Here we have LOST and the LOSS of sovereignty we face if the US ratifies this treaty. Hint: Ronald Reagan refused to sign this treaty in 1982.
From FoxNews.com:
The Law of the Sea Treaty Will Sink America’s Economy
by Sen Orrin Hatch, Sen John CornynAmericans despise taxes. After all, one of the key issues that paved the way for the American Revolution was the unfair taxation that King George III levied against the Colonies.
Now some in the US Senate want to say yes to an international tax. It would be the first time in history that an international organization would possess taxing authority, and it would amount to billions of American dollars being transferred out of the US Treasury.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is the vehicle through which such taxes would be imposed on U.S.-based commercial enterprises.
The treaty that Reagan refused to sign in 1982 is reappearing once again in the Senate. The truth is, LOST contains numerous provisions that hurt the U.S. economy at a time when we need more jobs – not fewer.
Under the guise of being for “the good of mankind, ” LOST would obligate the United States to share information and technology in what amounts to global taxes and technology transfer requirements that are really nothing more than an attempt to redistribute U.S. wealth to the Third World.
At the center of these taxes and transfers is the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a Kingston, Jamaica based supra-national governing body established by the treaty for the purpose of redistributing cash and technology from the “developed world” to the “developing world.”
Ceding authority to the ISA would mean that the sovereignty currently held by the U.S. over the natural resources located on large parts of the continental shelf would be lost. That loss would mean lost revenue for the US government in the form of lost royalties that the U.S. government collects from the production of those resources. According to the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Task Force, which is currently mapping the continental shelf, the resources there “may be worth billions if not trillions” of dollars.
In case proponents of LOST have not noticed, the US is over $15 trillion in debt, and we still have more than 20 million Americans who can’t find a job. The last thing we need to do redistribute funds from our country to our economic and strategic competitors.
To make matters worse, the US would have no control over how or to whom the taxes and technology would be redistributed.
Undoubtedly funds that rightfully belong to the American taxpayer would be sent to corrupt governmental regimes, make dictators wealthier, and could even be used for activities directed against the United States and our interests.
Under the treaty, the transfer of these funds does not end with nation states. These royalty revenues would even be extended to “peoples who have not attained full independence or other self-governing status.” That means groups like the Palestinian Authority and potentially other groups with terrorist ties.
Proponents of the treaty will claim that the technology transfer portion of the treaty has been significantly changed. In truth, nations with mining and resource recovery technologies like the United States will be obligated to share those technologies with Third World competitors, and that is one of the many issues, which trouble those of us opposed to the treaty.
In other words, US companies would be forced to give away the very types of innovation that historically have made our nation a world leader while fueling our economic engine.
Under the best of US economic circumstances, the Senate should say no to such an egregious breach of the trust Americans have placed in us. Our current economic struggles are all the more reason to say no to a treaty that is all cost and no benefit.
Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch is the ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee. Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee.
BZ
Think maybe Hatch is feeling the heat?
Interesting that Obama/Hillary are moving this forward.
this ‘treaty’ is probably the scariest thing going and our media’s not covering it.
NOT COVERING IT!
No WONDER people vote for Obama.
IF ONLY the media’d cover each detail and ramifications…..
we’re living with PRAVDA now.
Is there a good, non-nationalistic, non-‘USA Plutocrats Have the Power and Don’t Want to Give it Up’ reason to be against the Law of the Sea? Maybe there is, but Hatch and Cornyn’s sub-moral selfish-interest argument isn’t it.
And so then, Art, what IS the major argument FOR the LOST?
Of what benefit will it be to the United States?
Please explain, sir. I’ll publish your response.
BZ
Well, BZ, I haven’t studied the issue, but I imagine the best argument is that human activity has and continues to endanger the viability of ocean ecosystems. I think protecting the Earth’s primary ecosystems (and oceans are probably number one) is good for Americans, as well as everyone else on Earth (and as a human who believes in common decency and the Golden Rule, I think their interests are as significant as ours). And in fact, protecting oceans from further degradation would probably be good for America’s plutocrats in the long run, but their focus on short-term, selfish-interest profits apparently blinds them to that. Either that, or (as some smart people hypothesize) the wealthy are just tearing things apart and grabbing everything they can before the dust settles from Big Crash (the end of “growth,” peak oil, climate chaos, …) To me, the question is: is this proposed treaty the best way to protect the oceans? I don’t know the answer since I haven’t studied it, but I am pretty sure that approaching the issue as one to be determined by the interests of Big Money profit and centralized Nation-States is not the way to get there.
PS – I appreciate yr respect for free speech on yr private blog where free speech is solely up to you.
And to this, sir, I throw back:
I fail to make the connection between so-called Big Money and Capitalism and LOST. I vet this in terms of national sovereignty. I view this in terms of NOT deciding to turn American power over to a global power, say, that of the UN or another vein.
You admit you haven’t studied the issue. I have read what exists of LOST on the internet. It appears to me that signators of this treaty turn their individual sovereignty over to a larger global group or court. I believe in dominos. And I do NOT wish my country to go there.
The US has been the GREATEST force for Good in the history of this globe. If you can list another, please do so.
I do not believe in Anthropomorphic Global Warming, or AGW. I believe that the world vents itself through various changes and settings. Such that take literally thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of years.
To think that an insignificant gnat like Man can kill this world is laughable.
The planet has lasted for millions of years. We have reliable and incontrovertible data for perhaps a handful of decades, IF that. And even THAT data is disputational.
I am not willing to sink my nation, sink my economy, over specious and emotional arguments.
