Strategic Nine Corporation
FREEDOM OF THE SEAS
Government Funded fishing fleets have been feeding the world from catches caught in the commons for thousands of years.
85% of the world's good and energy supplies travel on the high seas under Freedom of the Seas Rights, all without fear of taxes or impost by the UN or any other body.
Untold billions of dollars of capital equipment operates in the world's ocean, safely beyond the clutches of despots,
ever-increasing taxes, overzealous environmentalists and all too often corrupt government officials.
Resources in the commons have always been extracted where it is profitable to do so as the lack of a resource rent makes a huge difference in returns and financiers flock to the opportunity with the best IRR and lack of risk of expropriation.
Fleets of the 20th century caught fish to feed the world Oceanic fleets of the 21st century will harvest oil and gas from beneath the world's oceans in international waters.
In the Bering Sea Claim area, (donut) government sponsored international fishing fleets took millions of tons out of the area for years until they over-fished it and the fishery collapsed. Japan took the biggest tonnage. Good profits were made by legitimate large fishing companies. Had the companies collectively agreed to a sustainable harvest level, the fishery would still be viable today.
Operating in international waters eliminates in-country political risk factors and cuts taxes and other imposts to zero. These are strong commercial advantages.
The Company plans to vigorously pursue it’s oceanic hydrocarbons claims and expects widespread support to develop for the eventual overhaul or abandonment of the UN’s the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
The Company asserts that any taxation and expropriation law for minerals exploration on the high seas is illegal under customary international law.
Fishing and minerals harvesting from the seabed surface are not and have never been properly regulated by the UNCLOS Convention and thus continue to be governed by the rules and principles of general and customary international law.
The Company asserts and declares its unalienable right to travel, research and peacefully operate commercial minerals enterprises in international waters as an internationally lawful use of the sea without fear of impost or hindrance from any government or organization.
Article 2 of the High Seas Convention 1958 provides as follows:
"The High Seas being open to all nations, no State may validly purport to subject any part of them to its sovereignty."
Article 2 sets out the following freedoms of the High Seas:
(a) Freedom of navigation.
(b) Freedom of fishing.
(c) Freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines.
(d) Freedom to fly over the high seas.
The Consortium will operate on the High Seas as:
LAW OF THE SEA TREATY, (LOST)
The Law of the Sea Treaty ("Treaty") was conceived in 1982 by the United Nations (U.N.) supposedly as as a method for governing activities on, over, and beneath the ocean's surface. It focuses primarily on navigational and transit issues. The Treaty also contains mendacious provisions for the regulation of deep-sea mining and the forced redistribution of any wealth generated from such mining activities to underdeveloped countries--as well as sections regarding marine trade, pollution, research, and dispute resolution. The Bush Administration has expressed interest in joining the International Seabed Authority and has urged the U.S. Senate to ratify the Treaty. However, many of former President Ronald Reagan's original objections to the Treaty--while modified--still hold true today, and many of the possible US national security advantages are already in place, lessening the need to participate.
The central, and abiding, defect of the Law of the Sea Treaty: its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states -- and most especially the United States, as well as extract trillions of dollars in taxes for the UN.
The Reagan White House could not accept the portion of the treaty that established the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Reagan felt that the decision-making process of the ISA Council and Assembly would not give the United States or other western industrialized countries influence commensurate with their interests especially given America’s leading role in finding and developing technologies to harvest the ocean's mineral resources.
Regardless of any outcome of the ISA issues, the Company will be able to operate under customary International law allowing unfettered harvesting and research rights. The Company has very strong legal rights to operate on the high seas without impost or hindrance.
Signing on to LOST would transfer as much as $500 billion a year in new offshore oil and gas taxes from American consumers, directly to the UN International Seabed Authority (ISA) who plans to regulate and tax to the hilt, any deep sea oil and gas production, as well as go into the resources business in its own right. Substantial oil and gas resources are located in international waters adjacent to Alaska in the high Arctic Ocean Commons, (See; www.unoilgas.com ), in the Bering Sea Abyssal and elsewhere.
The Seasick Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST)
"He who rules the sea, rules the land."
Has America lost its way since the Boston Tea Party and the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Have we forgotten why those brave patriots rebelled against tyrannical taxation by a foreign government?
In what can only be described as the most bizarre acts of the 21st century, The US with the willing help of the US Navy, is proposing to give control of the world’s oceans to a hostile UN bureaucracy.
This treaty, writes Gaffney, "would constitute the most egregious transfer of American sovereignty, wealth and power to the U.N. since the founding of that world body ... Never before in the history of the world has any nation voluntarily engaged in such a sweeping transfer to anyone." Why would we sign on to this?
