What's the rush? Another back-stabbing treaty on a "fast track"

By Wes Vernon

Every time Americans tune out the chattering political class, that's when the one-worlders rush in for the kill.

The Law of the Sea Treaty

As Americans are working to support their families, playing by the rules, paying their taxes, minding their business — forces are at work here in Washington to give them the business.

At a little-publicized Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this past week, Bush administration officials urged "quick" ratification of the law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). That begs the question — what's the rush? Many other committees need to take a serious look at this questionable document (more on that later).

Newspaper accounts that reported the story describe the treaty as "long-stalled."

Next question: Who "stalled" it?

President Reagan saw right through this proposal from the get-go. He "stalled" it, if you will, because he viewed it as a threat to American sovereignty; as weighted down with the agenda of environmental extremism; as a hindrance to U.S. military and intelligence operations; as creating more UN bureaucracy contrary to U.S. interests.

Mastermind(s)?

As this column has reported in the past, LOST's very origins should serve as a red flag that this document is not to be trusted.

As we reported (on May 14 in this space), one of the originators of what is now called The Law of the Sea Treaty was a socialist and leading figure in the pro-world government World Federalists of Canada. In her book The Oceanic Circle: Governing the Seas as a Global Resource, Elisabeth Mann Borgese (who died in 2002) bluntly stated she admired Karl Marx. By itself, that arouses suspicion.

But there is more.

America's Survival, Inc. (ASI), which did the digging on this, has come up with the name of yet another collaborator — the "main architect."

To be sure, Borgese organized the Pacem in Maribus conferences that hatched the idea of an "Ocean Development Tax" to support the United Nations. Beyond that, ASI's Cliff Kincaid has unearthed documentation that the late radical Harvard professor Louis B. Sohn saw the Convention on the Law of the Sea as part of a plan for a world government that would include a UN "peace" force. He envisioned "hundreds of thousands of troops, military bases" that would be "armed with nuclear weapons." The idea behind that, according to the professor, was to disarm "each and every nation and to deter or suppress any attempted international violence."

ASI also fingers Sohn as having participated in the conference that resulted in the creation of the United Nations. Among the other luminaries involved in that gathering was Soviet spy Alger Hiss, then a top State Department official. Small wonder many Americans have become leery of UN-backed treaties that have been shoved under the noses of our senators over the years.

Make no mistake, under Sohn's scenario, you and I would be taxed to pay for our domination by a world dictatorship. No silly little things like checks and balances in the self-governance sense. Just checks — the ones you and I would make out to satisfy the maw of a "United Nations Revenue System." The UN has repeatedly tried to impose a global tax, only to be rebuffed by the United States.

What's wrong with LOST: Where to begin?

The taxation issue alone should be ample warning. But other warning signs abound. LOST creates an International Seabed Authority Secretariat (ISAS) with the power to create an international court system to regulate nearly three quarters of the earth's surface, impose production quotas on oil, deep-sea mining, etc.

Obviously, this would be a serious blow to America's competitiveness. We would be forced to share valuable assets with a new international bureaucracy. That would include oil revenues from drilling in seawater just off America's shores.

American inventors would lose rights to profits from their ocean-exploring software and technology. Obviously, this would be a disincentive for American innovativeness and entrepreneurship.

Again, socialists pretend that absent the profit motive, innovators will continue to sink their time and money into research and exploration. So let's see if we have this straight: People study for years to obtain engineering degrees so they can become ocean-going hobbyists?

There's another tripwire here. The ISAS creates an opportunity to relive the wonderful days of the oil-for-food scandal. The new UN bureaucracy's potential for bribe-taking would break all records. And the UN, that is saying a lot.

Enviro playpen

The extreme environmentalist group Greenpeace has openly declared its intent to use the treaty to advance its cause — which in many respects conflicts with the best interests of the United States.

The U.S. is skeptical of the agenda the global warming alarmists would like to foist upon us. Just this past weekend, President Bush enunciated his intent to deal with greenhouse gases, but in such a way as to avoid throwing hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans out of work. All the more puzzling why his administration is going full bore for LOST.

Once again demonstrating its threat to U.S. sovereignty, LOST minces no words when it says nations that sign up shall "adopt laws and regulations" fitting its undefined view of "pollution of the marine environment from and through the atmosphere."

In case anyone sees some ambiguity here, Greenpeace is more than happy to fill in the blanks. As is the case with many "environmentalist" crusaders, Greenpeace has first-rate lawyers and fourth-rate scientists. And based on the "analysis" of its fourth-rate scientists, you can be certain its first-rate lawyers will find a way to haul the U.S. before LOST's new international judiciary on charges of failure to live up to the Kyoto (Global Warming) treaty, even though America has never signed on to that document — for reasons related to questionable science and threats to our economy.

Security sacrificed

At a time when Iran and North Korea have been working to develop nuclear weapons capability; when Communist China's People's Liberation Army considers the U.S. "the main enemy"; when Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries in our backyard are allied with terrorist states; when the FBI has confirmed the existence of terrorist cells right here on our soil — despite all these threats, LOST would tie our hands in protecting ourselves.

As a Heritage Foundation study notes, "Under the [LOST] convention, the U.S. would "sign away its ability to collect intelligence vital to American security within the territorial waters of any other country." No wonder Liyu (Laurie) Wang of the Chinese embassy told me during a LOST hearing in 2004 that China was most anxious that the U.S. "sign up."

Again: What's the rush?

Bush administration officials are calling for a "quick" ratification of LOST by the Senate. You can just bet they want it to be "quick" — preferably in the dark of night when the rubes out there across the fruited plains are not looking.

Senators Joseph Biden (Chairman) and Richard Lugar (Ranking Member) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of course, are most willing to expedite the process. That's what internationalists do — bind us to more worldwide entanglements.

At the Senate hearing Sept. 27, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte — who during his stint as Director of National Intelligence, moved heaven and earth to block any effort to clean house at the CIA — was out front pushing for LOST. Two new committee members caught him and other pro-LOST witnesses in disingenuous testimony. Senators Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and David Vitter (R-La.) were not "going along to get along."

No rush at all

Actually, there are many committees that have a legitimate interest in what happens if the Senate ratifies LOST. Let me count the ways. In the Senate, the following panels also need to hold lengthy hearings: Appropriations; Armed Services; Budget; Environment and Public Works; Judiciary; Commerce, Science and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Finance; Homeland Security; Intelligence.

And it need not stop there. In 2004, the House International Relations Committee was headed by Henry Hyde (R-Ill.). He reasoned that even though the Senate alone can ratify the treaty, the House would have much to say about financing it and voting on related issues. So he held his own hearing.

Let's put LOST through all of the above committees in the Senate and their counterparts in the House. Let all sides be heard, including the voices of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, who says the ISAS membership "is stacked in favor of Third World nations," and Phyllis Schlafly who calls LOST "a globalist's dream because it pushes the U.S. closer to world government and subjects the U.S. to a massive redistribution of wealth from American taxpayers to other countries." Yes, let all voices be heard. What's the rush? There's lots of time.

© Wes Vernon