Here Come the Black Helicopters!: UN Global Governance and the Loss of Freedom

by Dick Morris

  Do we want to be in a global ruling partnership with Russia, China, or a collection of tiny, lightly populated, third world autocracies, riddled with corruption and dedicated to the enrichment of their leaders? These are not the kind of bedfellows we want in our government. They are not worthy of entrusting our sovereignty to them.

  And we will not accept them.

  Join us in this urgent fight to maintain our sovereignty and stop the forces of global governance.

  But, if you do, be prepared to be identified as one of the “black helicopter crowd.”

  You’ll be in good company.

  TREATIES: HOW THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO UNDERMINE OUR SOVEREIGNTY

  UN treaties are a favorite way of circumventing our national government and transferring our power, control, and resources to a new global entity. And the Obama administration is determined to destroy the very essence of our national sovereignty and transfer power from our elected Congress to the UN General Assembly—a body filled with corrupt, undemocratic, tyrannical nations that abuse human rights and do not share our values.

  If Barack Obama is reelected in November 2012, his agenda for global governance through the United Nations will pick up steam. But even if he is defeated—or especially if he is defeated—he and his outgoing secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, are planning to use his remaining months in office to sign a series of treaties and international protocols that will bind our country for decades to come. We need to remember one fundamental but little known fact: Any treaty signed by the US but not yet ratified by the Senate is binding on our country—as if it had been ratified—until it is either rejected by the Senate or renounced by the president. This requirement—embedded in the Vienna Convention signed and ratified by the US—means that these treaties might come into force and effect even if we never ratify them.

  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:

  Law of the Sea Treaty

  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.

  UN Control of the Internet

  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.

  Gun Control

  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.

  Global Environmentalism

  Under the terms of the recently negotiated Rio+20 Treaty, the United Nations Environment Programme, a UN body, will be granted increased power to act as a worldwide Environmental Protection Agency, promulgating global regulations.

  The United States will be obliged to contribute to a fund to help third world nations cope with environmental change. At the Rio Conference in June 2012, Secretary of State Clinton pledged $2 billion for this fund, which is expected to reach $100 billion when fully implemented. The US would have only one vote out of 193 in deciding to which regimes these funds will be paid.

  International Criminal Court

  This treaty, signed by Clinton and then renounced by President George W. Bush, may be signed again by President Obama during his second term or before he leaves office following an election defeat.

  It supersedes the US Supreme Court and makes our entire judicial system subject to the rulings of an international court. The court would have the power to establish the extent of its own jurisdiction and would have the power to adjudicate disputes between Americans on US soil even after the Supreme Court has ruled. Double jeopardy would not attach to its review of American court rulings. The court would not have trial by jury or any of the constitutional protections Americans now enjoy.

  Dangerously, it establishes the new global crime of “aggression,” which it defines as going to war without UN Security Council approval. US presidents could be prosecuted criminally after they leave office for violating this new law. In practice, of course, this provision would give Russia and China jurisdiction over the use of the US military.

  Missile Defense

  Under the guise of a “code of conduct” to limit debris in outer space, the Obama administration is negotiating an agreement to limit what satellites or missiles can be put into orbit around the earth. This code is widely seen as a backdoor attempt to reimpose the constraints on defensive anti-missiles embodied in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and renounced by President George W. Bush.

  Each of these treaties creates a new global entity charged with its enforcement. Whether it is a gun control agency or a Seabed Authority or an International Criminal Court, these treaties empower such agencies. Long after the treaties have been signed and ratified and after the various disclaimers have been inserted by our diplomats protecting our rights and sovereignty, these agencies will remain, able to expand their jurisdiction, legislate new provisions, impose additional taxes and penalties, and require obedience by the signatories to the treaties that set them up—all without any input from us and all without any accountability to us.

  These enforcement agencies will inevitably acquire a life of their own, expanding their powers and eroding our sovereignty at every turn. This trend will not be an unintended consequence of these treaties—the systematic erosion of America’s sovereignty and subjecting her wealth and power to global control is quite specifically the intention of these treaties and the people who wrote them.

  Each one strips us of control over our own destiny and places our sovereignty under the political control of the United Nations, and not, it must be noted, the Security Council of the UN on which we have a veto. These powers would largely be vested in newly created global bodies in which all of the world’s nations—corrupt or not, democratic or not, free or not, tiny and large—would have an equal say.

