- 2 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis (New York, Free Press, 1990; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 197.
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- 3 As well as some justice, there is unthinking hypocrisy in this condition. The phrase "special interests" usually refers to other peoples' interests: politics is a forum for the public negotiation of different interests, or it is nothing.
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- 4 Recall what inadequate steps have been taken to remedy the effects of a meltdown in a single reactor at Chernobyl: multiply these by a thousand and we begin to be in sight of the public health effects of a nuclear exchange.
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- 5 It may be objected that at times, this "Good Cop, Bad Cop" routine comes close to blackmail - "ratify the conventions agreed at Rio, or else!" A colleague familiar with meetings of the International Whaling Commission has also informed me that members of Greenpeace have even been known to spit on the Japanese delegates to the meetings - conduct that is not calculated to win them over.
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- 6 Technically, the vatican attended the meeting in its capacity as a secular, territorial State, not as the voice of a religious interest; but that only made its position the more ambiguous.
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- 7 This is true, not just of Army-run states like Burma, and conservative Islamic states like Saudi Arabia, but also of countries where whole populations of immigrant workers - Turks in Germany or Koreans in Japan - are debarred from obtaining citizenship and voting rights, even after two or three generations of continuous residence.
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- 8 One qualification is needed at this point. At the Peace Research Institute's meeting in Yokohama, it became clear that those NGOs in which the lead is taken by women find it easier to establish standing alliances with other NGOs than higher profile male-run organizations. Some of the most effective NGOs in South and East Asia collaborate across national boundaries with other women-run NGOs: A stricking example was the Self Employed Women's Association in India, discussed by Professor Ito.
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- 9 This tendency finally became such a scandal that it triggered the recent campaign to achieve what is called "transparency" in accounting for the expenditure of such grants: just how much of a grant is siphoned off depends on the local degree of transperency - for which the traditional name was corruption.
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- 10 Problems of standing arise there too. Europe has little tradition of class actions like that in the USA. Senator David Norris of the Irish Republic, for instance, had a hard time getting a hearing in a case aimed at overturning Irish legislation that had penalized homosexulas as a class. The case was finally won by the skill of Mary Robinson, the lawyer who subsequently became the first woman President of Ireland.
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- 11How could such rulings be enforced? That is no longer an insoluble problem.
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- 12 Circumstances alter cases. Malaysians are not indifferent to torture but, unlike cruelty to children, smoking has different roles in different countries. So let physicians in Thailand debate with their fellow Thais the risk from borrowed smoke.
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- 13In one such digression, Kant remarks that the universal maxim against infanticide is open to exceptions: an illegitimate child is "smuggled into" the human community, and is not entitled to the same protection as a child born in wedlock!
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- 14When Greenpeace moved into South America, it needed to learn how to balance the claims of the environment against the counter-claims of development and employment.
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- 15My thanks to Benchmark Environmental Consulting, 33 Barlett Street, Portland, ME 04103, USA from whom the text of this questionnaire can be obtained.
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- 16 Camilla Toulmin, of the International Institute for Environment and Development, helped to articulate these two responses for me.
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