serb minorities to hope for NATO military aid in arriving at final settlements—which they finally did get. The NATO powers even actively or passively supported the most complete ethnic cleansings of the Balkan wars—which was of Serbs in Croatia’s Krajina area and Serbs in NATO –occupied Kosovo from June 1999. [2]
There were other problems with the notion that the NATO intervention in the Balkans had a humanitarian basis and effect, but it is equally important to recognize the selectivity in this focus and the political root of that selectivity. The humanitarian interventionists were almost completely silent during the 1990s massacres and deportations by Indonesia in East Timor, the Turkish slaughters and village burnings in their Kurdish areas, the killings and huge refugee exodus in Colombia, and the large-scale massacres in the Congo carried out in good part by invaders from Rwanda and Uganda.
For some reason the “moral instinct” of the humanitarian politicians didn’t reach these cases, where the killers were allies of these politicians—and obtained arms and military aid and training from them. Equally interesting, the moral instinct of the humanitarian interventionist intellectuals and journalists failed to over-ride the biased focus of their political leaders but instead worked in parallel with those biases. This helped their political leaders go after the targeted villains with greater violence, partly by diverting attention from the approved villains and the damage they were inflicting on their (implicitly unworthy) victims.
The Remarkable Case of Israel
The most interesting and perhaps most important case of an aborted “moral instinct” is that involving Israel, where the state has been engaged in a systematic policy of dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem for decades, not only without a meaningful response on the part of the Free World, but with steady support from the United States and spurts of approval and support from its democratic allies. The ability of the Western political leaders, media and humanitarian intellectuals to get enraged at approved villains like Arafat, Chavez, and Milosevic, while treating Begin, Netanyahu and Sharon kindly as statesmen deserving of economic and military aid and diplomatic support, is a small miracle of self-deception, advanced double standards, and moral turpitude.
What makes it a miracle is that the basic premises as well as performance of the Israeli state fly in the face of the entire range of enlightenment values that supposedly underlie Western civilization.
First, it is a racist state as a matter of ideology and law. It is officially a Jewish state, 90 percent of the land in the state is reserved for Jews, Palestinians have been barred from leasing or buying state-owned lands that were seized in 1948 and later, and Jews from abroad have a right to immigrate and become citizens with privileges superior to those of indigenous non-Jews.
This kind of ideology and law was unacceptable as regards the apartheid state of South Africa, although it is interesting that Reagan was “constructively engaged” with that state, Margaret Thatcher found it quite tolerable, and South African “anti-terror” operations were integrated with those of the Free World. [3] The Nazis treatment of the Jews in Germany even before the organization of the death camps was and still is considered outrageous; and the Soviet mistreatment of its Jewish population even led to punitive U.S. legislation (the Jackson-Vanik bill, still on the books). But the Israeli analogue of the Nuremberg laws and its construction of a state built on racial discrimination is acceptable to the enlightened West. The “chosen people” replace the “master race,” and that is not only acceptable, Israel is held up as a model democracy and “light unto the world” (Anthony Lewis). And by implication, Israel’s creation of a body of humans who are second class citizens by law (or of a still lesser class in the occupied territories), legally and politically “untermenschen,” is also acceptable. This is a unique system of “privileged racism.”
Second, the Israeli state has been allowed to ignore numerous Security Council resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding its occupation of the West Bank, as well as the International Court of Justice ruling on its apartheid wall, and simply dispossess the Palestinians of a large fraction of their land and water, demolish thousands of their homes, cut down many thousands of their olive trees, destroy their infrastructure, and create a modern network of roads through the occupied West Bank for Jews only while imposing serious obstacles to Palestinian movement within the West Bank. [4] This systematic ethnic cleansing has been implemented by an extremely well trained and well equipped army working over a virtually unarmed indigenous population, to make room for Jewish settlers—and in violation of international law on the proper behavior of an occupying power.
This is a unique system of “privileged ethnic cleansing,” “privileged law violations,” and “privileged exceptions to Security Council and International Court rulings.”
Third, Israel has periodically crossed its borders to make war on its neighbors—Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon—has engaged in supplementary bombing or acts of terrorism against those three countries plus Tunisia, and for many years maintained a terrorist proxy army in Lebanon while carrying out numerous terrorist raids there under its Iron Fist policy, inflicting heavy civilian casualties. [5]
While the 1982 invasion of Lebanon was proclaimed to be in response to terrorist attacks, in fact it was based on the absence of terrorist attacks (despite deliberate Israeli provocations) and the fear of having to negotiate with the Palestinians rather than continue to ethnically cleanse them. [6] There was of course no punishment or sanctions against Israel for these actions, as Israel benefits from a “privileged right to aggression, state terrorism, and sponsorship of terrorism,” which is not unique but which follows from the country’s status as a U.S. ally and client state.
Fourth, given its right to ethnically cleanse and terrorize in violation of Security Council resolutions and international law, its victims have no right to resist. They may be pushed off their land, their homes demolished, olive trees uprooted, and their people killed by IDF and settler violence, but forcible resistance on their part is unacceptable “terrorism,” to be deeply deplored. A thousand odd Palestinians were killed by the Israelis during their first and non-violent phase of resistance in the initial intifada (1987-1992), but their passive resistance had no effects on the illegal occupation, the international community did nothing to alleviate their distress, and Israel had a tacit understanding with the United States that it would be supported in its violent response to the intifada until that resistance was broken. The ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in these years was 25 to 1 or higher, but given Israel’s privileged right to terrorize, it was the Palestinians still labeled the terrorists.
Fifth, with full rights to ethnically cleanse and terrorize, and exempt from international law, the Israelis were also free to put in charge of the state a man responsible for a string of terrorist attacks on civilians and, at Sabra and Shatila, a massacre of somewhere between 800 and 3000 Palestinian civilians. Amusingly, the Yugoslav Tribunal argued that genocidal intent could be inferred from an action seeking to kill all the people of a given group in one area, even if not part of a plan to kill all of them elsewhere, citing their own earlier decisions plus a UN Assembly resolution of 1982 that the slaughter of 800 at Sabra and Shatila was “an act of genocide.” [7] But that kind of Tribunal judgment was applied only to target Serbs—it was not only not applied by the West to Sharon, it didn’t even interfere with his becoming an honored head of state.
Sixth, with rights to ethnically cleanse and terrorize, such invidious words were made inapplicable to Israeli actions. They were applied with great indignation to Serb operations in Kosovo, which were features of a civil war (stoked from abroad) and were not, as in the Israeli case, designed to remove and replace an indigenous population in favor of a different ethnic group.
