BUILDING A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE BUT OBLIVION: USG Funding Of UNCLOS & UN Environment Program Will Undermine US Sovereignty

BUILDING A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE BUT OBLIVION **


The UNCLOS has not been properly researched and scientifically investigated by the U.S. Executive and Legislative branches. Neither have these organs of U.S. government closely examined whether the UNCLOS's environmental regulatory rules can: 1) advance sound environmental policy; 2) ensure objective, balanced enforcement free from the political influence of special interests’ having philosophical/political and economic leanings antithetical to free markets and the protection of private property rights; and 3) guarantee that the Rule of Law, NOT the Rule by Law, is the order of the day - i.e., that Rule of Law is NOT undermined, circumvented or usurped to support a system of unaccountable supranational power where top-down rather than bottom-up Global Governance reigns.


As a result of inadequate executive and legislative branch research and oversight of the UNCLOS and its relationship to the burgeoning United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), U.S. policymakers have remained largely unaware of how the U.S. State Department continues to fund and seek future funding for these organizations/institutions - despite the fact that such funding can be and, in some cases, is actually being employed against U.S. national sovereign interests. For one thing, the UNEP is the multilateral environmental treaty-making machine of the UN, which the European Union, specifically, France and Germany, aim to enlarge and reform into an International Environmental Organization with vast powers to facilitate global environmental regulatory and economic governance over U.S. affairs, based on other than free market, private property, rule of law and scientific principles.


It is therefore surprising that the U.S. State Department has actually funded the UNEP in the neighborhood of $42.17 million from 2004-2007 ($10.94 million – 2004, $10.91 million – 2005, $10.16 million – 2006, $10.16 million – 2007), has estimated that actual 2008 UNEP funding will be $10.42 million, and has recently requested additional 2009 UNEP funding in the amount of $9.52 million – for a total of $19.94 ($20) more million, for a grand total of actual, estimated and projected UNEP funding for 2004-2009 of $62.11 million! [1] Adding insult to injury, the U.S. State Department has also, on at least two occasions, sought federal budget line funding for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the International Seabed Authority (ISBA). These funding requests were submitted FY 2006 $3.1 million (ITLOS - $1.9 million + ISBA - $1.2 million) and just recently FY 2009 $4.9 million (ITLOS – $3.6 million + ISBA - $1.3 million)! [2]


What is the sound rationale justifying the U.S. Department of State's appropriation of monies to the UNCLOS [a treaty not yet ratified], to the tune of approximately $5 million dollars? If the monies are being allocated to the UNCLOS, where other treaty parties hostile to U.S. interests are 1) refocusing and reshaping the UNCLOS into a more communal, centralized social system and 2) planning to utilize the interrelationship between the UNCLOS and the UNEP to promote the development of a global governance system that compromises U.S. national sovereignty, are we not undermining ourselves by building a “Bridge That Leads to Nowhere”, but oblivion?


**[THE ITSSD WISHES TO THANK CLIFF KINCAID OF AMERICA'S SURVIVAL (http://www.usasurvival.org ) FOR BRINGING THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT'S PROPOSED FY 2009 BUDGET LINE FUNDING OF THESE UNCLOS BODIES TO OUR ATTENTION]


[1] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2009 at p. 92, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/100014.pdf ; FY 2008 at p. 109, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/80151.pdf ; FY 2007 at p. 88, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/60297.pdf ; FY 2006 at p. 90, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/41913.pdf .

[2] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2006, supra at p. 92; FY 2009, supra at p. 96.

LOST runs silent, runs deep

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071030/COMMENTARY03/110300011



Washington Times



October 30, 2007


Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. - In over 30 years of working in and watching the ways of Washington, I must say, I have never seen anything quite like it.


According to Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the entire Senate Republican leadership is now opposed to a controversial treaty supported by the president and an implausible alliance of special interests from the U.S. Navy to Greenpeace. At a joint press conference last Wednesday, he was one of several senators to declare that, as a result, supporters would be unable to muster the necessary 67 votes for ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). Yet, it seems not one of the "establishment" media organs felt moved to report these momentous political developments.


