Monday, May 14, 2012

Get Ready - LOST is Coming

No, not that Lost - the Law of the Sea Treaty.  That second link, to a summary on the Heritage Foundation, gives a short overview of the LOST. 

The Law of the Sea Treaty has been around a long time: 30 years.  It was first conceived of by the United Nations in 1982.  In 1985, President Reagan refused to sign it, arguing it would take away US sovereignty.  In the '90s, Bill Clinton signed the US up to the (then) current version, but the Senate never ratified it, so the provisional acceptance of the treaty expired in 1998.

Much like the awful Kyoto treaty on global warming, LOST pretends to be saving the world from the perils of advanced civilizations while actually transferring vast amounts of power and wealth from the 1st world to the third world (which raises the question of whether we could benefit from it as we get driven further toward third world status as a nation). For example:
... the Treaty [is based on] the Principle of the "Common Heritage of Mankind," which dictates that oceanic resources should be shared among all mankind and cannot be claimed by any one nation or people. In order to achieve this goal, the Treaty creates the International Seabed Authority ("Authority") to regulate and exploit mineral resources. It requires a company to submit an application fee of $500,000 (now $250,000), as well as a bonus site for the Authority to utilize for its own mining efforts. Additionally, the corporation must pay an annual 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 countries. [emphasis added - GB]
It appears to be coming back for a Senate vote on ratification.  It was reported that well known RINO Senator Dick Lugar wanted to bring it back for ratification, but didn't want to bring it up during the campaign, should it hurt his re-election chances.  Now that he's been dumped (oh frabjous day!) there's nothing to lose and the LOST is coming back like a vampire.

This is a complicated mess.  The US Navy has endorsed it - I don't understand why, but maybe it's part of that "Global Force for Good" ad campaign.  I'm sure I don't need to tell you that a trans-nationalist like Obama wants it, too.  Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, says to beware that they are selling this thing under a false flag operation.
Amazingly, they are doing so under what intelligence professionals would dub a "false flag" operation - an initiative that presents itself as one thing, in this case "The American Sovereignty Campaign", when it is actually exactly the opposite. If ever there were an anti-sovereignty treaty it is LOST. It speaks volumes about the lengths to which this accord's proponents have to go to conceal that reality that they are masquerading as advocates of U.S. sovereignty, not what they really are: champions of an effort greatly to reduce it.
The campaign is being run by former Stupid party senator Trent Lott, a guy who opposed LOST as a senator, but is now a lobbyist for Shell Oil who apparently thinks they get more benefit than it costs. Personally, it reminds me too much of redistribution of US wealth to the rest of the world.  Remember, anyone in the US who earns over about $40,000 is in the richest 1% of the world, and it's a lot easier to take us down than make the rest of the world wealthy. When you add in that the treaty creates (Gaffney, again):

Of particular concern is the fact that LOST creates an international taxation regime. It does so by empowering the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to tax Americans for the purposes of meeting its own administrative costs and of globally redistributing revenue derived from the exploitation of seabed resources.
This one appears all bad to me, but I'm puzzled why the Navy would endorse it.  Maybe some aspect makes their mission easier.  If you need more information to decide, read those three articles I link to.  It's not "Agenda 21" level of bad, but it doesn't look positive for us in any way, either.   

When an international treaty is signed by the president and ratified by the senate, it acquires a level of permanency beyond mere federal laws.  It can't be cancelled by a future senate.  It stays until the treaty goes away, making it even less touchable than the constitution, which can be amended.  In my book, that's all the more reason to vote against it. 

5 comments:

  1. The LOST treaty would not only require us to give up half the royalties from our offshore drilling to the third world, but would also require us to give proprietary technology to third world countries for free. It is a HUGE tax that we get nothing in return for, it will dampen innovation and invention in this country, it will reduce our self-sufficiency and weaken our hegemony; and China, which is a party to this treaty, keeps violating it when convenient to their self-interest.

    We need to stop acting like we're the Daddy Warbucks of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "This one appears all bad to me, but I'm puzzled why the Navy would endorse it."

    Maybe the same reason the new focus of NASA is improving relations with islam?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm certain Anon is correct. The leadership of the Navy - at the top - are political drones who do as they are told by the Administration. The old time warriors and patriots who fought during WWII and those who helped protect us during the Cold War have been replaced by scum like Kerry, who was only in the service to punch some tickets and promote himself and his own agenda.

    It's like saying, "I don't understand why America would give billions of dollars to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. America doesn't, but scum like Obama and most of Congress do.

    This is one of the reasons I claim that electing Romney - if it were possible to counter Obama's pan to have himself declared President again - would be much more desirable than Obama. Political actions like this treaty and his Executive Orders and such make Obama more dangerous to our liberty than most people understand.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can back up the above claim about flag-rank in the military - the vast majority of general officers I met before separating after 10 years of flying for the Air Force were completely uninspiring political hacks...or at least they came across that way to a lot of us company/field grade guys.

    Expect the guys with stars to be surprisingly interested in getting a pat on the head, for the most part. (Not all of them...the incoming Chief for the AF was my Commandant at the Air Force Academy years ago and is a pretty decent guy)

    ReplyDelete
  5. As my wife said, "what does the Navy know about free enterprise?"

    The whole "Global Force for Good" campaign is so stupid, I don't know what to say. Navy - your job is not to be a global force for good, it's to project power. Which is the threat to kill people and break things. From time to time, you will be called on to actually go kill people and break things. "Global Force for Good" is you hobby when there's no killing and breaking to do.

    ReplyDelete