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Posted on 12/13/2001 9:54:57 AM PST by farmfriend
And now for citation, a completely shameless plug for my book:
The Convention on Nature Protection must be read to be believed. In his summary report to a distracted Senate, Executive Report No. 5, April 3 1941, Secretary of State Cordell Hull misrepresented its virtually unlimited scope.
From the Preamble: The Governments of the American Republics, wishing to protect and preserve in their natural habitat representatives of all species and genera of their native flora and fauna, including migratory birds, in sufficient numbers and over areas extensive enough to assure them from becoming extinct through any agency within man's control;
After going on at considerable length about wilderness areas and national parks, they come back with this language in Article V Section 1: The Contracting Governments agree to adopt, or to propose such adoption to their respective appropriate law-making bodies, suitable laws and regulations for the protection and preservation of flora and fauna within their national boundaries but not included in the national parks, national reserves, nature monu-ments, or strict wilderness reserves referred to in Article II hereof.
All species, all land, no limits to the commitment. Mr. (Cordell) Hull (Roosevelt' Secretary of State, "Father of the United Nations") made no mention of the scope of Article V in his summary (to the Senate). It was he who, upon Roosevelt's approval, convened the Planning Commission that created the United Nations soon after the adoption of this treaty. It is a document that exceeds the constitutional authority of the government of the United States.
It can't work either. This treaty is contrary to natural law.
Nature is a dynamic, adaptive, and competitive system. Under changing conditions, some species go extinct, indeed, for natural selection to operate, they must. The problem arises because human agency and influence is so pervasive that one can always attribute its loss to being within man’s control. When humans ask, “Which ones lose?” the treaty specifies, “None,” and demands no limit to the commitment to save them all. This of course destroys the ability to act as agent to save anything, much less objectively evaluate how best to expend our resources to do the best that can be done.
The demand of this treaty is a mutually exclusive logic, based upon an assumption that is a Type II error. It cannot be logically satisfied.
The problem with this suit is that the Convention, supposedly the supreme law of the land, states "IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT" which surely does not include hatcheries. In that regard, I think the recent decision that includes hatchery fish on the grounds that they are genetically idnetical is at risk of being overturned and that relying upon it as a legal strategy is extremely perilous if not counterproductive.
The Constitution limited the powers of both State and Federal governments because they operate in inherent conflict of interest with the rights of the people. Action to acquire control of the use of property at variance to its purported purpose demonstrates an interest. Because government derives power from controlling the use of property, it cannot simultaneously act as an impartial agent of the people, maintain the land in health and productivity, and serve its own interests. The key to the Strategy of the Commoners is to demonstrate that interest and set the government and the landowner on their Constitutional bases, citizen and servant, in a market serving the demand for managing ecosystem health.
One of those competitors is breaking the rules.
Instead of going broke entangled in a regulatory Tar Baby, isn’t it time that landowners recognized the eventual outcome of the regulatory game and go for the jugular of the civic beast instead trying to cooperate? Should they not question the purpose of the system and its efficacy? This is, after all, about the health of the planet, as the activists are so fond of reminding us, even though their sponsors seem somewhat forgetful once the land is in inventory.
Private property owners are capable of operating in an objective interest as long as the management system is aligned with natural law (one of the beauties of InsCert). Why, then, should we tolerate socialist tyranny and organized crime, fraudulently claiming an interest in habitat management?
Tolerate it no longer. In defense of ecosystem function, in defense of liberty, and in defense of natural law, the property owner must take the Moral High Ground of Environmen-talism back from government and activist lawyers. They have failed. The key is to set up businesses to manage the resource, and when these thugs get in the way, cite these very laws against their interested progenitors, until the laws are themselves, unnecessary or totally discredited.
Private landowners do a better job of managing their property than govern-ment. They are slowly sinking under the weight of regulatory require-ments based upon mere speculation. When the costs of compliance deprive prop-erty of value, the landowner sells. The buyer is often operating as a proxy for those with a profit interest in controlling the use of the property. That loop carries the potential for prosecution for racketeering and fraud.
It is important to emphasize that there are many honest, helpful, sincere, and diligent people in these bureaucracies. They really care about their mission, and try to find the best solutions of which they think they are capable. They perceive themselves to be just as stuck in the Tar Baby as any landowner.
However, if civil servants just "follow orders" or blind ideology without considering the balance of risks and the warnings of landowners, at that point they become morally culpable and ethically complicit for the choices that destroy their good intentions. It is an individual, moral choice that betrays the true purpose of civic environmental regulation.
If government is neither a disinterested nor a competent agent for the public demand for ecosystem health, who is?
Private landowners, free to market that insured, certified, and guaranteed management product to the public for a profit, ARE objectively disinterested in producing a return on the investment in the health of that land. They will have invested their own time, money, and education into scientific process development to extend the limits of ecosystem management. They will have a record of stewardship and proof of that record.
Private property owners do a better job of caring for habitat than gov-ernment. They can do it for less money and make a profit in the process.
All they need is independent verification of the data that demonstrates that superior record to stop the public theft of the economic value of those goods.
Every tool that the government might use as evidence of possible damage to ecosystems can be used against them. Government will charge taxes instead of paying them. It will waste resources instead of improving them. It destroys the wealth that supplies the revenue to fund protection of ecosystem resources. Government programs operate on chronically insufficient funding. Why do they get sole right to dictate the manner of the use of the land? Do they know what they are doing? Do they comply with their own rules?
These laws are tools. Property owners need to learn to use them. What do they need to prove the case?
