Posted on 06/14/2006 1:22:02 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk
Author Jerome Corsi and Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., will be guests tomorrow on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show to discuss the White House's effort to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada that could lead to a North American union, despite having no authorization from Congress.
Corsi and Tancredo will join Liddy for the entire 11 a.m. hour, Eastern time, and take calls from listeners.
Corsi reported this week that Bush administration working groups have not disclosed the results of their work despite two years of massive effort within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
The groups, working under the North American Free Trade Agreement office in the Department of Commerce, are to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005.
The trilateral agreement, signed as a joint declaration not submitted to Congress for review, led to the creation of the SPP office within the Department of Commerce.
Geri Word, who heads the SPP office, told WND the work had not been disclosed because, "We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public."
WND can find no specific congressional legislation authorizing the SPP working groups nor any congressional committees taking charge of oversight.
Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.
Nobody, but again you miss the point.
Because, as I've mentioned to you a million times, it hasn't affected his voting record as it is SOLIDLY conservative.
And why do you hate people who teach our children? Why do you hate people with Italian surnames?
Maybe I did, but no posts were removed. So you're free to refute and debate any comment posted.
Hope so. The locker room towel-snapping routine really gets old.
One last question... if this is the gold standard the mods use to determine whether a post crosses the line, why would anybody ever get banned?
Tin foil hat nonsense.
His voting record on pro-life issues stands for itself and is unassailable. Pro-life groups endorse him and give him 100% ratings, pro-abortion groups hate him and give him 0% ratings. Despite the facts in front of your face on this, you choose to go with whacko aspersions cast by the likes of the Tancredo Trashers on this forum.
People get banned for a variety of reasons, Jim can track the ip addresses of trolls, blantant lib trolls, retreads, anti-freepers, etc. We don't ban people for their idology, unless it's a liberal viewpoint. The conservative movement isn't black and white, it's a wide spectrum of people, and we try to imbrace them all. Some are too far right, some are too far left, and we try to balance the remander. The bottom line is, there is no 'standard', and we'll do what we do to keep FR the premium forum on the internet. Sure we make errors, and try to correct them. With 1/4 million posters, we're going to make errors.
Well, President Bush believes it--he's the one pushing the policies.
Especially when the targets of this particular bunch are always conservatives or conservative ideology.
I do not think LOST is germane to this discussion and I will address that in a moment, but as my opinion is vital for you, I understand why you would need to hear my opinion of it.
I was aware of the issue some years ago and I remember that I was supposed to be very upset about it. But to be honest, it was so long ago, I forget the issues involved in it all.
So if you really want my opinion, you can find a current article, published in a reasonable website, something that addresses the issue and doesn't engage in exaggeration or overuse of adjectives, and ping me and I will comment.
I suspect very strongly that you will not be able to do this, which pretty much sums up what I think about LOST: Not much.
Not only that, but True™ Conservatives®, to boot!
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight........President Bush is "pushing" a on e nation, comprised of the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Will he then be proclaimed EMPEROR, or just PRESIDENT OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE? hehehehehehehehehehehehe
If he were content to be a legislator, it would not be an issue, no. Presidents get, for good reason, a lot more scrutiny of their records and not just their votes in Congress. For good reason, too.
Ahem. That will be me. Emperor Amishdude I. Sic semper tyrannosaurus, baby.
Oooooooooooooooooooo....what fun! :-)
Of course it's germane. We're discussing the loss of American sovereignty to foreigners...and few things hand more power to the tinpot bureaucrats at the UN more than LOST. Whether you agree with the Bush Administration that this is a good thing is very pertinent.
So if you really want my opinion, you can find a current article, published in a reasonable website, something that addresses the issue and doesn't engage in exaggeration or overuse of adjectives, and ping me and I will comment.
I suspect very strongly that you will not be able to do this, which pretty much sums up what I think about LOST: Not much.
Why? Is this another giveaway of sovereignty that the Administration doesn't really want talked about much?
Let's start with the UN's own site:
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/index.htm
Then, you can look at the Heritage Foundation's site (how we doing on credibility?):
http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm470.cfm
LOST is a regurgitation of the socialist plan killed by President Reagan more than two decades ago.
Reagan's Objections
Former President Reagan's first objection to the Treaty was the Principle of the "Common Heritage of Mankind," which dictates that oceanic resources should be shared among all mankind and cannot be claimed by any one nation or people. In order to achieve this goal, the Treaty creates the International Seabed Authority ("Authority") to regulate and exploit mineral resources.
