UN SUPREMACY OVER OUR COURTS
Not content with grabbing global jurisdiction of the oceans and attempting to control the Internet, the globalists at the United Nations are determined to get the United States to knuckle under to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, creating a court superior to our own US Supreme Court.
The International Criminal Court, organized by the United Nations, is battling to gain worldwide acceptance. Already 120 countries have signed on to the court and thirty-two others have signed the treaty recognizing its jurisdiction, but have not yet ratified it.
But until the court can claim jurisdiction over the United States, Russia, and China, it cannot hold sway over the world. None of the big three have signed on.
But President Obama and Secretary Clinton have begun to move in that direction and will likely move further in a second term-should Obama win one-or even in the lame-duck part of this term. (Even if the Senate does not ratify this treaty, under the Vienna Convention-see page 30-we must abide by it until we explicitly renounce it.)
President Bill Clinton did actually sign the treaty in 2000, but he did not submit it to the Senate for ratification because he had problems with some of its provisions. President George W. Bush renounced the treaty and, now, Obama is cozying up to it again.
State Department legal counselor Harold Koh said, "After 12 years, I think we have reset the default on the US relationship with the Court from hostility to positive engagement. In this case, principled engagement worked to protect our interest, to improve the outcome, and to bring us renewed international goodwill."1
But that "international goodwill" comes with quite a price!
NO WAR WITHOUT UN APPROVAL
The International Criminal Court is a typical UN bait-and-switch routine. Nominally established to bring dictator/war criminals to justice, its real purpose is to hamstring the US military and force it to abide by UN Security Council rule and regulation. The globalists are using the reasonable desire to get an international court to catch war criminals to restrict the use of military force without the approval of the Security Council-that is to say, without Russian and Chinese approval.
The Treaty of Rome creates a new international crime of "aggression," which means "the use of armed force by one State against another State without the justification of self-defense or authorization by the [UN] Security Council."2 Under the terms of the court"s operation, US presidents who went to war without council approval are liable to arrest, prosecution, and punishment by the International Criminal Court after they leave office.
Former president George W. Bush was planning a trip to Switzerland, where he was to be the keynote speaker at a Jewish charity gala. But Reuters reported that "pressure [was] building on the Swiss government to arrest him ... if he entered the country," since Switzerland is a signatory to the ICC. On December 2, 2011, Amnesty International called for Bush"s arrest while he was touring East Africa. Bush canceled his trip to Switzerland "due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture." He went to East Africa without incident.3
American negotiators succeeded in getting an amendment to the Rome treaty pa.s.sed that permitted signatories to opt out of the provisions governing the crime of aggression, but it is worth noting that even though the US is not a signatory to the treaty, Bush was still in jeopardy if he had set foot on Swiss territory.
In any event, the ICC"s powers are very elastic. The Rome Treaty says that the court "shall satisfy itself that it has jurisdiction in any case brought before it."4
As with many of the UN treaties, the carefully crafted protections and codicils on which our diplomats insist can be swept aside by the body the treaty creates in years ahead without any need to go back to the signatories for approval.
OBAMA"S READY TO SIGN
The evidence that Obama is planning to move toward membership in the ICC is overwhelming. While he has neither signed the treaty yet nor submitted it for Senate ratification, US Amba.s.sador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen Rapp told the media "our government has now made the decision that Americans will return to engagement at the ICC." The US partic.i.p.ated as an observer at the ICC annual meeting in 2010, the first time we sent a delegation to such a meeting.5
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the US would end its "hostility" to the ICC. Susan Rice, US amba.s.sador to the UN, expressed support for the ICC investigations in the Sudan.
President George W. Bush, on the other hand, was very negative on the ICC and even renounced American cooperation with it, stating that the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on the Rome Treaty. He was particularly worried that the ICC might prosecute American soldiers deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other countries and insisted on concluding bilateral agreements with more than one hundred nations hosting our troops, specifying that they would not hand over our personnel to the court for trial.
Now President Obama has removed the sanctions that governed those bilateral agreements, and so has signaled our willingness to cooperate with the court.
