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Gould, Trying to keep kids offline

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kids these days
Two kids and their smart phones. Photo by Ron Lach.

Banning social media for under-16s won’t help – teaching digital media literacy will

Melissa L. Gould, Auckland University of Technology

The astounding rise in social media use in the past few years is seeing policy responses come to a head, both internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Some estimates put the number using social media globally above five billion, with an annua growth rate of more than 5%.

Accelerated concerns about smartphone addiction, cyberbullying, misinformation and extremist content have often seen digital devices and social media blamed for declines in mental and social well-being, in young people in particular.

The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls them “the anxious generation,” and politicians and policymakers are scrambling to respond.

This year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy asked Congress to put warning labels on social media, similar to health labels on cigarettes.

Along with New Zealand, governments in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, China and parts of the United States have proposed or enforced restrictions on phone use in schools

Now, an Australian petition to increase the minimum age of social media account users from 13 to 16 is building traction, with more than 100,000 signatures. Such a move is backed by the Australian and UK prime ministers. And in New Zealand, Labour MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan and ACT Party leader David Seymour have supported exploring the option.

But the research into protecting young people by restricting social media use is largely inconclusive. What we do know, however, is that these measures don’t equip young people with the skills they already need to build healthy relationships with smartphones and social media.

Education as empowerment

In all the proposed official solutions, one has been seriously overlooked – teaching media literacy.

According to the US National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), this would provide the skills to “access, analyze, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication”.

By making media literacy “highly valued and widely practiced as an essential life skill”, it aims to enable young people to shift from being passive media consumers to critical media users. It also helps them understand how they use – and are used by – media platforms.

Essentially, teaching media literacy is about shifting power and agency back to media users by educating them about how the media works.

Unfortunately, media studies (along with other subjects) was dropped from New Zealand’s NCEA level one curriculum from 2023.

So far, it remains at levels two and three, but the move signaled a devaluing of what should be a core subject in the digital age. This is especially relevant, given how digital media technology is being incorporated within classes themselves.

The more pervasive devices are in our everyday lives, the more essential media studies education becomes.

Students using laptops in classroomThe classroom is already digital, why isn’t digital literacy a priority? Getty Images

Accentuate the positive

Teaching social media literacy provides young people with the tools to engage with their smartphones and social media feeds in healthy, productive and meaningful ways. It also helps them navigate the darker, uglier sides of the online world.

By understanding the history, mechanics, ownership and funding models of social media, students can analyze its role and influence in their lives, and ask questions such as:

  • How does my behavior on social media train the algorithms that dictate what content is in my feed, and what content I don’t see?

  • How does a social media app make money, and what does it need from its users to make that money?

  • What techniques do social media apps use to gain my attention and keep me on the app?

  • How can social media help me find and belong to a community?

  • What stories do the content I post online tell other people about who I am and what I value?

As media literacy advocate Renee Hobbs of the US Media Education Lab has said, “there is a reciprocal relationship between protection and empowerment”.

In other words, conversations about social media shouldn’t be restricted to potential risk and harm. Social media also provides opportunities for people to be creative, to find communities and a sense of belonging, and to engage in learning, discussion and debate.

Social media as ‘virtual playground’

British social psychologist Sonia Livingstone suggests debates about the limits on screen time should focus on quality rather than quantity: it matters how screens are being used more than for how long.

US scholar Ethan Bresnick has described the online world as a “virtual playground.” There are risks, you can get hurt, but there is also joy, connections, play, creativity and laughter.

As with any playground, there need to be health and safety measures. But we must also support young people to assess and handle risk so they can thrive and have fun.

Above all, it is important not to forget that young people are social media experts.

Parenting and educating children experiencing childhoods so different from previous generations can be scary. Social media is complex and multifaceted – as should be our approach to learning how to navigate and understand it.The Conversation

Melissa L. Gould, Senior Lecturer in Critical Media Studies, Auckland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Jackson, A rainy end to an infrequent long weekend

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drizzle in Anton
Weekend drizzle in Anton. Photo by Eric Jackson.

A once every five years holiday doesn’t
always create a long weekend

by Eric Jackson

The last time, in 2019, it was also on a Monday. The time before that it was on a Sunday. The time before that, in 2014, it was on a Wednesday. It was also on a Wednesday in 2009.

Inauguration Day is the July 1 after a Panamanian Election Day. It comes once every five years. It’s a national holiday when a lot of businesses, even little informal ones, don’t open their doors.

It’s also, if the truth is to be told, terribly disruptive to Panama upon whatever days it falls. Shredders have been shredding, and public documents have been going up in smoke in many a burn pit. Outgoing municipal, ministerial and presidential websites have been erased. Functionaries have been told that their government jobs are at an end. Stick-ups have been consummated, abandoned, or in case of re-election been put on hold until the next cycle gets up to speed.

I left home in the light rain shopping items and to-do things in mind.

Stop one — the water in the wetland is up a bit. Whip out the camera, and message is that the chip is protected. I unsuccessfully tried to fiddle with that. A category of to-do ideas — pictures to take — stricken from the list.

The higher water in the swamp was not only a photo op idea for me, but also a recreational opportunity for my friend The Gimpy Dog. Is she a “street dog” or a “shared dog?” A little bit of both. I am not the only one, perhaps not the main one, who feeds her. Mostly though, on rainy days she takes shelter at bus stops rather than at somebody’s house. She came to me on this day dripping wet wet from a dip in the little wetland. And as a demonstration of her affection, jumped on me with muddy paws.

