Open letter to Marco Caceres of Honduras — and why “Model Cities” is good for Honduras

Hondurans opposing Manuel Zelaya. (Photo credit: Wikipedia). The demonstrations were massive like this all across Honduras to the smallest villages…

“Zelaya and Chavez STAY OUT”, “We want peace”, “We want peace”, “peace!”. Demonstration July 1, 2009 at the UN offices in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marco,

I was really disappointed with your article I found at Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marco-caceres/the-piecemeal-sale-of-hon_b_3671476.html

Clever, huh? No. More like stupid. The problem is that the law was hastily approved — as are most controversial laws in Honduras. And it was done so out of desperation, because the Lobo administration has not figured out how to pay off its financial obligations to its creditors and public employees. Also, the details of the law have not been made public, and so there are a lot of unanswered questions as to how it would be implemented.

The law has already created a furor in Honduras, sparking new accusations that the government is essentially moving to sell off Honduras in piecemeal fashion (like with the “Model Cities” initiative), and that those who would benefit would not be the Honduran people but rather a few well-positioned officials who would undoubtedly line their pockets with millions of dollars in bribes and commissions. The country would remain indebted, as it currently is (or more). In the meantime, it would open itself for additional exploitation (some might use the word “rape”) by foreigners. The losers? Yeah.

As an aside, although I was glad to see your opposition to Zelaya’s dictatorial attitude, and his attempt to usurp power completely.  I did part ways with your concession to the word “coup”. The Honduran constitution made advocacy of presidential re-election a condition that caused the immediate and automatic removal from any government office of the advocate of same. That meant he was a usurper and by continuing to act as president, it was HIS coup, and it is the point most define-able as such.

Your comments there did not tell the whole story. They did not mention that Hondurans involved in planning the second go-round in this project visited model cities in Korea and elsewhere to study their approach to crawling out of poverty. You did not mention the fact that anyone investing in these model cities in special zones will have to hire a minimum percentage of Hondurans for any enterprise.

You especially did not mention that ANY HONDURAN CITY THAT WANTS TO can become one of these model cities themselves just by voting in a referendum.

You did not mention the especially revealing fact that one of the objections raised by representatives of their respective departamentos, was the fear that all their businessmen would abandon them, preferring to live in a zone that was truly open for business and not for “tips” and paperwork and other arbitrary measures that steal productivity away from those who treat their employees fairly.

In fact, your very objection would be a good reason to abolish all of the currently open-for-business free zones along the coast, where FOREIGN businesses already own lots of production capital goods tarriff-free, providing a great number of jobs for Honduran citizens, with little objection.

In fact Honduras followed a plan before doing this, that I myself had suggested during the time Lobo was asking for suggestions on how Honduras could crawl out from under the burden of poverty. My suggestion was to look to countries that have done it. Some missionaries who live in Chile have told me that the changes have been dramatic. South Korea is one of the riches countries in the world, North Korea one of the poorest. Hong Kong is an island of luxury surrounding by an ocean of poor, still struggling under the heavy burden of central control.

And you did not mention that a great many Hondurans enthusiastically support this initiative. They see relief from economic doldrums in this, because there is reality in it. Foreign investment is only a small part of this story. The investment that comes in will only be seed money –if the project can be protected from meddling by people who think only a government can do good things for the poor.

By the way, how’s that workin’ out for ya? Chavez not only refused to encourage foreign investment, he kicked out what there was and started scaring off so many of his own productive citizens that he had to clamp down with currency controls. What a champion for the poor! How’s that working out for poor Venezuelans?

And they criticize about crime? You know how government’s central planners fixed that in murderous Caracas, don’t you? They stopped reporting the numbers altogether!

And wow, look at the United States and Lyndon Johnsons’ War on poverty and Roosevelts’ freedom from want. How’s that working out for us in the United States? Bah. Keep that change and give me the one Honduras is now working on. My wife has made a catracho out of me and I plan to get my passport and retire to Honduras.

And nobody can say “Hondurans” are against this, afraid of that, blah blah, because we KNOW that the representatives of the Honduran people voted OVERWHELMINGLY in favor of this project.

In summary this is good for Honduras, I’m sure of it, because there was some good roots going into it.

If only we can keep it free from this misguided anti-capitalist meme that has deceived so many.

I was so proud, God help me, in 2009, that I had married a girl from Honduras, when they stood up to the piti-Chavez. I am excited for Honduras again now, and if nothing else comes of this, it still is a pleasure because so many congressmen voted for it.

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• Honduras travelers visit Rotary (mysouthwestga.com)

My Person of the Year and Why

Ron Paul, member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Read on to see why in my opinion Ron Paul is the person of most influence over events of the world in this year 2012, at least of most impact on world events beginning this year).

Time Magazine, apparently attempting to expand its readership, or maybe to try to slow down the attrition of its readership to places that are not so tilted toward the plutocratic directives of the big-government crowd, with the smarter-than-you attitude, has put its person-of-the-year selections in the wild with a poll for public input.

