The year since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliation have demonstrated once again that neither has learned anything from decades of horrific violence as they continue to miscalculate each other’s intentions and resolve.
A Year Of Reckoning
by Alon Ben-Meir
Israeli-Palestinian relations have reached a new nadir in the year since Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliation. Never since Israel’s establishment in 1948 has their relationship reached this level of bloodthirstiness in the quest to completely destroy the other. Both Israel and Hamas have miscalculated the other’s intentions and resolved over the years to rid themselves of each other. The repeated violent encounters and wars over the decades have changed nothing, only poisoning one generation after another and planting the seeds for the next cycle of violence, which led to the horrific attack of October 7.
Israeli-Palestinian relations have reached a new nadir in the year since Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliation. Never since Israel’s establishment in 1948 has their relationship reached this level of bloodthirstiness in the quest to completely destroy the other. Both Israel and Hamas have miscalculated the other’s intentions and resolved over the years to rid themselves of each other. The repeated violent encounters and wars over the decades have changed nothing, only poisoning one generation after another and planting the seeds for the next cycle of violence, which led to the horrific attack of October 7.
Although Hamas expected a major retaliatory attack by Israel, they gravely miscalculated the extent to which Israel would go to counter Hamas’ unprecedented savagery they inflicted on Israeli civilian communities on a holy day, no less, that evoked the horrific memories of the Holocaust. Crossing this red line shattered any restraints to destroy Hamas that Israel might have otherwise exercised.
On its part, Israel underestimated Hamas’s capability to wage such an assault. Israel further underestimated Hamas’ resiliency and fighting abilities, something Prime Minister Netanyahu should have known because he made it possible for Hamas to arm themselves, train tens of thousands of fighters, and build hundreds of miles of tunnels, with time to prepare to wage such a violent assault.
Hezbollah has also miscalculated Israel’s intentions and strategy. Though immediately following the beginning of Israel’s war against Hamas, Hezbollah came to Hamas’s defense by engaging Israel in a violent tit-for-tat confrontation, it miscalculated its approach, which ideally suited Israel’s strategy. It gave Israel the time needed to effectively decimate Hamas’ fighting forces and infrastructure, and then turn its focus on Hezbollah. Finally, Hezbollah fatally underestimated Israel’s technological prowess and unsurpassed intelligence capability, which decapitated most of its top commanders, including Hezbollah’s Secretary General Nasrallah, and crippled the organization’s fighting capability, at least at this stage of the conflict.
Iran came quickly to the realization that the years of heavy investment in Hamas and Hezbollah has not yielded the benefits it had expected. Iran has also bitterly realized that its arsenals—an array of ballistic missiles and drones—are no match for Israel’s air defense systems and that its air defense systems are ineffective in the face of Israel’s superior air force and precision missiles that can penetrate its air space with impunity.
The USA has its share of miscalculations as well. The Biden administration stood firmly behind Israel; it had no strategy as to how to end this conflict before it engulfs the entire region. Yes, the United States lived up to its commitment to protecting Israel’s national security; it has, however, enabled Israel, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, to act as it pleases against the Palestinians, sidestepping the fact that Israel’s ultimate national security rests with Israeli-Palestinian peace.
I cite the above brief review of the miscalculations made by all direct and indirect parties to the conflict to demonstrate that regardless of how this war against Hamas and Hezbollah ends, very little will change the dynamic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unless both sides accept the inevitability of coexistence.
Whereas Hamas is now crippled militarily, it remains a viable organization and will reconstitute itself simply because Israel cannot eradicate a nationalist movement. A growing number of Palestinians cheered Hamas’s attack because they saw no other way to end their suffering unless they rose against the Israeli occupation. A new generation of Palestinians is now poised to continue their struggle against Israel and will pass the mantle to the next generation until they realize their aspiration for statehood.
Israel can win every battle against the Palestinians for generations to come, but it will never win any war that will subdue the Palestinians for good. The Palestinians are there to stay, and no power or circumstance will make them go away. Israel must come to terms with the Palestinians’ rights. If there is one thing the Israelis should have learned from the past 57 years, it is that the occupation will never be sustainable. More than seven million Palestinians who live in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel proper, which is roughly equal to the number of Israeli Jews, will not be subjugated to second-class status or occupation, no matter how painful and how long the fight against Israel will last.