And why do I call her The Gimpy Dog anyway? Isn’t that terribly disrespectful?

Thing is, when first we crossed paths she was in heat for the first time, from the asentamiento campesino down the street with a pack of males in pursuit. I looked at her, at her gait and shape and the “out-of-alignment” way she ran, and figured that this is a dog with hip dysplasia, who might live a rather ordinary life but should not be allowed to pass on this genetic problem. I brought her inside, contacted Animal Rescue of Anton, and bonded with her on an hour-long walk on a leash from my house in El Bajito to the Pan-American Highway, where they picked her up and took her to be spayed. They brought her back and were no doubt appalled by my rustic — or should I say slovenly? — way of life. But mission accomplished. I kept her inside for a few days of post-op recovery, then let her come or go as desired.

The Gimpy Dog is one of those canines that seems not to want to be owned. And the place down the street from whence she came? I think people came to some realizations about her hips, and about her not going into heat or having puppies, and decided that they didn’t especially want to own her, either. But the asentamiento is a collective organization, including some unfeeling characters and some kind-hearted souls. This dog gets fed, sometimes at my place, but she’s awfully skinny at the moment. Put some worm medication on the mental shopping list.

We sat together in the caseta for longer than usual, because this was a holiday with fewer buses running. Eventually I caught a Penonome bus, but I was headed for Anton on this day, so got off at the truck stop at the entrada by the Pan-American Highway.

WHAT?!? None of those expensive no-sugar Costa Rican chocolate bars this time? Oh, well. Just got a can of the Monster zero-sugar ginseng energy drink and crossed the street to the stop along the eastbound lane.

This was a heavy traffic day in that direction. Lots of people from the city were taking an early start on getting home from a long weekend. Soon enough a Penonome to Las Guias bus stopped and I headed in to Anton.

The Internet store, a one-man business, was closed. I kind of expected that. Scratch a couple more things off of the list for this day. Pick up hard-copy newspapers to read, check to see if any of the fruit and veggie vendors are selling anything that I want to buy for seeds to plant — they didn’t, and most of them were closed. Then a hampao, hsiu mai and Monster energy drink lunch at Lissy’s, where I am kind of a regular.

The ATMs were working as always. Back into the store, and picked up few items to meet the animals and me.

At the pharmacy two cops were standing around, a cabo and a teniente. But the corporal was female, so would that make her a caba? I have lived here most of my life, but all of my formal education is in English and picking up and refining Spanish is still a work in progress at my buzzardly old age.

President Cortizo had said his farewell and the hated old establishment parties had cobbled together a shaky coalition to run the legislature. Neither at the local nor the national level had anyone bothered to issue a dry law decree for this holiday. Perhaps the outgoing PRD, which has more than 730,000 members but got fewer than 135,000 votes for its presidential candidate on May 5, NEEDED to drink it off on this Inauguration Day.

On the bus back to the village, I sipped on bottled water but several other folks broke out the six-packs and these men were chugging beer and throwing the cans out the windows.

Got home in one piece, with the neighbor dogs and I greeting one another on the walk from the bus stop. The home guard dogs were annoyed about being shut in for a couple of hours. But it was going to be a mondongo night and they could smell that through my bag, so that took some of the edge off of them being left to guard the house.

Didn’t FEEL LIKE much of a holiday. I probably have to wait another five years to see another one of these.

 

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Ben-Meir, Netanyahu is Israel’s most dangerous enemy

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him again
None of Israel’s enemies pose a greater danger to Israel than Netanyahu and his messianic government. US State Department photo.

Israel’s most dangerous enemy

by Alon Ben-Meir

Never in Israel’s history have Israeli-Palestinian relations been more poisonous than under Netanyahu’s nearly uninterrupted 17-year-long reign. It is now incumbent upon every Israeli, young and old, man and woman, to realize that Netanyahu’s rule brought Israel to this unprecedented, perilous state of affairs. I make this statement because I genuinely believe that Netanyahu’s ideological bent, self-indulgence, insatiable thirst for power, and illusions about Israel’s future are sliding Israel ever more precipitously toward the abyss. Hamas’ ferocious attack and the disastrous war that followed is the culmination of a series of tragic mistakes that Netanyahu had committed over the years.

In defiance of any logic, reason, and reality, Netanyahu has opposed throughout his entire political career the establishment of a Palestinian state and has sworn to prevent that from ever happening with absolute zeal. Whereas he was determined to thwart any attempt that could lead to that end, he had been gripped by the illusion that he could find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that precludes such a state yet allows Israel to still coexist peacefully with the Palestinians.

The tragedy is that he has been completely dismissive of the fact that the Palestinian problem will not fade away and will continue to haunt the Israelis. And worse yet, he has contributed directly and wittingly to the horrific disaster in which Israel and the Palestinians are thrust today.

From the day he rose to power in 1996, he was resolute and made no secret of his desire to scuttle the 1993 Oslo Accords. In 2001, in a private conversation with relatives of terror victims, he said: “I actually stopped the Oslo Accords.” And in December 2023, he stated at a press conference, “I will not let the State of Israel go back to the fateful mistake of Oslo.”

