Originally published July 19 2012
Enough senators vow to vote against the Law of the Sea Treaty - again
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) With so much more government "involvement" in the lives of ordinary Americans these days than our Founding Fathers would have put up with (by half), the last thing the country needs is to be forced to answer to a host of global bureaucrats.
And yet if "LOST" - the Law of the Sea Treaty - ever passes the U.S. Senate, it will become the law of the land, and as such, would drive the final stake into the heart of U.S. sovereignty.
According to reports Monday, the treaty is dead again for now - thanks to the pledge of enough U.S. senators to make passage impossible.
Reports in May and June have documented the increasing number of senators (treaties have to be approved by the Senate) opposed to the LOST treaty. Those early reports put the magic number at 34 senators who had to pledge opposition in order for a vote on the treaty to fail (two-thirds Senate majority - 67 votes - are needed to approve treaties).
Blog site RedState.com reported this week that the magic number has finally been reached, thanks to Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.
The bad treaty that just won't go away
The treaty has generally been pushed by statists and globalists since it was first written three decades ago.
According to a letter written to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. by Portman and Ayotte:
Recently, there has been renewed interest in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty completed in 1982 and modified in 1994. After careful consideration, we have concluded that on balance this treaty is not in the national interest of the United States. As a result, we would oppose the treaty if it were called up for a vote.
In their letter, the senators said it was an "admirable" goal to secure the "U.S. Navy's navigational rights and defining American economic interests in valuable offshore resources."
However, they argued, the treaty seeks to go much further:
But the treaty's terms reach well beyond those good intentions. This agreement is striking in both the breadth of activities it regulates and the ambiguity of obligations it creates. Its 320 articles and over 200 pages establish a complex regulatory regime that applies to virtually any commercial or governmental activity related to the oceans - from seaborne shipping, to drug and weapon interdiction, to operating a manufacturing plant near a coastal waterway.
They also argue that many provisions of the treaty are vague - probably purposely so - and hence leaves much to the interpretation by unelected globalist "leaders."
In his own blog, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. also noted that opposition to LOST has been steadily rising.
"Strong opposition is rising in the U.S. Senate to the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) that would subjugate American sovereignty to the whims of an international tribunal," he wrote July 11.
Numerous reasons why LOST should be a lost cause
DeMint says LOST would be harmful for a number of reasons:
- It would act as a backdoor Kyoto Protocol, forcing us into cap and trade policies that would destroy jobs and harm our economy.
- It would cost the U.S. trillions of dollars in international royalties to nations including state sponsors of terror like Sudan and "undemocratic, despotic or brutal governments in Belarus, Burma, China or Zimbabwe."
- Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton warned it would embolden China, "constrain U.S. naval activities, and do nothing to resolve China's expansive maritime territorial claims."
- Radical environmental groups have lined up in support of LOST.
- President Ronald Reagan strongly opposed the treaty as a threat to U.S. sovereignty.
Long story short, this is yet another "treaty" offered by globalists to subjugate the world's most powerful nation and to relegate it to the same status as third-world nations. Americans should not only encourage their senators to oppose this globalist monstrosity, but to kill it altogether, once and for all.
As a sort of "insurance policy," the House last week approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill for 2013 that banned the use of federal funds to implement LOST.
Sources:
http://www.redstate.com/brian_d/2012/07/16/law-of-the-sea-treaty-dead/
http://www.demint.senate.gov
http://www.policymic.com
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