Posted on 08/07/2005 6:58:15 AM PDT by antisocial
U.S. sovereignty slip-sliding away
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 6, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Henry Lamb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
It began in 1994. All the attention was focused on the new WTO emerging from the Uruguay round of GATT negotiations. Little attention was paid to the Summit of the Americas meeting in Miami. The assembled ministers agreed to create a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and that it would be completed by January 2005, entering into force by December 2005.
For ten years, 34 governments have been conducting negotiating sessions throughout the Americas, fashioning a new trade agreement that will swallow up both NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and, quite literally, much of the U.S. Constitution.
The final draft agreement addresses every aspect of trade in the Western Hemisphere and requires that every dimension of the agreement be "WTO compliant." Chapter II contains two provisions that should disqualify the document immediately from any serious consideration by the U.S. Congress.
Article 4.2 contains this language:
4.2. The Parties shall ensure that their laws, regulations and administrative procedures are consistent with the obligations of this Agreement. The rights and obligations under this Agreement are the same for all the Parties, whether Federal or unitary States, including the different levels and branches of government. ... This language requires that existing laws – at every level of government – be conformed to the requirements of the agreement. It requires that all future laws conform as well. The effect of this agreement takes away law-making power from duly elected representatives of the people and gives it to unelected bureaucrats, most of whom represent foreign nations.
This language is consistent with the WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA, all of which were approved by Congress. Both NAFTA and the WTO have required revisions of dozens of domestic laws. CAFTA will do the same, and the FTAA will continue to take away laws that the peoples' representatives have enacted.
This process is transforming the meaning of national sovereignty. Article 3(g) stipulates that the agreement is governed by the principles of "sovereign equality." This is a term that arises from the 1995 publication of "Our Global Neighborhood," the report of the U.N.-funded Commission on Global Governance. In Chapter II, under the heading Democracy and Legitimacy (page 66), a lengthy discussion proclaims that the concept of national sovereignty must be revised. Ideas are introduced such as:
"... countries are having to accept that in certain fields, sovereignty has to be executed collectively ..." (page 70) "... there is a need to weigh a state's right to autonomy against its people's right to security." (page 71)
"It is time to think about self-determination in the emerging context of a global neighborhood rather than the traditional context of a world of separate states." (page 337)
Thus, the concept of "sovereign equality" emerges to replace the concept of national sovereignty.
National sovereignty embraces the belief that every nation has equal sovereignty – independent and supreme authority over its territory. "Sovereign equality," on the other hand, is the belief that every nation has equal sovereign authority – under a common, or collective, supreme authority. The FTAA represents this supreme authority in the Western Hemisphere, in much the same way as the European Union seeks to become the supreme authority in Europe, both of which are subservient to the WTO, which functions within the United Nations' family of international organizations.
These two provisions alone should be enough to scrap this agreement. The negotiators have accepted this language, as has the administration. Congress is the only hope Americans have to reject this entangling agreement. Congressmen will not read this language, however. They will listen, instead, to the lobbyists, the arm-twisting messengers from the administration and editorials from the major media.
They will be told that the agreement is an expansion of free trade and that failure to approve the agreement will label the U.S. as isolationist, a rebel in the global neighborhood. These arguments have been successful with NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO. Ordinary people know better.
Ordinary people still have time to be heard on this agreement. Ordinary people elect these representatives, and politicians are dependent upon them for re-election. Ordinary people are the only power on earth greater than the power of the U.S. government. If ordinary people fail to defend their freedom, no one will defend it for them.
The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas is an extraordinary erosion of freedom, for this nation and for every citizen.
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Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of Sovereignty International.
NAFTA and GATT have already been signed into law, if FTAA is ever signed it will be too late.
You are right about the oath being forever! However as Ben said "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately" This has allready been done those inclined to liberty are fractured in various splinters
You have the Libs vs The Repubs,ect all! Time is on the tyrants side as the patriots can be picked off one by one while the ones doing the picking get to release the "facts" to the eager press that gobble up any info that is given to them that fits their beliefs.
If anyone in this thred has not yet read EFAD (http://matthewbracken.web.aplus.net/) you should it is a virtual blueprint of the tactics and motiviations that the North Amercian Union Folks will use
Nice try. I find it very illuminating that those who cannot refute an argument with facts, always fall back on their liberal tricks of of attempting to ridicule the idea.
You didn't answer my question are you a real Texan or a yankee import?
Is this some sort of a "liberal trick?"
No, in his case,I was just curious:>)
I couldn't get the link to work.
Got it. Former Rep. Portman is a dissembler because he works for the government. Some yob named Henry Lamb is incontrovertible because he writes for WorldNetDaily.
Still waiting for an example of "unelected international bureaucrats mak[ing] decisions that our government cannot overrule." Anyone? How about you, Mr. Lamb?
[crickets]
Bookmark
The CAFTA reobligates the US to the WTO. The WTO allows countries to use "offers" and "requests" to get around our immigration laws and increase or eliminate caps on certain visas
Your argument is that CAFTA doesn't explicitly say that it changes US rights to regulate, but being law student with a Pell grant from a leftist University, I am quite sure you are aware that language from our government that
talks about "legitimate standards" --who decides what these are?
"must be non-discriminatory and transparent", so we cannot discriminate against DR sugar plantations that do not meet our health standards, because we would be discriminating against them for having lower health standards,
"disguised barriers to trade" oh boy is this a wide-open way for foreign countries to impose their will on the American people. Any and every attempt at maintain our standards can be declared a "barrier to trade"
These assertions by the USTR with a vested interested passing these "free trade" agreements cannot be substantiated, but there is mounting evidence that claims of "barriers to trade" and discrimination, have resulted in the will of the American people being ignored.
"Still waiting for an example of "unelected international bureaucrats mak[ing] decisions that our government cannot overrule." Anyone? How about you, Mr. Lamb?"
Post#30 gave the specific example did you read it?
By the way, Henry Lamb is chairman of Sovereignty International their website is http://www. soverignty.net
Sorry I don't know why that link didn't post right
http://www.soverignty.net
I don't think it will be a numbers game. Santa knows best.
Forget about free trade etc., American tech education is three years behind the rest of the industrialized world, and high tech jobs are growing abroad, not here. If we want jobs in finance and services, this is the place to be, but money can go abroad easily and the jobs can go with it. We can make a living for the time being running restaurants and cleaning people's houses, but all that is a bubble without basic and high tech manufacture. They say the industrial sector is strong, but what is the nature of this manufacturing?
If you are going to be carrying water for the democrats, you better be reading off the same page as Hillary.
Bush's Justice Dept has to administer the law.
Their track record on immigration seems make that a rather questionable absolute.
Or, maybe you are one of those who thinks Bush should write new immigration laws and ues his own money to implement them.
Every illegal immigrant that got amnesty was a failure to administer an immigrtion law. Are you telling me the Justice Department has no discretion as to which cases they chose to prosecute?
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