Israel was not only exempt from charge of an extremely applicable pair of words, it has also been the beneficiary of privileged usage of the words “security” and “violence.” The Palestinians may be far more insecure than the Israelis and subject to a much higher and more sustained level of violence, but again it is the Palestinians who must reduce their resort to violence and the big issue is how Israel can be made more secure. Palestinian security is not an issue in the West, because their victimization is of no concern and because their insecurity is a result of their failure to accept the ethnic cleansing process and their resistance to that process. They are “unworthy victims,” by virtue of deep-seated political bias.
The ethnic cleansing process, which involves wholesale terrorism, and is the causal force that has elicited a responsive Palestinian retail terrorism, is actually put forward (along with the wall), not as a deliberate program to “redeem the land” for the chosen people but as necessary for “Israel’s legitimate response to terrorism.” [8] And the primary terrorists get away with this!
Seventh, Israel is the only Middle Eastern state that has built up a stock of nuclear weapons, and it has been aided in this not only by the United States but also by France and Norway. This has happened despite the 39 years of ethnic cleansing, steady and record-breaking violations of Security Council demands and international law, and periodic invasions of Israel’s neighbors. This privileged right to nuclear weaponry and exemption from the jurisdiction of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Non-Proliferation Treaty flows from Israel’s other privileges noted earlier, and ultimately the protection and cover of U.S. power.
Eighth, the Free World has been aghast at the possibility that Iran might be positioning itself to acquire nuclear weapons at some future date. Iran has of course been threatened with “regime change” and bombing and other attacks by both the United States and Israel, but Iran’s actions conflict with the regime of privilege in which only Israel (and its superpower underwriter) have a security problem and right of self defense; others, like the Palestinians on the West Bank, must accept a position of inferiority, acute insecurity, and ethnic cleansing and apartheid walls and policies. Still others, like Iran, must cope with the threat of attack and sanctions for engaging in legal actions and possibly seeking nuclear means of self-defense, without help from a Free World busily appeasing the United States and its Middle Eastern client. So Israel not only has a nuclear privilege, it is able to get the Free World to help it monopolize that privilege in the Middle East, which of course gives it greater freedom to ethnically cleanse.
Ninth, the Free World has also been upset at the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian election of January 26, 2006. It is widely held that this may disturb the “peace process,” and George Bush is not prepared to negotiate with a group that employs “violence”!
Violence, however, is the Bush and U.S. specialty, with three major aggressions in the last seven years and an openly announced program of domination based on military superiority; and Israel’s operations in Palestine are violent beyond anything the Palestinians have been able to muster, although in the ludicrously biased West “suicide bombing” is horrifying whereas “targeted assassinations” are not (although if the Palestinians had the capability of targeting Israeli officials who can doubt that this would horrify?).
But just as “terrorism” cannot apply to the actions of the United States and its Israeli client, neither can an invidious word like “violence.” These states only “retaliate” and reluctantly use force in “self-defense” and with the best of intentions in service to their “security” and humanitarian ends—and the West buys this.
Hamas has grown in popularity because Fatah and its leaders have failed to stop the ethnic cleansing process and have been unable to halt a steady increase in Palestinian misery, with Israel simply walking over Fatah’s leaders and making their tenure a complete failure. Hamas was actually funded by Israel years ago with the objective of splintering the Palestinians and weakening the secular Fatah. It succeeded in this, but now that an Islamic group has taken on power they and their patron will be able to find another reason to avoid any final negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, who have now voted in a party that does not eschew violence as Sharon and Bush have done! Hamas also refuses to disarm and insists on a right to defend its people against a ruthless ethnic cleansing occupation, but in the West this is unreasonable as only one side has the right to arms, self-defense and a concern over “security.” There is no right to resistance in this case of shriveled moral instincts.
The “peace process” is an ultimate Orwellism, which I defined years ago in a Doublespeak Dictionary as “Whatever the U.S. government happens to be doing or supporting in an area of conflict at the moment. It need not result in the termination of conflict or ongoing pacification operations in the short or long term.” So the “peace process” in Palestine, steadily accepted or actively supported by the U.S. government, has been characterized by intensified ethnic cleansing, the destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure, the settlement of some 450,000 Jews in the West Bank, the construction of an apartheid wall, and the Israeli takeover of much of East Jerusalem—in other words, the establishment by state terrorism of enough “facts on the ground” to make any kind of viable Palestinian state unthinkable. But for the propaganda organs of the Free World, there has been a meaningful “peace process” going on that the election of Hamas might halt! [9]
How Do We Explain These Abominations and This Hypocrisy?
This has all come about because the Israeli leadership has wanted lebensraum for the chosen people, the indigenous Palestinians have stood in the way and have had to be removed, and the Israelis have been able to do this, with critical U.S. military and diplomatic support.
This process has fed on itself. That is, the eventual Palestinian violent resistance, along with Palestinian relative weakness and vulnerability, have exacerbated the racist underpinning of the ethnic cleansing project, with a resultant increase in its savagery over the years, helped along by Israel’s elevation to its recent leadership of a major war criminal. U.S. aid and protection in the project has been crucial, as that has prevented any effective international response to policies which violate basic morality as well as law, and which if carried out by a target state would result in bombing and trials for war crimes. [10]
The U.S. role, and the neutralization of any “moral instinct” in the United States itself, results in part from geopolitical considerations and the role of Israel as a U.S. proxy and enforcer, and in part from the ability of the pro-Israel lobby and its grass-roots and Christian right supporters to cow the media and political establishment into tacit or open support of the ethnic cleansing project.
The lobby’s tactics include aggressive exploitation of guilt, with references to the Holocaust, identification of criticism of Israeli ethnic cleansing with “anti-semitism,” along with straightforward bullying and attempts to stifle criticism and debate [11]—efforts which intensify in parallel with increases in the viciousness of the ethnic cleansing process.
These efforts have been aided by 9/11 and the “war against terror,” which have helped demonize Arabs and make Israeli policy a part of that supposed war.
The lobby and its representatives in the Bush administration were eager supporters of the attack on Iraq, and they are now fighting energetically for war against Iran—in fact the lobby is the only sector of society calling for a confrontation with Iran and it is already engaged in a major campaign on Bush and Congress to get the United States to take action. The Iraq war provided an excellent cover for intensified ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and a further war, despite its serious risks, might help in a further phase of ethnic cleansing and possible “transfer” of a population that poses a “demographic threat.”