More extraordinary still is the apparent news blackout concerning the fact that virtually every Republican presidential candidate (with the surprising, and hopefully ephemeral, exception of Rudy Giuliani) has announced either outright opposition to the treaty or deep misgivings about its inevitable effect: conferring more power on international organizations at the expense of U.S. sovereignty. Apart from a front-page article in The Washington Times last Friday and postings by an array of online news outlets, bloggers and a couple of newsletters, the so-called "mainstream media" have denied the American people virtually any information about LOST's growing difficulties.


The seemingly deliberate suppression of bad news concerning an accord favored by the elite is being compounded by a similar lack of transparency on the part of the Senate itself. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has scheduled a panel vote on LOST for tomorrow — ignoring a request from one of his colleagues, Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, for additional hearings and additional testimony from those opposed to the treaty.


Mr. Vitter recognized the Senate's need to hear from more than two critics of the treaty — each of whom were given just seven minutes to provide their oral critique. If anything, that necessity became even more urgent after several of the nine proponents from whom the Foreign Relations Committee took testimony, misled the panel (to put it charitably) about various provisions of LOST and their ominous implications.


It might seem unimaginable that Bush administration officials, such as Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger, could get away with dissembling before a Senate committee led by a Democrat who wants to be considered a serious contender for the presidency. Perhaps that is happening because Mr. Biden could not find the time to attend either of the two hearings he called concerning the treaty. Neither for that matter did the panel's two other active presidential candidates, Democrats Barack Obama of Illinois and Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Don't bother them with the facts. Let's vote.


Then there is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It did manage to hold a hearing on LOST, but it was a classified session and only featured official witnesses. Unsurprisingly, all of them supported ratification. What is surprising, though, is Chairman Jay Rockefeller's uncharacteristic acceptance at face value of representations by executive branch officials like Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. Based on such testimony, Sen. Rockefeller of West Virginia recently signed a letter with Republican Vice Chairman Kit Bond of Missouri declaring that U.S. adherence to the treaty would have no negative implications for U.S. intelligence. While there are strong arguments to the contrary, Mr. Rockefeller, like Mr. Biden, has no time for a second opinion that might produce inconvenient truths.


As things stand now, the Foreign Relations Committee's inaccurate and unbalanced record will be the only public one senators have to go on. Formal requests made by Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a senior member of the Senate's Armed Services and Environment and Public Works committees, asking them to examine the treaty's myriad repercussions for matters within their jurisdiction are going unanswered. The same is true of similar appeals made to those and six of the Senate's other committees with relevant areas of responsibility by the Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty (see http://www.rejectlost.org/Letters_to_the_Senate.html ).


So, here's what senators and their constituents need to know as decision time looms on LOST: Ronald Reagan rejected the Law of the Sea Treaty 25 years ago. We have been able to survive ever since without being a party to it, following Mr. Reagan's direction — observing its provisions regarding navigation, with which we can live, and not being bound by those hostile to our interests.


The latter involve, among other things, a supranational, United Nations-affiliated government of the seas with the power to extend its authority to our interior waters, sovereign territory and even our air. There is no justification for haste, let alone stealth, in trying to make such a treaty the "supreme law of the land."


The Republican leadership, both in Congress and on the presidential hustings, recognizes that what is at stake in LOST amount to defining issues. These leaders learned something from the ugly fiasco that resulted during the elite's recent efforts to foist immigration "reform" on the American people. Much of the public is deeply skeptical of secretive initiatives that would, similarly: undermine U.S. sovereignty; compromise our constitutional, representative form of government and its exclusive responsibility for regulating our national affairs; and endanger our security interests and economic competitiveness.


As with immigration, it matters not a whit to millions of American voters that President Bush and the establishment elite support such dubious initiatives. In the absence of Senate due-diligence and transparency about LOST, particularly those senators up for reelection next year flout this pivotal part of the electorate at their peril.


Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a participant in the Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty.