Sea Treaty all but dead, 34 GOP senators oppose.

I almost never analyze International Agreements, so I'm posting this here in order that I may write out loud to determine the nature of GOP opposition. Being that things are not obvious I'm going to have to get all the info I can and go over it with a fine tooth comb in order to flush out a rat.

www.foxnews.com...

Does anyone know about this Treaty and why has it all of the sudden appeared as a topic in cyber dialogue?

I can tell you this thing stunk on steroids all along and I've personally been against it since I learned of it under Clinton. Oh it's gotten worse for meaning in recent years, but all along it's basically been about removing the whole "open" concept from the term 'Open Waters' and bringing the Nationals into International Waters. In theory, we could have found ourselves having to ask UN clearance to sail a Carrier group across the Pacific. In theory..

What wan't theory was Russia literally planting a flag, as underwater planting goes, on the Arctic Circle for mineral claims and this new definition of lines would have made their day for making that case with legal legs on it. I believe China also has a dispute or two this would have helped define in their favor. At any rate....for Global Governance, it's been floating since Ronald Reagan and unlike wine, this pig didn't improve with age.

This bill was to essentially give ownership of any and all 'bodies'(oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, puddles) of water to the UN. Don't matter where it's at. Not yours. Don't matter if it runs thru your property. You would have to have UN permission to use it for any reason.

reply to post by michaelbrux

Does anyone know about this Treaty and why has it all of the sudden appeared as a topic in cyber dialogue?

This thing has been around forever. The US is one of the very last nations to have never ratified it, and probably never will.

The latest push has more to do with the South China Sea than anything else, where the US would like to challenge China on some of their territorial water claims, but without having signed onto the Sea Treaty to begin with, we don't really have a leg to stand on.

GOP Scuttles Law-of-Sea Treaty

reply to post by GoldenRuled

This bill was to essentially give ownership of any and all 'bodies'(oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, puddles) of water to the UN. Don't matter where it's at. Not yours. Don't matter if it runs thru your property. You would have to have UN permission to use it for any reason.

Sorry, but that is false. It's a common set of laws governing the "high seas". It doesn't turn over anything to the UN. The US doesn't really have anything to gain by signing onto it, which is why it won't pass Congress.

I'm glad it didn't pass, but I'm disturbed only 34 Opposed this piece of crap lol i want the names and states of the Senators who supported this trash...

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


i see what you are saying. the 200 miles off the coast seems like it could close the Mediterranean and Red Seas and the Persian Gulf; all really important sea ways.

I'm looking at the lead lobbying group and the 2 Senators that gave the last two votes against.

this may take me some time.

The USA never ceases to amaze me.

They lobbied hard 40 years ago for the creation of the treaty. They defined the agenda, more than any other nation. They dominated negotiations. They wrote half the text of the agreement. And 20 bloody years after the rest of the world has adopted the Law of the Sea as the baseline for defining all things maritime, they still refuse to join.

It boggles the mind.

the world was a different place in 1973...perhaps things have changed so much that the Treaty is no longer attractive.

and if what was mentioned earlier in this thread is correct, I don't want to have to get permission from the UN to flush my own toilet, water my lawn or take a long shower.

I am failing to see where the problem is in signing it as we have been abiding by it since Reagan anyway. So what could possibly be so horrible about it that we can't sign it? It is sort of like living with someone for 40 years saying your gonna get married and then when the time comes refusing to follow through.

I read it could threaten our rights or sovereign rights giving too much power to the UN or other countries. I don't remember all the details right now. I did sign a petition and emailed at least one or two congressmen from my state. What I read about it did not sound good so I did something to oppose it and moved on to other things.

One short article in The Washington Post by George Will explains one objection to the treaty:

But those hypothetical benefits are less important than LOST’s actual derogation of U.S. sovereignty by empowering a U.N. bureaucracy — the International Seabed Authority (ISA), based in Jamaica — to give or withhold permission for mining, and to transfer perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. wealth to whatever nation it deems deserving — “on the basis of equitable sharing criteria, taking into account the interests and needs of developing states, particularly the least developed and the land-locked among them.”

Royalties paid by nations with the talent and will for extracting wealth from the seabed will go to nations that have neither, on the principle that what is extracted from 56 percent of the earth’s surface is, the United Nations insists, “the common heritage of mankind.” And never mind U.S. law, which says that wealth gained from the continental shelf — from which the ISA would seek royalty payments — is supposed to be held by the U.S. government for the benefit of the American people.

LOST - George Will

Reagan never liked it and refused to sign it throughout his term. Clinton signed it but the Senate never voted on it. We might have gone along with parts of it, but it's never been a huge success.

reply to post by orionthehunter
It's the same reasons the US will not sign onto the worldwide court - soveriegn rights and the right of our millitary personnel to not be charged with crimes while on "police actions" in other countries - we don't go to war anymore - the congress would have to vote to authorize "war".

The sea treaty is a POS. It's part of the agenda 21 where the UN would be in control of all water on the planet and decide how it's appropriated. Just like food, medicine, and guns, weaponry.

This is the best news I've heard all day. Thanks for posting !

We don't need the U.N. running the F*n planet.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
reply to post by GoldenRuled

 

This bill was to essentially give ownership of any and all 'bodies'(oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, puddles) of water to the UN. Don't matter where it's at. Not yours. Don't matter if it runs thru your property. You would have to have UN permission to use it for any reason.

Sorry, but that is false. It's a common set of laws governing the "high seas". It doesn't turn over anything to the UN. The US doesn't really have anything to gain by signing onto it, which is why it won't pass Congress.

Actually true but not. It isn't outright worded to the end, but it's how you can interpret it. Politicians will use it to their own end or whatever they get a bribe for. Here's something I read a couple years ago on it.
Examiner

Re Reagan

But the treaty spooked conservatives straightaway. Before it was even finalized, President Reagan worried that "the deep seabed mining part of the convention does not meet United States objectives." Ultimately, he refused to sign the treaty for that very reason, but even that rejection wasn't enough for the right wing of his party -- probably because Reagan said he would nevertheless abide by the rest of the treaty's terms, which he found sensible.

source


God, how I wish for a zombie William F. Buckley to fight these right wing extremists..

The military wants it. Business wants it. But to get it, they have to get past conservatives who simply don't trust the United Nations .... The treaty has spooked them ever since 1982, when it opened for signature, even though it has been widely supported by their more moderate Republican brethren. Whatever specific qualms its opponents raise, the treaty's real problem is that in the last 30 years, compulsive U.N. skepticism has moved from the fringes of the GOP into its mainstream.
...

In Gaffney's corner: Everything from Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum to Jeane Kirkpatrick to the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute to the columns of Pat Buchanan. ("Should the U.N. be lord of the oceans?") In Inhofe's corner: A new team of conservatives like Jim DeMint, who only needed to hear the letters "U" and "N" to know what they were against.

same source