The performance of the “international community” in the face of the ethnic cleansing project has been a disgrace. Gung-ho for a war and trials of alleged villains in the ex-Yugoslavia, where the United States was pleased to oppose ethnic cleansing, selectively, the EU, Japan, Kofi Annan, most of the NGOs, and the Arab states, have been gutless and their “moral instinct” paralyzed by the U.S. commitment to Israel, the strength of Israel and its diaspora, the Israeli exploitation of Holocaust guilt, and in the EU the racist bias held over from the colonial past and exacerbated by the flow of propaganda that features “suicide bombers,” not targeted assassinations and massive and illegal brutalization and land theft.
Holocaust denial is reprehensible, but in the current political context it is confined to marginal elements and has no real impact, except for possibly providing a diversion from those engaged in “ethnic cleansing denial,” which as regards Israel is real and widespread among Western elites and has serious consequences.
Conclusions
Palestine is a crisis area par excellence, where a virtually helpless people has been abused, humiliated, beggared, and steadily displaced by force in favor of settlers protected by a huge military machine, supplied in turn and protected by the United States, and with the tacit agreement, if not more, of the rest of the Free World. The big issue now for the Free World is, will Hamas behave and accept ethnic cleansing (still in very active process) and possible bantustan status at best, or will it threaten to resist and to commit “terrorism”?
Power and racism have neutralized that “moral instinct” in the West in respect of this very important case.
It is a very important case in part because several million Palestinians are being immiserated in a tragic system of violence that could be terminated easily by the United States and international community by simply saying stop and threatening an end to aid and possibly sanctions. But in the Free World the causal force is not seen as the occupation and ethnic cleansing but rather the resistance to these abuses. This perspective is stupid, vicious, and is actually a rationalization of the racist and politically opportunistic support of the ethnic cleansing project.
The situation in Palestine is also very important because hundreds of millions of Arabs and a billion or more people of the Islamic faith, and billions beyond that, interpret the West’s treatment of the Palestinians as a reflection of a racist and colonialist attitude toward Arabs, Islamists, and Third World people more broadly.
It is a wonderful producer of anti-Western terrorism, but also and even more importantly a deep anger, hatred and distrust of the West and its motives. It is a cancer that bodes ill for the future of the human condition.
Notes:
1. David Rieff, “A New Age of Liberal Imperialism?,” World Policy Journal, Summer 1999. Ignatieff is quoted by Rieff.
2. See Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (Brookings: 1995); Diana Johnstone, Fools’ Crusade (Pluto and Monthly Review: 1999); David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Harcourt Brace: 1995); Lenard J. Cohen, Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic (Westview: 2001).
3. That integration of Western security services and “experts,” including those of apartheid South Africa, is described in Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry (Pantheon: 1990).
4. For good accounts of this dispossession, brutalization and immiseration process, see Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle (South End: 1999), Chap. 8; Kathleen Christison, The Wound of Dispossession (Ocean Tree Book: 2003); Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah (University of California: 2005), Part 2; Michel Warschawski, Toward An Open Tomb (Monthly Review: 2004); Jeff Halper, "Despair: Israel’s Ultimate Weapon," Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, March 28, 2001, (http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/pubs/20010328ib.html ); and Jeff Halper, "The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control," Middle East Report, Fall, 2000 (http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/216_halper.html).
5. Noam Chomsky, Pirates & Emperors (Claremont Research: 1986), chap. 2; Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, chap. 9.
6. Yehoshua Porath, an Israeli expert on the Palestinian national movement, wrote in Haaretz, June 25, 1982, that “It seems to me that the decision of the government [to invade Lebanon]… flowed from the very fact that the cease fire had been observed [by the Palestinians].” For more details, Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 198-209.
7. In the August 2, 2001 Judgment in the case of Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic (IT-98-33-T), (http://www.un.org/icty/krstic/TrialC1/judgement/index.htm ), Section G, “Genocide” (http://www.un.org/icty/krstic/TrialC1/judgement/krs-tj010802e-3.htm#IIIG), approx. pars. 589 - 595, and also note 1306, the Tribunal relied on a “1982 UN General Assembly Resolution that the murder of at least 800 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps that year was ‘an act of genocide’.” The UN General Assembly Resolution was “The situation in the Middle East” (A/RES/37/123), Section D, December 16, 1982 (http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r123.htm).
8. Quoting Israeli political scientist, Gerald Steinberg, in Chris McGreal, “Worlds apart,” Guardian, February 6, 2006: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1703245,00.html). A recent article in Haaretz based on a report by the human rights groups B’Tselem and Bimkom claims and shows that “The main consideration behind the route for ‘numerous segments’ of the separation fence was settlement expansion”: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/685938.html.
9. See “Washington’s Peace Process,” chapter 10 in Chomsky’s, The Fateful Triangle.
10. Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the Yugoslav Tribunal on May 22, 1999 for command responsibility for the death of 344 Kosovo Albanians, almost all of whom were killed in the aftermath of NATO’s commencement of a bombing war on March 24, 1999; Sharon, on the other hand, was found even by an Israeli commission to have been responsible for a Sabra and Shatila massacre in which more than twice as many Palestinians, almost all women, children and the elderly, were slaughtered. But as noted in the text Sharon is subject to a different system of evaluation and treatment.
11. See Joan Wallach Scott, “Middle East Studies Under Siege,” The Link, January-March 2006.
Published in Z Magazine
Edward S. Herman is Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
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Du, HAHAHAHAHA, ta dig åt ett lobotomerande o uppfriskande jättelavemang. Har du tur så skiter du åtminstone ut hjärnan. Den verkar inte behövas ändå i någon större utsträckning. Det räcker nog med att du bär enfaldiga plakat.
Å du Ali, som brukar censurera när det passar dig, ta bort de milslånga enfaldig utläggen åtminstone. Det är motiverat.
När blev "folkrätten" ett ord som förtryckarstaternas regerande fåtal legetimt kan gömma sig bakom på den internationella arenan?
Jag kan inte, i min blåbruna enfald, förstå att en fundamentalisktisk sluten elit fullständiga maktställning gentemot det stora flertalet av det egna landets invånare skulle ha "folkrätten" och den internationella moralen på sin sida. En maktställning som har uppnåts, och befästs, med systematiskt våld, tortyr, censur och lagstiftat frihetsförbud.
I min naiva syn på världen borde det bara vara regimer som utgår från folket som skyddas av den internationella "folkrätten" - och inte regimer som systematiskt förtrycker det egna folket.
Fråga: Driver Flamman en kampanj mot Alice Åström för hennes position i Iran-debatten? Känns som att man tar upp det gång på gång trots svaret i intervjuen med henne i förra nummret...