Democratic Whoopsy: Kim Jong-Un and Mohamed Morsey Lead Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’ Poll | TechCrunch:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/27/democratic-whoopsy-kim-jong-un-and-mohamed-morsey-lead-times-person-of-the-year-poll/

Gregory Ferenstein, the author of the techcrunch.com article, summed up the theme of the article well in the opening paragraph:

The Internet has a hard time taking things seriously and will happily enact silly vengeance on websites daring enough to leave important tasks up to a vote. Time’s coveted “Person of the Year” poll has been hijacked by thousands of pranksters who have voted up the not-so democratic icons, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Egypt’s Mohamed Morsey. The up votes could be legitimate exercise in satire, punishing Time for even floating the idea of those two in a poll next to Obama and brave political dissidents. But, if Morsey–or worse, Kim–actually wins the poll, Time will have egg on its face (both Kim and Morsey have nearly twice the number of votes as 3rd place).

Of course Mr. Ferenstein missed one important reason that Time exposed its yearly attention-grabbing exercise to a public poll, and that is the desertion of its readership for periodicals that do not regularly insult them and their “clinging to their religion and guns”, to use one refrain that sums up the arrogance.

I’d much rather trust my facts-based faith than in government edicts from Central Planning, and in my neighbors’ guns than in a government that is so arrogant as to tell us they are ordering us around for our own good.

I’d rather trust what I know and what my neighbor knows than what any political power tells me, especially when it’s for my own good.

But Time Magazine generally goes along with this theme of “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you”. Reach for your wallet when you hear that.

Zuckerburg as one who most influenced the events of the year more than Julian Assange apparently sparked a firestorm of comment in the Blogosphere over issues of privacy. I don’t follow Time’s person-of-the-year posturing very much, this time it just got my attention this year from other places. I believe both of those persons influenced events surrounding privacy issues, albeit in different ways. Zuckerburg’s influence was in helping expose your most private moments to the whole world, Assange’s was in exposing government secrets.

Julian Assange’s contribution was more important, and no doubt hit like a missive into thousands of secret conversations in the halls of power, and no doubt resulted in hundreds of plans on drawing boards over strategies to get more political control over the Internet.

MY PERSPECTIVE ON “PERSON OF THE YEAR”

Next December I’ll call this something else, to distinguish it from the Time Magazine term, if free speech is still as open as it is today, and the dollar crash has not yet put the means for it out of reach. Of course the right to free speech is under attack around the edges in the US, as bloggers that blast the TSA get harassed at airports with extra attention, and even the most outspoken voice in the United States Senate against TSA gets detained for hours at one airport, with the TSA denying it.

When Bush said we need to do this and that “without violating” constitutional rights, he evoked bitter sarcastic laughter at this sick joke. He said it with a straight face. Now Obama doesn’t even bother giving lip service to the idea.

The idea of Obama as professor of constitutional law at Saul Alinsky Institute is what I call a “negative credential”. It’s like Stalin giving lectures on civil liberties, or Paul Krugman giving lectures on how to get a prosperous economy. For those who don’t know about Krugman, he’s a columnist at New York that gives out advice to the government on how to improve the economy, and when his ideas cause poverty and misery he just says they simply should have done more of what he said.

MY “PERSON OF THE YEAR”

I’ll tell you right now who influenced world events more than any other. It is the most under-reported story on the Internet, not counting the various conspiracies and intrigues that go on in high places that will not be reported at all, “or else”, until a generation later, like MK-Ultra and the syphilis tests and the Gulf of Tonkin and such things.

That person is Ron Paul, because he is personally responsible for forcing the most important political issues into the “national conversation”, and forcing the media to actually cover it. His bold and very public statements on the real causes of economic malaise and the loss of liberty and proposal of very real solutions gave hope to many more to enter into their own local conversations on these topics.

A decade ago, there was no other political figure talking about the Federal Reserve, for example, and no one else made a credible and honest case against political hubris, the arrogance of thinking that a political authority could solve a problem by issuing a decree.

Those issues and his denouncing of the erosion of liberties in general attracted a gathering of like-minded freedom-loving people.

His campaign for liberty resulted in tens of millions of people around the world becoming aware of each other. Some of them, like me, agreed with most of his ideas long before they knew of him. Others among these tens of millions were attracted for their own various reasons, and in the process discovered the underlying and wider implications of individual liberty in general.

A very big deal, this one: Ron Paul’s following forced the Republican Platform to include an audit of the Federal Reserve, and a nod to the gold standard. This is unprecedented in 100 years.

Of course Romney would have done his best to avoid doing anything about either of those two positions, but it showed the influence of the movement for freedom that congealed this year 2012 in the Republican Party.

Another result of the Ron Paul campaign to use the presidential horse race to educate the public on the issues of liberty, is that despite the best efforts of the plutocrat class, many that were attracted to some of the propaganda that publicized the plutocrat-financed “Occupy” movement, discovered a lot of things they had in common with the Tea Party movement.

Time Magazine named the Occupy movement as one of the reasons in 2011 they named the generic “the protestor” as their person of the year, but totally ignored the Tea Party demonstrations of 2010 which gathered much more massive numbers and represented the flip of parties in the House. The Occupy thing fizzled, and it now looks like the “Arab Spring” protestors have become mere dupes in the reach for power by power-hungry Islamic authoritarians, and those authoritarians dupes of the world-class plutocrats that financed the Islamists’ rise to power from the shadows.