Since Oslo laid the foundation for Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu stopped short of nothing to sabotage it to prevent such a state from being realized. This was enshrined in the original Likud Party platform, 1977: “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable…” In 1997, Netanyahu reaffirmed this view: “This is the land of our forefathers, and we claim it to the same degree that the other side claims it.” And during his United Nations General Assembly speech last September, Netanyahu displayed a map that shows Israel encompassing all of Mandatory Palestine – Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

To make his case, Netanyahu skillfully and consistently portrayed the creation of a Palestinian state as a mortal danger to Israel. He stated in January 2024: “My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel. As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”

To cement his opposition to a Palestinian state, Netanyahu embarked surreptitiously on creeping annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank. In defiance of the international community, he pushed for establishing new and expanding existing settlements, and legalizing illegal ones. In February 2023, in response to reports of a settlement freeze, he countered: “Construction and legalization in Judea and Samaria will continue according to the original planning and construction schedule, without any changes.”

Since 2007, following Hamas’s overthrow of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, Netanyahu imposed a blockade, claiming that Hamas poses an existential danger to Israel. True, while Hamas’ leaders professed that much publicly, Hamas never posed such a danger to Israel as they have never had the military capacity to do so. But Netanyahu’s repeated assertion was calculated to serve his political interest. In response to Hamas’ provocations, he was happy to dispatch his troops to Gaza several times to “mow the lawn,” to keep Hamas at bay and bolster his badly-sought reputation as “Mr. Security.”

Netanyahu’s public posture against Hamas was misleading and designed for public consumption. He knew all too well that Hamas was shaped into what it is today by Israel going back more than a decade before he became prime minister in 1996. Former Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance Hamas as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Fatah party, stating “The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques.” And Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009 that “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

No one has strengthened Hamas’s military more than Netanyahu. It is under his watch that Hamas became a more potent force than it was ever before. Netanyahu was happily funneling billions of dollars from Qatar to Hamas, of which Hamas dedicated 55 percent to buying and manufacturing weapons, building 350-mile-long tunnels, and recruiting and training tens of thousands of fighters, preparing them for urban warfare beyond anyone’s wild imagination. In March 2019, Netanyahu stated that “Whoever opposes a Palestinian state must support the delivery of funds to Gaza because maintaining separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.” All along, Netanyahu has convinced himself that Hamas is under control and that the Palestinians will succumb to living in Gaza in an open-air prison.

And then came Hamas’s unfathomably horrific attack, where 1,200 Israelis were savagely murdered and 250 abducted, laying 20 Israeli communities in ruin under his watch. But, of course, leave it to the shameless Netanyahu to refuse to take any responsibility, blaming the Israeli intelligence and everybody else for the colossal failure of his own making that fundamentally amended the status quo. Netanyahu is now bent on making matters even worse.

The Israeli retaliation was undoubtedly justified, but in the manner the war was carried out, there were strong elements of revenge and retribution that no calculus could justify. The killing of 37,000 Palestinians, among them more than 50 percent women and children (albeit only 12,800 have so far been positively identified), while laying more than half of Gaza in ruin, transcends any proportionality and indeed is tantamount to war crimes. This unfolding horror obscured Hamas’ butchering of 1,200 innocent Israelis in cold blood courtesy of Netanyahu’s catastrophic mistake, and how he executed the war enraged the international community, putting Israel and its people to shame.

But then leave it to the masterful manipulator to paint the whole war as an existential threat to justify the often-indiscriminating bombardments, claiming: “I think we’ve responded in a way that goes after the terrorists and tries to minimize the civilian population in which the terrorists embed themselves and use them as human shields.” But then, how do you square that statement with what he said on November 2023: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”

The first Book of Samuel states:

I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

Then, in December 2023, he pledged, “We are not stopping, and we will not stop until we are victorious.

What kind of victory? Victory is celebrated if it ushers in a new era—an era of sustainable peace and promising horizon, not a new opening of an even greater inferno with the Palestinians, which will surely follow. Netanyahu’s continued refusal to articulate a sensible exit strategy from Gaza and his persistent rejection of the Palestinian right to statehood will only pave the way for the next catastrophic war that may well involve other regional actors, making this war anything but a rehearsal.

Netanyahu’s disdainful criticism of Biden

Netanyahu knows how indispensable the United States is to Israel, as no country has provided Israel with more financial, military, and political support than the USA. And no American president has ever been more supportive and committed to Israel’s security than President Biden. But then, leave it to the most loathsome Netanyahu, who dares to criticize the president for suspending the shipment specifically of 2,000-pound bombs to continue with his devastating bombardment of Rafah that could indiscriminately kill thousands of innocent civilians.

On June 18, 2024, Netanyahu shamelessly stated: “It is inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel.” And on June 23, 2024, he again brazenly stated: “Four months ago, there was a dramatic decrease in the munitions coming from the US to Israel… We received all sorts of explanations, but we didn’t receive one thing: the basic situation did not change. Certain items arrived in trickles, but the munitions at large remained behind.” In reality, only one shipment of “high-payload munitions” was paused in May.

Even if this were true, only an ungrateful fool would publicly make such an ill-thought-out statement for the whole world to hear. This character is scheduled to speak at a joint session of the US Congress on July 24. Inviting him at this particular juncture will do nothing but disgrace Congress. Netanyahu has repeatedly defied President Biden, and giving him the prestige to address Congress is nothing but a slap in Biden’s face.