För att vara lite "Fair and Balanced" som det heter, kan väl Ali lägga upp en länk till V's fördömanden av den Iranska diktaturen, samt information om Ung Vänsters aktiva roll i demokratirörelsen som existerar, främst bland studenter.
Folkrätten är och skall vara ett skydd just mot sådana fascistiska krafter som "bothnia" och den globaliserade amerikanska marknadsdiktaturen representerar.
Varje form av aggression eller sanktion syftande till att blanda sig i andra staters interna angelägenheter och styresleskick är ett brott mot folkrätten och demokratin.
Folkrätten är respekt för andra folk (än de anglo-amerikanska) och deras lokala kulturer och styrelseskick.
Who is behind Human Rights Watch?
Under President Clinton, Human Rights Watch was the most influential pro-intervention lobby: its 'anti-atrocity crusade' helped drive the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Under Bush it lost influence to the neoconservatives, who have their own crusades, and it is unlikely to regain that influence during his second term. But the 'two interventionisms' are not so different anyway: Human Rights Watch is founded on belief in the superiority of American values. It has close links to the US foreign policy elite, and to other interventionist and expansionist lobbies.
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 is a dangerous belief for a superpower: European colonialism shows how easily a 'civilising mission' produces its own atrocities. The Belgian 'civilising mission' in the Congo, at the time promoted as a noble and unselfish enterprise, killed half the population. Sooner or later, more people will die in crusades to prevent a new Holocaust, than died in the Holocaust itself. And American soldiers will continue to kill, torture and rape, in order to prevent killings, torture and rape.
For a century there has been a strong interventionist belief in the United States - although it competes with widespread isolationism. In recent years attitudes hardened: human-rights interventionism became a consensus among the 'foreign policy elite' even before September 11. Human Rights Watch itself is part of that elite, which includes government departments, foundations, NGO's and academics. It is certainly not an 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, Human Rights Watch arose as a joint venture of George Soros and the State Department. Nevertheless, it represents some fundamental characteristics of US-American culture.
The September 11 attacks confirmed the interventionism of the entire foreign policy elite - not just the highly visible neoconservatives. More important, the public response illustrated the almost absolute identification of Americans with their own value system. Without any apparent embarrassment, President Bush declared that a war between good and evil was in progress. Ironically, that mirrors the language of the Islamic fundamentalists. It implies a Crusader mentality, rather than the usual pseudo-neutrality of liberal-democratic political philosophy. A society which believes in its own absolute goodness, and the absolute and universal nature of its own values, is a fertile ground for interventionism.
Human rights are part of the American value system, but they are also especially useful as an 'ideology of justification' in wartime. Such an ideology should ideally meet some criteria. First, it should not be a simple appeal to self-interest. Simply stating "We own the world!" or "We are the master race, submit to us!" is not good propaganda. As a slogan, 'war on terrorism' is also inadequate, since it is too clearly an American war, against the enemies of America. For propaganda purposes, an appeal to higher values is preferable.
Second, these higher values should be universal. This is why Islamism would probably fail as an interventionist ideology: it is specific to Islam. A geopolitical claim to intervene in support of Islamic values can be answered simply by saying: "We are not Muslims here". The doctrine of universal human rights is, by definition, universal and cross-cultural.
Third, the ideology should appeal to the population of the super-power. In the United States, for historical reasons, 'rights doctrines' have become part of its political culture. It would be pointless for a US President to justify a war by appealing to Islam, or royal legitimacy, because very few Americans hold these beliefs. Most Americans do believe in rights theories - and very few know that these theories are disputed.
Fourth, if possible, the ideology should appeal to the 'enemy' population. It should ideally be part of their values. That is difficult, but the doctrine of human rights has succeeded in acquiring cross-cultural legitimacy. This does not mean it is inherently right - but simply that no non-western cultures have an answer to the doctrine. The government of China, for instance, fully accepts the concept of human rights, and claims to uphold them. So when it is accused of human rights violations, it can do nothing but deny, on this issue it is perpetually on the defensive. Acceptance of your values by the enemy population could be seen as the Holy Grail of war propaganda: if the enemy leadership is incapable of presenting an alternative value system, it will ultimately collapse.
Human rights are not the only ideology of intervention. The 'civilising mission', which justified 19-th century colonisation, is another example.The point is that human rights can serve a geopolitical purpose, which is unrelated to their moral content. It is not possible to show that 'human rights' exist, and most moral philosophers would not even try. It might not be a very important issue in ethics anyway - but it is important in politics and geopolitics. And geopolitics is what Human Rights Watch is about - not about ethics. HRW itself 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. However, the human-rights tradition is not, and can never be, a substitute for a general morality. Major ethical issues such as equality, distributive justice, and innovation, simply don't fit into rights-based ethics.
Ethical values are not, in themselves, culturally specific. However, this ethical tradition has become associated with the United States. It is dominant in the political culture, it has become associated with the flag and other national symbols, and it is capable of generating intense national emotion. It emphasises the universal rights set out in the American Declaration of Independence and its Constitution. In a sense the US was 'pre-programmed' as an interventionist power. Universal human rights, by their nature, tend to justify military intervention to enforce those rights. Expansionists, rather than isolationists, are closest to the spirit of the American Constitution, with its inherently interventionist values. In fact, most US-Americans believe in the universality and superiority of their ethical tradition. Interventionist human-rights organisations are, like the neoconservative warmongers, a logical result. Human Rights Watch is not formally an 'association for the promotion of the American Way of Life' - but it tends to behave like one.
Human Rights Watch operates a number of discriminatory exclusions, to maintain its American character, and that in turn reduces internal criticism of its limited perspective. Although it publishes material in foreign languages to promote its views, the organisation itself is English-only. More seriously, HRW discriminates on grounds of nationality. Non-Americans are systematically excluded at board level - unless they have emigrated to the United States. HRW also recruits its employees in the United States, in English. The backgrounds of the Committee members (below) indicate that HRW recruits it decision-makers from the upper class, and upper-middle class. Look at their 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 this all-American, English-only, elite organisation, to be anything else but paternalistic and arrogant. To the people who run HRW, the non-western world consists of a list of atrocities, and via the media they communicate that attitude to the American public. It can only dehumanise African, Asians, Arabs and eastern Europeans. Combined with a tendency to see the rest of the world as an enemy, that will contribute to new abuses and continuing civilian deaths, during America's crusades.
Who runs the HRW Europe Committee?
