http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/books1.htm
*Immediately after the tragedy of September 11, Zoltan Grossman, an American peace activist and regular contributor to the radical magazine Counterpunch, published a list of ‘A century of US military interventions from Wounded Knee to Afghanistan’, based on Congressional Records and the Library of Congress Research Service. Grossman lists 134 interventions, small and big, global and domestic, covering 111 years between 1890 and 2001. *
*As the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali writes in his book Unvanquished: a US-UN Saga, the UN is now the sole property of a single power - the US - which, through intimidation, threats and the use of its veto, manipulates the world body for the benefit of its own interest. When it suits the US, it uses the UN to seek legitimacy for its actions, to build coalitions and impose sanctions on ‘rogue states’. When world opinion goes against the US, it treats the UN with utter contempt. *
With noteworthy regularity," writes William Blum in Rogue State (2001), “Washington has found itself - often alone, sometimes joined by one or two other countries - standing in opposition to the General Assembly resolutions aimed at furthering human rights, peace, nuclear disarmament, economic justice, the struggle against South African apartheid and Israeli lawlessness and other progressive causes.” Blum lists some 150 incidence between 1984 and 1987 when the US cast a solitary ‘no’ vote against General Assembly resolutions.
As Blum notes, in 1982 and 1983 the US was alone in voting against a declaration that education, work, healthcare, proper nourishment and national development are human rights. It would appear that even 13 years later, official American attitudes had not ‘softened’. In 1996, at a UN-sponsored World Food Summit, the US took issue with an affirmation by the summit of the ‘right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food’. The United States insisted that it does not recognize a ‘right to food’.