Transnationalism: What it Means for America

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

What Transnationalism looks like with 20-20 vision
Barack Obama Bows to Transnationalism
Transnationalism = Globalization (see photo above)

I've heard word "transnationalism" used on television several times this week, and it reminded me that Obama's legislation, The Global Poverty Act, Senate Bill 2433, should be brought up for a vote, probably in the dead of night, before long.

The key to making transnationalism the rule of the world, rather than a choice by a Nation, is a document known as the U.N. Millenium Development Goal (read text here), known as the MDG. Senate Bill 2433 ties our President, whomever he may be, and surprise, surprise, "he" is Barack Obama, to accomplishing the Millennium Goal. Obama wrote this Bill while a Senator. Now he will implement this Bill with the U.N. - something that President Bush would have never considered.

In short, the U.N. defines transnationalism as a type of globalization that is, this minute, turning the world into a "global village." That "global village" will give back control of "peace, equity, social justice, democracy and human rights," to the people. The U.N.'s vision of globalization is one that makes all industry, throughout the world "work for the benefit of everyone to eradicate poverty and hunger globally..."

The U.N. MDG says this:

This can happen only if global corporations, international financial and trade institutions and Governments are subject to effective democratic control by the people..."

You get the picture. The U.N. wants world-wide socialism - no surprise there.

I urge everyone to keep a close watch on The Global Poverty Act, s.2433. It will rear it's ugly head sometime soon, and it's sponsors will attempt to get this innocuous-seeming Bill through without a lot of noise. Here's some information on how fossil fuels, currency, and land are to be taxed throught the MDG, as well as plans for globalized militaries.

Frank Gaffney, Jr. has a column this week on transnationalism. It's something we should all familiarize ourselves with because it is galloping at us at a very high speed. Here is Mr. Gaffney's article. Pay close attention to what is happening to former Bush U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others:

Looming specter of transnationalism
U.S. needs a State Department defender of its sovereign rights
by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Washington Times
Tuesday, March 31, 2009

COMMENTARY:

What is wrong with this picture? We learned this weekend that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, is preparing to prosecute six Americans who worked as senior legal and policy advisers to former President George W. Bush - including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. The purported crime? The opinions they provided Mr. Bush supported the use of torture against enemy combatants.

Most Americans would find this assertion of what has come to be called “transnational law” to be troubling on several grounds. Its application is an affront to due process and the rule of law in this country. It would criminalize internal U.S. policymaking deliberations, with profound implications for U.S. sovereignty. If allowed to run its course, this prosecution would have a profoundly chilling effect on the willingness of subordinates to provide a president with advice or perhaps even to serve in government.

One would hope President Obama would recognize that this use of legal mechanisms as a form of warfare against the United States - increasingly known as “lawfare” - holds serious dangers not just for the country and those who ran it for the past eight years, but for his administration as well. That would appear not to be the case, however, in light of his choice of Harold Koh to be the State Department's top lawyer.

In fact, as dean of Yale's law school, Mr. Koh has been an unalloyed enthusiast for transnational law. For example, in a 2006 article in the Penn State Law Review, he extolled the “transnationalist faction” on the Supreme Court and the wisdom shown by four, and sometimes five, of its justices in rejecting the impulses of what he disdainfully calls “the nationalist faction”:

“Generally speaking the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists tend instead to focus more on preserving American autonomyThe transnationalists believe in and promote the blending of international and domestic law, while nationalists continue to maintain a rigid separation of domestic from foreign law. The transnationalists view domestic courts as having a critical role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law, while nationalists argue instead that only the political branches can internalize international law.

“The transnationalists believe that U.S. courts can and should use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system, while the nationalists tend to claim that U.S. courts should limit their attention to the development of a national system. Finally, the transnationalists urge that the power of the executive branch should be constrained by judicial review and the concept of international comity, while the nationalists tend to believe that federal courts should give extraordinarily broad deference to executive power in foreign affairs.”

How many Americans are aware that some, let alone an actual majority, of the Supreme Court's justices think this country should be ruled by something other than the Constitution of the United States, laws made pursuant thereto and treaties clearly consistent with it? Assuredly, few of us know such an assault on our sovereignty is afoot; in all likelihood, fewer still would support it.

The same likely would apply to Mr. Koh's embrace of myriad other controversial transnationalist initiatives. He favors U.S. submission to the International Criminal Court, enabling that tribunal to have the right tomorrow to take up the sort of foreign prosecutions of Americans contemplated by Spain's Judge Garzon today.

Mr. Koh goes even further than Sen. John Kerry, who argued that American uses of force must meet what he euphemistically called a “global test.” Mr. Koh says the United States must obtain pre-authorization by the U.N. Security Council. In keeping with this view, he condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which lacked such a mandate, as “illegal.”

The State Department legal adviser-designate has also actively opposed virtually every instrument the previous administration deemed necessary to wage and win the war against terror-wielding adversaries. Mr. Koh insisted that Guantanamo Bay be closed, coercive interrogation techniques be halted and trials in civilian U.S. courts be afforded to captured enemy combatants. To be sure, these positions largely track with those of Mr. Obama, although the latter has left himself some latitude in their implementation. Mr. Koh's critique of the government's terrorist surveillance, though, is even more extreme than that of Mr. Obama, who as a senator voted to allow the program to continue.

It is absolutely predictable that the United States will find itself under ever greater assault in the form of lawfare as notions of the supremacy of transnational law take hold among elites, both here (notably in the Supreme Court) and abroad. Mr. Obama can spare himself and the country considerable grief when he meets this week in Europe and Turkey with some of the leading practitioners of lawfare by repudiating Judge Garzon's extraterritorial overreach, rejecting the application of transnational law more generally and selecting a State Department legal adviser who is an avowed nationalist, not a committed transnationalist”

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.

End Mr. Gaffney's article