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From Peru to the Philippines to Poland, U.S.-based conservative groups are increasingly engaged in abortion and family-planning debates overseas, emboldened by their ties with the Bush administration and eager to compete with more liberal rivals.

The result is that U.S. advocacy groups are now waging their culture war skirmishes worldwide as they try to influence other countries' laws and wrangle over how U.S. aid money should be spent.

"We don't expect to see the United Nations change, or Western Europe change," said Joseph d'Agostino of the Population Research Institute, a Virginia-based anti-abortion group. "But with the Bush administration, pro-lifers feel there's a real opportunity to stop the U.S. government from promoting abortion and sex education and population control in the Third World."

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America said U.S. conservatives are trying to counter the influence long exercised by women's rights and abortion rights groups at U.N. conferences and among international non-governmental organizations.

"NGOs have tremendous power, but for so many years they have been the playground for the leftist activists," Crouse said. "It's only been during the Bush administration that those of us from the right have had an opportunity to be on a level playing field."

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Conservative groups, notably the Population Research Institute, also are credited by both allies and foes with convincing the Bush administration to withhold U.S. funding from the U.N. Population Fund. At issue are conservative allegations, vehemently denied by the Population Fund, that the U.N. agency indirectly contributes to coercive abortions in China.

"The far right says, 'Jump,' and the administration says, 'How high?'" complained Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat who wants the Population Fund money restored.

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“A dark age is not merely a collection of subtractions. It is not a blank; much is added to fill the vacuum. But the additions break from the past and themselves reinforce a loss of the past.”

Not being discussed it the bigotry based on religion and ethnicity, that must be abundant in N. America, to produce such indifference or casual acceptance toward the estimated 200,000 Iraqi dead as the direct result of this criminal war. To many, they are only Aye-rabs.

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Originally posted by Nanuq:
The Americans didn't invent religious intolerance and they're hardly the only ones in the world to engage in it. Demonizing people we dislike is all too human a failing.

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