No More Special Little Freedom Zones
Plus: Hezbollah targets Tel Aviv, death pods in Switzerland, mapping San Francisco's decay, and more...
Honduras makes Próspera illegal: On Friday, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled ZEDEs—special economic zones that are still bound by criminal law but able to create their own civil codes—illegal following President Xiomara Castro's yearslong campaign against them.
"Justice for the Honduran people," wrote Castro following the decision "means not selling off our territory piecemeal or privatizing our sovereignty." That, of course, is not an accurate way of representing what ZEDEs do: They essentially allow new charter cities to be established, and they get to set their own laws and regulations and typically choose to create more business-friendly conditions with less taxation.
The ruling not only means the establishment of new ZEDEs will be prohibited but also possibly complicates the operation of existing ones, like Próspera, which Reason has covered:
Próspera officials told Reuters that the Supreme Court decision could cause "visas to be canceled, the suspension of support and even a disruption in the flow of remittances" but it's unclear how exactly this will play out in practice. The Court will publish an addendum that will detail how this ruling affects Próspera and other already existing charter cities like Ciudad Morazán.
Would-be Trump assassin charged: On Tuesday, Ryan Routh—the 58-year-old gunman who was apprehended after hiding out on a golf course with a gun seemingly looking to shoot former President Donald Trump—was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami on charges that he attempted to assassinate a presidential candidate. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
Routh was also charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, as well as assaulting or intimidating a Secret Service agent. Routh was already facing two gun charges, and has a long criminal record, including a 2002 conviction for possessing a weapon of mass destruction.
The case has been randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the South Florida judge who earlier this year dismissed Trump's federal classified documents case—a decision that's currently being appealed.
Scenes from New York: The chancellor of New York City's public schools, David Banks, has said he will resign his post in December. "The announcement came just weeks after federal agents seized Mr. Banks's phone as part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée," reports The New York Times, "and it promised to roil not just the nation's largest school system but also a mayoral administration already reeling from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries." More on Banks' legacy, and the decline of NYC public schools as they scrap the idea that merit or standards matter, from Reason's Matt Welch.
QUICK HITS
- Terrorist group Hezbollah, which has been exchanging heavy fire with Israel for several days now, has started targeting Tel Aviv. "Israel activated air sirens in its commercial capital early on Wednesday as the projectile—the first fired by Hezbollah on the city—flew over central parts of the country, the Israeli military said," reports Bloomberg. Hezbollah "said it was a ballistic missile aimed at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel's external-intelligence agency, in Tel Aviv's suburbs."
- Police in Switzerland have made several arrests (of co-conspirators) following a woman's suicide via the Sarco pod, a futuristic device that essentially looks like a tanning bed and allows the occupant to administer their own lethal dose of nitrogen gas. This is the first known use of the Sarco pod, and the person committing suicide was reportedly a 64-year-old American woman "who had been suffering from a severely compromised immune system" according to Reuters. Though many libertarians are on board with this type of thing, I cannot stomach the fact that assisted suicide is becoming increasingly normalized, with laws shifting to sanction it and new tech meeting the growing demand. (Put me in Libertarian Jail if you must!)
- "The expectation that anyone sufficiently intelligent can grasp, and perhaps master, any conceivable subject incentivizes technologists to become conversant in as many subjects as possible.…If the Washington intellectual aims for authority and expertise, the Silicon Valley intellectual seeks novel or counter-intuitive insights," writes Tanner Greer on the Scholar's Stage. "He claims to judge ideas on their utility; in practice I find he cares mostly for how interesting an idea seems at first glance. He likes concepts that force him to puzzle and ponder." (More on the differences between D.C.'s purportedly technocratic culture, and Silicon Valley's purportedly aristocratic one, here.)
- This guy has set out to map San Francisco's neighborhoods and give a granular look at urban blight:
After completing a map of The Mission Neighborhood I found:
- 232 Drug Addicts
- 213 Closed Businesses.
- 81 Empty/Abandoned Homes
- 50 Tents
- 37 Rvs
- 23 Prostitues
- 1 Raccoon See ???? for findings because it's MASSIVE. pic.twitter.com/h4wPAUZ0xo— JConr 傑·康納 (@TeamJConr) September 24, 2024
- Your rage-read of the morning, courtesy of Reason's Christian Britschgi: "California County Fines Man $120,000 for Refusing to Evict a Family From His Property"
