Storm Jameson Quotes

The crimes committed by the North Vietnamese regime against the Vietnamese people were minor compared to the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge against the Cambodians, but for us on the left they were emotionally far more significant.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

I know from reports of my own officers who served with General Dro that defenseless villages were bombarded and then occupied, and any inhabitants that had not run away were brutally killed, the village pillaged, and all the livestock confiscated, and then the village burned. This was carried out as a regular systematic getting-rid-of the Muslims

A letter arrived from Shanghai reporting in detail the atrocities of our army in Nanking. It describes a horrendous situation of pillage and rape. My God, is this how our Imperial Army behaves?

Genocide, massacre, and human slaughter; pillage, rape, and torture have been much more common than war and revolution. But historians do not dwell on such events. And even if they do, they very rarely attach numbers to them. They prefer the glamour of war, of diplomacy, of the clash of nations and personalities.

Exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese... and purify the masses of the [Cambodian] people.

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I'm watching it burn right to the ground.

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.

I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.

One day as Father and I were returning from our walk we found the Grote Markt cordoned off by a double ring of police and soldiers. A truck was parked in front of the fish mart; into the back were climbing men, women, and children, all wearing the yellow star. . . . "Father! Those poor people!" I cried. . . . "Those poor people," Father echoed. But to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the solders now forming into ranks to march away. "I pity the poor Germans, Corrie. They have touched the apple of God's eye.

The Nuremburg trials were attacked at the time as 'victor's justice'. And this is precisely what they were - and were intended to be.

If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.

I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.

When those pictures of Abu Ghraib came out, I thought, my gosh, this is like the tiger cages for prisoners in Vietnam all over again. Only we were actually doing it ourselves, we weren't hiring another government to do it.

As Serbia continues to move towards rectifying the evils of its past and joining the ranks of democratic nations, it is important that the individuals involved in the death of the Bytyqi brothers are held accountable for their actions[.]

What is the difference between burning and gassing people in ovens and doing it to a whole nation out in the open?

Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people... anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil.

I just feel like the country is guilty. I think we should be deeply ashamed for what we've done in Iraq, and we've gotta reconcile that, and we've gotta find some way to make peace with this, and we can't do that until we acknowledge what took place, and ultimately, I think that's the poison that is killing this administration. And I think there's a lot of people in the country who are guilty of allowing themselves to be duped in a very sloppy, sloppy manner.

When something like this [2003 invasion of Iraq] takes place, the international law professionals have a complicated task. There is a fringe that just tells the truth: Look, it's a violation of international law. But most have to construct complex arguments to justify it as defense counsel. That's basically their job, defense counsel for state power.

The idea of accountability in Vietnam, Nicaragua and now Iraq - the media never has that in its quiver. When you see time after time there is no possibility of Nuremberg [war crime trials], we're doomed to have it repeated.

We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children... during an assault, the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.

Saddam Hussein is about to face trial and George Bush wants to execute him. Not because of the war crimes, but because Saddam is beating him in the polls.