Moreover, bestowing him this honor before he agrees on an endgame to the war further strengthens his resolve to prolong the war in order to stay in power. Netanyahu’s speech will drive a deeper wedge between the Democrats who support versus those who are against the war. Known for his strong affinity to the Republican party, coming to Congress amid presidential elections, Netanyahu will allow Republican leaders to show more support to Israel than the Democrats. Indeed, there is no depth that Netanyahu will not stoop to only to see Trump be re-elected, believing that Trump will give him free rein to do whatever he wants to the Palestinians.

To sum up Netanyahu’s saga, he, more than any other individual in Israel’s history, tried to destroy every pillar on which Israeli-Palestinian coexistence must inevitably rest. Since he returned to power in 2008, he has spared no effort to make the Palestinians’ lives unbearable. His successive governments have systematically been oppressing the Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, subjecting them to forced evacuation, administrative detention, and night raids, demolishing their homes, and expropriating their land. At the same time, several hundred are being killed every single year. All the while, he let settlers harass and intimidate the Palestinians, poison their wells, uproot their trees, and block them from grazing on their land, forcing many to leave their villages in desperation.

Failing to cleanse the territories ethnically, Netanyahu’s actions only poisoned the minds of yet another Palestinian generation who now live with ever deeper hatred toward Israel, waiting to exact blood from the country they view as their existential enemy. More alarmingly, as the war rages on, one cannot escape the evidentiary conclusion that Netanyahu has become Israel’s most insidious and dangerous enemy from within.

All Israelis who care about their country’s future must rise and demand the immediate resignation of this corrupt and brazen creature who inflicted untold damage on the only Jewish state, making it a pariah state. It will take many years before Israel recovers, but only if it recognizes the Palestinians’ unmitigated reality and forges peace based on a two-state solution.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies

 

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Movimiento Democrático Popular, Lo peor

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Para ponerlo en perspectiva, hemos tenido varios gobiernos malos. Foto de dos delincuentes condenados, por una Presidencia anterior.

Se acaba el gobierno más corrupto, inepto e incapaz

por el Movimiento Democrático Popular

Faltan escasas horas para que se acabe la larga noche oscura del quinquenio del gobierno de Laurentino Cortizo y Gabriel Carrizo. Se trata, a no dudarlo, del gobierno más corrupto, inepto e incapaz de toda nuestra historia republicana. No en vano los electores los repudiaron como si fuesen portadores de la peste más contagiosa y mortífera: siendo Carrizo el candidato a la presidencia del PRD, el partido más grande de nuestra historia electoral, con sus casi 700,000 miembros, solo pudo obtener 132,897 votos, ocupando el sexto lugar de los ocho candidatos que se presentaron, pese al derroche multimillonario de dineros públicos con los que pensaron que era posible limpiar las úlceras de corrupción que afeaban su candidatura. Una sola candidata de su partido, que lo hizo por libre postulación, obtuvo 149,409 votos, 16,512 más que el candidato de la hipócrita y cínica sonrisa.

¿Cómo entender tan catastrófica derrota que ha convertido al PRD en un mendigo de la política, condenado a partir de ahora a ser un parásito electoral de cualquier otro partido tradicional al que tendrá que suplicar sumársele para obtener una limosna de corrupción? Un somero repaso a la herencia que nos han dejado resulta ser una explicación más que suficiente.

No se trata tan solo de la generalizada corrupción que caracterizó al gobierno saliente, se trata de que robaban mientras miles de panameños morían por causa del virus. Robaban en la compra de respiradores, mascarillas, bolsas de comida, auxilios económicos, construcción de hospitales para la urgencia epidémica, etc. Esta actividad de descarada corrupción se transformó en un hecho criminal imperdonable.

La Asamblea Nacional se ha engullido mil millones de balboas en los cinco años de su funcionamiento, cuando dicho organismo ha podido funcionar en ese mismo período con 300 millones. Es decir, Nito, Gaby y Alexander le regalaron a la Asamblea el costo del Hospital Oncológico, 700 millones de balboas que fueron a parar al bolsillo insaciable de los corruptos diputados, que constituyen a juicio de un analista político “el lado oscuro de la fuerza”.

151,000 millones de balboas han sumado los presupuestos de este quinquenio maldito, y los panameños continúan sin tener agua en sus barriadas, pese a ser Panamá uno de los ocho países de mayor riqueza hídrica del mundo. Pudo más la ambición y el miedo político, por el tamaño de sus fechorías, que dotar de agua suficiente al Canal y a los ciudadanos, lo que impulsó el millonario negocio corrupto de los “camiones cisterna”, y llevó además a que el país dejara de percibir millonarias sumas por la restricción del paso de barcos por la vía interoceánica, lo que se tradujo en menos servicios de salud y de educación, entre otros muchos servicios públicos. Esa carencia absoluta o parcial del llamado por los panameños “el vital líquido”, constituye otro crimen imperdonable.