Human Rights Watch is organised approximately by continent. The Europe section was established in 1978, originally named 'Helsinki Steering Committee' or 'Helsinki Watch'. It is the core of the later Human Rights Watch organisation. In the late 1970's, human rights had become the main issue in Cold War propaganda, after Soviet concessions at the Helsinki summit (1975), allowing human rights monitoring. Western governments encouraged 'private' organisations to use this concession - not out of moral concern, but as a means of pressuring the Soviet Union. HRW was one of these 'private' organisations: in other words, it began as a Cold War propaganda instrument.
The committee is now called the Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee. It is still affiliated with the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, which co-ordinates the "Helsinki committees". The membership now includes fewer ex-diplomats than in the 1990's, more academics, and a few HRW donors. This web page and other similar publicity, has probably influenced the change in style. (By appointing his tax lawyer to the HRW Board, Soros exposed himself to ridicule and charges of cronyism). The list below is the March 2004 version.
Peter Osnos, chair
George Soros' publisher. He is Chief Executive of Public Affairs publishers.
Alice Henkin, Vice Chair
Human Rights lawyer, Director of the Justice and Society Program at the Aspen Institute. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential elite foreign-policy lobby. The President and CEO of the Aspen Institute is Walter Issacson, who is also Chairman and CEO of CNN News.
Henri Barkey
Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University, advised the State Department on Turkish and Kurdish issues. Married to Ellen Laipson, former Special Assistant to Madeleine Albright, when Albright was UN Ambassador. Considered anti-Turkish by some Turkish media. See: Columnist on US Plans for Cyprus, 1999.
Jonathan Fanton, ex-member
Chair of the HRW International Committee until 2003, and still a member. President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, itself a HRW donor. 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.
Morton Abramowitz, ex-member
A link to the 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, 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".
Stephen Del Rosso
Ex-diplomat, also member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Works for the Carnegie Corporation as 'Senior Program Officer' International Peace and Security, and before that for the Pew Trust. See his biography at the Carnegie website - a typical international affairs career.
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 Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which is primarily active against Islamic countries and China. According to this JTA report, Gaer praised Madeleine Albright for her "outstanding human rights record", apparently meaning that she would not allow any criticism of Israel's housing policy in Jerusalem. Gaer was also 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."
In 1999, Felice Gaer was 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." More interesting ( with hindsight) 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."
The disclosures about abuse of prisoners in Iraq illustrate the ethical problem here. One thing you can't say, is that 'America doesn't treat its own prisoners like that'. Americans do treat their fellow citizens like that - in American jails, which have a consistently bad record on prisoner abuse. But Felice Gaer suggested that it somehow isn't as bad, if the US authorities do such things. The United States, she said, was committed to human rights and... "When violations occur, we have the mechanisms and protections in place to prosecute."
In reality, US authorities responded as at Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay: they obstructed outside investigators. The Report of the mission to the United States of America on the issue of violence against women in state and federal prisons says:
"...on the eve of her visit to Michigan, the Special Rapporteur received a letter dated 12 June 1998 from the Governor of Michigan informing her that she would not be allowed to ... visit any of the women's prisons... The Special Rapporteur found this refusal particularly disturbing since she had received very serious allegations of sexual misconduct occurring at Florence Crane Women's Facility and Camp Branch Facility for Women in Coldwater, Michigan, as well as at Scott Correctional Facility for Women in Plymouth, Michigan."
Virginia and California also obstructed the Special Rapporteur. Felice Gaer knew that, because the report had already been published. She was lying when she told the UN that "we welcome outside investigations". Instead of condemning the obstruction, she diverted attention to abuses in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and China. The United States, she explained, is an open, democratic society.
That sounds like Donald Rumsfeld speaking about Abu Ghraib. It is dangerous attitude: it implies that America can ultimately do no wrong, since its open society is a perfect defence against abuse of power. Human Rights Watch does promote that attitude - that 'human rights abuse' is essentially something done by foreigners, and that American institutions are somehow immunised against it. Now, the US soldiers who abused and killed prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan don't see themselves as comparable to the previous regimes: they see themselves as the good guys, defenders of a system which is infinitely better. Certainly under wartime conditions, that attitude inevitably leads to abuses.
So Human Rights Watch itself must accept some of the blame, for what happened to the prisoners. HRW divides humanity in two: on the one side are the supporters of American values. On the other, worthless criminal barbarian rapists and torturers. In this logic 'human rights' does not imply that Iraqi prisoners should be treated with respect, but rather the opposite. From "our torture is different" it's a small step to "our torture is acceptable because it is anti-torturer" and then another small step to "human rights means torturing torturers". Or their friends, or their family, or the subversives who want to appease them...
Michael Erwin Gellert
Vice Chairman of the Board at Fanton's New School for Social Research. Partner in the private investment company Windcrest Partners, and Chairman of the Board of the Carnegie Institute. Gellert is or was a director of Premier Parks Inc., owner of the Six Flags and Walibi theme park chains.
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, ex-member
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.
Jeri Laber
Longtime HRW staff member, since the Helsinki Watch period. Now an advisor, without executive tasks,
Kati Marton, ex-member
President of the Committee to Protect Journalists. However this 'protection' did not extend to journalists killed by NATO bombing of the Belgrade TV studios: she declined to condemn it. This may, perhaps, have something to do with not embarrassing her husband: Richard C. Holbrooke, former Special Envoy to Yugoslavia, and US Ambassador to the United Nations. For an idea of the social world behind Human Rights Watch, and a glimpse of of how US foreign policy is made, see this article about their cocktail parties...
Dick Holbrooke, who's been U.N. ambassador since August, has a different idea of what sort of people the suite should be filled with. Tonight, he's hosting a dinner for General Wesley Clark, the granite-faced, soft-spoken nato chief, who is leaving his post in April. .... Dressed in a formal pin-striped suit, crisp white shirt, and red tie, Holbrooke still manages to look comfortably rumpled -- his unruly hair is the secret to this effect -- as he banters his way around the room. Introducing Clark to billionaire financier George Soros and Canadian press lord Conrad Black, Holbrooke teasingly calls the general, whose formal title is supreme Allied commander for Europe, "The Supreme,"...
Holbrooke's wife, the author Kati Marton, is equally adept at the art of the cocktail party. Dressed in an elegant white pantsuit, she ushers guests into the dining room, where four tables are set for a meal of crab cakes and sautéed duck. Marton and Holbrooke, who have been giving twice-a-week diplomatic dinners, have a carefully choreographed act. "I give the opening toast, which is unorthodox in the U.N. village," she explains. "Richard and I are making the point we're doing this together."