Twenty years ago, Reagan saw this Law Of the Sea Treaty for what it was: a joint scheme of the Soviet Bloc, the Third World and the United Nations to seize sovereignty over the oceans, mandate transfers of American technology and get kickbacks from profits U.S. companies might earn from mining and drilling. Reagan ordered it deep-sixed.
To see it dredged up by Republicans is to wonder whether we care any more about what is happening to American sovereignty.
Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas is a vital inviolable human right. Free enterprise is responsible for all the worlds shipping, cruise lines and fishing which moves 95% of the world’s products and feeds millions of people. The UN has no business interfering there.
The adoption (1982) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the establishment (1994) of the International Seabed Authority, (ISA) with responsibility for controlling all deep-sea mining in international areas. The ISA regime dominated by third-world states, lead to unrealistic taxes and imposts being created that are detrimental for potential commercial operators, hence the development of deep-sea mining has been paralyzed for over a decade.
LOST created the International Seabed Authority, which member nations agree will have complete jurisdiction over all the oceans and virtually everything that flows into them, including the power to tax and control everything that sails on them or is conducted in or beneath them.
The LOST treaty’s child, the International Seabed Authority should be disbanded as it’s regime is without customary legal foundation and plainly illegal.
“……bureaucracies established by multilateral treaties often lack the transparency and accountability necessary to ensure that they are untainted by corruption, mismanagement or inappropriate claims of authority. The LOST bureaucracy is called the International Seabed Authority Secretariat, which has a strong incentive to enhance its own authority at the expense of state sovereignty.
For example, this treaty would impose taxes on U.S. companies engaged in extracting resources from the ocean floor. This would give the treaty’s Secretariat an independent revenue stream that would remove a key check on its authority. After all, once a bureaucracy has its own source of funding, it needs answer only to itself….”
LOST has created the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and given it total jurisdiction over all the oceans and everything in them, including "solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources." LOST even gives the ISA something the UN bureaucrats have lusted after for years: the authority to impose international taxes (disguised by euphemisms such as fees and royalties).
The most contentious issue is seabed mining. The International Seabed Authority, which is governed by a Council, Assembly, and various committees and commissions, and the Enterprise, to mine the seabed. Western mining operations will fund both their regulator, the Authority, and their competitor, the Enterprise. Monies collected will be handed out to Third World states, "liberation" movements, and whoever else the majority decides to shower with benefits.
It requires a company to submit an application fee of $500,000 (now $250,000), as well as giving up 50% of leases as a bonus site for the Authority to utilize for its own competing mining efforts. Additionally, the corporation must hand over 50% of production and pay an annual exploration fee of $1 million, as well as a percentage of its profits (increasing annually up to 7%), and must agree to share mining and navigational technology--thereby ensuring that opportunities aren't restricted to more technologically advanced countries. The decision to grant or to withhold mining permits is decided by the Authority, which consists disproportionately of underdeveloped hostile countries.
The US declared and controls its own 200 mile exclusive economic zone without the help of the UN and LOST.
The US can secure access to all the Oil and Gas, Titanium, Nickel, Cobalt, copper and Manganese it needs for 200 years, FROM THE WORLDS OCEAN SEAFLOOR, using the US Navy’s existing control of the oceans, the doctrine of discovery and other customary international laws, via existing oceanic resource rights Claims held by US companies, see: www.unoilgas.com and www.oceanicmetals.com. Signing on to LOST will put access to those vast oceanic minerals under the control of an illegal, stifling anti free-enterprise, hostile UN bureaucracy the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
When international bureaucracies are unaccountable they seek to insulate themselves from scrutiny and become prone to corruption. The International Seabed Authority Secretariat is vulnerable to the same corrupt practices that have bedeviled the United Nations for decades.
The concept of paying taxes to the UN for activities in international waters is clearly wrong.
1. No tax is paid to the UN for every fish caught on the world’s oceans.
2. No tax is paid for every ton of cargo shipped over the world’s oceans.
3. Cruise lines and pleasure yachts don’t pay taxes to the UN for operating in international waters.
4. Outer space is the common heritage of mankind, yet there is no tax paid to the UN for every TV program we watch from satellite networks.
No tax should be paid to the UN’s ISA for minerals recovered from the seabed.
The US has vital interests in oceanic minerals recovery and signing on to LOST will not strengthen the US position at all. The US would be better served by offering to sign LOST only if the ISA is abandoned.
SOME PUBLISHED COMMENTS
In 1978, Ronald Reagan declared, "No national interest of the United States can justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth's surface over to the Third World."
There are many good reasons this treaty has not been ratified by the United States since it first became available for signatures in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan told the U.N. to get LOST! He was not about to give this corrupt, incompetent organization control over 70 percent of the earth's surface or limit our activities – military and otherwise – in international waters.
