Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Honduras to build new city with its own laws and tax system to attract investors

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, September 7, 2012

Honduras to build new city with its own laws and tax system to attract investors

Click here to access article by Jonathan Watts from The Guardian.

This article announces a new twist--privatized cities--in the private equity infrastructure investments scheme I cited in my recent posting (check it out if you haven't already). As they say, the devil is in the details, and these were apparently unavailable to the author. However, notice the title of the Honduran official who signed onto this agreement:

"This is the most important project in half a century for Honduras," said Carlos Pineda, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships, which represented the government at the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the business consortium NKG.

Whenever a policy or program is described in terms of a "public-private partnership", all kinds of alarm bells should go off in your head. Hence, it appears to follow the same model as explained in my posting with huge giveaways by the public sector to support corporations and investors while adversely impacting the 99 Percent in Honduras. Honduras is already one of the worst countries in the world in terms of human rights violations, coup d'etats by their military, and CIA activity.

As usual, One Percent political operatives always claim that their proposals will create jobs. They make the additional claim that no one will be displaced. Both claims appear to be the usual deceptions. To get closer to the truth, I recommend that you read the following two critical articles on this story from independent websites in Honduras and Nicaragua: "Agreement for a Model City" and "A Model City for a Society in Tatters".

I've been mulling this over this morning and I've begun to wonder if this Honduran story doesn't represent the future that the One Percent has in mind for all of us. With the recent economic collapse (for the 99 Percent) due to their bad bets and forcing us to bail them out, they have been infected with new levels of arrogance unseen before. Why should they pay for and fool around with long periods of electioneering during which their candidates spout all kinds of lies, bribing government representatives, making up deceptive stories in their media, etc, when they could eliminate all those costly expenses by privatizing our cities, essentially privatizing our country? That way they could govern us through boards of directors that they directly appoint without all the other fuss and expense.