Ambassador A-List, from the January 3, 2000 issue of New York Magazine.
As 'journalist protector', Kati Marton lobbied for the Soros-funded B92 radio in Belgrade, which played a central role in the opposition under Milosevic, at least until his last year in power. The campaign for B92 is illustrative of the symbiotic relationship of interventionist lobbies and interventionist governments. Marton was lobbying to protect an 'independent' radio station which was already part-funded by the US government (National Endowment for Democracy). Partly as a result, it got even more western funding.
Immediately after the station was banned, Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador, showed his support by visiting its offices on the fifth floor of a run-down socialist-style building in downtown Belgrade. Carl Bildt, then the international High Representative in charge of the civilian side of the Dayton peace agreement in Bosnia, the US State Department, and Kati Marton of the Committee to Protect Journalists also made protests on behalf of the station.
Internet technology and international pressure proved to be effective weapons against Milosevic. After two days he withdrew his edict forbidding B-92 to broadcast. It seems likely that he was convinced that lifting the ban would win Western praise and deflect international attention from his electoral fraud. Immediately afterward, B-92 was able - through funds provided equally by the BBC, the British Foreign Office, USAID, the European Union, and George Soros's Open Society Foundation-to gain access to a satellite that linked twenty-eight independent local radio stations, covering 70 percent of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is now made up of Serbia and Montenegro.
1997 article from the New York Review of Books
Prema Mathai-Davis, ex-member
A token non-westerner, an Indian immigrant. She was, however, also CEO of the YWCA (Young Womens Christian Association), which is as American as can be.
Jack Matlock, ex-member
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. And, no surprise to conspiracy fans, Matlock attended the 1996 Bilderberg Conference.
Walter Link
Chairman of the Global Academy Institute for Globalization, Human Rights, and Leadership - obviously not a man to limit the scope of his activities. Promoter of the Blue Planet Run, a global foot-race starting in San Francisco, which will improve the global water supply. That's what it says at the website anyway. The Academy is associated with the futurist John Naisbitt.
Michael McFaul
Hoover Institution Fellow at Stanford University. See his biography. A lobbyist for the 'democratisation' of Russia, and relatively hostile to the Putin government. Note, that there is no lobby in Russia, that seeks to decide the form of government of the United States.
Sarah E. Mendelson
Senior Fellow at the Center For Strategic and International Studies. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Chechnya specialist. See her CV.
Karl Meyer
Editor of World Policy Journal, published by the World Policy Institute. The WPI supports an expansionist and interventionist American foreign policy: it is part of Jonathan Fanton's New School University.
Joel Motley
Also on the main HRW Board. Managing Director, Carmona Motley, Inc. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was a member of their Task Force on Non-Lethal Technologies. This is what Mr. Motley wants to do the poor, to improve their human rights:
- jamming or destruction of communications, together with the ability to transmit television and radio programs of ones choice, potentially useful for reducing inflammatory, sometimes genocidal, messages or separating murderous rulers from army and populace;
- slickums and stickums to impede vehicle or foot traffic;
- highly obnoxious sounds and smells, capable of inducing immediate flight or temporary digestive distress.
That would have helped in Somalia, concludes the CFR Task Force. Needless to say there was no Somali on the Task Force either. Motley is also on the Advisory Board of LEAP, an educational charity, where they develop courses in, among other things, conflict resolution. Their website doesn't say whether the children are trained to use digestive distress agents.
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
Represents HRW Southern California on the main HRW Board, see her 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. The biography notes that she "...participated in many investigation delegations to the former USSR, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia". There is even a photo gallery: Jane with helmet in front of an armoured car in Bosnia, Jane at Tianmen Square, Jane in Red Square, Jane celebrates Ukrainian independence, Jane in Cambodia with Queen Noor of Jordan.
Again note, that US citizens consider it normal to travel to Europe, to decide on Europe's 'Security and Cooperation'. However, there is absolutely no equivalent "Conference on North American Security and Cooperation", where Europeans arrive, to tell Americans what to do. And no Bosnians are allowed to drive armoured vehicles around the United States.
Hannah Pakula
Author, member of the Freedom to Write Committee at PEN, the international writers organisation. Widow of film director Alan Pakula. Co-organiser of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
Kathleen Peratis
Also Chair of the HRW Women's Rights Advisory Committee. Lawyer in New York, see the biography. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom - Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, which campaigns for a dual-state solution in Israel. Also a Board Member at B'nai Jeshurun, "a Zionist congregation"
"Collectively and individually, BJ members love and support the State of Israel. The continuing violence in Israel deepens our commitment as it saddens our hearts. We pray together for peace. At the same time, we assume our obligation as sacred communities to take action that will both encourage ongoing dialogue about the situation and explore the myriad ways that we - collectively and individually - can support Israel fulfill the vision put forth in its Declaration of Independence."
Peratis bought her way onto the Committee, she is listed in the 1995 donor's list.
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 had a curious attitude to the Taliban, he saw them as a bulwark against Islamic radicalism. No doubt he changed his attitude after 11 September 2001. 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. 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. He wasn't talking about the present Karzai government, which meets the description, but about the Taliban regime. Although they might prefer to forget this now, western foreign policy circles did consider recognising the Taliban, in a sort of oil-for-sharia swop.
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: the opposition never united until Milosevic fell.
Colette Shulman
Womens' rights specialist. Works for the US 'National Council for Research on Women', where she is editor of 'Women's Dialogue', a Russian-language magazine for Russian women. Does the Russian Federation have a national research council which publishes English-language magazines for American women? I doubt it: it is the American obsession to redesign the rest of the world, in detail.
Leon Sigal, also known as Lee Sigal
Director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, specialist on North Korea, author of 'Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea'. It is not clear why he is on the Europe Advisory Committee, instead of the Asia committee. See his biography:
...member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 1989 until 1995. In 1979 he served as International Affairs Fellow in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the Department of State and in 1980 as Special Assistant to the Director. He was a Rockefeller Younger Scholar in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution from 1972-1974 and a guest scholar there in 1981-1984. From 1974 to 1989 he taught international politics at Wesleyan University as a professor of government. He was an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs from 1985 to 1989 and from 1996 to 2000, and visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School in 1988 and 2000.
Sigal is a member of the Board of Advisors at Globalbeat Syndicate, part of the New York University Dept of Journalism.
Malcolm Smith
Senior Consultant, former President, at General American Investors Company, Inc.