It requires a company to submit an application fee of $500,000 (now $250,000), as well as a bonus site for the Authority to utilize for its own mining efforts.
Additionally, the corporation must pay an annual fee of $1 million, as well as a percentage of its profits (increasing annually up to 7%), and must agree to share mining and navigational technology--thereby ensuring that opportunities aren't restricted to more technologically advanced countries.
The decision to grant or to withhold mining permits is decided by the Authority, which consists disproportionately of underdeveloped countries. Technology-sharing is no longer mandatory, however, there are remaining "principles" to guide its use and distribution.
Additionally, the Council has been restructured so that the United States has a permanent seat, and developed countries can create a blocking vote.
Secondly, former President Reagan believed that the Treaty would restrict the world's supply of minerals. The Treaty was originally designed to limit the exploitation of heavy minerals in order to protect the mineral sales of land-locked, developing nations. This is no longer a severe limitation, because production limits to preserve land-based mining have been removed.
The third--and still valid--objection is that mandatory dispute resolution restricts autonomy. Either a U.N. court or tribunal must mandate maritime issues involving fisheries, marine environmental protection, and preservation, research, and navigation. A country may opt out if the dispute involves maritime boundaries, military, or limited law enforcement activities. Submitting to external jurisdiction creates an uncomfortable precedent.
Furthermore, it weakens the U.S. argument of autonomy when it refuses to submit to the International Criminal Court. Additionally, a country must petition to be excluded from mandatory jurisdiction requirements.
You're either a conservative or you're not. No embellishments needed.
How about CATO, which is hardly a paragon of strong borders:
http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-12-04.html
March 12, 2004
Sink the Law of the Sea Treaty
by Doug Bandow
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he served as a deputy representative to the third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea.
President Bush has demonstrated his willingness to stand alone internationally. Yet for little better reason than go-along, get-along multilateralism, the administration is now pushing the Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, which was just unanimously voted out of Richard Lugar's Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At a committee meeting in February, Lugar noted a wide range of support from American interests "for U.S. accession to be completed swiftly." However, the treaty is a flawed document, and there would be serious costs from accepting it.
The Law of the Sea Treaty originated in the 1970s as part of the United Nations' redistributionist agenda known as the "New International Economic Order." The convention covers such issues as fishing and navigation, but the controversy arose mainly over seabed mining. In essence, the Law of the Sea Treaty was designed to transfer wealth and technology from the industrialized states to the Third World.
Two decades ago, President Ronald Reagan ignored criticism of American unilateralism and refused to sign the treaty. U.S. leadership caused the Europeans and even the Soviet Union to stay out. Many Third World states eventually acknowledged the treaty's many flaws.
But treaties attract diplomats as lights attract moths. The first Bush and Clinton administrations worked to "fix" the treaty, leading to a revised agreement in 1994. Washington signed, leading to a cascade of ratifications from other countries. GOP gains in Congress, however, dissuaded the Clinton administration from pushing for ratification. Now George W. Bush has stepped in where Bill Clinton feared to tread.
Unfortunately, the revised treaty retains many of its original flaws. There is still a complicated multinational bureaucracy that sounds like an excerpt from George Orwell's "1984": At its center is the International Seabed Authority. The Authority (as it calls itself) supervises a mining subsidiary called the Enterprise, ruled by an Assembly, Council, and various commissions and committees. Mining approval would be highly politicized and could discriminate against American operators. Companies that are allowed to mine would owe substantial fees to the Authority and be required to do surveys for the Enterprise, their government-subsidized competitor.
A mandatory transfer of mining technologies to Third World companies has been watered down. However, "sponsoring states" -- that is, governments of nations where mining companies are located-would have to facilitate such transfers if the Enterprise and Third World competitors are "unable to obtain" necessary equipment commercially. Depending on the whims of the Authority, ensuring the "cooperation" of private miners could look very much like mandatory transfers.
The Authority, though so far of modest size, would suffer from the same perverse incentives that afflict the U.N., since the United States would be responsible for 25 percent of the budget but easily outmaneuvered. Proposals by industrialized signatories to limit their contributions have so far received an unfriendly reception. Still, when it signed the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Clinton administration said there was no reason to worry, because the treaty proclaims that "all organs and subsidiary bodies to be established under the Convention and this Agreement shall be cost-effective." Right. Presumably just as cost-effective as the U.N.
