Ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) seems like a no-brainer. The treaty’s central provisions divvy up maritime territory among countries for the purposes of natural resource development. More than 160 countries have acceded to it, including the whole of the developed world. Iran, Syria, and North Korea oppose it while the Obama administration, five former Republican Secretaries of State, the U.S. military, and major affected industries all support ratification.

But today, according to a blog post by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), enough Senate Republicans have signed on to block the Treaty so that it will not pass in the coming year: “4 additional senators have joined in opposition to LOST, including Mike Johanns (R-NE), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). With 34 senators against the misguided treaty, LOST will not be ratified by the Senate this year.” DeMint’s complaints against the treaty, listed in the same post, aren’t remotely based in reality:

• Demint claims LOST would sneak in a cap and trade law for greenhouse gasses. In reality, a State Department legal analysis found that “it contains no obligation to implement any particular climate change policies.”
• DeMint claims the U.S. would have to pay “trillions in royalties” to state sponsors of terrorism. But according to John Norton Moore, a U.S. ambassador for the Law of the Sea in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, “the treaty grants the U.S. the only permanent veto as to how the modest royalties, collected in return for secure property rights, are to be distributed to state parties” and would allow “U.S. access to strategic minerals of copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese and rare earths worth about $1 trillion.“
• DeMint claims it would strengthen China against the United States. Actually, it would give the U.S. a leg up on Beijing in several major areas.

So why are 34 Republicans opposing it? Because, as Dave Weigel reported for Foreign Policy, conspiracy theories about the U.N. have “moved from the fringes of the GOP into its mainstream.” Republicans, Weigel discovered, have been swayed by a fringe theory that claims LOST is facilitating the U.N.’s takeover of American sovereignty:

“[I've] heard we should not join this convention because, quote, ‘It’s a U.N. treaty,’” said [Secretary] Clinton, “and of course that means the black helicopters are on their way.” Opposition to the treaty, she said, is “unfortunate because it’s opposition based in ideology and mythology, not in facts.”

Republicans were unconvinced. “Most wars we’ve fought have been fought over ideology and philosophy,” said Idaho’s Sen. Jim Risch, who’s been winning elections in his state since 1970. “If we give up one scintilla of sovereignty that this country has fought, has bled for, and have given up our treasure and the best that America has, I can’t vote for it.”

Of course, when military leaders pointed out that the treaty would actually strengthen America’s position in the world, Risch yelled at them. The most influential advocate for the “sovereignty” concern that Risch was peddling, according to Weigel, is Frank Gaffney, a well-documented source of Islamophobic conspiracy theories.

Things are getting awkward for Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who pledged to spend a “limitless” amount of money to get Mitt Romney elected. Adelson’s latest woes stem from business practices surrounding his lucrative casino in Macau, the only Chinese city with legalized gambling.

The Macau operation has long been under scrutiny but a new in-depth investigation from ProPublica and PBS focused on allegations of improper, and perhaps in some cases illegal, business dealings by Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands company in China. While focusing on the possibility that Sands violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with a $700,000 payment to a Chinese associate, PBS also released documents that bolstered accusations of business ties between Adelson’s shop and Chinese organized crime figures.

PBS reports that Sands was clear that, in order to drive business from mainland China to their Macau casino, they would need to use “junkets” — trips arranged by private companies to ferry high-stakes gamblers to Macau:

Among the junket companies under scrutiny is a concern that records show was financed by Cheung Chi Tai, a Hong Kong businessman.

Cheung was named in a 1992 U.S. Senate report as a leader of a Chinese organized crime gang, or triad. A casino in Macau owned by Las Vegas Sands granted tens of millions of dollars in credit to a junket backed by Cheung, documents show.

Cheung did not respond to requests for comment.

Another document says that a Las Vegas Sands subsidiary did business with Charles Heung, a well-known Hong Kong film producer who was identified as an office holder in the Sun Yee On triad in the same 1992 Senate report. Heung, who has repeatedly denied any involvement in organized crime, did not return phone calls.

Because Nevada gambling authorities forbid doing any business with organized crime, Sands’s Las Vegas gambling licenses could hang in the balance. (Adelson and his company refused to comment for the PBS story.) But Adelson has other issues with his China operations.

In 2001, Adelson allegedly helped derail House Republican measure opposing Beijing’s Olympic bid due to human rights issues. “The bill will never see the light day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it,” he reportedly told Beijing’s mayor after phoning then-House Majority Whip Tom Delay. Sands went on to receive its lucrative casino license from China.

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A poll conducted by the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) and the Stimson Center released back in May found that Americans support cutting military spending but a new analysis of the poll’s results shows that overwhelming majorities in both Republican (74 percent) and Democratic (80 percent) congressional districts support drastically reducing military spending.

The survey also found poll respondents living in districts that receive higher amounts of defense budget dollars “were no less willing” than respondents in districts that get the least amount of federal military spending to reduce the Pentagon’s share of the budget. U.S. News reports:

“Three quarters of respondents in the top 10 percent of beneficiary districts favored reductions, and their average cut slightly exceeded that of the full sample,” the organizations said in a statement. “Overall, there was no statistical correlation between the level of defense spending in a district and the level of support for defense cuts.

