Hondurans opposing Manuel Zelaya. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Commondreams, apparently wanting to spread the poverty around, continues to push big lies about Honduras:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/06-6:

Commondreams pushes common myths, repeating the lies spread by the autocracy-friendly news sources during 2009, when Honduras pushed back against Zelaya’s illegal and unconstitutional auto-coup, and restored its freedom from imperialist intervention by foreign powers.

Myth #1: President Porfirio Lobo—who came to power in a military coup in 2009

Facts #1: There was no military coup in 2009. Honduras is a constitutional republic and Congress is an elected body, and the President is an elective office. As in any people that repudiates dictatorship, the idea is to separate the powers.

In 2009, elected President Zelaya became Self-Appointed Autocrat Zelaya, and dictator in a real sense.

According to the ideals of freedom and constitutionality, the Honduran people did NOT elect the autocrat Zelaya, to make laws, they elected him to run the country according to the laws that were passed by Congress.

Instead, he began issuing his own decrees. He refused in November 2008 to submit the required budget for 2009, as he was constitutionally required to do. The Honduras Constitution says that if for some reason there is no budget for a year, then the default budget is the same as the previous year.

But Zelaya ignored the law and began spending the tax receipts according to whim, no decree to let people pick at. And much of it of course secretly.

No surprise there about corruption. When Jorge Ramos of Spanish-language US-based network Univision asked him about rumors he had won the election by cheating, he didn’t even try to hide it, proudly saying that “everybody does it”! At least that was a moment of honesty.

The SUPREME COURT, not the military, ordered Zelaya arrested after he flaunted his actions and even loudly expressed contempt for court orders to cease and desist from his long series of many illegal activities: “I don’t have to obey any pipsqueak judges”.

The military obeyed the constitutional court orders to arrest him for a list of criminal actions. His open and vocal advocacy for presidential re-election is defined in the Honduras Constitution as “treason”, because they did not want incumbents cheating their way to life-time dictatorships.

The Honduran people were almost unanimous in repudiating him. The Catholics Protestants came together in a way hardly ever seen in the Americas, all the industry groups, Chambers of Commerce and many unions united against Zelaya’s coup attempt, rich and poor. The only identifiable groups that supported his dictatorship were the usual “leftists” who openly advocate centrally dictated planning, and the teachers’ union, who left students without education for those months. Parents in one very poor town took over one school when the principal closed it to sympathize with the strike.

The CONGRESS, not the military, voted to recognize that Zelaya’s actions themselves had already vacated the presidency, according to the Constitution.

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Using a quote from an AP dispatch, they spread a lie from a well-funded “indigenous” spokesman:

COMPOUND MYTH #2: “These territories are the Garifuna people‘s and can’t be handed over to foreign capital in an action that is pure colonialism like that lived in Honduras during the time that our land became a banana enclave,” said Miriam Miranda, president of the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras.

FACT #2: The lands that would be ceded to this project are UNOCCUPIED. This spokesperson is also and advocate of robbing land that belongs to ranchers to give it to other people free of charge.

This is not colonialism because the sovereign government of Honduras and representatives elected by the people of Honduras have enthusiastically invited this foreign investment to come into the country according to principles they see as good for themselves. The Cuban government also has invited foreign investment, and even China sees benefits in allowing Hong Kong to govern itself in a manner friendly to the free market. Heavy-handed dictates are the opposite of the free market.

MYTH #3: Also quoted from AP disinformation propaganda:

Oscar Cruz, a former constitutional prosecutor, filed a motion with the Supreme Court last year characterizing the project as unconstitutional and “a catastrophe for Honduras.”

“The cities involve the creation of a state within the state, a commercial entity with state powers outside the jurisdiction of the government,” Cruz said.

FACT #3: The statement by Oscar Cruz is an oxymoron from the contextual premise. Stated a better way, he contradicts himself. These cities do NOT involve “state powers outside the jurisdiction of the government”, because they are a CREATION OF “the government” and by agreement of the state. This project is constitutional because the Congress amended the Constitution according to rules for amending the Constitution within the Constitution itself.

Which is more than the unelected self-appointed “spokesperson” for the Garifunas can say.

And there is another bigger issue in which both Oscar Cruz and ALL the critics are self-contradictory. These are people and activist organization that very loudly support the organization of communes run by state-appointed personalities for purposes known only to those who institute them. In other words, do they have a problem with political appointees who make the rules for centrally-planned industries?

Obviously they do not have such a big problem turning over the entire country to a self-confessed corrupt autocrat like Manuel Zelaya to run as he pleases. “In the name of the poor” of course.

The whole principle that bothers them so greatly about this project is the free market principle of letting the poor compete with the rich instead of having the state dictate all the outcomes.

Where were these protests when Zelaya simply capitulated and handed over a disputed island territory to Nicaragua?

MYTH #4: This one is from “The Guardian” disinformation propaganda piece:

… the idea has provoked controversy in a country already suffering from one of the worst levels of inequality in the world.

Controversy? Oh really? Because maybe 5% of the country might be opposed, while these same opponents are the same ones that advocated letting Zelaya run the country like a fiefdom?

Well, it’s only a “small part” true, and “large part” a lie. How much controversy is there? You can find a clue in the vote by Congress to create these special administrative zones: 126-1. That’s a real controversy.

No, the controversy is from a handful of well-funded leftist groups that lackey press organizations like the AP and apparently The Guardian run to whenever they know that statist central-planning pushers won’t like something.

Where do those guys get so much money anyway? Who funds them? They always are talking about the rich, are they funded by starving peasants? How long can they kid us and get away with this ruse?

Then there is this precious gem from Ismael Moreno, worthy of a good belly laugh. They present it as an environmental concern but the objection is that it would end up “eliminating the last agricultural frontier left to us”.

But the project will rather open that agriculture, and provide a new market with new demand for the projects of agriculture.

Specialization of labor multiplies production in all economic sectors, but it requires capital investment by investors that have capital.

D’uh!

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The land they are talking about using is IDLE and at present I suppose it is government owned land. It apparently has not attracted demands for land distribution from the usual so-called self-described “agricultural reformers”, because they instead sent their small squad of “peasants” to invade lands under productive cultivation by agricultural investors, in an area called “Bajo Aguan”.

This is land that is not generating taxes nor productive activity. There will be property taxes, and that’s more than it’s getting at the present. The agreement includes a requirement for a major percentage of employees to be from Honduras itself.

So if there is any profit in this land its value will go up and there will be tax revenues, and a great number of Hondurans will find productive work, according to as much as they can get based on their productive bottom line. If they are underpaid, it is because they did not find a free market for their contributions but a regulated one.

But if they wanted a regulated one they could just work anywhere in Honduras outside these zones. How has that been working out for them?

I was a missionary and helped the poor directly with food and other needs. It makes you feel good to help people who need it. But you don’t help them by taking them food every day for their entire lives. That’s okay for dogs and cats and pets, but not people.

But I’ve learned that a free market environment is the very best way to help the poor, and to allow the ones that can to create their own new opportunities instead of being shackled to poverty by the paper ceiling of rules, laws, taxes and regulations.

Poor people have a right to buy and sell, too…

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