Posted on 10/16/2005 8:06:23 PM PDT by Coleus
Pirates of the High Seas: Robbing with the Law of the Sea Treaty
Study urges Senate to reject the treaty as not in the American interest
WASHINGTON - A new study by the Cato Institute argues forcefully against the US Senate ratifying an international measure that would allow the United Nations (UN) to subject navigation and seabed to questionable international control.
According to the study, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which the UN has been urging the US to pass since the 1980s, would discourage resource and mineral development and wouldn't help the US and allies to intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction.
Supporters claim that the treaty is necessary to ensure the rule of law on the high seas and would help to fight the war on global terrorism. However, in "Don't Resurrect the Law of the Sea Treaty," Doug Bandow, a Cato senior fellow, disputes such arguments.
He says: "Adherence to LOST might constrain Washington's ability to intercept weapons shipments that are problematic, but legal, under existing international law. After all, any proliferation policy treats nations differently based upon a subjective assessment of the stability and intention of a particular government. LOST makes no such distinctions."
On the development front, Bandow contends that the benefits of signing LOST are so insignificant that they are "offset by its convoluted approach to property rights." He maintains that since free markets have greatly improved the world's poorest countries, adopting LOST would to be a return to a collectivist and redistributionist tradition and would essentially eliminate ocean property rights.
Treating the seabed as the "common heritage of mankind" would discourage resource development by private investors and would result in burdensome regulations and additional bureaucracy for developers.
Funding for the International Seabed Authority, a subsidiary agency of the UN, is also a big problem, says Bandow. "The United States, naturally, would be expected to provide the largest share of the ISA's budget, 25 percent to start. ...The ISA's budget is modest, but the revised agreement changed none of the underlying institutional incentives that bias virtually every international organization, most obviously the UN itself, towards extravagance."
bump to the top BTTT!!
What is the matter with the brains of American citizens? What would induce a single American --- no matter how leftist --- to support this handing over of power to the same group who brought us the Oil For Food program and the genocide in Rawanda?
LOST ping!
PLEASE READ THIS STORY:
"Opportunity Knocking: Defeat Law Of The Sea Treaty"
By Phyllis Schlafly
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/feb05/05-02-09.html
Another looming nightmare. Pres. Bush needs some convincing that L.O.S.T. isn't in America's best interests.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/wm470.cfm
http://www.freedomalliance.org/view_article.php?a_id=505
LOST is as good for America as Kyoto was.
LOST PING!
Old resurrected NWO crap. I saw Jeff Sessions on TV say that the LOST would never see the light of day if he could help it. More power to him.
A couple of Admirals are supporting this I understand. Why? Doesn't the U.S. Navy already go where it pleases? How would you improve on that?
"If it says U.N. U.N. U.N.
On the label label label
You should chunk it chunk it chunk it
Off the table table table"
To be fair and balanced, here are some voices in favor:
http://www.brookings.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb137.htm
http://lugar.senate.gov/sfrc/sea.html
They all need replacing. Every damn one of them is trying as hard as they can to get this NWO in place before the people know what happens.
Clean out the House and the Senate before we have to have a Tea Party to protect our children from Communism.
Take whatever Brookings says about UN treaties with a large grain of salt. Brookings advocates eliminating our borders and creating the western hemispheric trade zone, per the opinion of the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Perhaps Americans are waking up--- see the president's recent polling numbers.
The fact that RINO Sen Lugar is endorsing the LOST treaty makes it even less appealing. As I understand it, President Reagan rejected the LOST treaty outright as being harmful and detrimental to U.S. interests, and it was soundly defeated in the U.S. Senate in the 80's. I think this is more crap from President Bush trying to appease the lefties and global multiculturalists!
Holy sheite. I took a course in international law in law school and the instructor had helped work on this treaty. Half the course was on the subject. If we hand this stuff off to an international body, we deserve every bad thing that results.
Lugar is an outright traitor. It's just a matter of when this passes, but when it does, the global shipping companies who are forced to pay tribute to the UN for using the straits of Malacca will be very sorry they didn't fight while they had a chance.
My condolences. That prof should have been reported. Just a schill for Globo-Marxism.
Bump! Ever since Harriet Meiers nomination (who he has still kept on at the Counsels office), and UNOCAL (where he was obviously ready to bend over for China one more time) and the Dubai Debacle... it has been a free-fall. And the Illegal Alien Issue has really tanked him. And while some polls are claiming a recovery due to the usual over-grasping liberal misbehavior at the NYT, a more-telling poll today suggests W's support has collapsed to 24%...
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