If approved, it will grant a Kingston, Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) the power to regulate deep-sea oil exploration, and seabed mining.
In a move without precedent and with ominous implications, the International Seabed Authority would have the power to impose what amounts to taxes on American citizens.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Protect US sovereignty: Sink the Law of the Sea
If ratified by Congress, it will grant a Kingston, Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) the power to regulate deep-sea oil exploration, seabed mining, and fishing rights.
They point to the relatively small size of the Kingston, Jamaica-based international bureaucracy that has operated the International Seabed Authority in obscurity over the last 25 years.
The bodies created by the convention the International Seabed Authority, and International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea worry conservative American groups like the Heritage Foundation which fear global bureaucracies.
Michael Lodge, general counsel for the International Seabed Authority, told me that the authority's aim was to encourage a new mining industry to exploit seabed minerals but within strict environmental controls.
BBC: UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush
Yet, that would be the effect of our joining one of the UN's offshoots--the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a supranational organization created by Part XI of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Protect US sovereignty: Sink the Law of the Sea
What is clear, however, is that the taxpayer will be on the hook for at least a quarter of the International Seabed Authority's annual operating budget, our tithe under the UN formula.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Protect US sovereignty: Sink the Law of the Sea
It does so by empowering the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to tax Americans for the purposes of meeting its ownadministrative costs and of globally redistributing revenue derived from the exploitation of seabed resources.
Only weeks earlier, a Lockheed unit in the United Kingdom was granted an exploration license by the International Seabed Authority to mine polymetallic nodules on the ocean floor between Hawaii and Mexico.
For example, for the first time since the UN was founded, a multilateral agency, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), would have the power to raise revenues from U.S. taxpayers if American companies wish to exploit the seabeds' resources.
Under the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, mining rights on the ocean floor are controlled by a little-known body, the International Seabed Authority, which since 2001 has issued 13 licences - with another six in prospect.
BBC: UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs would have a two-fer, due (1) to the fact LOST may require, among other things, the compromise of sensitive information about domestic industries in the name of environmental regulation, and (2) the growing allegations of corruption and incompetence in LOST's utterly unaccountable International Seabed Authority.
Mr. Gaffney warned against the significant erosion in U.S. sovereignty that would attend U.S. endorsement of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) - a supranational organization with unprecedented powers to regulate seven-tenths of the earth's surface, levy taxes, govern ocean research and exploration, and create a multinational court to render and enforce its judgments.
To his credit, Mr. Reagan recognized the Law of the Sea Treaty for what it was intended to be by the World Federalists and so-called non-aligned movement types who had a significant hand in shaping its supranational International Seabed Authority and related entities: a highly precedential, and undesirable, vehicle for establishing world-government mechanisms to control the "international commons" (in this case, the oceans) at the expense of sovereign states.
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