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Title: Nightmare libertarian project turns country into the murder capital of the world
Source:
salon.com
URL Source: http://www.salon.com/2015/01/29/nig ... e_murder_capital_of_the_world/
Published: Jan 29, 2015
Author: MIKE LASUSA
Post Date: 2015-02-02 23:37:39 by Gatlin
Keywords: None
Views: 14726
Comments: 56
Even Ayn Rand would be taken aback Since the 2009 coup against President José Manuel Zelaya and subsequent election of Porfirio “Pepe Lobo” Sosa and his favored successor Juan Orlando Hernandez, Honduras has embarked on a devastating neoliberal economic program that has contributed to its status as one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. The privatization of Honduran society has been accompanied by a militarization of public security efforts in the country, both of which have been fueled by a network of U.S.-supported policies and programs. Despite the country’s crackdown on crime, violence in Honduras has skyrocketed in recent years. Honduras now has the world’s second-highest national murder rate and is home to two of the world’s five most violent cities. Unchecked gang activity has contributed to widespread corruption and impunity within police and government institutions. This weekend, a coalition of leftist opposition parties came together temporarily to defeat a proposed amendment to the Honduran constitution that would have given permanent status to the country’s militarized police force, known as the Policía Militar de Orden Público, or PMOP. This “elite” police unit, which serves under the direct command of the presidency, is intended to support President Hernandez’s heavy-handed crime reduction efforts. President Hernandez created the PMOP shortly after coming to office in 2014, with support from a legislature dominated by his conservative National Party. The Hernandez administration’s police militarization efforts also had the backing of the country’s business sector. According to one study, in 2013, only 27 percentof Hondurans expressed confidence in the civilian police while 73 percent thought the military should be involved in policing efforts. Nevertheless, both the military and the police have a long history of corruption and criminality as well as abuses committed against civilians in Honduras. The PMOP plan isn’t the only initiative with dubious implications for human rights put forth by Hernandez’s government. Honduras is also experimenting with Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico (special employment and economic development zones), also known as ZEDEs or “charter cities.” According to reporting by Danielle Marie Mackey for the New Republic last month, here is how the project works: “An investor, either international or local, builds infrastructure….The territory in which they invest becomes an autonomous zone from Honduras…The investing company must write the laws that govern the territory, establish the local government, hire a private police force, and even has the right to set the educational system and collect taxes.” An earlier article by Erika Piquero at Latin Correspondent described the law as “allowing the corporations and individuals funding the ZEDEs to dictate the entire structural organization of the zone, including laws, tax structure, healthcare system, education and security forces. This kind of flexibility is unprecedented even in similar models around the world.” George Rodríguez reported for the Tico Times that the plan was previously challenged and ruled unconstitutional in Honduras’ supreme court, but Hernandez “twisted arms, had the [dissenting] judges removed, and brought in obedient replacements.” Hernandez then re-tooled the bill and pushed it through the congress. As Mackey reported, “The ZEDE’s central government is stacked with libertarian foreigners,” including a former speechwriter for presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., conservative political operative Grover Norquist, a senior member of the Cato Institute think tank, and Ronald Reagan’s son Michael, as well as “a Danish banker, a Peruvian economist, and an Austrian general secretary of the Friedrich Hayek Institute.” According to the official ZEDE website, the zones place a heavy emphasis on security, offering “a 21st century, business-efficient, non- politicized, transparent, stable, system of administration, plus a special police and institutional security to overcome regional issues and meet world standards.” A new bill introduced by Hernandez minutes after losing the vote this weekend would allow municipalities and ZEDEs to request that the PMOP or other branches of the Armed Forces provide them with security services. Honduras’ continuing militarization of security efforts appears to have the backing of the United States, which has provided more than $65 million in security aid to Honduras since 2008. President Hernandez has also met frequently with high-level U.S. officials for talks on security and migration issues. As the U.S. amassador’s Twitter account wrote on Friday, “U.S. cooperation with Honduras’ fight against narcotrafficking and crime is strong and continuing.” However, contrary to commonly held perceptions, most of the violence in Honduras is not caused by large, transnational drug trafficking organizations, but rather by smaller gangs fighting over territory (including street corners, neighborhoods and even prisons) in which to conduct extortion rackets, small-scale smuggling efforts and prostitution operations among other illegal activities. Privatization and paramilitarization are also