Posted on 05/13/2007 5:15:39 AM PDT by driftdiver
WASHINGTON – In a move that has already angered some of his most ardent supporters, President Bush has asked the Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate to revive a proposal for ratification of the United Nation's Law of the Sea Treaty, an international agreement defeated two years ago by Republican leadership in the upper house.
Critics say ratification would compromise U.S. sovereignty and place 70 percent of the Earth's surface under the control of the U.N. – even providing for a "tax" that would be paid directly to the international body by companies mining in the world's oceans.
The battle over the Law of the Sea Treaty first began 25 years ago, eventually being vetoed by President Reagan. It resurfaced in 2004 under the sponsorship of Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and was successfully defeated by then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
President Bush announced his intention to seek reintroduction of LOST for ratification to a small group of trusted Republican grass-roots organizers last week – an announcement that was met with horror and scorn.
Eagle Forum leader Phyllis Schlafly, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, Leadership Institute President Morton Blackwell, Free Congress Foundation founder Paul Weyrich and leaders of the Heritage Foundation were quick to denounce the idea in forceful terms, calling on their members to begin lobbying the White House immediately.
LOST has long had the support of environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.
It would establish rules governing the uses of the of the world's oceans – treating waters more than 200 nautical miles off coasts as the purview of a new international U.N. bureaucracy, the International Seabed Authority
The ISA would have the authority to set production controls for ocean mining, drilling and fishing, regulate ocean exploration, issue permits and settle disputes in its own new "court."
Companies seeking to mine or fish would be required to apply for a permit, paying a royalty fee
Critics also point out the new U.N. agency would have the right to compete directly with private companies in those profit-making activities.
The U.S. would have only one vote of 140 – and no veto power as it has on the U.N. Security Council.
The Bush administration claims the initiative for reintroduction of the treaty comes from the military, which likes the 12-mile territorial limits it places on national claims to waters. Yet, critics point out international law already protects non-aggressive passage, including non-wartime activities of military ships.
One of the main authors of LOST not only admired Karl Marx but was an ardent advocate of the Marxist-oriented New International Economic Order. Elisabeth Mann Borgese, a socialist who ran the World Federalists of Canada, played a critical role in crafting and promoting LOST, as WND reported in 2005.
Borgese was hailed by her U.N. supporters as the "Mother of the Oceans" or "First Lady of the Oceans." She died in 2002.
The youngest daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann, Borgese openly favored world government, wrote for the left-wing The Nation magazine and was a member of a "Committee to Frame a World Constitution." She served as director of the International Center for Ocean Development and chairman of the International Oceans Institute at Dalhousie University in Canada.
The U.N. Environment Program, UNEP, has said that Borgese recognized the oceans as "a possible test-bed for ideas she had developed concerning a common global constitution."
Borgese received UNEP's "Environment Prize" in 1987 and was credited with organizing the conferences that "served to lay the foundation" for the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, according to Dalhousie University, which houses her archives.
In a 1995 speech, pro-U.N. Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell said Borgese's ideas were "embodied in the negotiated texts of the Law of the Sea Convention."
Her ideas included recognizing the oceans as the "common heritage of mankind" and creating an International Seabed Authority to charge U.S. and foreign companies for the right to mine the ocean floor.
In a January 1999 speech, Borgese declared, "The world ocean has been, and is, so to speak, our great laboratory for the making of a new world order."
In an article titled, "The New International Economic Order and the Law of the Sea," she argued that the pact could "reinforce" the goals of the NIEO by giving Third World countries a role in managing access to the oceans.
In a 1997 interview, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcaster Philip Coulter asked Borgese about the collapse of Soviet-style communism and the triumph of the "elites."
Borgese replied "there is a strong counter-trend. It's not called socialism, but it's called sustainable development, which calls ... for the eradication of poverty. There is that trend and that is the trend that I am working on."
The concept of "sustainable development," considered a euphemism for socialism or communism, has been embraced in various pronouncements by the U.N. and even the U.S. government.