Who will oversee the potentially massive “fees” provided to the International Seabed Authority (ISA)? Who will oversee the ISA bureaucrats and employees to preclude another oil-for-food scandal? Who will set these “fees” and who decides on who pays them? And, who do you think will pay the most of these “fees”? Who pays the most in “dues” right now to keep the U.N. going? Yes, good old American taxpayers. Right now, there are members of the ISA who are not paying their “dues” to ISA.
The Law of the Sea Treaty is an utterly unnecessary transfer of authority from the United States and of the wealth of its citizens to global bureaucrats who have never had our interests at heart, and to Third World regimes that have never been reliable friends.
………the fundamental hostility to private enterprise and production underlying the treaty. If implemented, the treaty would assert United Nations control over all ocean resources and channel all mining and development through a vast new UN-created bureaucracy. "The Law of the Sea Treaty retains its coercive, collectivist philosophical underpinnings," says Smith.
….to regulate ocean resources the UNCLOS convention ‘creates a gobbledy-gook bureaucracy called the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The system is unique in its byzantine perversity.
The Enterprise, subsidized by private miners, is to mine the seabed for the ISA. Among the system’s formal objectives is redistributing the revenues collected to enrich the usual Third World regimes.
The ISA, with its nonsensical governing regime, and the Enterprise remain. Some provisions on mandatory technology transfer were cut, but other language remains that could lead to the same result.
The same problem exists with production controls. The U.S. possesses no veto, and land-based minerals exporting countries as well as developing states could block exploitation of the seabed, allowing them to demand expensive concessions in return for their support.
Most important, the terrible precedent remains: LOST turns over a vast amount of the earth’s wealth to a highly politicized international bureaucracy. This global regulatory system would restrict entrepreneurship.
In doing so it would do more than hinder seabed resource development. Such rules could deter the production of software, technology, and processes designed for seabed mining, as well as those with dual use capabilities. The treaty also would create a precedent for a LOST-like regime to govern other, currently unowned “resources,” ranging from the Internet to broadcast airwaves to space…..
10 Reasons for Rejecting the Law of the Sea Treaty
1. Ronald Reagan rejected this treaty – not just because of certain details associated with seabed mining, but because of the threat he rightly saw LOST represented to our sovereignty and national interests in its empowerment of supranational government. Representations that his concerns have been “fixed” by a 1994 agreement Bill Clinton’s administration negotiated are false. Key Reagan lieutenants like former National Security Advisor Bill Clark, former Counselor to the President and Attorney General Ed Meese and the late former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick have agreed that LOST remains unacceptably defective.
To learn more, click here.
2. LOST empowers the United Nations. LOST is also known as the “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.” All LOST agencies are U.N. organizations, and the U.N. Secretary General plays an important role in administering the treaty. The U.N. has a track record of corruption and hostility to American and its allies, most recently evident in its entrusting to Libya and Iran decisions about an anti-Israel conference on “racism.” The UN’s multilateral agencies and bureaucrats cannot be trusted to oversee or administer 70% of the world’s surface covered by its oceans.
To learn more, click here.
3. LOST threatens American sovereignty by subjecting our governmental, military and business operations to mandatory dispute resolution – to be decided by international bodies that are stacked against us. LOST’s broad jurisdiction – involving virtually anything affecting the world’s oceans – is an invitation to UN interference in our affairs on an unprecedented scale. Worse yet, decisions by LOST’s dispute resolution mechanisms are final and without appeal, obliging us to submit to the dictates of others perhaps motivated by anti-American agendas.
To learn more, click here.
4. The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is inconsistent with American security. As a party, the United States would be obliged to uphold myriad commitments at odds with our military practices and national interests, including one reserving the oceans exclusively for “peaceful purposes.” Proponents claim that military activities are exempt, but obligations such as those barring the use of territorial waters for intelligence collection or their transit by submerged submarines clearly set the stage for disputes that may well be decided against us. The treaty also requires the transfer of sensitive, militarily useful technologies to other nations and international organizations hostile to American interests. So-called “fixes” in the 1994 agreement do not alter this reality.
To learn more about how LOST threatens American security by restraining our military, click here.
To learn more about how LOST threatens American security by forcing the transfer of sensitive, militarily useful technologies, click here.
To learn more about how LOST threatens American security by emboldening China’s aggressive claims on the oceans, click here.
To learn more about how LOST threatens American security by providing a forum for ludicrous territorial claims such as Russia’s claim to the floor of the North Pole, click here.
5. President Clinton called LOST “the greatest environmental treaty in history.” It will be used by America’s economic competitors and strategic adversaries to interfere with our sovereign decisions concerning actions they deem to have unacceptable environmental impacts – probably with little regard to the costs to Americans and their businesses. LOST is a back-door way to impose U.S. compliance with the Kyoto accord.
To learn more, click here.
6. LOST would establish a precedent for international taxation. LOST empowers a multilateral International Seabed Authority (ISA) to administer deep seabed mining operations. This supranational ISA would impose fees, royalty requirements and other payments on American companies in order that they may exercise exploration and production rights they already enjoy. These forced arrangements would take money out of the American business revenue stream for an international government’s use – and would amount to a tax on Americans without representation.
To learn more about how LOST imposes international taxation on Americans, click here.
To learn more about the potential for LOST to set alarming precedents for the international control of other “international commons” such as Outer Space or the Internet, click here.
7. LOST imposes requirements of other treaties and international standards that the U.S. has not accepted. LOST international bodies to hear disputes related to the purposes of LOST. This means that if the U.S. joins LOST, it could be brought before a LOST tribunal for violating a totally different treaty – including a treaty that it has not even joined – as long as it relates, for example, to protecting the marine environment.
To learn more, click here.
8. If the U.S. is a party to LOST, it could be subjected to decisions enforced by activist American judges, importing foreign or perhaps even “international” law into the courtroom, or perhaps even a UN Navy.
To learn more about how LOST opens the door to the imposition of “international” law in American courtrooms, click here.
To learn more about how the United States is fully capable of protecting its interests on the oceans without subjecting itself to LOST litigation mechanisms, click here.
9. LOST creates precedents for replacing accountable, representative government under our Constitution with supranational bureaucratic arrangements that are non-transparent and wholly unaccountable.
To learn more, click here.
10. Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department cannot be counted on to truly represent American interests on LOST. It reflexively embraces treaties and other international agreements at the expense of U.S. sovereignty, seemingly favoring harmonious relations with other countries over U.S. national interests.
To learn more, click here.
In summary, America does not need to join LOST to protect its interests in the world’s oceans. A “seat at the table” in LOST agencies where we can be simply outvoted will not safeguard those interests. It will, however, oblige us to abide by the majority’s dictates. The U.S. already belongs to several multi-country organizations (for example, the Arctic Council) designed to solve regional oceans disputes, and can always exercise diplomacy with another country directly. In the final analysis, a navy second-to-none – the large and potent U.S. fleet we need today and for the foreseeable future – is a more certain basis for assuring freedom of the seas and our interests than a defective international treaty like LOST.
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The U.S. and the U.N. |
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Sen. Jon Kyl May 15, 2008 When the United Nations was first conceived after the end of World War II, its purpose was to maintain international peace and security. Unfortunately, the U.N. today is spending very little time devoting its resources to these noble goals, and seems more interested in rhetoric without action. The U.S. is by far the largest contributor to the U.N.'s budget - it pays roughly 22 percent of the cost for most U.N. agencies, and 27 percent of all peacekeeping costs - but this substantial contribution has yet to earn the U.S. its fair share of goodwill. |
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John Bolton, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, recently spoke at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar about his experience as an ambassador. He spoke of the problems with the U.N. and why numerous attempts at real reform have failed. The U.S. is often criticized by other countries for trying to advance its own interests within the U.N., but, he noted, every country that is a member of U.N. is trying to further its interests in some way.
A common idea at the U.N. is that U.S. foreign policy should be
based on some sort of "international consensus" - often referred to as "norming."
As Mr. Bolton said, the international community believes that the U.S.
should be made to, "demonstrate the legitimacy of its foreign policy
decisions by getting the approval of the U.N. Security Council or some other
international body."
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19693838&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=222077&rfi=6
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©Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. 2008 |
THE SEASICK LAW OF THE SEA TREATY
By Cliff Kincaid
September 26, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
My group, America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), will be holding a news conference in Washington, D.C. on September 26 to oppose the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty. We have assembled a massive coalition to oppose the pact. You can have a look at our new TV/Internet ad about the treaty on our home page at usasurvival.org Click on the headline about the ad and please send it to your friends and associates.
Our message: The U.N.’s law of the Sea Treaty is the biggest giveaway of American sovereignty and resources since the Panama Canal Treaty. It lays the groundwork for another U.N. corruption scandal worse than oil-for-food. This is what you need to tell your Senators.
Our new report shows:
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Leader who is on the fence, may be the key. He may hold the fate of the Law of the Sea Treaty in his hands. He can be reached at: (202) 224-2541.
A pro-treaty hearing is scheduled on Thursday. There is another hearing a week later and then a full Senate vote could happen quickly. That hearing, too, will be stacked. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Joe Biden has denied us the opportunity to testify. This is an absolute outrage but it demonstrates their desperation.
However, we are running out of time.