La espantosa crisis humanitaria y ambiental de la emigración por la frontera entre Colombia y Panamá, producto de la hambruna y la falta de esperanzas de millones de empobrecidos por las políticas neoliberales imperantes en la mayor parte del Continente, así como de dictaduras burocráticas autodefinidas falsamente como de “izquierdas”, ha sido un pavoroso ejemplo más de la naturaleza putrefacta del gobierno del nunca jamás volverán: un protocolo de acuerdo para frenar dicha marea de emigrantes resulta ser que estaba en manos del gobierno desde hace meses sin firmar. ¿Qué explica tamaña canallada? Frenar la migración incontrolada afectaría el corrupto negociado del control por el gobierno saliente de las líneas de autobuses que los transportaba hasta la frontera con Costa Rica.

Y qué decir de la estrellada “estrella de la educación”, tal como fue caracterizada por los cínicos de los que se van y no volverán. La Defensoría del Pueblo inspeccionó el pasado 22 de mayo 450 centros educativos, encontrando que el 91% de ellos presentaban gravísimos problemas de infraestructura, de agua potable y electricidad. Por otra parte, el 70% de las escuelas denominadas bilingües no cuentan con profesores o maestros de inglés nombrados. Y las “escuelas rancho”, ubicadas preferentemente pero no únicamente en las Comarcas, se mantienen como símbolo indeleble e inolvidable del desprecio del gobierno Cortizo-Carrizo por nuestras poblaciones indígenas, cuyos escolares, entre otros riesgos, en travesías por ríos sin puentes ni pasos seguros para cruzarlos de camino a sus hogares o a la escuela, han perdido hasta su vida.

Hablar de la salud inexistente, o de la protección a los oligopolios de los medicamentos, que resultan por ello ser los más caros del Continente, es innecesario dado el sufrimiento agónico de centenares de miles de panameños. Igual podríamos decir de la corrupción e ineptitud del Ministerio de Obras Públicas, en cinco años ha sido incapaz de iniciar siquiera la construcción del túnel que hará posible la línea 3 del Metro, o iniciar la construcción del cuarto puente sobre el Canal.

Esta es la espantosa herencia de hambre y miseria que nos dejan los que quisieron imponernos el inconstitucional contrato con la minera First Quantum, con el único propósito de satisfacer sus inconfesables intereses económicos. El pueblo en la calle los derrotó. Esos ¡Nunca jamás volverán!

 

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Para defendernos de los piratas informáticos, los trolls organizados y otros actos de vandalismo en línea, la función de comentarios de nuestro sitio web está desactivada. En cambio, ven a nuestra página de Facebook para unirte a la discusión.
 

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¿Wappin? End of June homage mix / Mezcla de homenaje de finales de junio

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KF
The late Kinky Friedman, US-born son of Russian Jewish immigrants, musician, composer and writer, human rights activist, friend of animals and would have made the best governor of Texas ever. Wikimedia / Good Shepherd photo by Stephen C. Webster.
Kinky Friedman, nacido en Estados Unidos, hijo de inmigrantes judíos rusos, músico, compositor y escritor, activista de derechos humanos, amigo de los animales y habría sido el mejor gobernador de Texas de todos los tiempos. Foto de Wikimedia / Good Shepherd de Stephen C. Webster.

Mid-summer heroes, fallen and riding on
Héroes, caídos y en marcha

Kinky Friedman — Ride ‘Em Jewboy
https://youtu.be/Co3I0GYGaSY?si=UckfaLpTFubQUFI1

Alanis Morissette – Live at The Woodlands 2024
https://youtu.be/S2Qr_r1pO3E?si=_DRZHSTdd8RUgbnK

Adele with Billie Eilish & Christina Perri – A Thousand Years
https://youtu.be/wlcVuDaLWYQ?si=4M_EKZcxACOpjvo2

Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
https://youtu.be/wp43OdtAAkM?si=cd8fmZQO38IPwLYW

Lord Invader – Reincarnation
https://youtu.be/pwXxbMUrYsk?si=OMfwq9NaHI2gjEjN

Lauryn Hill – Rotterdam Reggae Festival 2023
https://youtu.be/PhP-x6kUICY?si=9x3ARbusgAzFeiQI

Natalia Lafourcade – María a Curandera
https://youtu.be/a8eDeLKWx74?si=B1FpqPa1CvyT1qtT

Joan Baez & Mercedes Sosa – Gracias A La Vida
https://youtu.be/rMuTXcf3-6A?si=wdG6FmCyElkqpahi

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Powderfinger
https://youtu.be/tdPs5YXQTSw?si=1_qjFrEaupvYVs0i

Beenie Man – Reggae Geel Festival Belgium 2019
https://youtu.be/9kBhprAOyZU?si=4sURb_rm88XDRehT

Willie Nelson – The Border
https://youtu.be/8b3ckldWoX8?si=p3OgDfFUrUJdscuc

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Pierce, Comedians and the Catholic humor tradition

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Pope and his jesters
Pope Francis meets with comedians at the Apostolic Palace on June 14, 2024, in Vatican City. Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Image.

Pope Francis may have surprised many by inviting comedians to the Vatican
but the value of humor has deep roots in Catholic tradition

by Joanne M. Pierce, College of the Holy Cross

When Pope Francis addressed a group of top international comedians on June 14, 2024, he called them “artists” and stressed the value of their talents.

To many Catholics, this meeting came as a surprise. Traditionally, the themes of detachment, sacrifice, humility and repentance appear far more frequently in religious writing and preaching than the spiritual benefits of a good laugh.