In her book, "The Oceanic Circle: Governing the Seas as a Global Resource," she approvingly cites Karl Marx, the father of communism, as someone with "amazing foresight" about the problems faced by urban and rural societies. The book is available from the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
In an article co-authored with an international lawyer, Borgese noted how LOST stipulates that the oceans "shall be reserved for peaceful purposes" and that "any threat or use of force, inconsistent with the United Nations Charter, is prohibited."
She argued LOST prohibits the ability of nuclear submarines from the U.S. and other nations to rove freely through the world's oceans.
—likewise. There can be no sane reason to attempt to revive this idiocy—
Do a search and you’ll find many references to Bush supporting this treaty in 2004. I haven’t found a second source indicating he has brought it up again. I don’t remember hearing that he tried in 2004. There is nothing good for America in this treaty.
What the heck is up with our Govt?? Has everyone in Washington become so disconnected with the rest of the country they would sell us out?
DITTO to both points you made.
Do a search using “bush and law of the sea treaty” and you’ll find many references to his support for this treat since 2004.
During her confirmation hearing Condoleezza Rice indicated supported this.
This treaty give the UN the power to tax Americans and puts us under a UN court jurisdiction. It also mandates that American technology be given to anyone who doesn’t have it.
I haven’t found that he’s brought it up again though.
Haven't you been paying attention to what Bush and Poppy have been up to?
They've been at this since Bush 41 tried to maneuver Ronald Reagan into signing it the first time around.
If Ronnie vetoed it, that's about all the hint anyone needs on this issue.
We need a guidebook to who this international clerisy are, and why they think they have the God-given right to plow whole countries under, including the United States.
The late Elizabeth Mann Borgese and her pals are like cockroaches. Rejected by humanity, they just keep at it. Nobody owns the ocean, so they'll just grab it, declare it their own property, and then all the other kids will have to play by their rules if they want to engage in international trade. It's an old idea -- the Gutian barbarians did that to the Sumerians 4500 years ago. People never learn. You cannot let high-concept swindlers like these screw with you.
I am just surprised that it's taken the American people so long to start waking up to their treason.
Resign? GWB won't do that. Perhaps tar and feathers are in order at last for all those who would sell out our nation to the new world order.
Absentee president. What the h is W thinking ?
Always a method for the madness.
Well, we always have the Great Lakes to utilize our submarines to thwart any attempted attacks from Canada...
He must think that liberals would begin to give him their approval rating if he can revive the treaty. But most liberals don’t know about this treaty and probably wouldn’t know that GWB tried to revive it.
Another irony, Mel Martinez has a conservative voting record, like Mrs. E. Dole of NC.
Actually, president’s can’t “veto” treaties: perhaps you meant “disapprove” instead of “veto”.
Yes, Prescott Bush (defended by “Bill” Clinton in an effort to embarrass GHWB in the 1992 debate in Richmond) was an early globalist too, wasn’t he? Prescott Bush was also a board member, I believe, of Planned Parenthood.
No, GWB is NOT a Democratic operative: he just wants some Democrats to say something nice about him during his latest years of the doldrums.
It could be that the “leadership” class in DC is so self-confident in the people’s inability to know and understand that it thinks it can do as it pleases with impunity. Pat
Buchanan said that the two parties had become “two wings of the same bird of prey.”
The Bush-led Democrat resurgence.
I really have major Bush fatigue. I know the man is a decent man,, I realize he does this stuff because he really has this “one world we are all neighbors new world order thing” going on like his dad, I realize he just thinks it would be in the best interest of us all to just submit to the global vision, not because he is a commie Nazi like Hillary or anything,, but the results are pretty much the same. It is sort of like the difference between being a Wiccan or being an outright Satanist. The Wiccan takes a pretty, scenic, little windy road through the country side, past cute little cottages and wishing wells grown over with vines and elves and fairies dancing along the way,, the Satanist takes a massive superhighway with unlimited speed straight to hell,, but they still end up in the same place.
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