Frank Gaffney, who was assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and currently heads the Center for Security Policy, explains the curious fact that we are bound by treaties even if we don’t ratify them. “The Vienna Convention governing the status of treaties—to which we are a party—requires states that sign a treaty to refrain from any actions that undermine the treaty pending ratification until such time as a formal renunciation of the treaty is made. In practice, this is done by the State Department. This translates into actual compliance with the treaty including often paying the dues we would be obliged to pay once we are parties [to the treaty after ratification].”36
Because of the Vienna Convention, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid need not bring these treaties up for ratification if he feels he lacks the votes to pass them. Then, if the Democrats keep the Senate and Obama is reelected, these treaties will remain in force throughout his second term—never voted down (or up) by the Senate or renounced by the president. Our only remedy then, will be to defeat Obama and/or capture the Senate.
Nevertheless, Obama and Hillary Clinton are very anxious to get as many of these treaties as possible ratified in the lame duck session of Congress, after November but before the results of the 2012 election come into play. Even though some of these treaties have been kicking around for thirty years, they know that this might be their last chance to put into place key elements of their global governance plan.
One other reason that the treaties have become such a high priority is that Senator John Kerry chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is trying out for the position of next secretary of state. He is anxious to show how he can deliver the left’s agenda.
But Obama need not rely on the Vienna Convention since some of these treaties might get through in the lame-duck session of Congress that will meet after the election results are in. Even if the Republicans take control of the Senate, it won’t matter at all because it will be the outgoing, defeated Democratic senators who will vote on these treaties. Immunized by their defeats from public pressure—and possibly embittered by their losses—they will willingly vote to hogtie the United States and approve the massive grant of sovereignty to the United Nations.
Obama and Clinton are feverishly negotiating treaties—with very little public attention—and lining up votes for Senate ratification of numerous treaties.
Once these treaties are passed, they are the law of the United States forever.
That’s why we need to stop them.
Laws can be repealed, but treaties cannot. The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution characterizes all treaties as “the supreme law of the land” akin to constitutional provisions. Treaties supersede acts of Congress or of the various state legislatures and American courts are required to enforce these treaties in most instances. There are only two ways to get out of a treaty: (1) if the other signatories let us (all 190 nations that sign them in most cases) or (2) by passing a constitutional amendment.
The treaties Obama and Hillary are rushing to completion will permanently cede vast swaths of our national sovereignty to the UN.
We wrote briefly about these treaties in “Tricks or Treaties,” chapter 2 of our previous book, Screwed!. But since that book’s publication in early May 2012, these threats to our freedom have multiplied and gained momentum even as brand new threats—as that to Internet freedom—have come into public view. So we write this volume to explain the assault against our values and our nationhood so we can act to preserve our country from these threats while there is still time.
Here’s what Obama and Hillary are trying to do:
Signed by the president. Up for Senate ratification before the end of the year, it would:
• Give the UN control of the 71 percent of the earth’s surface covered by oceans and seas and all minerals and fish underneath.
• It would likely subject the US to international rules on carbon emissions such as the Kyoto Treaty (never ratified by the Senate) and might be used to force us into a global cap-and-trade system.
• It would curb the ability of the US Navy to perform its historic mission of protecting freedom of the seas and vest the power in a tribunal appointed by the UN secretary-general.
• Give the International Seabed Authority—a group of 193 nations in which we would have but one vote—the power to tax offshore oil and gas wells and pay the revenues, at their discretion, to any third world nation it chooses.
• Oblige our oil and gas companies to share, for free, all of our most modern offshore drilling technology.
A treaty giving the United Nations control over the Internet is now under negotiation (in secret). Responding to proposals by Russia, China, Brazil, and India, the negotiators hope to present a final treaty for signature by the nations of the world at a conference in Dubai in December 2012. It would:
• Give the UN power to regulate online content.
• Allow nations to inspect private email communications by their citizens.
• Permit nations to charge Internet traffic coming in from abroad a fee akin to that charged for long-distance phone calls. So Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., would have to pay tolls to send their content into these nations.
• Give the UN authority to allocate Internet addresses and require it to turn over to member nations (like China) the IP addresses (a unique set of numbers that indicate the geographic location of each and every computer) of each user.
The negotiations are ongoing. The US negotiators will probably succeed in diluting some of these provisions, but the chances for eventual passage of these destructive changes is such that Vinton Cerf, one of the two founders of the Internet, said that the free Internet is now under more threat than ever before.
At a global meeting in New York on July 27, 2012, the nations of the world—including the US—were scheduled sign an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which will empower an international body to regulate the international arms trade. Its goal is eventually to establish a system of worldwide gun control. While paying lip service to the right of private individuals to own, buy, sell, or transfer arms, the body will have a life of its own and the power to require of the signatory nations measures to effectuate the goal of the treaty. These could include gun confiscation and will almost certainly call for universal registration and licensing.
And the global governing body the treaty establishes can pass whatever rules it wants without having to come back to the Senate or to any national legislative body for approval.
The treaty signing was canceled after fifty-one senators said they would oppose its ratification. But it is likely to be approved and finalized by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly of the UN. Then it would go into effect if ratified by sixty-five nations (easily done). At that point, the US could either sign it or not. If it signed the treaty, we would be bound, under the Vienna Convention, until it was rejected for Senate ratification or renounced by a future president.
The best bet is that Obama signs the treaty after election day and Harry Reid never submits it for ratification so it remains in force until it is either renounced by a President Romney or rejected by a Republican-controlled Senate.