Psycho-Cannon
06-25-03, 04:46 AM
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0306antingo.html
Bringing the War Home: Right Wing Think Tank Turns Wrath on NGOs
Having led the charge to war in Iraq, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential think tank close to the Bush administration, has added a new target: international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). AEI and its partner in the project, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, are setting their sights on those groups with a "progressive" or "liberal" agenda that favors "global governance" and other notions that are also promoted by the United Nations and other multilateral agencies.
The two organizations announced June 11th that they are launching a new website (www.NGOWatch.org) to expose the funding, operations, and agendas of international NGOs, and particularly their alleged efforts to constrain U.S. freedom of action in international affairs and influence the behavior of corporations abroad.
To mark the site's launch, AEI, which is funded mainly by major corporations and right-wing foundations, also held an all-day conference entitled NGOs: The Growing Power of an Un-elected Few, which featured a series of presentations depicting NGOs as a growing and largely unaccountable threat to the Bush administration's foreign policy goals and free-market capitalism around the world
the fact that no less than 42 senior administration foreign policy and justice officials have been recruited from AEI and the Federalists and that AEI "fellows" include such prominent figures as Lynne Cheney (the vice president's spouse), former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and the influential Iraq hawk and former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, suggests that Wednesday's events may herald a much more antagonistic attitude toward NGOs on the part of the government.
The general message at Wednesday's conference was that while NGOs like Amnesty International, CARE, Oxfam, and Friends of the Earth have performed valuable work in promoting human rights, development, and environmental protection, their general policies, particularly at the international level, may be inimical to U.S. interests and free-market principles
On the political front, international NGOs, which in recent years led the fight for the global ban on anti-personnel mines, the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming, and the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, are pursuing a "liberal internationalist" vision that "wants to constrain the United States," said American University law professor Kenneth Anderson.
Seems this was inevitable really but hey ho here we go.
Bringing the War Home: Right Wing Think Tank Turns Wrath on NGOs
Having led the charge to war in Iraq, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential think tank close to the Bush administration, has added a new target: international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). AEI and its partner in the project, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, are setting their sights on those groups with a "progressive" or "liberal" agenda that favors "global governance" and other notions that are also promoted by the United Nations and other multilateral agencies.
The two organizations announced June 11th that they are launching a new website (www.NGOWatch.org) to expose the funding, operations, and agendas of international NGOs, and particularly their alleged efforts to constrain U.S. freedom of action in international affairs and influence the behavior of corporations abroad.
To mark the site's launch, AEI, which is funded mainly by major corporations and right-wing foundations, also held an all-day conference entitled NGOs: The Growing Power of an Un-elected Few, which featured a series of presentations depicting NGOs as a growing and largely unaccountable threat to the Bush administration's foreign policy goals and free-market capitalism around the world
the fact that no less than 42 senior administration foreign policy and justice officials have been recruited from AEI and the Federalists and that AEI "fellows" include such prominent figures as Lynne Cheney (the vice president's spouse), former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and the influential Iraq hawk and former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, suggests that Wednesday's events may herald a much more antagonistic attitude toward NGOs on the part of the government.
The general message at Wednesday's conference was that while NGOs like Amnesty International, CARE, Oxfam, and Friends of the Earth have performed valuable work in promoting human rights, development, and environmental protection, their general policies, particularly at the international level, may be inimical to U.S. interests and free-market principles
On the political front, international NGOs, which in recent years led the fight for the global ban on anti-personnel mines, the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming, and the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, are pursuing a "liberal internationalist" vision that "wants to constrain the United States," said American University law professor Kenneth Anderson.
Seems this was inevitable really but hey ho here we go.