But as a specialist in medieval Christian history, I am aware that, since antiquity, many theologians, preachers, monastics and other Christians have embraced the role of humor as a valuable part of Christian spirituality. Some have even become popularly known as the patron saints of comedians or laughter.

Comedy is natural

Many Catholic saints have considered laughter to be an integral part of nature itself. For example, the 12th-century German nun St. Hildegard of Bingen, a mystic poet and musician, wrote in a poem on the power of God:

I am the rain coming from the dew
That causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.

In the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi called himself the “Jongleur de Dieu” – troubador or jester of God – because of his ministry. He probably used a French reference because his mother came from France and spoke French at home. Francis and his followers wandered from town to town, singing God’s praises and preaching joyfully in the streets. People laughed when he preached to birds in trees, and he once had to politely ask a large flock to stop chirping first.

The 16th-century nun and mystic St. Teresa of Avila wrote in a poem, alluding to the voice of Jesus Christ as love:

Love once said to me,
‘I know a song, would you like to hear it?’
And laughter came from every brick in the street
And from every pore in the sky.

Humor and play are an important part of human nature. They provide opportunities for relaxation and relief and offer a way to cope with the challenges of human life.

In the 13th century, Dominican scholastic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas composed a lengthy summary of theology that became one of the most important resources in the Catholic tradition: the Summa Theologica. In it, he argued that humor and other kinds of joyful recreation offer the mind and soul the same kind of rest that the body needs.

Aquinas cautioned, however, that these kinds of words or activities must not become hurtful or indecent.

Comedy can heal

The shared experience of laughing can break down barriers across cultures and bring people together.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits in the 16th century, is said to have danced a jig to raise the spirits of a despondent man on retreat; he also praised a Jesuit novice for his healthy laughter.

A statue of Saint Ignatius Loyola with an angel holding a book.
St. Ignatius is distinguished by his heart-shaped face and the Latin motto of the Society for Jesus, ‘Ad maiorem dei gloriam,’ or ‘for the greater glory of God.’ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Assunta Sommella Peluso, Ignazio Peluso, Ada Peluso and Romano I. Peluso Gift, 2010

In the same century, St. Philip Neri, who has been called the patron saint of humor and joy, was reputed to be a mystic and visionary. To put others at ease, he engaged in pranks and jokes, once attending a gathering with half of his beard shaved off.

Some famous Catholic saints even faced death with a smile, such as the second-century deacon St. Lawrence, one of the patron saints of comedians. The legend goes that as he was executed by being roasted alive on a gridiron over a hot fire, he joked with his executioners, saying, “Turn me over … I’m done on this side!” This legend has carried over into the official story of his life.

The Carmelite nun St. Therese of Lisieux also lived a life marked by humor in the 19th century. Even as she lay dying from tuberculosis at the age of 24, she is said to have joked with the other nuns and her doctor. Supposedly, when a priest was called to give her the last rites, he refused because she looked too healthy. She replied that she would try to look sicker the next time he was called.

Popes and humor

Francis is far from the only pope to stress the value of humor in Catholic and Christian life. Pope St. John XXIII, who in 1961 summoned the Second Vatican Council, calling all Catholic bishops worldwide to a series of formal meetings at the Vatican to update Catholicism, was known for his humor. Famously, when asked once how many people worked at the Vatican, he replied, “About half of them.”

The next pope, St. Paul VI – elected in 1963 – was an accomplished administrator known for his wit. One of his papal documents was on the importance of “Christian joy.” Now on the path to sainthood as “blessed,” John Paul I, who reigned for only a month in 1978, was known as “the smiling pope” because of his cheerfulness.

Pope St. John Paul II, the first non-Italian elected pope in almost 500 years, was only 58 years old when elected in 1978, and he was well-known for his sense of humor.

The German cardinal who succeeded him in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, also valued the role of humor in a balanced Christian life: “Humor is in fact essential in the mirth of creation.”

And before this 2024 audience with comedians, Francis discussed the topic of humor more fully in his 2018 apostolic exhortation. In this important document, addressed to the whole Catholic Church, the Pope stated that holiness is within the reach of every believer and is achieved through a joyful life. Humor has a section of its own within the exhortation.

In the audience with comedians on June 14, Francis, who took the name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the troubadour of God, has very publicly affirmed that for Catholics, humor is an important part of a faithful life.

The meeting even concluded with one of the pope’s favorite prayers, for good humor, attributed to St. Thomas More, the chancellor of England under King Henry VIII – fitting, given More’s legendary sense of humor. Executed for treason in 1535, More is said to have asked the constable of the Tower of London to help him up the steps of the scaffold, with one of his last jokes: “For my coming down, I can shift for myself.”

The prayer asks God for, among other things, “a good sense of humor … to share with others.”The Conversation

Joanne M. Pierce, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Editorials: Post-colonial Panama’s defense; and Plan B

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SENAFRONT
A new class of SENAFRONT border police graduate from basic training. Panama needs to strengthen our defenses along the Colombian border, not hand the problem over to somebody else. Ministry of Public Safety photo.

With more foreboding than hope

This is not just any week, this is the last week of the worst government in history.