By the same token, although Hezbollah will come out of the violent confrontation with Israel bruised and battered, it too will regroup and prepare for the next round of hostilities with Israel as long as there is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s experience with Hezbollah over the past two decades offers a good lesson to every Israeli that as long as Iran views Hezbollah as the front line in its defense against Israeli and/or American attacks on its soil, Tehran will continue to finance and arm Hezbollah regardless of the extent of its losses in the current conflict.
Iran, too, would realize if it hadn’t learned already that its aspiration to destroy Israel is nothing but a perilous nightmare. Iran must reconcile itself with Israel’s irrevocable reality and understand that any credible threat against Israel’s existence is tantamount to suicide. Iran has now witnessed how the two prominent members of its “Axis of Resistance” have fared — Hamas is decimated, and Hezbollah is crumbling before its eyes.
Finally, it is time for the United States to understand that while its iron-clad commitment to Israeli security is necessary not only to protect Israel but to safeguard its own strategic interest in the region, it must now put its foot down, stop preaching about a two-state solution, and start acting on it. The United States should make its continued political, military, and financial support of Israel conditional upon Israel’s moving earnestly toward a two-state solution.
In the final analysis, the US unconditional commitment to Israel’s security did not produce peace. It has only prolonged the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Israel took comfort in America’s unconditional support regardless of its continuing, nearly six decades-long, brutal occupation.
The question is, will Israel, the Palestinians, and the players that support them, have learned anything from Hamas’s attack on October 7? If they have not, the horrific Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliation will only be another tragic chapter in the dark, dismal annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. Added: Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
When you get old and buzzardly, spend a lot of time on social media and identify as male and single, you get all these incongruent friend requests from improbable online personas.
Not just porn, sextortion and pedophilia — Martinelli
was extradited under the Cyber-Crimes Convention
by Eric Jackson
The National Assembly has turned its attention to computer crimes. Not especially the ones we have seen from and within Panama’s political caste – the massive theft of confidential government records for partisan / personalist campaign purposes; the viral spread of scurrilous montages alleging things about the sexuality of political adversaries;; hacking that shuts down, even erases, critical websites; all manner of interception of supposedly private communications. (The Cyber-Crimes Convention specifically provides that the extradition principle of specialty does not apply, no matter what the fugitive sticky fingers and money launderer holed up in the Nicaraguan Consulate may claim.)
Having passed out of committee, the full legislature is now considering proposed Bill 61, which criminalizes a lot of sleazy online practices, with most of the discussion revolving around extortion, the sexual recruitment of minors by adults and pornography. For some crimes under the proposed law, a person could be sentenced to 20 years in Panama’s hellish prison system.
The international players on the scene – Israeli and Italian hacking companies, skullduggery arising from the US and Chinese rivalry playing out on the isthmus, West African criminal organizations, thuggish multinational corporations deep-sixing their data via Panama – those are not much addressed here.
It is not, however, as if what’s left isn’t real. Ricardo Beteta Bond, more or less the founder of Panama’s gay liberation movement, puts it this way:
Cases of scams, extortion, theft and even assault are common.The ease with which one can create a profile and contact others, together with the promise of anonymous encounters, has been used by malicious individuals to perpetrate criminal acts.
So would President Mulino sign it? Would someone in the legislature or the rabiblanco media dare to bring up the history of cyber-crime in our political history? We shall see.
In Spanish, read the proposed law — ACTUALLY, YOU CAN’T BECAUSE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY NOW BURIES INFORMATION ABOUT BILLS IT IS CONSIDERING, WHICH USED TO BE EASILY AVAILABLE ON ITS WEBSITE.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
Sandy Koufax at Dodger Stadium circa 1962, California Historical Society photo. The Hall of Fame southpaw hurler famously declined to pitch on major Jewish holidays, including when in 1959 when the Dodgers’ rotation would have had him starting on Rosh Hashana and in 1965 when he would otherwise have been slated to pitch on Yom Kippur.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
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.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
Renaissance man Kris Kristofferson – singer, actor, activist, veteran, Rhodes Scholar and “one of the greatest songwriters of all time” – has died at 88. Known for meticulously crafted songs of regret and longing – despite a voice “like a barking bullfrog” – he was also “an epic human with the biggest heart” who advocated for farmworkers, peacemakers, political prisoners, the Nicaraguan and other liberation struggles. What he wanted to emerge from his songs and shows, he said, was “a belief in the human spirit.”
Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas to a military family that moved around a lot, finally settling in San Mateo, California where he was a high-achieving student and short-story writer dubbed “Straight Arrow.” In 1958, he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, where he got a master’s degree in English Literature and planned to write novels; in later years, he used to joke that between him and Bill Clinton, “We’ve cleared up any lingering myths about the brilliance of Rhodes scholars.” Returning to the U.S., he enlisted in the Army; during a three-year-tour in West Germany, he boxed, learned to be a helicopter pilot and played in an Army band. On his return, he planned to accept a gig teaching at West Point until he took a fateful side trip to Nashville, where he quickly grew enamored of its burgeoning singer/songwriter scene and decided to join it. His mother disowned him, telling him that regardless of what he might achieve, it would never match “the tremendous disappointment you’ve always been.”
But the good and dutiful student flourished in his new-found freedom, figuring if he didn’t make it as a songwriter he’d get enough material to become a(nother) Great American Novelist. By then married with two kids, he sometimes wrote multiple songs a week, on the side working as a janitor at Columbia Recording Studios and as a part-time helicopter pilot; according to an apocryphal story, he once landed on Johnny Cash’s lawn so he could hand him demo tapes of every song he’d written. His raspy “lawnmower voice” didn’t help his performing career, but his songs – rich, mournful, introspective – quickly took off; starting in the 1960s, they were covered by covered by dozens of artists and earned multiple Grammys. Several became legendary: Help Me Make It Through the Night, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, and Me and Bobby McGee, with the iconic lines, “Freedom’s just another word/ For nothin’ left to lose.” Tragically, he never heard Janis Joplin’s version until October 1970, the day after she died.
Years later, Kristofferson said his songs’ lyricism simply sprang from his experiences. As his marriage fell apart, he wrote Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down: “Cause there’s somethin’ in a Sunday/That makes a body feel alone.” “Many of the people I admire are figments of our own imagination,” he said. “I was just writing about what I was going through. One critic compared his craggy voice to the “grit and softness of ancient stone, worn smooth by time and elements.” But his writing represented “a seismic shift” in country music before it got bastardized into the pop country Steve Earl calls “hip hop for white people who are afraid of black people.” Many credit Kristofferson – troubadour, storyteller, member of the freshman class of “outlaw” singer-songwriters – with elevating and humanizing country music into a new and better art form. You could break down the country capital of Nashville, Bob Dylan once said, into “pre-Kris and post-Kris…He changed everything.”
En route, Kristofferson became an actor, starting with Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie in 1971. It was a commercial and critical flop, but he went on to over 50 films in the next two decades, including Scorcese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore with Ellen Burstyn in 1974 and an award-winning turn in A Star Is Born with Barbara Streisand in 1976. After that role – a musician destroyed largely by alcoholism – Kristofferson stopped drinking, a move widely applauded. Alcohol, he said, had helped him feel “handsome and bulletproof”; it also almost derailed him. He went on to play, terrifically, a sadistic sheriff in John Sayles’ 1996 Lone Star. “He could dig for the simple truth of a character,” said Sayles, a deeply political filmmaker. “Just as important, Kris Kristofferson knows how to wear the boots.” In 2018, he took on his final movie role as the estranged father of songwriter Blaze Foley in Ethan Hawke’s graceful Blaze. One reviewer praised Kristofferson’s “a wonderful, albeit brief performance.”
Kristofferson also long and consistently spoke out against injustice, beginning with a 1972 concert to benefit Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. He protested nuclear power, supported Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, did benefits for Farm Aid and Amnesty International, played and spoke up for the release of Nelson Mandela, wrote a tribute to Gandhi, Jesus, and MLK Jr., performed at Obama’s White House. In the 1980s, he traveled to Nicaragua in support of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, wrote songs about other Latin American liberation struggles, decried US support of Contra terrorism in Nicaragua and the first Gulf War; that work inspired 1990’s concept Album Third World Warrior: “They’re killing babies in the name of freedom/We’ve been down that sorry road before,” with what became a catchphrase, “Don’t Let the Bastards (Get You Down).” When Bush invaded Iraq, he switched up some of the lyrics: “They’re bombin’ Baghdad back into the Stone Age/Around the clock non-stop.”
Kristofferson happily conceded other people sang his songs better than he could, though after joining longtime friend Willie Nelson for the 1984 film Songwriter, he argued he could still “sing better than Willie Nelson says I can.” The next year, he and Nelson began to record and tour with fellow outlaws Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash in the supergroup The Highwaymen; he once said that, when they invited him, he felt “like a little kid who’d climbed up on Mount Rushmore and stuck his face up there.” In 1991, on the brink of the Iraq War, they did an interview with New Zealand TV host Paul Holmes, who asked each what they thought was wrong with the USA. They spoke of too much hate, bitterness, money for the military, “our obligation (to) straighten those things out.” Not much, said Kristofferson, except it “reminds me a lot of the flag-waving and choreographed patriotism we had in Nazi Germany, with a lap-dog media cranking out propaganda that would make a Nazi blush. Other than that, we’re doing pretty good.”
