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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"There can be no more urgent task than to speak truth about power, the destructive power unleashed in the name of all the people of the United States. Speaking truth about power entails good research and analysis by U.S. progressives, and it means listening to those impacted by U.S. power abroad."
- - Noam Chomsky
RHINO HERE:
The Interhemispheric Research Center (IRC) is a citizen think tank working to raise the impact of grassroots agendas by providing constructive strategic dialogue on objectives & strategies on international affairs. Their mission statement says:
"As the world's governments wrestle with such issues as ethnic conflict, global security, international trade and financial flows, migration, poverty and underdevelopment, and sustainable development, citizen movements--both national and transnational--are helping to chart a new course for national and international policy. The IRC regards this growing profile of citizen-based agendas in global affairs represents one of the most promising developments in the international arena. Their close connections with the grassroots, internationalist perspectives, and nontraditional sense of national interests mean that citizens' groups have an essential contribution to make to debates regarding key issues like global economic governance and sustainable development.
Following up on the work of Noam Chomsky, as featured in Monday's blog...
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207/2002/12/09.html#a594
...below is a letter from Chomskyin behalf of IRC.
8:44:18 AM 
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Dear friends,
One cannot accuse the Bush administration of any lack of clarity about its vision for global affairs.
This administration understands very well that in terms of military force the United States stands alone, beyond any conceivable challenge. And this administration has made it crystal clear that it intends to use this power to organize the world to satisfy the demands of the narrow sector of domestic power and privilege that it represents. In service of the same interests, Bush and company are quite openly conducting an assault against the domestic population. They are seeking to impose obedience by undermining civil liberties and fostering a distorted brand of patriotism that aims at suppressing democratic debate.
The Bush administration is also breaking new ground in the brazenness of its contempt for international law and treaty obligations. The language and processes of multilateralism, international rule of law, treaties, and international cooperation have been thrown into the trash heap of history: the Kyoto protocol, International Criminal Court, arms control treaties, human rights conditionality on U.S. military aid — indeed any impediment to unconstrained U.S. force and coercion. Emboldened by their historically unprecedented and rapidly escalating military hegemony, leading Bush planners make no secret of their intention to validate the four-word definition that George Bush Sr. gave to his new world order, "What we say goes."
There is only one deterrent to this mad and destructive course — the people of the United States.
There can be no more urgent task than to speak truth about power — the destructive power unleashed in the name of all the people of the United States. Speaking truth about power entails good research and analysis by U.S. progressives, and it means listening to those impacted by U.S. power abroad. Truth about power facilitates the essential organizing and advocacy needed to ensure that the immense resources of the U.S. can help create a more decent, livable world.
Since 1979 the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, on the internet, http://www.irc-online.org) has been doing just this. Now more than ever, the IRC needs your support to continue this important work, because never before has U.S. power been so widely projected and unconstrained.
With long experience in U.S.-Latin American relations, the IRC has in the past year launched its new Americas Program (http://www.americaspolicy.org). This program is not only critiquing how the U.S. is wielding its weight in the region[breve]meddling in domestic politics in Bolivia and Venezuela, supporting state-sponsored terror in Colombia, funding migrant detention centers in Guatemala, and pushing its now discredited neoliberal trade agenda — but is also looking at how citizens are fighting back and establishing alternatives.
Six years ago the IRC had a vision of creating "a citizen-based think tank without walls." Today that vision has been realized in the internationally renowned Foreign Policy In Focus project (http://www.fpif.org). Over the years, FPIF has demonstrated an admirable capacity to respond to global affairs crises with expert analysis based on sound progressive principles. Also, in the past year I applauded the IRC[not equal]s launch of an "Outside the U.S." component of FPIF, which insures that perspectives from countries impacted by U.S. policies become part of the public debate.
A new IRC initiative, the Project on the Present Danger (http://www.presentdanger.org), is a campaign to build support for international cooperation and law as the proper framework for managing global affairs. We define the "present danger" as U.S. unilateralism and U.S. attacks on multilateral frameworks for peace and security. Over the past six months, the IRC has also covered new investigative and analytical ground in its focus on the right-wing front groups and ideologues that are shaping Bush's supremacist foreign policy.
As a member of the IRC's board of directors — and a long-time fan of its work — I urge you to make a donation in support of the IRC.
More than ever before, we need groups like the IRC speaking out, asking hard questions, tabling alternatives, and telling it like it is.
Sincerely,
Noam Chomsky
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8:36:27 AM
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