LOST History

The former editor of the New York Times editorial page says it is “crazy” to be opposed to the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty and she can’t understand why it has become a hot-button issue in the Republican presidential race. Gail Collins declared in a November 3 column in the Times that the measure simply clarifies “rules for navigation and mining in international waters” and sets up “a system for settling disputes.” Those opposed to it, she says, are spinning “conspiracy theories.” But Collins is doing the spinning.

What if there were evidence that the treaty was the product of those who believe in world government financed by global taxes? Hold on to your seats.

The true story of how the Law of the Sea Treaty came into being is a fascinating one that I have investigated for several years. I researched the matter at the United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea in New York City and at the Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College in North Carolina. The Guilford College papers demonstrate the activities that engaged Sam and Miriam Levering as they wrote and promoted this treaty. The Leverings, a husband and wife team who were Quakers and World Federalists, helped write the treaty and lobbied for it through a non-governmental organization called the Neptune Group.

You have probably never heard of them before. But the November 4 edition of the Mount Airy (North Carolina) News gives a hint of the truth. It reports that Sam Levering “played a key role in formulating” the treaty and was recognized for that role during a symposium there on October 12.

Is it possible this small-town North Carolina paper has information that Gail Collins and the Times do not? Who is Sam Levering? And is it true that he played a key role in writing the treaty? Here lies one of the sinister secrets of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty that the major media are either too lazy or too dishonest to report. It is a “secret,” of course, only in the sense that it is kept from the American people by papers like the New York Times.

The shocking truth is that the Law of the Sea Treaty, which could come up for a full Senate vote at any time, was largely written by people like Sam Levering, a World Federalist devoted to world government. And since that is demonstrably the case, could the Law of the Sea Treaty be considered a step toward world government? Or is it too conspiratorial to even consider such a possibility? Let’s continue our probe.

The Names Have Been Changed

The Mount Airy News was reporting on an October 12 symposium on the treaty sponsored by a patriotic-sounding group called the “American Freedom Association.” The paper reported that “The event featured a variety of speakers on the treaty, including Ralph Levering, whose late father Sam played a key role in formulating the measure in 1982.” The paper quoted Marie Judson, the association’s historian, as saying that “one of the reasons she supports the treaty is to help carry on the work started by Sam Levering, a strong advocate for peace, who among other issues campaigned against nuclear arms proliferation.”

The American Freedom Association was one of several groups which emerged after World War II and were devoted to the concept of “world federalism” or world government. Their reaction to the horrors of World War II caused them to embrace world government as the solution to the world’s problems. But some of the world federalist groups were accused of being infiltrated or manipulated by communists sympathetic to the Soviet Union. For that reason, one of these groups changed its name to “American Freedom Association” in the 1950s.

The group’s website admits as much. “Many of the founding members were members of the World Federalist Society,” it says. “The chosen name reflected a strong perspective on the required conditions for American Freedom. It also reflected a need for a name that was acceptable at the height of the era of Senator Joe McCarthy.” In other words, in order to avoid the taint of being associated with the world communist movement, the name was changed.

A similar public relations strategy was also evident in 2004 when the World Federalist Association changed its name to the more harmless sounding “Citizens for Global Solutions.” It is funded by major liberal foundations and lobbies for ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. It also joined with the Open Society Institute of George Soros to oppose John Bolton’s nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. They hired a crook as part of their lobbying effort.

Global Taxes

Back when it proudly called itself the World Federalist Association, the group said that one of its main priorities was to “provide the U.N. with sustained and independent sources of funding.” How did they intend to bring this about? Through the Law of the Sea Treaty.

The WFA book, A New World Order: Can It Bring Security to the World’s People? declared, “One of the most popular concepts identified as an independent source of revenue is the ocean and seabeds.” It noted that the treaty creates an International Seabed Authority to grant “leasing rights to private corporations,” provide “mining concessions,” and operate mining operations through something called the Enterprise. “Certain fees and sharing of technology are also involved,” it noted. Revenues accruing to the Seabed Authority “are designated for development assistance” or foreign aid.

Basic investigative reporting, which is apparently lacking at the Times and other liberal papers, also reveals that the concept of the “common heritage of mankind” was inserted into the treaty through the aforementioned efforts of Sam Levering and his wife Miriam. They were the left-wing Quakers and World Federalists who formed the “Neptune Group” to lobby for the treaty over the course of decades. They worked with Elliot Richardson, who was President Jimmy Carter’s representative to the treaty negotiations. He would later serve as national co-chairman of the pro-U.N. lobby, the U.N. Association. (The U.N. Association is funded by most of the major media groups, including the New York Times Company Foundation).

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker group, reports that “During the 1970s, Sam and Miriam worked out of FCNL’s office as they diligently and patiently advocated to keep the oceans part of ‘the common heritage of mankind’ and negotiated with governments on the treaty’s final language.” FCNL reports that the Leverings also “entered the fray in 1970 as Congress debated the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources bill that promoted a nationalistic approach” to mining. The Leverings were strongly opposed to that approach. Their notion of the oceans being the “common heritage of mankind” stayed in the treaty.

The Birth of “Limited” World Government

The results were what they intended. In its 1995 study, National Taxpayers, International Organizations: Sharing the Burden of Financing the United Nations, the U.N. Association admitted that the International Seabed Authority was unique among U.N. bodies: “Only the Seabed authority created by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which entered into force in late 1994, has authority today to directly collect international revenue to finance its activities.” Hence, global taxes were born, a major step on the road to world government. But will the U.S. Senate sign on to that scheme? That’s what the battle over the Law of the Sea Treaty is all about.

“My parents were world peace advocates,” boasted Davidson College history professor Ralph Levering. “They were deeply involved with the World Federalist Movement from the 1930s through the 1950s, advocating a federalist system binding all countries under a central world government with limited power.” There were other players involved and you can read about them in this report.

An official 1997 WFA publication declared that the final version of the Law of the Sea Treaty “marked real progress in establishing global governance by…stipulating that mining of the seabeds beyond national waters should require payment of royalties to the LOS [Law of the Sea] organization, thereby creating a funding resource that would be independent of voluntary contributions by the treaty member nations. These are the elements of a limited world government in a very restricted field that is nevertheless significant.”

There you have it, Ms. Collins. You can call this a conspiracy theory if you want to. But it is really not. It is an open secret that our major media want desperately to conceal.

Defeating the Law of the Sea Treaty would not only stop the globalists dead in their tracks. It would let the New York Times and other media know that we have seen through their propaganda and disinformation. So we will get two victories for the price of one. Isn’t that worth the effort? America’s sovereignty is right now hanging in the balance. What will you do? What decision will you make?

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.