Honduras approves private cities project

­by cryptogon.com

Illustration of one of three cities designed that would be built in Honduras in the Atlantic coast by international investors, and which project was already approved by the government.

The link on this update mentions (see at the bottom of this document) , which is just 15 pages long, but will have you wondering, “Is this real?”

I’m asking everyone out there: Is this real?

Let’s assume it is, for a few minutes anyway.

I took one semester of International Law, so I’m far from being an expert on these matters, but this thing is far and away the most breathtaking voluntary forfeiture of sovereignty by a state that I’ve ever encountered.

Look at Articles 15 and 69:

Article 15.- Other domestic and foreign authorities cannot interfere in matters within the exclusive jurisdiction of the RED’s.

Article 69.- The government of the RED?s may apply immigration controls on the entry, stay and departure of people from other States to the RED’s.

These REDs will have governments that are independent of the Honduran Government, borders that they control and their own police forces (Article 8). They are able to lease out and otherwise encumber the land, but they don’t own it. Because they don’t own the land, I suppose they wouldn’t pass the sovereignty test, but this is getting pretty damn close. The REDs, for example, are free to enter into foreign relations with other states independently of the Honduran Government.

The political structure is a mix of oligarchical and democratic. A, “Transparency Commission” appoints governors. The initial members of the Transparency Commission, arbitrarily appointed by the President of Honduras are:

George Akerlof – Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, Senior Resident Scholar at the International Monetary Fund, and Nobel Prize Winner.

Harry Strachan – Former President of INCAE Business School, Director Emeritus at Bain & Co., and Managing Partner at Mesoamerica Partners and Foundation in Cost Rica.

Ong Boon Hwee – Former Chief Operating Officer of Singapore Power and Former Brigadier General in the Singapore Armed Forces

Nancy Birdsall – President and Co-Founder of the Center for Global Development , former Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former Executive Vice President at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Paul Romer (Commission Chair) – Professor of Economics at the New York University Stern School of Business.

Really, Bain & Co.? Really.

Ok, so the core of the unelected regime that will pick the governors of the REDs is made up of a couple of economics professors, a Bain & Co. executive, a bank executive and a former Singaporean general. This thing is like a board of directors and the governors are like division heads in a corporation.

The Normative Councils have legislative and advisory roles.

Members of the Normative Councils will be elected.

I’ll definitely be following developments with this story, but I have to move on right now. I’ll pay a US$10 bounty to anyone who can tell me the names of the people who are putting up the initial $15 million.

I have not been able to find that information after 30 minutes of searching, which I find interesting.

I have found that Michael Strong has a site: The Purpose of Education.

He is a libertarian. This is from his About page:

In order to create an educational system capable of improving the happiness and well-being of humanity, we need to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, government involvement in education at all levels, as well as government restrictions on the free pursuit of whatever occupation one desires. Government financing and regulation of education at all levels prevents the emergence of the more authentic, humane, and effective forms of education that we need. Thus around the world we need to move towards a principled separation of school and state, occupation and state, and research and state.

Sometimes, “libertarian,” means, libertarian, and other times, it means, corporate fascist. It’s a spectrum that seems to be determined by the scale of one’s endeavors.

Which is the case here?

I’m not sure yet. I have to go out and collect eggs, feed the chickens and help Becky get the kids fed, bathed and into bed. I’ll return to this later tonight. In any event, this is clearly the most interesting story that isn’t getting much play in the regular media at the moment.

Via: ABC News / AP:

Investors can begin construction in six months on three privately run cities in Honduras that will have their own police, laws, government and tax systems now that the government has signed a memorandum of agreement approving the project.

An international group of investors and government representatives signed the memorandum Tuesday for the project that some say will bring badly needed economic growth to this small Central American country and that at least one detractor describes as “a catastrophe.”

The project’s aim is to strengthen Honduras’ weak government and failing infrastructure, overwhelmed by corruption, drug-related crime and lingering political instability after a 2009 coup.

The project “has the potential to turn Honduras into an engine of wealth,” said Carlos Pineda, president of the Commission for the Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships. It can be “a development instrument typical of first world countries.”

The “model cities” will have their own judiciary, laws, governments and police forces. They also will be empowered to sign international agreements on trade and investment and set their own immigration policy.

Congress president Juan Hernandez said the investment group MGK will invest $15 million to begin building basic infrastructure for the first model city near Puerto Castilla on the Caribbean coast. That first city would create 5,000 jobs over the next six months and up to 200,000 jobs in the future, Hernandez said.

South Korea has given Honduras $4 million to conduct a feasibility study, he said.

Decree #123-2011: ­http://coredhn.squarespace.

com/storage/documents/ConstitutionalStatuteREDUnofficialTranslation.pdf.

“The future will remember this day as that day that Honduras began developing,” said Michael Strong, CEO of the MKG Group. “We believe this will be one of the most important transformations in the world, through which Honduras will end poverty by creating thousands of jobs.”

by Jonathan Benson

The health risks associated with radiation exposure, whether it comes from cancer treatments or medical imaging scans, are much more significant than most people probably think. The latest published data on radiation exposure suggests that roughly 25,000 Americans develop cancer every year as a result of medical radiation exposure, and many more experience DNA damage that could eventually lead to the development of cancer and other health problems in the long term.

Every year, millions of Americans opt to undergo computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and X-ray scans for medical purposes, thinking that by doing so, they are keeping up with the latest technologies in advanced medical care. But each time medical patients get one of these scans, their bodies sustain varying levels of ionizing radiation, the negative effects of which can take years to manifest as they build up cumulatively over time.

CT scans, which are a relatively modern medical imaging technology, are particularly problematic as they emit far higher doses of radiation than traditional x-rays do. Based on the figures, a single CT scan can blast up to 500 times the amount of radiation released by a single x-ray, an astounding level when considering how gratuitously CT scans are administered within the medical profession today.

In a new study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), it is reported that the use of all medical imaging scans, including CT scans, has risen dramatically between 1996 and 2010.

The use of CT scans in particular, more than tripled during this time, which is in large part responsible for doubling the proportion of patients now receiving what is considered to be “high” or “very high” radiation doses on a regular basis.

Overuse of CT scans causing significant uptick in cancer rates

Failing to recognize the long-term health consequences of repeated and perpetual exposure among their patients, many doctors needlessly order CT scans for patients who do not need them, or order multiple scans when only one is necessary. Data compiled from outpatient claims filed through Medicare, for instance, reveals that CT scans are routinely overused at hundreds of hospitals across the country, and that patients are needlessly “double scanned” more than 80 percent of the time. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/health/18radiation.html).

The high cost of CT scanning equipment has also led to an epidemic of unnecessary CT scans at private practices as well. Because they know that, most of the time, insurance companies and government health programs will reimburse them, many doctors simply default to CT scans whenever there is even a remote possibility that they might be useful — and oftentimes these doctors double-up on scans as well, even though this is almost never medically necessary.

“Double scans expose patients to extra radiation while heaping millions of dollars in extra costs on an already overburdened Medicare program,” wrote Walt Bogdanich and Jo Craven McGinty in the NYT, concerning CT scan abuse within government healthcare.

Besides the added costs to the medical system, medical imaging overuse is destroying the physical health of many Americans.

According to data compiled by Jane Brody over at the New York Times (NYT), radiation exposure from medical scans now accounts for 1.5 percent of all cancers that occur in the U.S. Based on figures released by the American Cancer Society (ACS), this translates to about 24,583 Americans that develop cancer every year as a result of Western medicine. (http://www.cancer.org/Research/CancerFacts-Figures/ACSPC-031941).

“All imaging has increased, but CTs account for the bulk of it,” said Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a specialist in radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California -San Francisco (UCSF) to the NYT. “There’s clearly widespread overuse. More than 10 percent of patients each year are receiving very high radiation exposures.”

Some doctors refusing to provide care unless patients submit to imaging scans.

Despite their known dangers, CT and other risky imaging scans are often pushed on patients by doctors who refuse to provide care unless patients submit to their orders. Presumably to protect themselves against litigation, many doctors will insist that their patients undergo multiple imaging scans in order to confirm a medical condition, even when doing so puts patient safety at risk.