Later he toured again with his band Border Lords, often playing small roadhouses. “Kris doesn’t know what the word ‘commercial’ means,” said a friend. “He could go on stage performing Me and Bobby McGee every night. Instead (the) audience might hear 25 songs about the Sandinistas.” Over time, he had triple heart bypass surgery and memory issues diagnosed as Alzheimer‘s that turned out to be Lyme disease. He released three quiet albums – This Old Road, Closer to the Bone, Feeling Mortal – and retired from it all in 2021. He died at home in Maui, Hawaii amidst his eight kids and his third wife Lisa Meyers, who helped navigate the last few years but balked at the term “manager”: “He’s unmanageable. Even if someone tells him to have a good day, he’ll say, ‘Don’t tell me what to do.'” Still, he was there to console Sinead O’Connor being booed at a 1992 Dylan tribute concert after she’d ripped up the Pope’s photo to protest sexual abuse in the Church. He was there to give her a hug and tell her, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” “It costs nothing to be a decent human being,” notes one fan. “God speed Kris Kristofferson.”
The Pilgrim
And he keeps right on a changin’ for the better or the worse And searchin’ for a shrine he’s never found Never knowin’ if believin’ is a blessin’ or a curse Or if the going up is worth the coming down He’s a poet he’s a picker he’s a prophet he’s a pusher He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned He’s a walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home
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.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
Generous Nigerian princes and Uzbek potassium barons for Trump
If you believe that you probably were not born yesterday – odds are you are middle aged or a bit older.
People who have been taken by con men will go to great lengths to deny it. That’s who the MAGAs are: people who have swallowed the bait offered by a lifelong fraud artist.
US citizens who have not been taken really do need to register and vote, and Donald Trump really does need to move into jailhouse accommodations befitting a man convicted of fraud.
Mulino before the General Assembly. United Nations photo.
Mulino at the UN
This was an underwhelming discourse, bound to yield few positive results for Panama. Worse than the speech was some of the praise of it published by Panamanian lawyers afterward. The attempt was made to lead people to believe that those of our law firms that organize corporate shells are some variety of freedom fighters, like the underground railway conductors who helped slaves to escape to free states in the years before the United States had its Civil War.
As in helping the wold’s oppressed millionaires escape from “tax hells” and, for a fee, secrete their wealth in foreign numbered bank accounts. They make it even sound like a patriotic defense of Panamanian sovereignty.
The biggest hole in that line of argument is that the great majority of Panamanians do not share in any of the proceeds of this racket, but do tend to get treated as suspects on those occasions when we try to do business in this world.
Black Skin White Masks illustration by BiLewis.
Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.
Frantz Fanon
Bear in mind…
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.
Leonardo da Vinci
I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
The retirement system that works is the solidary one
by Richard Morales
The debate over Social Security pensions is political rather than technical. Its future, rather than a figure, depends on answering a question that is far from a number and places us in the realm of humanity: How do we want to live tomorrow? It doesn’t happen the other way around. It doesn’t start by discussing how to pay, but rather what we need to pay. A life? An old age? A prosperous old age?
For decades, Panamanians supported a retirement that met the basic needs of life. There is a social consensus that every person who has sacrificed their life time working should be guaranteed an adequate income until their last days. Currently, in the debate over the future of the CSS there are two alternatives: a solidarity system — we all support each other — or one of individual accounts — each person is responsible for their own future.
Let’s start with individual accounts. These do not guarantee a retirement. They provide savings and a minimum return. The experience in countries such as El Salvador, Chile, Poland or Kazakhstan is that they pay 20-30% of your salary. However, this system creates a thriving business for those who collect commissions for managing the funds, even if they lose their savings through speculation.
The solidarity system, on the other hand, can offer a pension as a right. This model depends on the contributions of the generations that work in the present and that contribute to the retirements of the generations that worked in the past. It is not a proportion of your savings as an individual, it is a pact of solidarity between parents and children, grandmothers and descendants, which transforms a portion of the wealth produced by the collective work of society into a guaranteed individual income in old age. Today you retire with 60% of your best salaries — which is insufficient, but it is superior to individual accounts.