The treaty's mining scheme is flawed in its very conception. Although many people once thought untold wealth would leap from the seabed, land-based sources have remained cheaper than expected, and scooping up manganese nodules and other resources from the ocean floor is logistically daunting. There is no guarantee that seabed mining will ever be commercially viable.
Yet this has not dimmed the enthusiasm of the Authority. Like the U.N., it generates lots of reports and paper and obsesses over trivia. Protecting "the emblem, the official seal and the name" of the International Seabed Authority has been a matter of some concern. Among the crises the Authority has confronted: In April 2002 the Jamaican government turned off its air conditioning, necessitating "urgent consultations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade." A year later Jamaica used the same tactic in an ongoing battle over Authority payments for its facility. Oh yes, half of the Authority members are behind on their dues.
Were seabed mining ever to thrive, a transparent system for recognizing mine sites and resolving disputes would be helpful. But the Authority's purpose isn't to be helpful. It is to redistribute resources to irresponsible Third World governments with a sorry history of squandering abundant foreign aid.
This redistributionist bent is reflected in the treaty's call for financial transfers to developing states and even "peoples who have not attained full independence or other self-governing status"-code for groups such as the PLO. Whatever changes the treaty has undergone, a constant has been Third World pressure for financial transfers. Three voluntary trust funds were established to aid developing countries. Alas, few donors have come forward to subsidize the participation of, say, sub-Saharan African states in the development of ocean mining. Thus, the Authority has had to dip into its own budget to pay into the funds.
Why, given all this, was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee eager to sign on? The treaty is not without benefits. Provisions regarding the environment, resource management, and rights of transit generally are positive, though many reflect what is now customary international law, even in the absence of U.S. ratification. Lugar notes that "law and practice with respect to regulation of activities off our shores is already generally compatible with the Convention." This would seem to be an equally strong argument for not ratifying the treaty.
Most influential, though, may be support from the U.S. Navy, which is enamored of the treaty's guarantee of navigational freedom. Not that such freedom is threatened now: The Russian navy is rusting in port, China has yet to develop a blue water capability, and no country is impeding U.S. transit, commercial or military.
At the same time, some ambiguous provisions may impinge on freedoms U.S. shipping now enjoys. In Senate testimony last fall, State Department legal adviser William H. Taft IV noted the importance of conditioning acceptance "upon the understanding that each Party has the exclusive right to determine which of its activities are 'military activities' and that such determination is not subject to review." Whether other members will respect that claim is not at all certain. Admiral Michael G. Mullen, the vice chief of naval operations, acknowledges the possibility that a Law of the Sea tribunal could rule adversely and harm U.S. "operational planning and activities, and our security."
Moreover, at a time when Washington is combating lawless terrorism, it should be evident that the only sure guarantee of free passage on the seas is the power of the U.S. Navy, combined with friendly relations with the states, few in number, that sit astride important sea lanes. Coastal nations make policy based on perceived national interest, not abstract legal norms. Remember the luckless USS Pueblo in 1968? International law did not prevent North Korea from seizing the intelligence ship; approval of the Law of the Sea Treaty would have offered the Pueblo no additional protection. America was similarly unaided by international law in its 2001 confrontation with China over our downed EP-3 surveillance plane.
Nor has signing the Law of the Sea Treaty prevented Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, North Korea, Pakistan, and others from making ocean claims deemed excessive by others. Indeed, last October Adm. Mullen warned that the benefits he believed to derive from treaty ratification did not "suggest that countries' attempts to restrict navigation will cease once the United States becomes a party to the Law of the Sea Convention."
Critics of the U.S. refusal to sign in 1982 predicted ocean chaos, but not once has an American ship been denied passage. No country has had either the incentive or the ability to interfere with U.S. shipping. And if they had, the treaty would have been of little help. In 1998 Law of the Sea Treaty supporters agitated for immediate ratification because several special exemptions for the United States were set to expire; Washington did not ratify, and no one seems to have noticed. Now Lugar worries that Washington could "forfeit our seat at the table of institutions that will make decisions about the use of the oceans." Yet last October Assistant Secretary of State John F. Turner told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that America has "had considerable success" in asserting "its oceans interests as a nonparty to the Convention."
Law of the Sea Treaty proponents talk grandly of the need to "restore U.S. leadership," but real leadership can mean saying no as well as yes. Ronald Reagan was right to torpedo the Law of the Sea Treaty two decades ago. Creating a new oceans bureaucracy is no more attractive today.
This article was published in The Weekly Standard, week of March 15, 2004. Copyright (c) 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard. All Rights Reserved.
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