concerns in Honduras, with one recent report estimating that there are three times as many private security guards as police in Honduras, up to a third of whom work for unregistered companies, some of whom reportedly employ off-duty police officers looking to supplement often-meager salaries. While international investors may be seeking to capitalize on Honduras’ voluntary surrender of its national sovereignty to make a “legal” profit, even more nefarious actors are already operating in a completely unregulated, free-market criminal underworld in Honduras—one that has helped turn the country into the world’s “murder capital” in recent years. Even Honduran schools have become scenes of rampant gang activity. In a recent chilling article for the Associated Press, journalist Alberto Arce wrote that gang members “rely on kids to do much of their illegal grunt work, knowing that even if they get caught, they won’t face long jail sentences…School administrators say that teachers generally are more afraid of the gangs than the remaining students are, because so many children admire gangsters.” Arce also writes that “a 14-year-old can earn $500 a month in prostitution — more than a police officer’s salary.” U.S.-backed policies in Honduras have fed a cycle of crime, violence, exploitation and abuse of vulnerable populations by state and non-state actors alike. According to the research organization Security Assistance Monitor, gang-driven “violence has been one of the primary drivers behind the surge in migration to the United States from Honduras,” but ironically, “ [t]he U.S. government practice of deporting thousands of Hondurans with criminal records, which began in the 1990s, has only fueled the growth of these gangs.” When these migrants, many of them women and children —along with those from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and elsewhere—flee to the United States, they are routinely apprehended and “fast-tracked” for deportation. In the case of Honduras, migrants are sometimes sent back to some of the most violent cities in the world. Many women and children fleeing violence in Central America also experience abuses and violations of their legal rights at the hands of U.S. authorities if they are detained after crossing the border. And the future doesn’t appear to hold a change of course. In all likelihood, the new U.S. congress will continue to support efforts to militarize its southern border, as well as Me xico’s southern border with Central America, and to “deter” migration through the use of mass detention and deportation. The U.S. government also seems likely to continue supporting the privatization and militarization of Honduran society. As Maya Kroth wrote in September for Foreign Policy, “[c]ritics worry that evidence to date — the government’s opaque approach, the ZEDEs’ undemocratic features, the cast of characters backing the scheme, and the vulnerabilities of people likely to be affected by development — indicate that charter cities would be little more than predatory, privatized utopias, with far-reaching, negative implications for Honduran sovereignty and the well-being of poor communities.” The U.S. has coupled its neoliberal economic prescriptions with its drug war security framework in other countries in the Americas, including at home, with disastrous results. While the vote against the PMOP this weekend was an important victory for human rights advocates, from the perspective of many, much work remains to be done. It appears that the precarious situation of Honduras’ most vulnerable citizens could get worse before it gets better.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 42.
#1. To: Gatlin (#0)
What do you do sit around and google libertarians suck or something?
I never tried to google "libertarians suck." Let me try that in another browser....stand by. Here we go, first link hit: Why Libertarians Suck. Nothing new here....I have seen this one before.
But then maybe tpaine has not. "Ping" for tpaine to Post #3.
Frequently, people confuse libertarianism with anarchism. It's anarchism that proposes no government whatsoever. Libertarianism, by contrast, advocates a need for government but only a minimal one. At least compared to what exists today in the USA.
"Anarcho-capitalism (also known as “libertarian anarchy” or “market anarchism” or “free market anarchism”) is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty in a free market. Economist Murray Rothbard is credited with coining the term. In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be provided by voluntarily-funded competitors such as private defense agencies rather than through taxation, and money would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. According to anarcho-capitalists, personal and economic activities would be regulated by the natural laws of the market and through private law rather than through politics. Furthermore, victimless crimes and crimes against the state would not exist."
You can post whatever theories and definitions made by anyone you want, but the fact is the Libertarian Party platform does have a role for government, and does NOT call for it's abolition. This is possible because there ARE people who call themselves libertarians who similarly only call for a drastic reduction of government NOT it's abolition. If you have decided that anyone who calls themselves a libertarian is not allowed to define what that means to himself, then that certainly makes you an authoritarian. At least in my book. Feel free to post definitions of "authoritarian" that are similarly not widely accepted.