$100 MILLION, 700 STAFF, AND ONE INDICTMENT
The ICC does a terrible job of the task for which it was nominally created: the prosecution of human rights violators. In ten years of operation, it has acc.u.mulated a staff of seven hundred and spends an annual budget of $100 million. It has, according to the Wall Street Journal, "so far completed precisely one trial-that of Thomas Lubanga, a commander in the civil war in Congo. It took three years and ended with a conviction on March 14, 1012. The appeals have not begun. A few other trials are ongoing or set to begin. Even by the low standards of international tribunals, this performance should raise an eyebrow."6
While 120 countries have signed on to the ICC, few of the really bad actors have done so. The Journal reports that the court"s membership "includes few authoritarian countries that employ repression or conduct military operations. Mostly democracies with some semblance of rule of law have joined."7 Since the ICC cannot intervene unless a nation is a signatory to the treaty, it doesn"t get much business.
But the possible implications of this court are terrifying. It would have the right, if we signed on, to prosecute Americans for crimes committed on American soil. If a person had already been acquitted by our own courts, it could indict and try him anew without any restrictions on double jeopardy.
The court could even overrule decisions of our own Supreme Court if we become a party to its jurisdiction.
And the ICC has none of our const.i.tutional protections. It has no trial by jury, no right to a speedy trial, no separation of prosecutorial and judicial functions (the judge and the prosecutor are the same person). It has no protections against search and seizure and does not follow American jurisprudence.
Some people have cited the court"s inability to go after war criminals as a reason to strengthen its jurisdiction, but Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, drew the opposite conclusion, writing in the Journal, "Now ... it is clear that the ICC will serve no country"s interests, let alone international justice... . It is too weak to deter atrocities, end impunity, or keep the peace, but it is strong enough to serve as an irritant in international relations."8
But the globalists will continue to press for ICC jurisdiction, always remembering that the court is the judge of its own powers. While their initial sales pitch for the court sounds impressive-the prosecution of war criminals-it really is a heavily disguised attempt to bring the United States and our military under the jurisdiction of a global court. If the Law of the Sea Treaty is a threat to our naval dominance, the ICC is poised to restrict our military power.
We must be vigilant on this issue and move quickly to defeat it should the Obama administration move to resurrect the court and deepen American partic.i.p.ation.
PART SEVEN
GLOBALIST CONTROL OF s.p.a.cE
Even as the UN tries to take over control of the seas, the globalists are also pushing for international control of outer s.p.a.ce. In January 2012, Hillary Clinton announced we would enter into negotiations with the European Union and other "s.p.a.ce-faring" nations to develop a Code of Conduct for Outer s.p.a.ce Activities.
On its surface, the code seems to be aimed at keeping outer s.p.a.ce tidy by curbing the growing amount of debris in outer s.p.a.ce. It is, literally, an anti-littering agreement.
Rose Gottemoeller, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, explains that "orbital debris and irresponsible actions in s.p.a.ce have increased the chance of collisions that could have damaging consequences for the United States and others. As more nations and organizations use s.p.a.ce, the United States must work with our allies and partners to minimize these problems. The United States is joining with the European Union and others to develop an International Code of Conduct for Outer s.p.a.ce Activities to reduce the potential threat to American s.p.a.ce a.s.sets by endorsing nonbinding best practices and transparency and confidence-building measures."1
A BACKDOOR BAN ON DEFENSIVE s.p.a.cE WEAPONS
But Taylor Dinerman, of the Gatestone Inst.i.tute, explains the code"s real purpose: "What this Code would, in fact, ban is what the Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese see as American "s.p.a.ce weapons." The code is designed to prevent the United States and other liberal democracies from deploying systems actively to defend their own satellites, while it would allow Russia, China, and just about anyone else to continue their s.p.a.ce weapons program, probably with only minimal cosmetic changes."2
To curb debris in outer s.p.a.ce, the code would prohibit the launch of any missile or satellite that might contribute to litter in outer s.p.a.ce. This would ban defensive s.p.a.ce-based anti-missile satellites and weapons systems designed to defend against nuclear attack. (The theory is that such systems would contribute to debris by destroying missiles as they fly through s.p.a.ce en route to targets in other nations.)