With the military spending sequester looming — a $500 billion 10-year cut from the Pentagon budget — Republicans and defense industry representatives have been fearmongering about resulting job losses (despite the fact that military spending is not meant to be a jobs program). But PPC director Steven Kull said in a statement that “the idea that Americans’ would want to keep total defense spending up so as to preserve local jobs is not supported by the data.”

As the group reported back in May, respondents from Republican districts support reducing the Pentagon’s budget by 15 percent and those from Democratic districts by 22 percent, “or between 50 and 100 percent more than under ‘sequestration.’”

A report from the Congressional Budget Office last week further weakened arguments from those claiming that the military spending cuts sequester will decimate the military, finding that the reductions will simply bring the Pentagon back to levels spent in 2006.

During a joint press conference with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today in Israel, Israeli president Shimon Peres — who is recognized as an elder statesman despite his largely ceremonial role in politics — praised the Obama administration’s Iran policy.

Lauding Clinton as a “constant friend,” Peres also had kind words for the Obama administration as a whole, focusing in on President Obama’s efforts to spearhead an international coalition to apply sanctions on Iran as part of a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy.

Peres, who said an international coalition against Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program was essential, recognized that sanctions are having an impact:

I want also to thank President Obama and you for handling the more complicated issue and the most dangerous issue of all time, Iran. …

I think the coalition you have built — and a coalition should have been built, it’s not a matter for one country — and the measures that you have taken are beginning to have their impact, are the right start.

Watch the video here:

The Obama-led U.N. sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program have long-since retarded Iran’s nuclear progress. Increasingly harsh U.S. and European economic and energy sanctions are devaluing Iran’s currency and slashing the government’s revenue from oil sales with the intent of pressuring the government to strike a deal to resolve issues over its nuclear program.

Peres also noted that Obama has vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal with Iran. “(T)here is a continuation of keeping all options on the table,” he said.

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

In South Texas, gas companies are building hundreds of miles of uncharted private backroads that inadvertently provide a “pipeline to America for drug traffickers.” The Houston Chronicle reports that previously inaccessible ranchlands are now traversable, allowing drug-stocked vehicles to pass Border Patrol checkpoints that “have long been the last line of defense for stopping all traffic headed farther into the United States.”

Traffickers are taking advantage the gigantic Eagle Ford shale formation, which runs from Mexico to East Texas. In the southwest portion of Eagle Ford, traffickers are sending millions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States along these private energy roads by bribing truck drivers, gate personnel, and seemingly make clone copies of gas trucks to avoid suspicion among fleets of energy trucks using the roads. Authorities have also found stolen energy trucks used by smugglers.

In March, Border Patrol intercepted 18,665 pounds of marijuana on two bogus oil trucks travelling on private gas industry roads. One of the trucks was driven by an apparently bribed energy employee, and the other appeared to be a fake truck driven by a drug trafficker. Law enforcement fears there are many more such trucks carrying illegal materials across the border on these private roads. Tony Garcia, director of the South Texas High Intensity Drug Traffic Area, a law-enforcement coalition, is very concerned about the problem. He told the Houston Chronicle:

“Our biggest concern is how law enforcement is going to attack the threat. We cannot move Border Patrol checkpoints into those positions. It is pretty much up to your imagination what they could be moving through there. … It is a bit of a dicey situation for us to deal with.”

Border patrol agents are working to educate energy companies about potential encounters with drug traffickers. But there is a limited amount drug enforcement officials, who can’t set up new checkpoints and are already strapped for resources, can do to stop the problem. Javier Pena, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Houston division, warned, “Once they get past the checkpoints, they are pretty much free.”

– Ben Sherman

In an interview with CNN, one of the top officials that recently defected from embattled president Bashar al-Assad’s regime said he favors a military intervention to dislodge the government there. The Syrian ambassador to Iraq, Nawaf al Fares defected last week and, since, appeared in the press to denounce his Assad’s 17-month crackdown against anti-government demonstrators — a conflict the Red Cross declared a full-blown civil war.

On CNN, Fares said Assad held sole power to make decions in a “totalitarian regime and a dictatorship.” He served the Assad family for 34 years but turned against them when his hopes for reform were dashed by “what happened in the last year during the holy revolution, all of the killing, the massacres, the refugees, and the declaration of war by Bashar al Assad against the Syrian people.”

Asked by CNN if he favored foreign military intervention, Fares said only force could topple Assad:

CNN: Do you want a military intervention in Syria by foreign powers?

FARES: This regime will not go without force. the suffering of the Syrian people is very great. And they want it to end by any way possible. I support military intervention because I know the nature of this regime. This regime will only go with force.

Watch the interview here:

His call came after reports last week of another massacre (some of the details have been called into question). Another army defector called for NATO airstrikes to assassinate Assad, but NATO seems to still be deferring to U.N. processes that are largely blocked by Syria’s ally Russia.

While the exiled representatives of the political opposition have been unable to unite, defections bolster their cause. In addition to Fares, a top general and Assad confidant defected two weeks ago, but failed to surface. Other generals, however, have joined the rebel leadership in Turkey, and, according to reports, “virtually none” of the 80,000 conscripts due to join the army this year reported for duty.

While Assad’s minority Allawite sect rules Syria, the military depends on the Sunni majority to fill its ranks. But many Sunnis are joining the opposition. Its strength was on display today with increased fighting in the once quiet capital, Damascus.