We have posted several new reports, also available on our home page www.usasurvival.org One has a list of questions that your Senators need to answer. They include:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff174.htm
by Doug Bandow | October 10th, 2007
Once the scourge of reflexive internationalism, the Bush administration is now dressing in multilateralist garb. The president’s latest concession is pushing the Law of the Sea Treaty, appropriately known as LOST.
The treaty declares all seabed resources to be the “common heritage of mankind,” hits Western mining companies and their sponsoring nations with fees and royalties, and creates a new global bureaucracy to divvy up the spoils. There are authorities, enterprises, committees, commissions, tribunals, and rules galore.
Unfortunately, decades ago the so-called Group of 77, the developing nations’ political lobby, appended this money-making scheme to [add] proposals to improve ocean resource exploitation, regularize petroleum exploration, improve environmental protection, and strengthen navigational freedom. Turn over the globe’s unowned resources to us, the Third World states offered, and we’ll recognize some of your rules–many of which already had been accepted as customary international law.
Newly elected President Ronald Reagan spent more than a year fighting to “fix” the treaty. The effort failed, so Washington refused to sign and the LOST seemed to die. However, President Bill Clinton negotiated an addendum that addressed a few of the treaty’s most egregious failings.
Senate Republicans then blocked ratification, but now Senate Democrats, along with President George W. Bush, are committed to moving the treaty forward.
Unfortunately, LOST remains a bad deal.
The fishing, ocean pollution, marine research, and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) provisions are largely noncontroversial. Nevertheless, even here there is reason for some caution. LOST imposes fees on some off-shore oil production, for instance, probably the first international tax applied to Americans, and one imposed without congressional approval.
Moreover, the treaty’s ambiguities invite legal mischief. William C.G. Burns, with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, argues that LOST “is a promising instrument through which such [legal] action might be taken, given its broad definition of pollution to the marine environment and the dispute resolution mechanisms contained within its provision.”
Indeed, long-time treaty supporter Bernard Oxman warned LOST advocates not to begin suing the U.S. until Washington ratified the convention. It “is an easy target,” he writes, since “it is amply endowed with indeterminate principles, mind-numbing cross-references, institutional redundancies, exasperating opacity and inelegant drafting, not to mention a potpourri of provisions that any one of us, if asked, would happily delete or change.”
The U.S. Navy backs the treaty as strengthening transit freedoms, but when the right of passage is truly vital LOST will be only a make-weight. If a hostile nation desires and is able to stop U.S. passage, it is unlikely to spend much time parsing treaty language. Good relations with straits nations offer a better guarantee for navigation rights.
Finally, to regulate ocean resources the convention creates a gobbledy-gook bureaucracy called the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The system is unique in its byzantine perversity.
The Enterprise, subsidized by private miners, is to mine the seabed for the ISA. Among the system’s formal objectives is redistributing the revenues collected to enrich the usual Third World regimes.
Today few people defend the original treaty: the mantra is that LOST has been “fixed.” But despite a few improvements, the essentials of the LOST system remain unchanged.
The ISA, with its nonsensical governing regime, and the Enterprise remain. Some provisions on mandatory technology transfer were cut, but other language remains that could lead to the same result.
The same problem exists with production controls. The U.S. possesses no veto, and land-based minerals exporting countries as well as developing states could block exploitation of the seabed, allowing them to demand expensive concessions in return for their support. Most important, the terrible precedent remains: LOST turns over a vast amount of the earth’s wealth to a highly politicized international bureaucracy. This global regulatory system would restrict entrepreneurship.
In doing so it would do more than hinder seabed resource development. Such rules could deter the production of software, technology, and processes designed for seabed mining, as well as those with dual use capabilities. The treaty also would create a precedent for a LOST-like regime to govern other, currently unowned “resources,” ranging from the Internet to broadcast airwaves to space. Protecting navigational rights and the ocean environment are legitimate, even important, goals. But LOST’s provisions advancing these ends should not be paired with creation of a redistributionist regulatory regime for the ocean’s floor.
America’s response to LOST should be the same today as in 1982: no.
Doug Bandow is the Robert A. Taft Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon Press). He served as a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and Deputy Representative to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea.
peter sterling wrote,
LOST
Negraponte and his socialist friends should be sacked for attempting to give
away so much in return for nothing.
The high seas has been seen from time immemorial as belonging to no country or
individual but open to those willing to take the risk and invest the labor
necessary to derive benefit from the abundant resources the seas contain.ISA was
set up to control development of the worlds undersea minerals resources within
international waters. It has been a complete failure to date.
The Seabed authority is in disarray having come under relentless attack for not protecting the rights of humanity from encroachments like that planned in the Arctic Commons by Russia. There are increasing calls for the disbandment of the seabed authority in its current form so as to allow private enterprise to take over the oceans minerals development.
Free enterprise is responsible for all the worlds shipping, cruise lines and
fishing which moves 95% of the world’s products and feeds millions of people.