  And then there is the question of who would obey these treaties. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other outlaw nations have shown no regard for their treaty obligations. They each routinely disregard the provisions of the treaties they have signed and feel in no respect bound by them.

  By contrast, law-abiding nations like the United States take their treaty obligations very seriously and are scrupulous in carrying them out to the legalistic letter. Indeed, American courts would be obliged—under the Supremacy Clause—to enforce these treaties, honoring them all even as the other nations who sign them take them lightly.

  AMERICA’S TREATY ADDICTION

  What is it with our diplomats? Why do they constantly seek to ensnare us in treaties to regulate each aspect of our existence? Can’t our diplomats ever say no?

  Our foreign policy is largely conducted by globalists who work within our State Department, and the National Security Council. Deeply committed to the one-world agenda, they have dedicated their lives and public service to bringing the UStates into the global fold. The goals of the Club of Rome have no greater allies than many of the men and women of our foreign service.

  Our nation’s foreign affairs experts live in the shadow of the trauma of the United States’ rejection of the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations. Because of the United States’ refusal to enter the global body and the perpetuation of American isolationism, historians assign to the United States much of the blame for the failed peace that followed the First World War and led directly to the second.

  These experts fear the resurgence of isolationism and are determined to ensure that the United States is a full participant in every global treaty that comes down the pike.

  When President Woodrow Wilson led the United States into the war in 1917—until then a conflict of Britain, France, and Russia against Germany and Austro-Hungary—he promised that it would be “a war to end all wars.” When the American military began to weigh heavily into the scales of the conflict, eventually forcing a German surrender in 1918, the president amplified his idealistic motivation for fighting by issuing his “Fourteen Points,” which would be the basis for what he described as “a peace without victory.”

  The document that set forth Wilson’s Fourteen Points was one of the most idealistic in diplomatic history. It pledged the nations of the world to postwar boundaries based on self-determination by each country’s people. Every ethnic or national group would be able to determine, democratically, to which country they wished to belong. Freedom of the seas, the rights of neutral nations, and free flow of commerce were guaranteed. And, to enforce and implement this program, a League of Nations was to be established.

  When the Armistice ending the war was signed—largely based on German acceptance of the Fourteen Points—Wilson sailed to Europe to attend a peace conference at the French palace of Versailles, where the nations of the world gathered. While all the Allied powers, who dictated the peace to Germany and its defeated allies, paid lip service to the Fourteen Points, they disregarded it when it came to thrashing out the details of the peace settlement.

  When the final document emerged, nobody was happy. The ideal of self-determination was breached more than it was honored. The treaty reflected the same mad scramble for territory and reparations that had always accompanied the end of wars. This was far from a war to end all wars. In fact, it was the beginning of the onset of World War II!

  Of all Wilson’s Fourteen Points only the provision for a League of Nations emerged
in the final draft of the Treaty of Versailles. But when the document came up for ratification in the Republican-dominated US Senate, it was harshly criticized and ultimately rejected. So Wilson’s League began operations without the United States in attendance. The US never joined and played almost no role in trying to keep the peace between the world wars. With isolationists firmly in control of our foreign policy throughout the twenties, the United States turned inward and let the world hurdle toward another ghastly war.

  When finally war came, first to Asia in 1934, to Europe in 1939 and to the US in 1941, it was a global catastrophe. More than fifty million lay dead by its end.

  Determined to avoid the isolationism that had engulfed the United States at the end of World War I, Presidents Roosevelt and Truman firmly steered the US into the UN and raised great hopes for its effectiveness. Our diplomats, chastened by our former isolationism, determined that they would never again sit on the sidelines. Having “a seat at the table” became a mantra on Capitol Hill and in the State and Defense departments. Never again would we shut ourselves out.

  The legacy of this harsh lesson still carries over. American diplomats instinctively rally to the negotiating table wherever it is, whatever it is about. The rest of the world understands that without American participation, no agreement is worth the paper on which it is written. And the other nations use the treaty-making process primarily as a way to cut the United States down to size. But the addiction of our foreign policy establishment to international conventions, forums, negotiations, and debates ensures our presence at the table and, most likely, our ascension to the global consensus.