Miguel Antonio Bernal

In Panamanian history? We had Noriega times. We had Arnulfo Arias’s short-lived racist 1941 constitution. We had the Conservatives in Panama City during the Thousand Days War, who allowed massive famine and prohibited publicity about those who were dying of starvation. Way back when we had Pedrarias The Cruel, who killed Vasco Núñez de Balboa and then took his reign of terror to Nicaragua. We had the brutality of the Spanish Conquest of indigenous Panama. We had the centuries of slavery here. And then we have had awful kleptocracy since the bloody 1989 US invasion.

The Nito Cortizo years will be remembered as times of massive theft that left the government unable to pay its bills, setting off two huge national strikes. Bad enough to rate truly awful, but does it take a history major to look askance at the superlatives?

Let’s not hear that “He stole but he got things done” stuff. Martinelli stole tens of millions and was properly tried and sentenced to prison for it. His continued presence as a prominent factor on our political scene would be toxic to Panama’s international relations. Including with the United States, whose State Department has branded him a crook, and whose justice system jailed his two sons for laundering their father’s Odebrecht bribes. Including with Spain and through them the European Union, where he is suspected of corrupting the police and using illegal electronic surveillance to spy on a former mistress.

We get an alarm from an interview that President-elect Mulino did with Andrés Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald:

Mulino may want to solidify Panama’s status as a top US ally, in sharp contrast with Nicaragua, Honduras or other Central American governments that are either anti-American, or have tense relations with the United States.

And how would Mulino go about ditching the protection of Panama’s neutrality, which is designed to avoid the temptation of any foreign power to attack us and our canal? “Today, the US border isn’t in Texas; it’s in the Darien in Panama,” he told Oppenheimer. That’s a dangerous thing to say. As in, nearly a quarter-century after the last US military bases here closed with only semi-covert “forward operating locations” left behind, leave it to US forces to seal our border with Colombia and the US treasury to fly would-be migrants back to their countries of origin. Stated with the servile omission of any suggestion that Washington should stop the economic warfare against Venezuela that’s driving most of this migration, of course.

We’ve had an outgoing PRD government that looted Panama to the point that our government couldn’t pay its bills, generating a mostly nonviolent national uprising, and posited as its “solution” the recolonization of the isthmus by selling large parts of it off as a foreign mining colony. Is it now to be replaced by a Martinelista government that proposes to recolonize Panama by bringing back the Southern Command?

‘Don’t be alarmist,’ some might suggest. But to seal off the border with Colombia would be a huge, expensive and perhaps impossible undertaking. Panama is well nigh broke and faces severe austerity, without any proposal coming from Mulino about how we are to mobilize Panamanians to meet such a daunting challenge.

The US border does not run through Panama. We are an independent country, nobody’s “back yard.” The US “lot line” is far to our northwest, largely along the Rio Grande. Suggesting otherwise to a great power that can be and has at times been belligerent at Panama’s expense is irresponsible.

A US “technical solution” with electronic sensors in the jungle like the ones along the network of trails through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia that were supposed to win the Vietnam War for Washington? How about our own economic and technical approach, where people living along the border all have their cell phones and laptops connected to the Internet, so that they can call the police if they see a group of foreign intruders in their neighborhood? How about better cooperation with our closest neighbors there, the Colombians?

Looking farther afield for international help with a serious problem of ours can be reasonable enough. A mainstream political culture in which rival establishment parties push different versions of selling off Panama as a colony is only reason for despair. People died, people fought uphill battles over their long lifetimes, for something better than this for Panama.

There are certain toxic thoughts that are the bane of Panamanian history. “What’s in it for ME?” is one of those. So is “Let the gringos solve it.”

 

KH
Kamala Harris takes the oath as Vice President of The United States of America. DoD photo by US Air Force Senior Airman Kevin Tanenbaum.

The US system has a backup if a president becomes disabled

Set aside a rush job rerun of primaries, all the possible intra-party chicanery, exaggerated ambitions, celebrity politics. We have our stand-in, if need be, and she’s very well qualified.

 

JA

           

            If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.

Julian Assange            

Bear in mind…

We have only the people’s hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people’s hearts, what can we use to sustain the country?

Empress Dowager Cixi

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

Ann Landers

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Benjamin Disraeli

 

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Assange’s original sin: publishing the truth about government lies and murder

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A US military attack on a Reuters news crew in Iraq, about which the US government lied. The attack continued against civilians who came to the rescue of the journalists and their assistants, including against several children. Nobody has ever been penalized for the deaths or the lies. US government video, obtained, decoded and released by WikiLeaks.

Don’t think that it can’t happen here

It has. The George H. W. Bush administration denied the mass civilian casualties in the invasion of Panama, falsely accused Noriega’s Dignity Battalions of starting the firestorm in El Chorrillo, and killed Spanish photojournalist Juantxu Rodríguez while he was walking down the street near the ATLAPA convention center.

When the editor of The Panama News, at the time an associate editor with the Ann Arbor newsmonthly Agenda, who came to Panama to report and visit a few days after the December 20, 1989 US attack on Panama, returned to his undergraduate alma mater, Eastern Michigan University, and spoke about the mass civilian casualties and the secret mass burials, a black ROTC sergeant called it a pack of lies, denied the mass graves and called the editor “a Zonie who sympathizes with the Hoochies.” Neither the Pentagon nor the university ever disavowed the racism.

