August 27, 2000
Noam Chomsky
This small 65-page paperback is part of The Open Media Pamphlet Series. In three separate articles by internationally-recognized humanists, it makes three important points: first, that U.S. policies toward “rogue states” comprised largely of embargoes that result in infant mortality, local epidemics, starvation, infertility, and so on, are a direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; second, that the U.S. appears to have been both an active practitioner of bio-chemical warfare resulting in the deaths and deformation of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians (Agent Orange) as well as a passive practitioner in biological warfare qua disease promulgation through embargo and non-intervention; and third, that the U.S. has consistently refused to abide by international arbitration and other means for settling disputes, but instead generally utilized force as its preferred vehicle for getting its own way, regardless of international agreements to which it has been a signatory. Too few write credibly in this vein, and this pamphlet is therefore a helpful off-set to the more conventional wisdom that comes from the military-industrial complex and the politicians this complex supports.
