Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people for national liberation

Dec. 8 42/162B 140-1

Financing the training of journalists and strengthening communica-tion services in the underdeveloped world

Dec. 11 42/176 94-2 (US, Israel)

Ending trade embargo against Nicaragua

Dec. 11 42/198 154-1

Furthering international co-operation regarding the external debt problems Dec. 11 42/441 131-1

Preparation of summary records for a UN conference on Trade and Development Necessity of ending the US embargo against Cuba

1992 59-2 (US, Israel)*

1993 88-4 (US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay)

1994 101-2 (US, Israel)

1995 117-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1996 138-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)**

1997 143-3 (US, Israel, Uzbekistan)

1998 157-2 (US, Israel)

1999 155-2 (US, Israel)

* Romania also voted no , by mistake.

** For the first time, all 15 European Union countries voted yes.

It should be remembered that for years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an international pariah.

Food is not a human right

As noted above, in 1982 and 1983 the US was alone in voting against a declaration that education, work, health care, 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 United Nations-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 . Washington instead championed free trade as the key to ending the poverty at the root of hunger, and expressed fears that recognition of a right to food could lead to lawsuits from poor nations seeking aid and special trade provisions.2

Some other items you may have missed about the US at the UN

In 1949, the United States induced UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie to agree to a written secret agreement with the US State Department whereby, in violation of basic liberties and of the United Nations Charter, applicants for and incumbents in UN secretariat positions would be screened , without their knowledge, by US agents. Although directed in the first instance against American citi-zens-who, numbering about 2,000, then constituted approximately half of the UN headquarters personnel-the influence of this clandestine agreement extended to UN employees of other nationali-ties, and permeated UN specialized agencies abroad. The agreement was an attempt to formalize a policy that had already been well established: a State Department policy aimed at excluding committed internationalists from the international civil service and aligning that service with partisan US attitudes.3

In 1952, on the basis of confidential information supplied by the United States Government , Lie dismissed three American secretariat employees who had invoked the Fifth Amendment before a Senate subcommittee on internal security. Seven other American employees, who had done the same, were placed on compulsory leave with pay. 4

In 1983, the American Deputy UN Ambassador told other UN members that if they wanted to move UN headquarters out of the United States, the Reagan administration would do nothing to stop them. Said Charles Lichenstein: We will put no impediments in your way. The members of the US mission will be down at the docks waving you farewell as you sail into the sunset. 5

CHAPTER 21 : Eavesdropping on the Planet

Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it.. .There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at

any given moment.. .You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

George Orwell, 1984

George didnt have it quite right about the darkness. Night-vision technology is becoming less science-fictionish even as you read this. And he wrote of one country, Oceania. A large country to be sure, but certainly not the entire world. Could he have imagined how it would be only sixteen years further into the future?

Can people in the year 2000 imagine a greater invasion of privacy on all of earth, in all of history?

Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky, the National Security Agency (NSA) sucks it all up: fax, home phone, cellular phone, email, telex...satellite transmissions, fiber-optic communica-tions traffic, microwave links...voice, text, images...if it runs on electromagnetic energy, NSA is there, with high, high tech. Seven days a week. Twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps billions of messages sucked up each day. Who knows how many? No one escapes. Not presidents, prime ministers, the UN Secretary-General, the pope, the Queen of England, transnational corporation CEOs, friend, foe, your Aunt Lena...if god has a phone, its being monitored...maybe your dog isnt being tapped. The oceans will not protect you. American submarines have been attaching tapping pods to deep underwater cables for decades.

Under a system codenamed ECHELON-launched in the 1970s to spy on Soviet satellite communications-the NSA and its (very) junior partners in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada operate a network of massive, highly automated interception stations, covering the globe amongst them. In multiple ways, each of the countries involved is breaking its own laws, those of other countries, and international law-the absence of court-issued warrants permitting surveillance of named individuals is but one example. But who is to stop them?

In 1999, the House Intelligence Committee of the US Congress sought internal NSA documents about its compliance with the law that prohibits it from deliberately eavesdropping on Americans, either in the United States or overseas, unless the Agency can establish probable cause to believe that they are agents of a foreign government committing espionage or other crimes. NSA stonewalled the committee. 1

Apart from specifically-targeted individuals and institutions, the ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. Every intercepted message-all the embassy cables, the business deals, the sex talk, the birthday greetings-is searched for keywords, which could be anything the searchers think might be of interest. Computers can listen to telephone calls and recognize when