The UN has no business interfering there. ISA treaty should be abrogated as it
is without customary legal foundation and plainly wrong. As a non signing state
party to the convention the US is not currently bound by any of LOST’s absurd
rules, and so it should remain.
The carrot of US access to the estimated 400 billion barrels of arctic oil and
gas being dangled in front of the senate is completely bogus. Article 76 of the
law also allows countries to extend their submarine claims beyond the 200-mile
limit only if they can provide solid scientific evidence that the continental
shelf under their territory extends beneath the ocean beyond 200 miles. If the
US signs LOST it will not gain any of the arctic oil as LOST rules preclude any
claim extension beyond the Alaska 200 mile zone as the US continental shelf only
extends an average of 50-100 miles from shore.
A US company (see;
www.unoilgas.com )made a solid hydrocarbons rights claim to the Arctic
Oceans Commons under customary international law on May 9th 2006. This claim
gives the US priority over developing the Arctic oil and gas resources with or
without LOST.
Comment on October 11, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
Bald-Faced Lies About the
U.N.
By
Cliff Kincaid | October 9, 2007
Think about it: what senator in his or her right mind would vote for giving the
U.N. more power and influence over world affairs in light of the still unfolding
U.N. oil-for-food scandal? 
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Do you think our "adversary press" is on the lookout for government lies? Consider the false testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on behalf of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is a treaty that our media want passed by the Senate. So they are letting his lies go completely unchallenged.
One of the most audacious lies was that, despite the fact that the treaty carries the name "United Nations" in its title, it is not a U.N. treaty.
Negroponte's testimony included several "myths" that he said were prevalent about the treaty. One was that "The Convention [UNCLOS] is a 'UN' treaty and therefore does not serve our interests." The "reality," he said, was that, "The Convention is not the United Nations¯it was merely negotiated there, as are many agreements, and negotiated by States, not by UN bureaucrats."
There was a time when the State Department didn't lie in such an audacious way about the treaty. A 1995 speech by the then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Ocean Affairs, David A. Colson, openly refers to the entities created by the treaty as "U.N. institutions." He didn't try to confuse or mislead the American people about the U.N. connection. But Negroponte went out of his way to tell us¯in official testimony before a Senate committee¯that it is not a U.N. treaty. How can he get away with it? Simple. Our major media let him. They should be insisting on an official investigation. Federal law prohibits making false statements to Congress.
The U.N. is much more open about its role. Its Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea declares that "Throughout the years, beginning with the work of the Seabed Committee in 1968 and later during the nine-year duration of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, the United Nations has been actively engaged in encouraging and guiding the development and eventual adoption of the Law of the Sea Convention. Today, it continues to be engaged in this process, by monitoring developments as they relate to the Convention and providing assistance to States, when called for, in either the ratification or the implementation process."
It goes on to say that "The United Nations also gives assistance to the two newly created institutions¯the International Seabed Authority and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea."
But there's more. "The United Nations will continue to play a major role in the monitoring of, collection of information on and reporting on State practice in the implementation of the new legal regime," the website declares. "It will also have a significant role to play in reporting on activities of States and relevant international organizations in marine affairs and on major trends and developments. This information will be of great assistance to States in the acceptance and ratification of the Convention, as well as its early entry into force and implementation."
But there's still more. "A number of new duties falls upon the Secretary-General of the United Nations," it says. "These include the depositing of charts and coordinates showing the maritime limits of coastal States and servicing of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. The Secretary-General is also called upon to convene meetings of States Parties to elect the members of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and to adopt its budget."
The role of the U.N. Secretary-General is not a mere formality. As I noted in a previous column, Senator David Vitter forced the admission from treaty proponent Dr. Bernard Oxman that the U.N. boss can pick three of five arbitrators to resolve certain disputes if an enemy of the U.S. drags us before a treaty panel. The official list of arbitrators nominated under article 2 of annex V and article 2 of annex VII to the Convention is maintained on the website of the United Nations Treaty Section of the Office of Legal Affairs.
The treaty's preamble makes several references to the U.N., including the fact that the treaty is based ultimately on a 1970 U.N. General Assembly resolution declaring ocean resources beyond national jurisdiction "the common heritage of mankind." This is how the global socialist entity created by the treaty and known as the International Seabed Authority (ISA) acquires rights to billions of dollars worth of oil, gas, and minerals in "international waters." In order to exploit those natural resources, U.S. companies will have to pay a "fee," a form of global tax, to the ISA. This will make the ISA the first U.N. entity to have an independent source of revenue.
Other U.N. references included the preamble's statement that the treaty will be carried out in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.
Article 301 of UNCLOS, "Peaceful uses of the seas," declares that "In exercising their rights and performing their duties under this Convention, States Parties shall refrain from any threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations."