George Soros
In some ways the 'Osama bin Laden' of the human rights movement - a rich man using his wealth, to spread his values across the world. See this overview of his role in Eastern Europe: George Soros: New Statesman Profile (Neil Clark, June 2003). The Public Affairs site gives this short biography of George Soros, chief 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.
Soros Foundations Network
Open Society Institute Staff Directory
Privatization Project
Open Society Institute Budapest
Marco Stoffel
Founder and director of the Third Millennium Foundation. Although it sounds harmless, the Foundation promotes a pseudo-ethical theory aimed at children, in which morality is reduced to 'empathy'. It also funds some human rights research.
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.
Mark von Hagen
Director of the Harriman Institute - an International Relations institute of Columbia University in New York. A Soviet and post-Soviet specialist, with a long list of publications, see his profile at the institute website.
Patricia M. Wald
US Judge, appointed to the Yugoslavia Tribunal (ICTY) in The Hague, until 2001. See this interview. Incidentally, the Soros Foundation also paid for the equipment of the Tribunal - so much for its judicial impartiality.
Mark Walton
This is apparently a British specialist in human rights and mental health, but I can not link him definitively to HRW.
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 was later appointed the UN Representative ( the "governor") in Kosovo - and he has been suggested as a possible 'UN Governor' in Iraq. 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 how his 1997 Contemporary Diplomacy course taught 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 Council
The Human Rights Watch 'Council' is primarily a fund-raising group. However, its members no doubt expect some influence on HRW policy, for their $5 000 minimum donation. The Council describes itself as "...an international membership organization that seeks to increase awareness of human rights issues and support for Human Rights Watch."
At first Council membership was secret, but the list is now online: it partly overlaps with Board and Advisory Committee members. The interesting thing about the Council is that it shows how much HRW is not international. It is Anglo-American, to the point of caricature. The Council is sub-divided onto four 'regional committees'. You might expect a division by continents (the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia-Pacific). But instead the 'regions' of the HRW global community are New York, Northern California, Southern California, and London. There is also a three-person 'Europe Committee At-Large' but it does not appear to organise any activities.
Although Human Rights Watch claims to act in the name of universal values, it is an organisation with a narrow social and geographical base. If HRW Council members were truly concerned about the welfare of Africans, Tibetans or eastern Europeans, then they would at least offer them an equal chance to influence the organisation. Instead, geographical location and the high cost restrict Council Membership to the US and British upper-middle-class.
HRW Donors
Taken from an older version of the HRW website, this 1995 list is apparently the only information available. In the United States, HRW is not legally obliged to disclose who donates money. About half its funds come from foundations, and half from individual donors, in total about $20 million.
In its Annual Reports, HRW always claims that it "accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly." However, that was a lie according to the 1995 list, and it is still a lie. The Dutch Novib - now part of the Oxfam group - is a government-funded aid organisation, and in turn it funded the activities of Human Rights Watch Africa in the Great Lakes region and Angola. Oxfam itself is primarily funded by the British government and the European Union, see their annual report. It is also funded by the United States Agency for International Development, USAID. Oxfam in turn partly funds Novib, so some of that money finds it way to HRW. Both Oxfam and Novib funded the HRW report on the Rwanda genocide. So, if it is as accurate as HRW's claim not to accept any indirect government funding, look elsewhere for the truth.
DONORS OF $100,000 OR MORE
Dorothy and Lewis Cullman
The Aaron Diamond Foundation
Irene Diamond
The Ford Foundation
The Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Fund
Estate of Anne Johnson
The J. M. Kaplan Fund
The Fanny and Leo Koerner Charitable Trust
The John D. and 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
Vissa inom vänstern verkar sakna grundläggande kommunikationskunskaper. Vanligtvis brukar man lägga en länk till informationskällan och sedan dra ut några valda citat eller sammanfatta vad man uppfattar att källan vill åstadkomma. Man lägger inte in en uppsats som kommentar. Det tyder bara på att man själv inte orkat läsa uppsatsen och/eller att man försöker trötta ut motdebattören.
Jag förstår att sådant här kan förekomma när man inte är van vid fria debatter och källhänvisningar så jag lägger bara huvudet på sned och ler åt era första staplande steg i utövandet av er yttrandefrihet. Lycka till med era fortsatta inlägg.
Jo en sak till, det fyller ingen större funktion att lägga multipla epiterer efter varandra såsom "...den globaliserade amerikanska marknadsdiktaturen..."
Det låter väldigt mycket -68 och sänker egentligen bara trovärdigheten på inlägget.
Fast egentligen borde jag väl inte ge er dessa råd. Er sätt att debattera gör det bara lättare att ignorera er. Men det skulle iofs vara roligt att ha en meningsfull debatt också.
Vem är idioten ovan?
Jaja, i alla fall : "Även hot om angreppskrig är att betrakta som brott mot internationella lagar."
Gäller inte det Iran också? Kanske ni borde protestera mot det med?
Iran har händelsevis inte hotat några grannar med angreppskrig. Däremot blivit angripet av en USA-allierad, med USA:s goda minne - kanske namnet Saddam Hussein säger något?
"Iran har händelsevis inte hotat några grannar med angreppskrig."
Samtidigt utanför Alis fantasivärld:
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map"
De hotar med försvarskrig då, eller vad?
Att ett land "måste rensas bort från kartan" skall inte betraktas som ett hot?
Ja vad skall man säga!!!!, egentligen inget. Möjligen vem är totalidioten som klipper in miltals med engelska urklipp?
Sedan, Alis kommentar om det fredälskande Iran är fullständigt lysande. Visar hur cyniskt extremvänstern ställer sig till grundläggande mänskliga rättigheter, d v s tar som vanligt ingen ställning alls utan gömmer sig bakom folkrätten i egna dunkla politiska syften de har oförskämdheten att kalla demokratiska. Jag betackar mig för den demokrati kommunismen står för = staten o kollektivet har all frihet att göra precis vad de vill inklusive förtrycka dess medborgare för den politiska ideologin.
Det finns stora likheter med fundamentalistiska stater som Iran. I detta land är ett människoliv noll o intet värt. Allt för den store profeten. Allah, Gud och Marx är lika stora idioter och dess uttolkare borde gå på terapi om inte annat. Inte för jag tror det hjälper, men ändå.
Kul logik från fascisten Botnia: eftersom den iranska regimen är dålig bör man masslakta civila i Iran. Bra tänkt.