In summary, Ron Paul has influenced world events by helping liberty-minded people find each other.

The media gave attention to the issues that were in the public mind during 2008 and 2012, plus the issues he forced into the conversation as related to current policy, but note that he also opposed membership in the United Nations and regarded the organization as an implicit vehicle for world dictatorship. He avoided using those terms that way outright, I believe, but it’s obvious.

For Christians the full impact of that will become more manifest during the years leading up to the Tribulation and thereafter. The world dictator predicted by the Bible is also known today as The Antichrist. But those who understand what’s happening will recognize other opponents of his dictatorship as being against the Antichrist, even though they are not “saved”, or not yet “saved”.

We can call these others “anti-anti-Christs”.

Liberty-minded people will have no choice but will have to become “anti-Antichrists”.

The convergence of political and economic tyranny will become evident with the top-down command to all the people to take a “mark” in the right hand or in the forehead.

In that mark of the Beast, the issues of so-called political “civil rights” such as free speech, free press, freedom of religion, and what most people think of when they think of “civil rights”, these things will meet with the issues of economic freedom. You cannot buy or sell without this mark, we will be told.

Some authors at Wired Magazine are already pushing for what they call a “cashless society”, by which they mean abandoning paper money in favor of electronic cash. Memo to Wired: Cash by any other name is still “cash”.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that the very smart folks at Wired Magazine don’t realize how much this idea of the government mandating electronic cash shows how flimsy the whole idea of fiat currency is. I’m sure some of their staff cheered the Ron Paul candidacy, lots of geeks liked his ideas. His primary campaign in 2007-2008 at first attracted by far the most donations from Silicon Valley, especially Google, where at least one of their technical staff quit so he could dedicate his time to the campaign.

For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.- Mark 4:22

Thou shalt not steal.- Exodus 20:15

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s. -Exodus 20:17

And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.-1 Samuel 8:5
And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. -1 Samuel 8:7

The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,-Luke 4:18

And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, [many] days.–Daniel 11:33 

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• Julian Assange Attorney Michael Ratner: Were “Rumsfeld Techniques” Used on Bradley Manning to Turn Him on Assange? (fdlaction.firedoglake.com)
• Satire Be Damned, Fluke In Running For Time Person Of The Year (personalliberty.com)
• Rush: Make me co-Person of Year with Fluke (wnd.com)
• Kim Jong Un: Chinese News Site Falls for The Onion’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ Parody (newsfeed.time.com)

Carter proves to be not only the worst president in history, but the craziest

A Political Map of North Korea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I”m sorry, but in the fine 2000-year-old tradition of calling whited sepulchres and snakes and vipers as they are. Well, maybe he’s the second worst now, we got another contender in 2008.

Carter: Foreign election system ‘best in world’:
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/carter-foreign-election-system-best-in-world/

The photo is very appropriate to this statement, he has an other-worldly look in his eyes, like he’s not seeing reality.

The US has one of the worst, he says.

He is now worthless. He came back from North Korea saying it wasn’t worth pressing North Korea to treat its citizens with more respect for their rights.

Paper receipts mean nothing if you have about 50% more registered voters than the demographics support, and if the opposition only has one channel that they can sometimes say something on, and if half the influential dissidents are in prison. That’s what is going on in Venezuela where the press is also under all kinds of regulations that control the content. It’s a farce.

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• Carter: Foreign election system ‘best in world’ (wnd.com)

Helping Koreans in the North

Topographic map of North Korea. Created with GMT from SRTM data. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Economist has an article advocating meaningful action to help the North Koreans, especially from China, still oppressed by a brutal dictatorship:

http://www.economist.com/node/21553029

But would they omit the effective and well-known work of Helping Hands Korea, led by Tim Peters, missionary and father married to a Korean national?

Home

He works with refugees from the North, works with North Koreans still in the North, and regards his advocacy activities as a mission field, just as William Wilberforce in 18th and 19th century Britain made of abolishing slavery. He helps to organize a new “Underground Railroad” to help their escape to freedom, supports those who decide to go back into North Korea with the politically liberating message of the Gospel, and testifies before the U.S. Congress, European parliamentary bodies and United Nations agencies to encourage more action.

Communism is not classless, the party bosses are the upper class, all others have no chance

High school accused of ‘promoting communism over capitalism’ in social studies lesson worksheet | Mail Online:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097111/High-school-accused-promoting-communism-capitalism-social-studies-lesson-worksheet.html

Tell you what for the Cold War to compare Communism and Capitalism. Take a bunch of case studies. Look at the lot of the poor (and everybody else) in these cases:

Compare East Germany to West Germany.

Compare North Korea and South Korea.

Compare Cuba’s sinking in poverty and Chile joining the Developed Nations club.

Compare Venezuela before Chavez and after Chavez.

Compare Taiwan of the 1980s to the Maoist China of the 1980s.

Witness the post-WWII “German miracle“.

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