
PBS, March 12, 1998 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
PBS, March 12, 1998 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
Context: The U. S. has always insisted on its right to use force, whatever international law requires, and whatever international institutions decide.… The U. S., of course, is not alone in these practices. Other states commonly act in much the same way, if not constrained by external or internal forces.
PBS, March 12, 1998 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/march98/intervention_3-12.html.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
"The Ad Hoc Behavioral Laboratory" http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/28108/, New York Magazine (8 February 2007)
Context: Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities, as a former general counsel for the Department of the Navy explains here, but also because war is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civilized scruple. There isn’t even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear. From an international leader in the cause of human rights and democratic values, the U. S. has turned into an unaccountable bully.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999
Context: As the most powerful state, the U. S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will. It also threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its conveniently flexible notions of "free trade." In one important case, Washington has employed such threats with great effectiveness (and GATT approval) to force open Asian markets for U. S. tobacco exports and advertising, aimed primarily at the growing markets of women and children. The U. S. Agriculture Department has provided grants to tobacco firms to promote smoking overseas. Asian countries have attempted to conduct educational anti-smoking campaigns, but they are overwhelmed by the miracles of the market, reinforced by U. S. state power through the sanctions threat. Philip Morris, with an advertising and promotion budget of close to $9 billion in 1992, became China's largest advertiser. The effect of Reaganite sanction threats was to increase advertising and promotion of cigarette smoking (particularly U. S. brands) quite sharply in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, along with the use of these lethal substances. In South Korea, for example, the rate of growth in smoking more than tripled when markets for U. S. lethal drugs were opened in 1988. The Bush Administration extended the threats to Thailand, at exactly the same time that the "war on drugs" was declared; the media were kind enough to overlook the coincidence, even suppressing the outraged denunciations by the very conservative Surgeon-General. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimates that among Chinese children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, an achievement that ranks high even by 20th century standards.
In Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years on: A Reappraisal, 1997 http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/9708-UD-relativity.html
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: Experience proved that man's power of choice in action was very far from absolute, and logic seemed to require that every choice should have some predetermining cause which decided the will to act. Science affirmed that choice was not free,— could not be free,— without abandoning the unity of force and the foundation of law. Society insisted that its choice must be left free, whatever became of science or unity. Saint Thomas was required to illustrate the theory of liberum arbitrium by choosing a path through these difficulies, where path there was obviously none.
Prologue, p. xvi
The Age of Fallibility (2006)
Context: The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States. This is a harsh — indeed, for me, painful — thing to say, but unfortunately I am convinced it is true. The United States continues to set the agenda for the world in spite of its loss of influence since 9/11, and the Bush administration is setting the wrong agenda. The Bush agenda is nationalistic: it emphasizes the use of force and ignores global problems whose solution requires international cooperation. The rest of the world dances to the tune the United States is playing, and if that continues too long we are in danger of destroying our civilization. Changing the attitude and policies of the United States remains my top priority.
Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on the right of self determination http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN General Assembly
“International law exists only in textbooks on international law.”
The anthropologist Ashley Montagu said it in an interview with Einstein. (Source: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/montagu-ashley_conversations-with-albert-einstein-1985.html.)
Misattributed
United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013