Validated data. The data that come as a byproduct of the best practice process builds the knowledge that is the way to civil power.
If the Natural Resources Defense Council or the Center for Biological Diver-sity sues government with the threat of a regulatory Briar Patch, go for the jugular and join their suit as a superior steward with an alternative plan. The civic management system will inevitably make enormous mistakes, if they have not already done so. Offer the alternative as a management contract taking all public goods including tax revenue, into account.
If you need a resource, just remember: the opposition has enormous research tools available that are already networked that describe in gory detail the legal language you will need. The activists have enormous resources on their web sites. If you have a question regarding precedents that you might invoke to protect your land from government and NGOs, send them an email with the request. You are the one protecting the ecosystem from civic ignorance.
Can you be more efficient than the Nature Conservancy? They may have money, but they have to hire much of the work, house people, and travel. They are subject to suit for unfair competition and illegal restraint of trade. If there is competition for their volunteers, what will they pay? Their overhead is structured as a charity with lots of top-heavy legal expertise. They are not structured to focus upon delivery of competitive land management and restoration. Perhaps they may wish to make an honest profit instead of relying upon the government?
The court must allow standing if your business is to improve the conditions for endangered species. Meanwhile, you know that the interests of the NGOs ARE economic. Betray that economic interest that the NGOs are serving a profit interest for their supposedly non-profit benefactors. Find a DA with some cojones to file a RICO complaint. Support a District Attorney and a sheriff who will enforce the Constitution. File a complaint with the IRS. Collect the citations, network the precedents and 'repeat them over and over.'
And now a final little motivational speech from the epilogue to the same source, exhorting the private property owner to take back these valuable goods as the best agent for the land... (Warning: you may need a hankie)
Enterprise, endeavor, industry... production, hope, pride, and profit...
These are almost lost words. Some people say them with a sneer of disgust and fear, like there must be something wrong with them. Our forebears spoke them with the quiet simplicity that only comes with having conquered their challenges with their humanity intact.
What they did not know, did hurt them: the broken hearts and broken backs accepted in the price of what only freedom can offer. They may not have expected any more from a life of risk, toil, and filth than a better one for their children, but at least they completed their lives with their spirits intact. Sometimes it seems we no longer even start with ours. If there is a principal benefit to a constant flow of immigrants, it is their belief in that truth.
We, the native born, who have supposedly "elevated" our status beyond the level of bitter struggle, have somehow assumed the dual expectations of pros-perity and protection from harm. We seem to have forgotten something, Many, having lived without freedom, need not be reminded. ...with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
We have forgotten that life is not without risk and personal sacrifice in the defense of liberty. For without that risk, our lives are not our own.
Those of us whom have come to believe that by virtue of our birthright as Americans we have some kind of entitlement to peace and prosperity under a protectorate; that we are due a lifestyle to which we wish to become accus-tomed, regardless of the price of liberty, have, in submission to a popular chimera, abased the requirement of vigilance, ignored the value of industry, and abdicated our responsibility to regulate our government, our conduct, our selves. We have adopted an optimistic delusion sold by those to whom we are instructed to entrust our choices: those who would profit on the sale.
The price isn't, "Free!" It is freedom.
There was something in that industrial culture that many of us now miss: The certain expectation of the undiluted blessings and daily satisfactions to be found in the practice of what we wholeheartedly believe is productive work, the conduct of personal integrity, and the shared enterprise of individually-held shares. These personal experiences of internal confidence and the power of will were indeed sullied with the knowledge that prices were being paid by others at the expense of our benefit. Out of an over-blown sense of guilt, and the consequent belief that no one could be trusted, we gave monopoly control of all factors of production to government, a body intrinsically undeserving of that trust. We thus surrendered to a mere idea, without even considering the full array of the options af-forded by a free society under the rule of law. It was a surrender that may yet cost the society itself, and take the planet with it. It was a failure of leadership by those with too much to gain.
What we have before us is an opportunity to add the certainty of having done our best to account for the total effects of our striving to our cultural birth-right to improve the lot of our successors. What we can gain is the certainty that responsibilities for our actions have been, or will be assumed, and that the product of our work is of net benefit to all, not at the expense of some-thing or someone else. We can operate with the certainty, that the measure of our success in the marketplace is an objective judge of value.
Though there might be an unwitting cost to others, once it is identified, the vision allotted by conduct with integrity will drive us to measure and calcu-late its impact. For upon recog-nition of a cost, there is always opportunity: Profit is found in the reduction and con-trol of risk.
Problems are opportunities. Though we still have a lot to learn, the redirec-tion of human motivation can assure continued insight into the whole consequence of our being.
It is a better way to live and a better way to make a living.
Grandpa Dave, thank you for that important link. I'm passing it around.
A bump to this post and
GO GRANGERS!.
Please, everyone, if and when possible, give financial support to at least give them a fighting chance against these monsters!
Find Out Who funds your local envirals!
Click Each site to link up!
"It is not well known that the Iron Gate hatchery fish on the Klamath were not even considered part of the SONCC coho ESU that was listed. We allege the "natural spawners" in the mid-Klamath are all progeny of this hatchery stock, yet they are listed. To make it even weirder, the Trinity River stock WAS included in the ESU and it was also the source of Iron Gate broodstock. The Trinity got its stock from the Columbia. The natural spawners in the Trinity are considered offspring of the Trinity hatchery fish. Although both are in the same ESU, only the "natural spawners" are listed."
Hopefully this data can get become common knowledge!
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