BZ
BZ – For posting purposes, I am breaking this up into two parts. I hope you will read them as one unified response. The connection between profits and LOST was made by Hatch and Cornyn — I was responding to their argument. I think yr concern with “national sovereignty” is quaint. The plutocrat overlords who rule the GOP and, for the most part, the Democratic Party don’t give a damn about national sovereignty unless they can see a way to parlay it into increased profit-power for themselves. The Tea Party people who think they are being patriots as they demand policies that benefit the plutocrat class at the expense of working men and women are being played like a fiddle by the billionaire Koch brother types who don’t give a damn about working people. It’s really heartbreaking. The fact is, as the study of history and anthropology shows, Nation-States have ALWAYS been about centralized population control by an elite ruling class. That is how and why they came into existence – and ALWAYS in the interest of a ruling class. (Nation-States KILL human freedom by making whatever counts as freedom dependent on the centralized authority of the Nation-State.) So from my point of view, nationalism – the idea that “the nation” is something to venerate and treat as an object of worship and deference – is basically brainwashing in the interest of an immoral ruling class. (I should note that my my nonIndian ancestors started arriving in America in 1630 – basically no one is more American than me. And I believe the basic American values inscribed in the first part of the Declaration of Independence provide the path to real freedom and the best communities and lives humans can create.)
Yr assertion that the US has been the greatest force for good in the history of the globe is obviously an emotional assertion. I don’t suppose you would agree that the US has also been one of the greatest forces of evil in the history of the globe, but I could go on all night providing examples of the US using immoral might-makes-right logic to impose the will of American plutocrats on other people who were simply trying to live their lives as they saw fit. Surely you don’t think that can be justified by anything other than power and emotion. In any event, I think I can say with almost 100% certainty that the idea we call the Golden Rule has been a much greater force for good in human history than any Nation-State, including the US. (Also, you realize of course that US has existed for 250 years of humanity’s 50,000+ year history – that necessarily makes your assertion about what has happened in human history a feeling, an emotion-based FAITH, rather than a rational assessment of what has actually happened in human history.)
[Actually 3 parts]
[Part 2] As to Anthropogenic Global Warming… I am a science skeptic (for instance, unlike some, I believe evolution by natural selection is a theory – a pretty good theory, but not the Truth – no theory is the Truth). But when 90% of scientists who study a phenomenon agree on some basic facts that make a difference in the future of what kind of life might survive on Earth, I personally think it would be irresponsible to reject that consensus based on politics or faith. I am not saying you emptied your clip, but the arguments you put forth are faith-based. Not one to follow the crowd, I determined to find the smartest global warming skeptic I could and go from there. I found the quantum physicist Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. He was skeptical about the measurements that said the globe was warming. But then, over time, additional data eventually led him to agree that the global average temperature was indeed on an upward trend. But Dyson continued to dispute that human transfers of carbon dioxide from the Earth into the atmosphere was causing the warming, as opposed to say historical processes in the atmosphere itself. Then, over time, the data forced him to revise his opinion and agree that the amount of carbon dioxide humans were emitting into the atmosphere was reasonably associated with the rise in global average temperature. Dyson STILL believes there should not be a concerted effort to do anything about it, because he believes reining in carbon emissions would force people in the Third World to forgo First World petroleum-based prosperity. (Note how different his position is from that of the Oil Industry toadies whose concern – let’s be honest – is their own selfish-interest profits [fiduciary duty!].) Personally, I am not focused on trying to get Americans and the rest of the world to agree to reduce carbon emissions, although I think we all should and I do my miniscule personal part. I think it’s too late – whatever equilibrium the Earth was in (and yes, the Earth’s equilibrium has changed over time, but it was in a specific one when we started burning petroleum) has been rendered asunder and the climate is on the move in new and unpredictable ways. I guess I’m not surprised that people will deny what is right in front of them, but even beyond the expert’s tables of atmospheric concentrations blahblahblah, climate chaos is real all over the globe, including right here in the high desert of eastern Oregon and the Sierra Nevada as well I bet. But again, from my perspective, it’s too late to stop it. The Big Crash (the point when capital sees the infinite resources required for infinite profits are in reality finite and the ponzi scheme starts to crumble) has already happened. The only question now is how to form resilient communities that can surf the chaos of collapse into benevolent futures of true democracy and freedom. But I also feel compelled to say that I don’t believe it is possible to morally justify thinking about something like, say, “saving the whales” in terms of national sovereignty or profit [two things (the State and Capital) that are not separable when you look at modern Euroamerican history]. Is there not some moral-value level of humanity shared by every human on Earth that calls for ensuring we don’t do long-term harm to this planet, riches be damned?)
[->part 3->]
[Part 3 of 3] Just so it’s clear, I have no delusions about convincing you and yours of anything, other than maybe that smart, thoughtful people of good will might have views different from yours. I wonder if we can agree on this: as stated in the Declaration of Independence we have (1) the Right to Abolish a government – ANY government – that we do not believe is serving our interests, and (2) the right to institute new ways of governing ourselves that we think will serve our interests. And if we want to do so in ways that move beyond the Nation-State (with its territorial boundaries of centralized population control), so that you and yours and me and mine and whoever and whoever’s can govern ourselves separately in whatever ways the various groups devise, that would be perfectly in accord with our basic right as human beings to govern ourselves. And THAT – the right to govern ourselves – is the only real FREEDOM that is not the whore of some power-grabbing ideology or institution.
“Nation-States KILL human freedom by making whatever counts as freedom dependent on the centralized authority of the Nation-State.”
To this I am afraid I cannot much disagree. At all.
My “force for good” assertion is obviously in the context of the existence of the nation, clearly.
I disagree on AGW but, yes, we can still agree to disagree and conduct ourselves like gentlemen, which about 8 other persons who come here do NOT and, hence, are not published.
Good writing. Enjoyed it.
BZ