­Fortunately, many health insurers are now taking notice of this rampant abuse, and are putting policy measures in place to discourage it. These include requiring preauthorizations before patients can receive scans, for instance, or restricting who can administer the scans, and on what types of equipment.

­

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Javier Sicilia

New York’’s social organizations announced their support for the Mexican Caravan for Peace led by poet Javier Sicilia, in the third last stop of the tour around 25 U.S. cities.

In New York it is planned a vigil and march for the victims of the war against drugs, which will begin at Riverside Church up to the Church of Santa Cecilia.

Tomorrow, the last day in this city, there will be a press conference on the stairs of the City Hall of New York, a demonstration in the HSBC bank and then, they will go to Zucotti Park, according to the official website of the Caravan.

In its tour around the U.S. territory, the caravan, composed mostly of relatives of people killed or missing, calls for an end to the alleged war against drugs that has caused the loss of over 60,000 lives in Mexico over the past six years.

At each of the stops, the Caravan has received a warm welcome, even U.S. citizens impacted by this war against drugs have joined the group to denounce its consequences.

On Sept. 12, the tour will conclude in Washington with a call to celebrate an International Day of Action for Peace in Mexico.

Time is perfect to achieve peace in Colombia, Santos says

BOGOTÁ – President Juan Manuel Santos said today that time is “perfect, astral”, to carry out the peace process begun by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), which could be concluded in the coming six to eight months.

The conditions are now very different from those that prevailed in earlier times. The world has changed and Colombia as well. The whole world is supporting this process and the region too. I hope this will be the basis for a happy ending, the president stated.

I think the major thing is to focus on the five points of the agenda adopted by the two parties, noting that this should be a decent, serious, effective and realistic process, and “there are things that can be and others not,” Santos said.

­We have talked about months, not years. I hope that, if there is a will in six or eight months, we could say we finished the second phase of negotiations, which is to say that we officially ended the conflict, he noted.

The FARC ratified at a news conference held in Havana, Cuba, its will toward peace to seal the lasting armed conflict in Colombia for almost 50 years.

The FARC announced in that conference the names of two of the leaders that will make up the negotiating team, Ivan Marquez and Jesus Santrich, and their intention to join Ricardo Palmera, alias Simon Trinidad, sentenced to 60 years in prison in the United States, where he was extradited.

Another table of negotiations between the parties will begin on Oct. 8 in Oslo, Norway.

by Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com

ANALYSIS: If political conventions are ranked on a one to 10 scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one.

How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?

The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama propaganda and their propriety programmed electronic voting machines. For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security complex).

Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a citizen. If Obama were not a citizen, why would the very aggressive House Republicans not capitalize on it. It would be easy for a Congressional committee to determine if Obama were a citizen. Despite the propaganda, the Republicans in office have shown no interest in the propaganda charges spread by Republican operatives over the Internet.

Either Republicans have no confidence in the charges and do not want to end up proving with Congressional hearings that Obama is a citizen, or the Republicans, having destroyed every other aspect of the U.S. Constitution, reducing it to “a scrap of paper,” feel that making an issue of the last remaining Constitutional provision other than the Second Amendment would be the height of hypocrisy and don’t want to risk opening the constitutional issues that Republicans have run roughshod over.

If the Republicans can destroy habeas corpus, due process, violate both U.S. statutory and international law, ignore the separation of powers, and create a Caesar, why can’t the Democrats run a non-citizen?

Why didn’t the Republican convention raise the issue about the Obama regime’s claim that the executive branch has the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process of law? No such power exists in the U.S. Constitution or in U.S. statutory law. This gestapo police state claim exists only as an assertion. Republicans ignored this most important of all issues, because they support it.

Why didn’t the Democrat convention raise the issue that the Republicans took us to wars based on 9/11 assertions without ever conducting an investigation of 9/11? No qualified high-rise architect, structural engineer, physicist, chemist, or national security expert believes a word of the U.S. government’s 9/11 story. Neither do the first responders who were on the scene and witnessed and experienced the event.

