Posted on 02/16/2005 5:21:47 PM PST by Coleus
We Lose If LOST Wins The Law of the Sea Treaty is not just a bad idea; it is a very dangerous legal document that heralds a major step into world government and grants vast powers to the UN.
by William F. Jasper
Some bad ideas just keep coming back again and again, like a vampire that hasnt been properly disposed of with the wooden stake to the heart. The United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is just such a creature. Pronounced dead several times over the past couple of decades, it was largely forgotten except by its internationalist sponsors. It has been resuscitated and now stands poised for action in the U.S. Senate.
The Law of the Sea Treaty is not just a bad idea; it is a very dangerous, concrete thing, a revolutionary legal document that heralds a major step into world government and grants vast powers to the United Nations. All of the blather, bombast and assurances of its supporters notwithstanding, theres no way to get around that fact. The treaty does create new jurisdictions and governing structures with real powers that threaten our national sovereignty. Among other things, LOST establishes an International Seabed Authority (referred to as ISA, or "the Authority"), a new UN agency to control the minerals and other wealth of the sea floor. This also means granting the ISA control over two thirds of the Earths surface no trifling matter. LOST designates this vast, watery commons as "the Area."
Article 136 of the treaty declares: "The Area and its resources are the common heritage of mankind." And Article 137 informs us: "All rights in the resources of the Area are vested in mankind as a whole, on whose behalf the Authority shall act." Thats certainly reassuring: The UN kleptocracy that has given us the massive Iraqi oil-for-food rip-off, and that has proven to be a bottomless sinkhole of corruption for nearly 60 years, is to administer the wealth of the oceans for the benefit of "mankind."
In case you didnt know, "the Authority" is already up and running; the ISA was launched in 1994, when the 60th nation ratified LOST. Like all UN-formulated entities, the ISA mimics the UN, with a sprawling bureaucracy and a confusing, Byzantine system of geopolitically weighted voting and representation. For the past decade, the ISA has been growing like The Blob. Headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, it is comprised of a Secretariat, Assembly, Council, Legal and Technical Commission, Finance Committee, and the usual proliferation of committees, commissions, panels, task forces, etc. For dispute resolution there is an International Tribunal ("the Tribunal") in Hamburg, Germany. Or, if you prefer, you may opt for the International Court of Justice at The Hague, where Judge Shi Juiyong of Communist China sits as President. Some choice!
There are now 145 member nations, the only major holdout being the United States. As with the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol and other efforts by the UN and one-world elites to install what they euphemistically call "global governance," U.S. resistance to joining this new collective regime is being portrayed as contempt for "the world community" and disrespect for "the rule of law."
The Law of the Sea Treaty opened for signatures at the UN in 1982. At the UNs 20th anniversary celebration of that event in 2002, Koreas Tommy Koh, president of the 3rd UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, declared that LOST is nothing less than "a comprehensive constitution for the oceans" covering "every aspect of the uses and resources of the sea." Its difficult to get more comprehensive than that. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at the same event, echoed President Koh, referring to the treaty as "a constitution for the oceans." Acting President of the UN General Assembly Clifford S. Mamba of Swaziland may have unintentionally let the cat out of the bag on that occasion, declaring that the treaty represented a major effort to achieve a "just and equitable international economic order."
Back in 1974, you may recall, a raucous UN General Assembly led by Fidel Castro and the Soviet-directed "Non-Aligned Movement" voted for a Marxist manifesto entitled "A New International Economic Order," or N.I.E.O. The Law of the Sea was a key element of the N.I.E.O. scheme for global socialist wealth distribution. It still is, though its advocates at the UN have learned that they make more progress toward their goal if they are less strident and more honeyed in their utterances.
Under LOST, the UN will finally have the tax and regulatory powers it has lusted after for so long, together with a commercial income stream, independent of the purse strings of national legislatures. Any entrepreneur wishing to explore or mine the ocean floor would have to pay the Authority and provide technical assistance to "the Enterprise," the ISAs own commercial ocean mining corporation. Articles 192 through 237 are loaded with environmental legalese that will provide UN globocrats and their NGO allies at Greenpeace and the Sierra Club with previously undreamt-of opportunities for regulating not only commercial, recreational and naval shipping, but also land sources of marine pollution, such as agriculture, manufacturing, mining, construction, logging and urban waste management.
If you havent already done so, now would be a good time to tell your senators to send this fanged fossil back to the grave permanently.
We must end U.S. involvement in this corrupt organization of tyrants, socialists, and America-haters. Get the United Nations out of the U.S. and get the U.S. out of the United Nations!
And while you are at it tell them to get the USA OUT of the United Nations' madhouse/cesspool. H.R. 1146 will withdraw the USA from the United Nations madhouse/cesspool. Go to: http://www.getusout.org/un/index.html . Then go lobby at http://www.conservativeusa.org/megalink.htm . Email President Bush at president@whitehouse.gov . White House comment line is 202-456-1111. The United Nations is a corrupt disgrace and it is time for the USA to WITHDRAW from and defund the United Nations. Please tell your senators, congressmen and everyone you know to support H.R. 1146 which would WITHDRAW the USA from the United Nations, prohibit US funds going to the UN and prohibit US troops serving under UN command. H.R 1146 is the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. The whole mission of the UN is to take power, money and national sovereignty from the USA. Thus the United States must withdraw from and defund the UN, a worthless organization, and if we go, if we are lucky, the whole thing will implode.
Did you watch any of the confirmation hearing of John Bolton today?
If not, you might be interested in knowing that he mentioned, when asked, if he would be in favor of the LOST treaty---he said that the administration was for it, so he would be also-
Bolton also mentioned, though, that he hadn't read it...
Lost? Lost rules! too bad about Boone being dead, but Jack is gonna open a can o' whupass on Locke.
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