Libertarian International Organization
From Freepedia
The Libertarian International Organization (LIO) is the transanational network of the Libertarian movement. Unlike other transnational groups, it networks activists directly across borders, in line with the self-managing and non-authoritarian Libertarian philosophy, and maintains links with Libertarian and Libertarian-friendly groups and parties in every country. ISIL is a separate group that sponsors international conferences.
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Activities
Its main activities include various mentoring and improvement initiatives for Libertarian groups, communicating with the United Nations, proposing Libertarian-direction initiatives to a contact group of interested public officals and retired leaders, start-up guidance for Libertarian groups in different countries, special projects, and providing a nexus of information exchange and coalition building for Libertarian leaders and other groups, as in this GOOGLENEWS/PHX article.
It sponsors various initiatives demonstrating a wide range of projects from Libertarian group models to website ideas that are often modified and adopted by different groups, and LIO activists are frequently involved in key Libertarian projects. Its Board of Advisors has had an impressive but surprising list of names such as US Secretary of State Rogers and Dr. Timothy Leary, all of whom are united by interest in LIO's activities. It's present Board has many Libertarian luminaries.
LIO: the Libertarian project
Its program is to help communities "abolish all coercive government programs by peaceful means, in favor of voluntary alternatives more conducive to natural rights." It tates: "Libertarianism is a movement in over 100 countries where people seek to promote their rights by agreeing not to initiate force, and developing and monitoring voluntary and non-governmental alternatives."
LIO clssifies Libertarian communities into two types. Type I are those where freedom is enhanced through free choice of community, confederal limited government, it's non-territorial form called polyarchy or anarch-capitalism, and small local communities or mini-archies including conservative oriented minarchies and Libertarian socialist municipalisms. Type II are those where government is reduced to its original role of decisons by juries selected by the litigants and gided by natural law or local custom as announced by legislatures or community meetings. These may be minimal government, where an official's role is symbolic, and pure classical anarchies, where structure is totally informal from the high moral level of the inhabitants.
LIO treats all of these as acceptable and co-ordinate forms depending on the temper or interest of the inhabitants, and united by confederal limited government as a defense consultation pact and trade and possible cultural area. the present task of Libertarians, according to LIO, is to present the array of voluntary options and assist communities in developing them. LIO also defines a Libertarian as one who has taken a non-coercion oath, pointing to the old rights-respect oaths and freeman staus as a social form key to a stable society.
In addition, LIO emphasizes solutions based on a non-punitive approach, autonomous management, and market forms such as unions, trusts and co-operatives.
History
LIO has some claim to be the oldest transnational group in the world, tracing antecedents to the old Western Libertarian League; the Libertarian Party founded in 1856; and XIXth Century Societies for Individualism of which only one other today is thought to remain, and that promoted male suffrage and agitated against slavery; and correspondence among Libertarian communes, mostly centered in Spain, going back to pre-Roman times. It took recent form in the late '70's, severing ties with the De Lemos Beneficiencia atrust which today primarily funds studies of Space Colonization, and related to the famed clan of the Ron Castro Monforte de Lemos Almirante that essentially founded Spain, and on whose lands many of those communes flourished.
The interesting clan also had key roles not only in fighting monarchic oppression and the Inquisition, but in spreading freedom in America, such as bringing Spain to the side of the US Revolutionaries, and the abolition of slavery and founding of the Republic of Brazil by the Libertarian-Positivist movement of Michael de Lemoswho even designed the Brazilian flag. By tradition the main facilitator of the otherwise informal group is always a De Lemos, but all projects and groups are autonomous.
In fact there are many people with interesting family lines of advoocates of freedom in the Libertarian movement, bringing oit an historical continuity, self-confoidence and memory of what in fact can be done as having once been done successfully of which many new adherents and critics, aware of developments over only the last few centuries, are imperfectly aware.
Current Projects
Among it newer projects are sponsorship of internet colloquia; an international Library including Papal documents; microfiches of Libertarian items and storing of archives and papers of Libertarianism; a fund for a separate Library Institute; and a training initiative for community activists called Libertarian Citizen that has had promising results in Florida in elections and encouraging community action.
Its lead activists have been involved in the spread of freedom in the former Eastern Bloc, ending various Latin right-wing dictatorships, and initiatives in many local areas such as election reform and tax reduction. it invites anyone wishing to share a project of interest to contact it via its website.
One signature project of the LIO Libertarian approach, as a transitional form, is the Alaska Permanent Fund, championed by libertarians there and which by transferring and investing capptured government cost-reductions and lands into an independent fund of the people, has not only effectively abolished most taxes in that State, but provides a family with a core income.
Funds are all directed to separate groups, as perhaps most surprisingly of all it accepts no money. While showing activist groups how to develop their own funding, it depends entirely on volunteers.
Summary
LIO is cited in numerous web and other references, such as ElectionWorld, and praised by noted Libertarians such as management expert and former USA LP Chair Dr. James Lark as "a wonderful activist and college student resource."