(In its own way that was a perfect illustration of the opinion of Malcolm X, that racism is a malady that can afflict any person of any race anywhere, which in the USA of his time was a small problem among black people but a big problem among white people.)

At his sentencing in a US courtroom in Saipan — the venue carefully chosen in Washington to avoid press coverage — the judge tacitly admitted the years-long campaign of lies against Assange, noting that nobody was personally killed or injured because of what Assange published. The possibilities of reparations for the defamation campaign appear to be remote. However, individuals and institutions that participated in it go on with forever-stained reputations. 

 

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STRI, El busito de la ciencia vuelve a rodar por Panamá

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STRImobile
El Q?Bus del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales llevará la ciencia a los colegios públicos del país. Foto por STRI.

Recorrerá las escuelas cargado de instrumentos, colecciones científicas y actividades interactivas

por STRI

De junio a noviembre, el Q?Bus del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI) recorrerá las escuelas de Panamá cargado de instrumentos, colecciones científicas y actividades interactivas. Este minibús forma parte del programa público de STRI y desde 2018 visita colegios públicos en distintas partes del país, llevando la ciencia de manera divertida al aula para despertar la curiosidad innata de los niños, niñas y adolescentes. Uno de sus objetivos es eliminar las barreras logísticas y económicas al conocimiento científico.

Este año, el Q?Bus llegará a nuevas regiones del país gracias al apoyo de la Iniciativa Adrienne Arsht de Soluciones de Resiliencia Basadas en la Comunidad. Por primera vez, visitará las provincias de Bocas del Toro, Chiriquí, Veraguas y Coclé. También estará en Colón y Panamá Oeste. El programa se enfocará principalmente en aulas de Premedia (7mo a 9no grado), una etapa de muchos cambios y crecimiento a nivel social, emocional y académico.

Además de ampliar el alcance geográfico de las escuelas a visitar en 2024, el Q?Bus se estrenará en diversas ferias a nivel nacional. Estas estrategias le permitirán exponer a una población mayor y más diversa al conocimiento científico.

En 2020, debido a la pandemia, el Q?Bus puso en pausa su programación presencial y se volcó a las plataformas digitales con la creación de Q?Digital. Este programa público de STRI es una plataforma de aprendizaje virtual dirigida a niños, padres y educadores.

Para conocer más acerca de los programas públicos de STRI, visite este enlace. Para solicitar una visita del Q?Bus a su colegio, feria u organización comunitaria, puede escribir a: striqbus@si.edu

 

Contact us by email at / Contáctanos por correo electrónico a thepanamanews@gmail.com

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The guy Mulino chose to oversee railroad construction…

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2d suspension
There are caveats. Should one or two mistakes over the course of a career be all that matters about qualifications? Should the conflicts of interest of those who raise the issue count in the calculations? Are there more specific qualifications that should be demanded for running a national project with a price tag in the billions? Screenshot from the Gaceta Oficial, wherein the man chosen to head the biggest project that President-elect Mulino advocates had his engineer’s and architect’s license suspended for a year for negligently building a San Miguelito housing development on a landslide-prone spot.

Questionable appointment, questionable questioners

by Eric Jackson

La Prensa has pointed out that Henry Faarup, the man chosen to head a Panama City to David train project, has twice had his professional license suspended for negligent work by the Engineering and Architecture Technical Board (JTIA, an agency of the Ministry of Public Works).

So what, exactly, has been Mr. Faarup’s career, and why might La Prensa be sensitive to any issues arising from it?

For one thing, La Prensa’s founder, Bobby Eisenmann, is a real estate developer like Faarup. That daily is set up to have no one controlling owner, but other heavyweight families in the real estate and allied banking and construction industries — the Tribaldoses, the Planellses and the Sucres, for examples — have their current or historical associations with La Prensa or with the political and social circles in which those folks move. Not to get into the conspiratorial world view that’s all the rage in parts of US society these days, but in business and social circles they’d tend to be aware of real estate developers and their reputations. But on the other hand to the extent that they might be business competitors it could create conflicts of interest that might lead on to expect an undue slant in reporting.

2006
From the Gaceta Oficial, a prior suspension for Mr. Faarup, for six months in 2006.

Set aside this old Panagringo hippie’s distrust of Panama’s elite families, if you can, but without forgetting that there is no such thing as “completely objective journalism” where the experiences, upbringing, schooling, native tongue and social situation of the reporter impart no bias. Both a ruthless late Chinese politician and an outstanding Chinese-American reporter, Chairman Mao and Joie Chen respectively, in their own ways warned us that there is no such thing as writing without a point of view. With those two boulders of salt about bias in mind, and given Faarup’s public record, consider two things:

  1. Does a career as a real estate developer especially qualify an engineer to direct the construction of a railroad?
  2. Given the common faults of Panamanian transportation construction — bad drainage or no drainage is a biggie — and a changing climate, can we expect prudent routing and construction techniques with a longer view than toward the immediate future with respect to to this expensive railroad project?

I don’t know. I’m not an engineer. I just have a decade on a small Rust Belt city building code appeals board, and a couple of terms on that place’s city council to instruct me, which doesn’t and shouldn’t get me an engineer’s license.

Plus, I do know that people learn from mistakes, that the guy who is knocked down can get up and win the fight.

It does, however, seem to be a time for rude questions.

 

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