On behalf of the People of the World

Submission to the Participating States,

the United Nations and

the International Seabed Authority

Agent for Humanity

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

To: Member States, The United Nations and

the International Seabed Authority

Dear Friends            

                         Noting that people everywhere now recognize the growing reliance on free market principles as the key to eliminating poverty and bringing peace to the world.

Mindful that under customary international law dating back over thousands of years, no charge or impost has been levied upon ships, fishing vessels, cruise liners and cargo vessels by reason only of their operating, fishing, harvesting and passage through international waters.   

Thus parties have an inalienable right dating back to the beginning of civilization to operate in international waters without fear of impost from any government or organization and consequently the United Nations International Seabed Authority (ISA) taxation and expropriation regime for minerals exploration on the high seas are illegal under customary international law.

Recognizing that The International Seabed Authority (ISA)  policies, born in the bygone era of the cold war have resulted in not one single commercial minerals harvesting operation coming to fruition under ISA auspices. This despite the ISA and its government partners having unfettered access to all the world's great ocean resources for more than a decade.

We assert that;

1. To enforce rules, you must first control the space. The UN and the ISA have not proved legitimate control of the high seas, therefore their "rules" are “trumped up”, illegal and invalid.
2. The ISA, by promulgating illegal onerous impost regimes, has abused the trust placed in it by humanity by actively holding back deep sea minerals developments for over a decade.

3.                  The Law of the Sea Convention and the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part IX (seabed provisions) of the Convention are in part illegal under customary international law and hence unenforceable.

4. Commercial operations on the high seas including international aircraft over-flights, navies, fishermen, cargo vessels, and cruise liners do not and have never paid taxes to any organization for the right to free passage, or share harvest income from fish or minerals recovered from the high seas and neither should they. Such imposts would cripple modern trade and commerce in very short order.
5. The failure of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to promulgate any viable rules for the harvesting of minerals in international waters to the detriment of all humanity in over ten years. 
6. There is no customary right to taxation or any participation in future deep sea minerals revenues by the UN or the International Seabed Authority or any other UN body or the transfer of any proprietary deep sea mining technology to the International Seabed Authority.   Neither is there the right to the ISA’s planned in-house “Enterprise” competitor minerals corporation as provided for in their Convention.  Thus the ISA has no legal, moral or economic right to such immoral transfer, or need for them and no such right is either fair, customary or enforceable under international maritime law.
7. Observers now recognize that the many benefits of increased supply of much needed minerals and metals to all humanity shall be significant benefit to the developing States and their people and thus the proposals for the ISA to onerous control of the high seas, imposing taxation, interference and expropriation regimes are morally bankrupt and entirely inappropriate.
8. It could be more appropriate for a contract organization, or the US or another democratic government to manage registration of the minerals resources in the Clipperton-Clarion fracture zones. Given the complete failure of the ISA to develop the mineral resources therein and humanity’s urgent need for a greater supply of affordable minerals.

With the deepest respect for the hard-working people at the International Seabed Authority today, we hereby submit to the International Seabed Authority, (ISA) Board and member countries that as the ISA policies have resulted in not one single commercial minerals harvesting operation coming to fruition under their auspices, despite having unfettered access to all the world's great ocean resources for ten years, the management or the member countries should vote to immediately disband the International Seabed Authority in order to better foster the development by commercial operators of deep sea mining to bring much-needed minerals to the market as soon as is commercially possible in a responsible manner that protects the natural environment.

This radical change is urgently needed in order to free the way for commercial enterprise to harvest much-needed minerals and thus promote the greater good and improve the lives of all the world's citizens through increased availability of goods manufactured from minerals carefully recovered from the deep sea.

Disbanding the ISA would enable the unleashing of the unbounded energy of private enterprises to recover minerals from the deep sea for the common good and pleasure of all peoples.

Presently the ISA is denying the world's people, particularly the poor, from fairer access to all manner of goods via onerous and inhibiting ISA policies, which effectively stamp out any commercial deep seabed activity via illogical, illegal and  outmoded rules.

We submit that it would be in the best interests of humanity if the International Seabed Authority were to be voluntarily disbanded forthwith and superseded with a simple, non taxing, non-competing and fairer Ocean Minerals Area Claim registry, along the lines of the ITU.

ISA RULES ARE NON-SENSIBLE 

1. In large part due to the high price of  minerals from land-based mining operations the world's poor are increasingly being locked out of the benefits of a modern society, and the ISA rules are perpetuating humanity's suffering with the promulgation of outmoded and illegal “Non-Market-Rule” regulations based on widely discredited cold-war statist concepts.
2. In effect the ISA policies represent a "Land Grab" of the very worst kind, a grab by a monopoly bureaucracy which appears to be self-serving rather than the serving of humanity.  
3. By continuing with their power grab and ISA owned asset expropriation policies the ISA management has effectively broken the public's trust, damaged the lives of millions, especially the world's poor and land locked and should be retired.
4. Many minerals have quadrupled in price in recent years due to short supply.  Existing land-based minerals miners are much pleased at having such an efficient organization as the ISA holding back much-needed supplies of minerals from world markets for years and years, so that mining companies can reap ever higher prices. Perhaps the land miners could collectively pay the costs of running the ISA. The world's poor and their governments should no longer be insulted by being asked to pay for an organization that ensures that many minerals and products remain too expensive for poorer people to afford. 
5. The current proposed ISA rules for exploration are hugely disadvantageous to private industry, the world's poor and a “bad bargain".  As a direct result of poor policy, the ISA regimes have destroyed any chance of the world’s people benefiting from the minerals present in the deep seas for over a decade.
6. Only state-sponsored industries subsidized with funding from a few member States long-suffering and often overtaxed citizens have signed up for ISA “Exploration Areas”.
7. The proposals for the ISA to set up its own bureaucracy run supra-state deep sea mining  “Enterprise”, retaining undersea mine sites equal in size or value to every site awarded to private companies runs counter to common sense, human history and the customary rule of international law and should be recognized as illegal.
8. ISA has informed deep sea mining firms that they would be required to sell their technology to the International Seabed Authority under certain circumstances so as to subsidize a bureaucracy-led, non-commercial competitor and to abide by production ceilings. These ideas seem preposterous in today’s enlightened age.

There are five primary reasons for disbanding the ISA and rejecting the illegal UN treaty;

1.      The ISA agreement attempts to illegally take onerous expropriation, taxation rights and other control of private companies to the Seabed Authority.  These are onerous rules that would instantly bankrupt every shipping company, cruise line, distant water fishery fleets in the world if it was applied to them.

2.      The ISA is a burdensome new international bureaucracy with an abysmal track record, over which the citizens of the world, especially the poor, have little influence and with no visible benefits to date, and none in the foreseeable future.

3.      We oppose the idea of production controls, by who’s authority and for what reason? The market decides the level of production of goods and services in the real world.

4.      The mandatory sale of technology to the ISA to help the ISA create a commercial competitor using the supplying private firm’s capital is clearly wrong, illegal and illogical.   Such ill-founded morally bankrupt policies can only have been born in the darkest days of the cold war.

5.      Private seabed mining firms attempting to operate on sound commercial terms while having to fund, then compete with an all-powerful stateless near-monopoly ISA seabed mining enterprise controlled by bureaucrats with an already-established track record of failure, is an unworkable illegal proposition that only the bureaucrats of statist governments and dictatorships could love.

THE SOLUTION

Given the failure of the policies perpetuated by ISA management, disbanding the ISA in its current form is the only viable option for humanity’s sake.   

We urge the states cooperate to create a simple Not-For-Profit minerals claim filing registrar organization.

Yours Truly

People of the World.