Many experts keep their opinions to themselves, because otherwise the federal grants to their universities are over and done with or their architectural and engineering businesses are boycotted by patriotic former clients.

Regardless of these risks, there are 1,700 architects and engineers who have sent a petition to Congress that they do not believe one word of the official explanation and who demand a real investigation.

Why did not either party raise the question of how can the U.S. economy recover when corporations have offshored millions of U.S. middle class jobs, both manufacturing jobs and professional service jobs. For at least a decade, the U.S. economy has been able to create only lowly paid domestic non-tradable (not exportable) service jobs, such as waitresses, bartenders, and hospital orderlies.

Both parties talk total nonsense about jobs. The Republicans say they can create jobs by not taxing the rich. The Democrats say they can create jobs by financing jobs programs. The Republicans say that the Democrats’ jobs programs simply take money from business investments and give it to those who patronize bars and the drug trade. The Democrats say that the low taxes of the Republicans just subsidize yachts, exotic cars, private aircraft, and $800,000 wrist watches for the one percent, most of which is produced abroad.

Neither political party will admit that when U.S. corporations offshore their production for U.S. markets, Americans are removed from the incomes associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume. Offshoring is defended by both moronic political parties as “free trade.” In fact, offshoring is the gift of what was U.S. GDP to China, India, and the other countries to which U.S. corporations locate their production that they sell to Americans. US GDP goes down, the GDP of the countries who make the American goods sold to Americans goes up. The idiot free market economists call the de-industrializing of America “free trade.”

As an intelligent economist–an oxymoron– would know, destroying consumer incomes by moving their jobs to other countries, leaves consumers without incomes to purchase the imported offshored goods.

Neither American political party recognizes this disconnect. Neither party can afford to recognize it, as both parties are dependent on corporate campaign financing, and offshoring boosts executive bonuses and share prices. A political party that opposes offshoring of U.S. jobs simply does not get financed.

So, the great “superpower,” the “indispensable nation,” the world hegemony, is going into an election, and no one knows what are the stakes.

Why did not either political party ask: if Washington has demonized Iran, why did the 120 countries that comprise the non-aligned movement convene in Iran last week?

Is Washington’s propaganda failing? Can Washington no longer convince the world that the countries that Washington wants to destroy are evil and must be destroyed?

If Washington’s propaganda is failing, the world rule of the hegemonic power will not succeed. As world rule is Washington’s goal in keeping with the neoconservative ideology, then Washington is failing and is not the superpower it pretends to be.

Most credible foreign policy experts, none of which either political party has, believe that Washington has thrown away U.S. “soft power” by its obvious lies and unjustified military attacks on seven Muslim countries, its encirclement of Russia with missile bases, and ­its encirclement of China with air, naval, and troop bases.

In other words, Washington’s moral force no longer exists. All that exists is financial and military force, and both will fail as they are insufficient.

Neither party asked why the U.S. is at wars with Muslims for Israel. Why should Americans be losing lives and limbs for Israel while going broke and running up enormous war debts for our children and grandchildren? The answer from both parties is to blame the country’s bankruptcy on what Washington does for its own economically disenfranchised citizens. America’s financial problems are all the fault of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, housing subsidies, Pell grants–any and every thing that gives a leg up to the non-one percent.

In short, the attitude of both parties is: if you are not the one percent, you are disposable.

Both Obamacare and the alternative Republican voucher program dispose of ill Americans who confront potentially terminable diseases. The American people and the ill no longer count; only the budget counts. Letting the elderly die sooner is cheaper. We can therefore afford more wars for hegemony and more tax cuts for the one percent.

Have any peoples in human history ever been less represented by their government and political parties than Americans?

The U.S. government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is disposable.

Regardless of the political party whose lever is pulled in November, every American who votes will be voting for Israel and for their own demise.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

­

por David Bacon

New America Media

Indigenous Oaxacan strawberry workers take the boxes they’ve picked to the checker, who checks the quality of the berries, weighs them, and punches the ticket that keeps a record of their work and how much they’ll be paid.­ (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)

Three bills now making their way through Sacramento promise to dramatically improve conditions for California farmworkers, including one that requires overtime pay for shifts above eight hours. The overtime benefits bill is currently awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature.

