The Law of The Sea Treaty is a Threat to Our Nation's Sovereignty

By John Wallace

On October 31, 2007, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) by a vote of 17-4. With this vote, the committee basically voted to surrender American sovereignty to the corrupt United Nations and the new world order. With the committee's approval, the full Senate will now be faced with a final vote on ratification of the treaty. Under the Law of the Sea Treaty, a 12-mile territorial sea limit and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) limit would be established. This sets a definitive limit on the oceanic area over which any country may claim jurisdiction.

The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) was first conceived in the early 1980's by the United Nations as a method for them to gain control of most of the activities on, over, and beneath the ocean's surface. The fundamental premise of the Law of the Sea Treaty is that the resources on the ocean's floor belong to all of the people of the world and those resources should be protected and controlled by an international organization like the United Nations. Although that is a noble sounding goal, in order to achieve this goal, the United Nations has created a multinational bureaucracy called the International Seabed Authority ("ISA") and charged them with regulating and controlling the world's mineral resources in the oceans.

Proposed regulations require private companies that want to mine in international waters to submit substantial application fess to the ISA, which in turn the ISA could use for its own mining efforts through its own mining subsidy, called the Enterprise. Corporations from member nations operating in international waters would have to pay annual fees and even a percentage of their profits to the ISA. These corporations would also be expected to share their mining and navigational technology with third world countries to ensure that opportunities aren't restricted to more technologically advanced countries. The decision to grant or to withhold mining permits in international waters would now be decided by bureaucrats at the United Nation's International Seabed Authority.

U.S. adherence to this treaty would entail the biggest and most unwarranted surrender of our nation's sovereignty in our country's history. I urge members of the U.S. Senate not to ratify the "Law of the Sea" Treaty for the following reasons:

1. The treaty would essentially give the United Nations, a notoriously corrupt organization, the power to assert control over 70% of the earth's surface through the International Seabed Authority (ISA),
2. Through the ISA, the United Nations would be given the power to levy international fees and taxes on American companies. Mining approvals would be highly politicized and could discriminate against American operators.
3. The United Nations, through the ISA, would be given the power to regulate ocean research, exploration, fishing, marine environmental protection and navigation. They could even impose production quotas and licensing requirements on American fishermen operating in international waters.
4. The United Nations, through the ISA, would be given the power to create a multinational court system to render and enforce its judgments! If we agree to this provision, we will be surrendering our sovereignty by subjecting ourselves to the jurisdiction of some international court.
5. The treaty calls for prosperous member nations to provide financial and technical assistance not only to developing countries, but also to "people who have not attained full independence or other self-governing status" (codeword for groups such as the PLO).
6. The most important objection concerns Article 314 of The Law of the Sea Treaty (located in Part XVII) that empowers the LOST member Assembly, dominated by nations of the developing world, to amend the terms of the treaty over the objection of any individual member state. In other words, the terms of the treaty could be changed significantly and the United States would have to abide by those changes without the U.S. Senate having the opportunity to consent to the changes.

Every U.S. senator should review Article 314 of the Law of the Sea Treaty and Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution before they vote on the ratification of this treaty. Our Constitution requires that two thirds of our Senate must approve any treaty. When changes to any treaties are made, our Senators have the authority and responsibility to review those changes and not surrender our sovereignty to UN bureaucrats and foreign governments!

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com