spy1
Regular Member
imported post
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/12/lost-found-senate-moves-ratification-un-treaty/
"LOST and Found: Senate Moves Toward Ratification of U.N.'s 'Law of the Sea Treaty'
The Senate is gearing up to ratify a decades-old U.N. treaty that critics warn could create a massive U.N. bureaucracy that could even claim powers over American waterways."
...
"But critics say the treaty, which declares the sea and its bounty the "universal heritage of mankind," would redistribute American profits and have a reach extending into rivers and streams all the way up the mighty Mississippi."
...
"But critics say clauses built into the treaty could directly harm American interests. They say it could force the U.S. to comply with unspecified environmental codes, and that the treaty gives environmental activists the legal standing to sue over river pollution and shut down industry, simply because rivers feed into the sea.
The treaty allows environmental groups to bring lawsuits to the Law of the Sea Tribunal in Germany, a panel of 21 U.N. judges who would have say over pollution levels in American rivers. Their rulings would have the force law in the U.S., according to a reading in a 2008 Supreme Court decision by Justice John Paul Stevens.
"You've got an unaccountable tribunal that will surely be stacked with jurists hostile to our interests," said Chris Horner, author of "Red Hot Lies," a book critical of environmentalists. "This would never pass muster if the Senate held an open, public debate about this."
Legal experts also warn that the treaty demands aid for landlocked countries that lack the access and technology to mine the deep seas -- and that it might not even benefit the U.S. at all.
"You have to pay royalties on the value of anything you extract (from the deep seabed), those royalties to be distributed as the new bureaucracy sees fit, primarily to landlocked countries and underdeveloped countries," said Steven Groves, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. American money would also go to fund the International Seabed Authority, which Groves warned "would have the potential to become the most massive U.N. bureaucracy on the planet."
"The whole theory of the treaty is that the world's oceans and everything below them are the common heritage of mankind," said Groves. "Very socialist."
Any nation that is party to the treaty can have a seat on the tribunal and seabed authority -- even ones that don't have access to the sea. The current vice president of the tribunal represents Austria, a landlocked nation that hasn't had a sea berth since the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved in the First World War.
Some legal experts worry that without ratification, the U.S. will lose a seat at the table as maritime law continues to be codified and resources get divvied up. But opponents note that many of the benefits offered the U.S., such as navigation rights, are already international custom, and that the U.S. has effected the treaty without being party to it. President Reagan's initial opposition on the basis of seabed laws forced the rewriting of the original treaty in 1994, which led the U.S. to sign it, but not to ratify it.
Its complexity, however, still beguiles even experts, who say it is unlikely to be understood when brought to a vote in the Senate.
"The thing is about 150 pages long -- meaning there are exactly zero people in the Senate who have read it," said Groves."
========================================================
People - This thing will get passed if you don't contact your SENATORS ASAP to let them know you oppose it.
ANY "treaty" that gives the U.N. power over the United States is A BAD THING.
Get busy, get on the PHONE OR FAX MACHINE and let your Senators know that you want L.O.S.T to GET lost!
And while you're at it, let them know that you want NO PART of any U.N "Small Arms" treaty, either!
We want sovereignty NOT subjection.
Please look up your Senators contact info here: http://www.theorator.com/senate.html - and get on the horn to them ASAP! Pete
http://www.votervoice.net/Core.aspx?AID=972&APP=GAC&SiteID=0&IssueID=15905
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/12/lost-found-senate-moves-ratification-un-treaty/
"LOST and Found: Senate Moves Toward Ratification of U.N.'s 'Law of the Sea Treaty'
The Senate is gearing up to ratify a decades-old U.N. treaty that critics warn could create a massive U.N. bureaucracy that could even claim powers over American waterways."
...
"But critics say the treaty, which declares the sea and its bounty the "universal heritage of mankind," would redistribute American profits and have a reach extending into rivers and streams all the way up the mighty Mississippi."
...
"But critics say clauses built into the treaty could directly harm American interests. They say it could force the U.S. to comply with unspecified environmental codes, and that the treaty gives environmental activists the legal standing to sue over river pollution and shut down industry, simply because rivers feed into the sea.
The treaty allows environmental groups to bring lawsuits to the Law of the Sea Tribunal in Germany, a panel of 21 U.N. judges who would have say over pollution levels in American rivers. Their rulings would have the force law in the U.S., according to a reading in a 2008 Supreme Court decision by Justice John Paul Stevens.
"You've got an unaccountable tribunal that will surely be stacked with jurists hostile to our interests," said Chris Horner, author of "Red Hot Lies," a book critical of environmentalists. "This would never pass muster if the Senate held an open, public debate about this."
Legal experts also warn that the treaty demands aid for landlocked countries that lack the access and technology to mine the deep seas -- and that it might not even benefit the U.S. at all.
"You have to pay royalties on the value of anything you extract (from the deep seabed), those royalties to be distributed as the new bureaucracy sees fit, primarily to landlocked countries and underdeveloped countries," said Steven Groves, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. American money would also go to fund the International Seabed Authority, which Groves warned "would have the potential to become the most massive U.N. bureaucracy on the planet."
"The whole theory of the treaty is that the world's oceans and everything below them are the common heritage of mankind," said Groves. "Very socialist."
Any nation that is party to the treaty can have a seat on the tribunal and seabed authority -- even ones that don't have access to the sea. The current vice president of the tribunal represents Austria, a landlocked nation that hasn't had a sea berth since the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved in the First World War.
Some legal experts worry that without ratification, the U.S. will lose a seat at the table as maritime law continues to be codified and resources get divvied up. But opponents note that many of the benefits offered the U.S., such as navigation rights, are already international custom, and that the U.S. has effected the treaty without being party to it. President Reagan's initial opposition on the basis of seabed laws forced the rewriting of the original treaty in 1994, which led the U.S. to sign it, but not to ratify it.
Its complexity, however, still beguiles even experts, who say it is unlikely to be understood when brought to a vote in the Senate.
"The thing is about 150 pages long -- meaning there are exactly zero people in the Senate who have read it," said Groves."
========================================================
People - This thing will get passed if you don't contact your SENATORS ASAP to let them know you oppose it.
ANY "treaty" that gives the U.N. power over the United States is A BAD THING.
Get busy, get on the PHONE OR FAX MACHINE and let your Senators know that you want L.O.S.T to GET lost!
And while you're at it, let them know that you want NO PART of any U.N "Small Arms" treaty, either!
We want sovereignty NOT subjection.
Please look up your Senators contact info here: http://www.theorator.com/senate.html - and get on the horn to them ASAP! Pete
http://www.votervoice.net/Core.aspx?AID=972&APP=GAC&SiteID=0&IssueID=15905