In addition, the International Seabed Authority and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea have written and formal working agreements with the U.N. Their employees are members and beneficiaries of the $36-billion United Nations Pension Fund.
Not a U.N. treaty, Mr. Negroponte? How could he deliver that testimony with a straight face? Answer: he knew the media would protect him or not even bother to check the facts.
Why did he lie? The answer has to be that the name "United Nations" is in disrepute. It has come to symbolize incompetence and corruption. So State Department officials have to lie about the U.N. role in this treaty in order to have any hope of it passing.
Think about it: what senator in his or her right mind would vote for giving the U.N. more power and influence over world affairs in light of the still unfolding U.N. oil-for-food scandal? A Texas oil tycoon is the latest to plead guilty in that case.
But the scandals just keep on coming. A former U.N. investigator from Australia has now come forward to allege that the world body is corrupt to the core and that up to $500 million in humanitarian relief for the victims of the December 26, 2004, tsunami has been ripped off. The Sydney Morning Herald originally reported his allegations in stories you can find here and here. The former investigator, Francis Montil, also describes investigating a pattern of sexual harassment by a top U.N. official, including the groping of American movie star Angelina Jolie. The report of the investigation was buried.
A Google search found that one or both of the Sydney Morning Herald stories was picked up by WorldNetDaily.com and some other newspapers in Australia, India, and Malaysia. But no major U.S. "mainstream media" outlet has covered these extraordinary allegations. This is the pro-U.N. media bias in action.
However, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that an anti-fraud unit at the U.N. that has identified more than $610 million in allegedly tainted contracts might be closed down.
You can bet Negroponte and his friends at State are hoping that all of these allegations remain buried or glossed over¯at least until after the Senate ratifies the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty. It is then that we might find out that the U.N. institutions created by the treaty have even less ethical oversight and fraud protection than the U.N. itself. There is no requirement, for example, for any of the employees of these new institutions to submit financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms. UNCLOS will make the oil-for-food scandal look like peanuts.
Only the power of the people, as talk-show host Laura Ingraham talks about in her new book, can save the U.S. and the world from this latest U.N. power grab and inevitable financial scandal. We need Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh and other radio talk-show hosts to inform the American people and then provide a platform for their rightful anger and outrage. Time is running out. The Senate could vote soon.
http://www.aim.org/aim_column/5803_0_3_0_C/
Has America lost its way since the Boston Tea Party and the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Have we forgotten why those brave patriots rebelled against tyrannical taxation by a foreign government? The State Department's one world, old boy network strikes again in a Sept. 26 editorial-page commentary by James A. Baker III and George P. Shultz -- "Why the 'Law of the Sea' Is a Good Deal." How can new taxation by the U.N.'s polyglot foreign governments (many of them unfriendly and corrupt) possibly be a "good" deal for American sovereignty?
Would President Kennedy's successful blockade of Cuba during that apocalyptic nuclear missile crisis in 1962 have required prior approval from U.N. bureaucrats had LOST (Law of the Sea Treaty) been in effect back then? If the Islamic mad mullahs of Iran were to mine the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the world's oil supply, would we require prior permission from the LOST bureaucrats before sending in U.S. Navy minesweepers? We need a strong Navy, not needless entanglements with a socialistic U.N. treaty.
A gigantic new LOST U.N. bureaucracy, ever prone to corruption, with a socialist super-government's taxing authority over use of the oceans by private enterprise, surely is not a "good" deal. Why join third-world tyrants -- such as Venezuela's Chavez, Cuba's Castro, Iran's Ahmadinejad, etc. -- in creating a potentially enormous U.N. slush fund and underwater land-grab that could make the U.N.'s "Oil for Food" scandal seem like child's play? Could the U.N. possibly use such a slush fund in the future to buy its own navy so it can enforce the LOST treaty, possibly engaging the U.S. Navy to settle irresolvable disputes over U.S. sovereignty? LOST, as currently designed, is a very bad deal for the U.S., and the Senate mercifully should kill it.
M. Robert Paglee
Moorestown, N.J.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119129173695046091.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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Reagan and the Law of the SeaBy
WILLIAM P. CLARK and EDWIN MEESE It is an impressive testament to the abiding affection and political influence of former President Ronald Reagan that the fate of a controversial treaty now before the U.S. Senate may ultimately turn on a single question: What would Reagan do?
