Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published Sept. 18, 2002

In whose best interest?

Earlier this month, Prince Zeid bin Raad, cousin of Jordanian King Abdullah II, gaveled the first session of the United Nations International Criminal Court to order. It marked the first time in history that U.S. citizens and our foreign-based service men and women are placed under the criminal jurisdiction of a foreign power. As one of his final acts upon leaving office, President Clinton signed the treaty that established this court, but it has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. No matter, though, it is in effect anyway, and non-member nations, such as the U.S., are subject to its authority.

Its the same old story: fellow UN member nations, such as Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, and many others you've probably never heard of, see this as an opportunity to retaliate against the oppression being imposed upon them by the United States of America. Of course President Bush strongly opposes having U.S. citizens subject to foreign jurisdiction, and is applying pressure on our "allies" to at least exempt our servicemen while they are performing their "peacekeeping" roles around the world. But so far only England, and a couple of other non-entities, have agreed.

Since a United Nations international court has now been established, I suppose it was only natural that a proposal for a United Nations international tax would follow. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, currently meeting in Johannesburg, French President Jacques Chirac is proposing just such a tax. The only issue of disagreement is whether they should accept the previously recommended "Tobin" tax on international transactions only, or the Chirac proposal to place a UN sales tax on a sovereign nation's internal domestic transactions. Initial estimates are that such a tax would extract $100 BILLION the first year -- mostly from us, of course -- and according to South African President Thabo Mbeki, would end "global apartheid" between the rich and the poor nations of the world.

So now we have the Kyoto Protocol, a so-called environmental effort designed to limit U.S. industrial power. The International Criminal Court, designed to punish U.S. citizens for whatever charges they wish to trump up, and now a proposal for an international sales tax to make certain the leveling process continues.

It was Henry Ward Beecher who said, "The real democratic American ideal is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance."

But our friends around the world don't see it that way. They won't rest until they succeed in bringing us down to their levels. And if you look around at all the empty plants in our community, their functions having been moved to Mexico and elsewhere, you can see that it's working!

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.