Noam Chomsky Quotes

In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers, but not against the United States.

You have to understand that once an indictment has been signed, all countries that are signature to the U.N. charter will hand a person straight over. You don't have to go through the normal extradition process.

Well, they really didn't have to worry, because the way power politics works, the World Court can't do anything. Look, there's one country in the world at the moment which has refused to accept World Court decision-that's the United States. Is anybody going to do anything about it?

A World Parliamentary Assembly functioning outside the United Nations, or a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly set up as a subsidiary body of the General Assembly pursuant to article 22 of the UN Charter, could start initially as a consultative body and gradually develop into a legislative assembly.

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

If you want to control the world you need to control the oil. Therefore the destruction of Iraq is a prerequisite to controlling oil. That means the destruction of the Iraqi national identity, since the Iraqis are committed to their principles and rights according to international law and the U.N. charter.

This new declaration which emphasizes the necessity of global disarmament is based on the purposes and principles of the United Nations, in particular the prohibition of the threat and use of force, and on the obligation to negotiate disputes in conformity with the UN Charter. It is a strong and positive example for the entire world.

The United States happens to be the only state in the world that has been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism.

"a fatal and perhaps fateful error of judgment" "...this was the last chance for the United Nations to get a grip on themselves and apply the principles of their Charter"

I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

Obama's latest line is that he didn't establish a "red line" but the world did through its conventions on chemical warfare.

Authority and example lead the world.

I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for a comprehensive Middle East settlement and for a 'new world order' based not on Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court.

What the world wants iz [sic] good examples, not so mutch advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.

When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket.

When Barbarossa commences, the world will hold its breath and make no comment.

You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!

Whether [Turkey] is a NATO country or not, it doesn't have the right to invade any other country according to the international law or to any other moral value.

The only way I could be extradited is through the principle of what my lawyers call "politics trumps law."

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it. I should be happy that my own experience had afforded fewer examples of the little dependence to be placed upon them.

In the corporeal world, international law is whatever the United States and Great Britain say it is.

Genocide is not a legitimate option. It's not ok to decide that an entire population has no right to live in the world. No matter whether these relationships are very proximate or very distant, there is no entitlement to expunge a population or to demean its basic humanity.

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.

In fact, various lawyers' groups - to some extent in the U.S. but mostly in England and Canada and elsewhere - are bringing demands for a war crimes trial for the crime of aggression. However, though the invasion of Iraq was plainly an act of aggression, it doesn't break any records.