What is it?
Should be able to find all at www.lp.org/platform
That sounds familiar. Oh, right, anarcho-capitalism. "In Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, there would first be the implementation of a mutually agreed-upon libertarian "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow..." And here's some icing for your cake. "All kinds of people today call themselves 'libertarians,' especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists." -Ayn Rand
You are as good at quoting things said or written by somewhat well-known people as some are at quoting bible verses. I suspect it's done with the same reverency as well. But unlike Christians, you have no reason to believe your "bible" verses are correct.
You are as good at quoting things said or written by somewhat well-known people as some are at quoting bible verses. I suspect it's done with the same reverency as well. But unlike Christians, you have no reason to believe your "bible" verses are correct. It's not done for any other reason than to paint small government types as being fringe. They use the biggest box possible, put anyone who desires smaller government into it, and mock them. They scream in fits of canary rage if you try and take their box from them.
At less than 2%, Libertarians barely even qualify as fringe.
To: Dead Culture Watch At less than 2%, Libertarians barely even qualify as fringe. And whats yer point? That effects my opposition to the growth of government power exactly how?
They are a failure in the marketplace of ideas.
#43. To: Palmdale (#42)
Key Concepts of Libertarianism By David Boaz January 1, 1999 The key concepts of libertarianism have developed over many centuries. The first inklings of them can be found in ancient China, Greece, and Israel; they began to be developed into something resembling modern libertarian philosophy in the work of such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world. Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away. Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. It’s easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society — the complex network of associations and connections among people — is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own. The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that “people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.” Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome. Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe — more than other parts of the world — that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth. Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized. The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre- Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, “There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.” Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, “We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to nonproducers. Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One person’s individual plans — which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on — may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power. Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age-old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class — which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict. … It may be appropriate to acknowledge at this point the reader’s likely suspicion that libertarianism seems to be just the standard framework of modern thought — individualism, private property, capitalism, equality under the law. Indeed, after centuries of intellectual, political, and sometimes violent struggle, these core libertarian principles have become the basic structure of modern political thought and of modern government, at least in the West and increasingly in other parts of the world. However, three additional points need to be made: first, libertarianism is not just these broad liberal principles. Libertarianism applies these principles fully and consistently, far more so than most modern thinkers and certainly more so than any modern government. Second, while our society remains generally based on equal rights and capitalism, every day new exceptions to those principles are carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento, and Austin (not to mention London, Bonn, Tokyo, and elsewhere). Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before giving up any liberty. Third, liberal society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient. Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimately deadly undermining of civilization. From Chapter 1, “The Coming Libertarian Age,” Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz (New York: The Free Press, 1998). See also www.libertarianism.org. David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer, from which this is excerpted.
To: Dead Culture Watch They are a failure in the marketplace of ideas. Umm, ok, why TF should I care? Do you view Libertarians, who you yourself concede, who have no power to effect change, as more of a threat than the progressives in the Republican and Democratic parties? Apparently you do, you spend 16 hours a day here making snarky comments about them. None directed at the government, and OBozo. Pretty telling in my mind, eh comrade?
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#3. To: A K A Stone (#1)
What do you do sit around and google libertarians suck or something?
#4. To: A K A Stone, tpaine (#3)
Nothing new here....I have seen this one before.
#8. To: Gatlin (#4)
#9. To: Palmdale (#8)
The biggest mistake that libertarians make is the way they view government and private sectors. Government is the root of all evil, and the private sector is the source of all good.
#12. To: Pinguinite (#9)
#25. To: Palmdale (#12)
#26. To: Pinguinite (#25)
the Libertarian Party platform does have a role for government
#34. To: Palmdale (#26)
the Libertarian Party platform does have a role for government
What is it?
#35. To: Pinguinite (#34)
"The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected."
#36. To: Palmdale (#35)
#37. To: Pinguinite (#36)
#39. To: Dead Culture Watch (#37)
#41. To: Palmdale (#39)
#42. To: Dead Culture Watch (#41)
Replies to Comment # 42.
#47. To: Palmdale (#42)
End Trace Mode for Comment # 42.
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