Top 914 Humanitarian Intervention Quotes & Sayings - Page 16

At the beginning of his administration, Reagan tried set the basis for American military intervention in El Salvador - which is about what Kennedy did when he came into office in regard to Vietnam. Well, when Kennedy tried it in Vietnam, it just worked like a dream. Virtually nobody opposed American bombing of South Vietnam in 1962. It was not an issue. But when Reagan began to talk of involving American forces in El Salvador there was a huge popular uproar. And he had to choose a much more indirect way of supporting the collection of gangsters in power there. He had to back off.

It is always brave to insist on undergoing transformations that feel necessary and right even when there are so many obstructions to doing so, including people and institutions who seek to pathologize or criminalize such important acts of self-definition. I know that for some feels less brave than necessary, but we all have to defend those necessities that allow us to live and breathe in the way that feels right to us. Surgical intervention can be precisely what a trans person needs – it is also not always what a trans person needs.

I think the Scandinavian health systems are better when it comes to preventative care than the German system, because in the Scandinavian systems, the government is really more active in defining treatment, goals and defining health priorities. The German system is a competitive system with little government intervention. The price for this is that the government cannot set a health agenda. And the Scandinavian systems have little competition, so you often do have waiting lists. But on the other hand, you then have the government which can push for prevention.

Every chance at destabilizing [Bashar] Assad... the bombing campaign causes a flood of refugees into Jordan, there's already half a million in Jordan. I think a bombing campaign - I think it's hard to argue that a U.S. bombing campaign is going to cause less refugees. And I think it causes more refugees and more of a humanitarian disaster. I think it causes, or allows, the risk of Israel being attacked with a gas attack to go up, if we attack Assad. So there's all kinds of bad things.

Absolutely love the new campaign from the Optimum Population Trust: do your bit for addressing climate change by having fewer children - or even no children. The lifetime CO2 emissions of a UK citizen amount to 750 tonnes (the equivalent - apparently - of 620 return flights between London and New York), so the extra 10 million by which our population will rise between now and 2074 will, over their lifetimes, emit around 7½ billion tonnes of CO2..."births averted" is probably the most single most substantial and cost-effective intervention that governments could be using

Continuous wars - which we have now had since 2001 - starting with Afghanistan, continuing on to Iraq. And even since Iraq, it's been more or less continuous. The appalling war in Libya, which has wrecked that country and wrecked that part of the world, and which isn't over by any means. The indirect Western intervention in Syria, which has created new monsters. These are policies, which if carried out by any individual government, would be considered extremist. Now, they're being carried out collectively by the United States, backed by some of the countries of the European Union.

I oppose U.S. military intervention in Iraq. I believe that we should not send troops or engage in air strikes-our nation's military involvement needs to be over. The United States has already spent billions of dollars in Iraq while our nation has endured a crumbling infrastructure, cuts to our social programs, a lack of investment in job training and creation, and sadly, a failure to take care of our veterans. Let's focus our resources at home. Over 4000 men and women have sacrificed their lives for Iraq. That is enough.

As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These "humanitarian parts" are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its "antirent and anticapital parts," means to get rid of the poodle.

Roger Casement is an intriguing figure - humanitarian, Irish revolutionary, gay - and much had and would be written about him, there was something about his character as a conflicted man, an Irish Protestant who spent much of his time representing England in different African nations, a gay man who, true to the times, kept his sexual orientation to himself, that kept playing in my head. I read on and around him, but a historical figure is not a story - it's not even a character - so my story, the one that I would develop into Valiant Gentlemen, had yet to reveal itself.

The thing is, autism is all different, you know, variables. And you start out with a certain amount of, you know, the point where the differences in the brain are going to just be a personality variant and, like, for very mild Asperger's. But you get into more severe kinds of autism where there's obvious speech delay, obvious abnormal behavior in a two and three-year-old child, you know, the initial neurology is different from case to case. But all children with autism are going to do better if they get really good educational intervention.

The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity.

The Chinese get over 40 percent of their oil from the Middle East through the Persian Gulf, but have you ever seen a Chinese aircraft carrier sitting inside the Persian Gulf? For at least 40 years, the United States of America has been guaranteeing Chinese energy supplies. Sitting here today, the US provides funds to, honest to God, 99 percent of the countries on the planet. We even give North Korea humanitarian aid. We give them food, and God knows what they do with it. They probably feed it to the crooks in the headquarters.

In a sense, every tool is a machine--the hammer, the ax, and the chisel. And every machine is a tool. The real distinction is between one man using a tool with his hands and producing an object that shows at every stage the direction of his will and the impression of his personality; and a machine which is producing, without the intervention of a particular man, objects of a uniformity and precision that show no individual variation and have no personal charm. The problem is to decide whether the objects of machine production can possess the essential qualities of art.

The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, ... says "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!