Vad beträffar Pontus yranden bör man åter understryka att medan Israel och USA konkret har hotat Iran militärt och planerat för detta - och det torde inte vara svårt att ta ett sådant hot på allvar givet dessa länders track record och nuvarande praktik - så har alltså inget militärt hot riktats från Irans regering mot någon annan stat. Att Irans president skulle ha hotat ockupationsmakten Israel med ett militärt angrepp är inte sant, utan en propagandatwist, levererad av den ökända, för ändamålet startade organisationen MEMRI. Juan Cole är en av dem som påpekat detta:
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:34:18 -0400 From: "Cole, Juan"
The speech in Persian is here:
Sorry that I misremembered the exact phrase Ahmadinejad had used. He made an analogy to Khomeini's determination and success in getting rid of the Shah's government, which Khomeini had said "must go" (az bain bayad berad). Then Ahmadinejad defined Zionism not as an Arabi-Israeli national struggle but as a Western plot to divide the world of Islam with Israel as the pivot of this plan.
The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."
Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.
Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.
Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.
I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist but have a strong preference for peaceful social activism over violence, so needless to say I condemn the sort of terror attacks against innocent civilians (including Arab Israelis) that we saw last week. I have not seen any credible evidence, however, that such attacks are the doing of Ahmadinejad, and in my view they are mainly the result of the expropriation and displacement of the long-suffering Palestinian people.
It is not realistic for Americans to call for Iran to talk directly to the Israeli government (though in the 1980s the Khomeinists did a lot of business with Israel) when the US government won't talk directly to the Iranians about most bilateral issues. In fact, an American willingness to engage in direct talks might well pave the way to an eventual settlement of these outstanding issues.
cheers
Juan Cole
Here we go Ali, och du skall få svar på tal även om jag vet du blir tyst när det blir besvärligt.
1. Faschist är jag inte, men anser den representativa demokratin är kass och endast göder en politisk adel, där som i fallet Sverige vänskapskorruptionen är mycket omfattande. GP´s kompis Lunds utnämning till g-direktör för Kommerskollegium är bara det senaste beviset, det finns många värre, hans egen fru om inte annat. Våra nya frälsen är f ö finansadeln o nämnda politikeradeln i en ohelig allians med A o B aktier som sammanfogande kitt.
2. Är i motsats till dig en sann demokrat som envetet försvarar den enskildes rätt. Min uppfattning är att vi skall ha samma konstitution som Schweiz. D v s medborgarna och inte riksdagen har rätten att utlysa referendum både för nylagda lagförslag och grundlagsändringar. Inklusive att lämna EU. Sedan är det nog tyvärr ett besvärande faktum att denna form av demokrati skulle blåsa VP fullständigt av banan. Med era 5% kan ni nog samla listor tillräckligt för folkomröstning, men i praktiken blev ni totalt maktlösa.
Vågar du som kommunist förespråka denna form av sann demokrati eller anser du folket för dumma att lägga sig i politiken?????????? Detta vill jag ha ett ärligt svar på.
3. Sen suktandet efter ministerposter. Hoppas det blir av om ni vinner valet, det blir GP´s sista och stora misstag. Starka krafter inom SAP skyr fortfarande VP o icke kommunisten Ohly som pesten. En sådan regeringsbildning kommer att krossa SAP innifrån. Sedan glöm inte, det är SAP som hitills gjort er salongsfähiga. När de vissar kalla handen ramlar ni sanbbt mot 4% spärren och blir till sist ett minne blott.
Sen suktandet efter ministerposter. Hoppas det blir av om ni vinner valet, det blir GP´s sista och stora misstag. Starka krafter inom SAP skyr fortfarande VP o icke kommunisten Ohly som pesten. En sådan regeringsbildning kommer att krossa SAP innifrån.
...................................Det ser inte så ut med tanke på att en mycket stor del av dom socialdemokratiska väljarna VILL att Vänsterpartiet ska ha ministerposter.
Vad det beror på kan du ju fundera på.
Iran såväl finansierar, utrustar och tränar Hizzbollha. En organisation som i det närmaste ligger i direkt krig med Isreal. Människor dör därav.
(Graden av rättfärdighet i den konflikten kan dock onekligen diskutteras - långt och mycket).
Men det är ett tydligt bevis på den nuvarande iranska regimens gränsöverskridande aggresionsbenägenhet. Att de inte har gått längre att med våld sprida sitt islamska åsiktsdiktatur beror nog främst på att de helt enkelt har saknat den militära styrkan. Atombomber i mullornas rättfärdiga händer skulle ändra basala parametrar i den ekvationen.
Ali
I motsats till dig är jag inte så förblindad av min politiska agenda att jag väljer att misstro CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera etc. till förmån för ett e-mail från John Doe.
Gulligt!
Vänstern fortsätter kriga för lika åldergränser på krogen och annat trams på feministfronten här hemma.
Men det är väldigt tyst om kvinnornas rättigheter i Iran. Jag kan garantera att olika åldergränser är det sista de behöver oroa sig för.
Men vafan, vänstern har ju alltid hellre sett att folk mördas inom ett lands gränser än att någon går över landets gräns och hindrar brotten. Eller brotten, vänstern har ju heller aldrig erkänt människans rätt till sin egen kropp och sitt eget arbete.
Ali stöd till mullorna i Iran kanske inte är så konstigt...
Så mycket skitsnack. Och vår nya medlem av politikeradeln Ali håller som vanligt käft när frågorna blir besvärliga. Med dig i regeringen på vilken post det än må bliva flyr jag landet. Du skall i vart fall inte leva på mina pengar.
Till 'Botnia':
Dina resonemang om vem som har rätt till oljan i Iran, vem som skulle bära ansvaret för civilas dö vid en eventuell bombning av Iran etc. är uppenbarligen helt uppåt väggarna. Du har en skrämmande människosyn som varje anständig person borde ta avstånd ifrån. Eller så tror du inte ens på vad du säger utan argumenterar enligt 'the madman's theory' som går ut på att låtsas vara våldsam och irrationnell för att skrämma och uppröra dina meningsmotståndare. Det funkade ett tag för Hitler, Nixon och nu Bush, men brukar sluta i katastrof. Dessutom brukar folk genomskåda såna som du efter ett tag och ignorera dem. Jag råder dig hur som helst att uppsöka psykologhjälp. Du tycks ha en hel del aggressioner inom dig. Kan bero på en taskig uppväxt, att du aldrig fick någon uppmärksamhet eller vad vet jag. Blev du mobbad i skolan?
PS: fly aldrig landet! Du är säkert ett uppskattat komiskt inslag för många mäanniskor runtom dig utan att du vet om det. De skulle sakna dig.
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