As we had the privilege of working closely with President Reagan in connection with the foreign policy, national security and domestic implications of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty or LOST), there is no question about how our 40th president felt about this accord. He so strongly opposed it that he formally refused to sign the treaty. He even sent Donald Rumsfeld as a personal emissary to our key allies around the world to explain his opposition and encourage them to follow suit. All of them did so at the time. Proponents of LOST, however, have lately taken -- on these pages and elsewhere -- to portray President Reagan's concerns as relatively circumscribed. They contend that those objections were subsequently and satisfactorily addressed in a multilateral accord known as the Agreement of 1994. To the extent that such assertions may induce senators who would otherwise oppose the Law of the Sea Treaty to vote for it, perhaps within a matter of weeks and after only the most cursory of reviews, we feel compelled to set the record straight. Ronald Reagan actually opposed LOST even before he came to office. He was troubled by a treaty that had, in the course of its protracted negotiations, mutated beyond recognition from an effort to codify certain navigation rights strongly supported by our Navy into a dramatic step toward world government. This supranational agenda was most closely identified with, but not limited to, the Treaty's Part XI, which created a variety of executive, legislative and judicial mechanisms to control the resources of the world's oceans. In a radio address titled "Ocean Mining" on Oct. 10, 1978, Mr. Reagan applauded the idea that "no nat[ional] interest of ours could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the earth's surface over to the Third World." He added, "No one has ruled out the idea of a [Law of the Sea] treaty -- one which makes sense -- but after long years of fruitless negotiating, it became apparent that the underdeveloped nations who now control the General Assembly were looking for a free ride at our expense -- again." The so-called seabed mining provisions were simply one manifestation of the problems Ronald Reagan had with LOST. That was made clear by an entry in his diary dated June 29, 1982, after months of efforts to negotiate extensive changes in the draft treaty text came to naught. On that evening, President Reagan wrote: "Decided in [National Security Council] meeting -- will not sign 'Law of the Sea' treaty even without seabed mining provisions." The man selected by President Reagan to undertake those renegotiations was the remarkable James Malone. In 1984, Ambassador Malone explained why the Law of the Sea Treaty was unacceptable: "The Treaty's provisions were intentionally designed to promote a new world order -- a form of global collectivism known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO) -- that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world's wealth through a complex system of manipulative central economic planning and bureaucratic coercion. The Treaty's provisions are predicated on a distorted interpretation of the noble concept of the Earth's vast oceans as the 'common heritage of mankind.'" Interestingly, Ambassador Malone declared in 1995, "This remains the case today." That statement is particularly relevant insofar as LOST's supporters, including some of our colleagues from the Reagan administration, insist that the 1994 Agreement "fixed" the previously unacceptable Part XI provisions. As James Malone explained to a conference on the Law of the Sea Treaty before his untimely death more than a decade ago: "All the provisions from the past that make such a [new world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because of technical difficulties with Part XI. The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign." He added, "The regime's structural arrangements place central planning ahead of free market interests in determining influence over world resources; and yet, the collapse of socialist central planning throughout the world makes this a step in the wrong direction." In a comment that is, if anything, even more true at present, Ambassador Malone observed that: "Today, not only are the seabed mining provisions inadequately corrected, and the collectivist ideologies of a now repudiated system of global central planning still imbedded in the treaty, new and potentially serious concerns have arisen." Currently, these include: the increasingly brazen hostility of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions to the United States and its interests; the organization's ambition to impose international taxes, which would allow it to become still less transparent and accountable to member nations; the determination of European and other environmentalists to impose the "precautionary principle" (a Luddite, "better safe than sorry" approach that requires proof no harm can come from any initiative before it can be undertaken); the increasing practice of U.S. courts to allow "universal jurisprudence" to trump American constitutional rights and laws; and the use of "lawfare" (multilateral treaties, tribunal rulings and convention declarations) by adversaries of the U.S. military as asymmetric weapons to curtail or impede American power and operations. Such developments only serve to reinforce the concerns President Reagan rightly had about the central, and abiding, defect of the Law of the Sea Treaty: its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states -- and most especially the United States. One of the prime movers behind LOST, the late Elisabeth Mann Borgese of the World Federalist Association (which now calls itself Citizens for Global Solutions), captured what is at stake when she cited an ancient aphorism: "He who rules the sea, rules the land." A U.N. publication lauding her work noted that Borgese saw LOST as a "possible test-bed for ideas she had developed concerning a common global constitution." While we would not presume to speak for President Reagan, his own words and those of the man who worked most closely with him and us on Law of the Sea matters, Jim Malone, make one thing clear: Even if the 1994 Agreement actually amended LOST (and there are multiple reasons why it did not actually alter so much as a single word of the treaty), Ronald Reagan's belief in the U.S. as an exceptional "shining city on a hill" and his enmity towards threats to our sovereignty in general, and global governance schemes in particular, were such that he would likely encourage the Senate to do today what he did in 1982: Reject LOST. Judge Clark and Mr. Meese served in several capacities in President Reagan's administration including, respectively, as national security adviser and attorney general. |
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