SANTA MARIA, CA — Growing up in a farmworking family — well, it’s everything I ever knew. Whenever I got out of school, it was straight to the fields to get a little bit of money and help the family out. That’s pretty much the only job I ever knew. In general we would work on the weekends and in the summers. When I was younger it would be right after school, and then during vacations.

My sister Teresa slept in the living room and one night when I was doing my homework at the table, I could hear her crying because she had so much pain in her hands. My mother and my other sister complained about how much their backs hurt. My brother talked about his back pain as well. It’s pretty sad. I always hear my family talk about how much they’re in pain and how’s it’s impossible for me to help them. I always moved. In my high school years, I moved six times. In junior high I moved three times and in elementary school I’m not sure. I went to six different elementary schools.

For a while we went to Washington to work, but aside from that it’s always been in Santa Maria. We’d move because the lease ended and we couldn’t afford the rent, so we tried to look for a cheaper place. We always lived with other families. The first time I can remember we lived with four other families. The second house we lived with five families.

Each family gets their own room and does their own cooking. They get their own space in the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. When they cook in the morning before work it gets pretty chaotic in there.

The first time I worked in the fields was when I was seven, in Washington, where I picked cucumbers. It was summer. We didn’t go to school in Washington [but] the foremen never said anything because my brother knew them. He worked in the crew, so the foremen were OK with it. There were other kids there as well. It wasn’t a huge company, just a small rancher.

When they paid by the hour we couldn’t work. If [workers] were paid by the hour and they were slow, the foreman would send them home and not let them work anymore. They would only let kids work if they were doing piece rate. We were actually really slow because we were only in third or fourth grade.

The first [paycheck I received] was for $40. I was crying because I counted my boxes that day and I knew how much I had earned that week. When the foreman gave me my pay he said I hadn’t worked  [more than that]. I was in fourth grade. I was crying because I had worked and really wanted my money. I wanted to buy something with it. Finally he paid me my money in a white envelope. I was pretty happy.

When we got older, we did get more money. We got to earn our own money because before then my mother would take everything we earned. As we got older we had more interest in money, so we would keep half of it. We were getting our own pay, and my older siblings would ask us to give half.

The biggest problem was working in the vineyards. I worked for three months in the summer and it was the hardest work I’ve ever done. They gave us clippers to clip the vines, and that’s what you did all day. Clip them and pull the grapes off. When I got home my hands hurt so much I couldn’t make a fist or hold a cup or anything. I would just lie down since the pain just stayed. In the morning there was nothing else I could do, just go out there and work again.

In the weekends in elementary school it was pretty easy working on the weekends and going to school during the week. They didn’t give us much work and school came pretty easy. II would like to think that I am a good student. I took predominately AP and Honors ­classes, and got good grades — mostly A’s and B’s. I never got any C’s.

When I worked in the tomatoes recently, [some workers] stole four boxes from me. I told my family to report it to the Labor Department, [but] to them it’s inevitable. They think we should just put up with it and be grateful that we have a job. [They] also fear losing their job if they make a complaint. That’s pretty much how it is. They would make fun of my dad because he would complain a lot. They’d say, “That’s why your dad is like that and never gets jobs.”

I’m proud of what my mom and older siblings did in order to get the family here and survive. That was my motivation for choosing only AP classes. My sister didn’t get an education. None of my older sisters could go to school. I really want fairness and equality in schools. I want the discrimination against indigenous kids to stop in elementary schools. That’s where it starts. They affiliate themselves with gangs, to get it to stop. That’s the only reason.

I didn’t want to learn Spanish, because I didn’t want to lose my Mixteco language. I try to keep in touch with my indigenous roots. Whenever I cut my hair I always bury it. I asked my mother why we did that, and she says it’s because you fertilize the earth.

When it rains, I get a bowl and fill it with rainwater and drink it. I would talk with her as our bowls filled up. When I visit my dad I ask him to tell me folktales. When I have a dream I ask him to tell me what it means. I want to write down my language before it gets lost. So many students are choosing to not speak it and many parents don’t want to teach their kids. I want to teach my kids.