The sensible thing to do would be to improve pensions, not worsen them. However, the government and business associations are leaning towards their deterioration. At the beginning of the debate, they only want to discuss profitability: reducing costs — that is, pensions — and increasing their potential profits. Therefore, their spokesmen say that solidarity is impossible, that only a system of individual accounts is viable.
It’s a dishonest argument. First, because it relies on the recent crisis of the institution caused by Law 51 of 2005 —which removed contributors from the system — to argue that it is financially unsustainable. It does not discuss the business evasion of contributions, nor the precariousness of the work force after the reforms to the labor code in 1995 — which deepened informality and made it impossible for a large part of the salaried workers, particularly the young, to contribute. Nor does it address the proliferation of special economic zones with thousands of salaried workers who do not contribute. We must talk about history, because there are the causes and also the responsibility of those who today say they are concerned about the institution, but have historically been complicit in the embezzlement.
Second, it is possible to build a modern solidarity system that is financially, institutionally and technically viable for the next century. Only by merging the mixed subsystem of individual accounts with the defined benefit solidarity system would we have sustainability in pensions until 2038, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). With that time gained, we could — starting from the Panamanian reality and strategic planning for the future — establish the origin of the financial resources according to the contributory capacity of workers, companies and the state, design an institutional architecture with effective and efficient management, establishing the appropriate parametric criteria, in terms of the amount of pensions and periodic adjustments, retirement age, density and number of contributions.
Panamanians do not deserve to grow older being poorer. Let us design an exemplary pension system, one that is supportive, managed in an equitable, sustainable, transparent, effective and highly useful manner, which will allow our final years of life to be prosperous. Let’s make it a reality without impositions, with the participation of all.
Richard Morales is an economics professor at the University of Panama and ran as an independent for vice president in last May’s elections.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
JOSÉ RAÚL MULINO QUINTERO, President of Panama, said his country faces the immense problem of illegal migration due to its strategic geographic location. This mass movement through the Darien Gap, spearheaded by criminal organizations, is used as passage by hundreds of thousands of migrants — women, children, and elderly people — fleeing serious economic, political and social problems in search of the so-called American dream. Expressing understanding of the “hard decision” people take to migrate and escape the misery and oppression they experience in their place of origin, he said “the vast majority of people want to live, develop, and thrive in the land where they were born”. The causes are known but cannot be addressed alone, especially given the many social and financial problems Panama faces. That is why, he continued, illegal migration through his country — being a huge global problem — should be at the core of discussions at the United Nations.
“We are proud to be a country that connects world trade, but we will not allow ourselves to be used for the transit of illegal immigrants with the corresponding social, human and environmental costs that this entails for our territory,” he said, adding that Panama does not only pay an expensive environmental price for this illegal human flow, but its biodiversity is also severely damaged. Contextualizing the magnitude of the situation, he contrasted the 2023 migration figure of over 500,000 persons — 12 per cent of Panama’s population — through the Darien Gap to the population of the United States and Italy, a fellow victim of illegal migration, revealing that both countries would experience the influx of 40 million and 7 million illegal migrants into their territories at that rate. He lamented the lack of international support on this issue, imploring Member States to appreciate its enormity and offer much needed “concrete cooperation”.
He highlighted political instability as one of the causes of mass migration, the consequences of which is the desertion of citizens — Venezuela being a “concrete example”, with almost 8 million Venezuelans having fled the country. “The latest events in Venezuela have further undermined the country’s tainted institutionality”, he stressed, adding that “the current regime has lost the livelihood of its most fervent defenders in the region or, at best, has received the fragile support of silence”, and will neither leave power nor recognize its defeat. He therefore called on “the relevant organizations to act forcefully against manifestly undemocratic attitudes and behaviours”.
He expressed displeasure over Panama being placed on a list together with “tyrannies that have committed the worst atrocities”, objecting to such labelling. Highlighting the actions his Government has taken, especially in democratic and financial reforms, compliance with international standards of transparency and prevention of money laundering and other organized crime crimes, he insisted that “Panama cannot and should not allow this affront, especially after all the efforts made.” “It is paradoxical, but the nations that approve the inclusion of Panama in these lists use our canal, participate in public tenders, profit from paid consultancies and lobby in favor of their companies to win contracts in our country,” he continued, announcing that companies from such countries that endorse and accompany those lists would be prohibited from participating in international tenders and would not have Panama’s vote in international organizations. He vowed to continue the fight against discrimination of his country.
Texto del discurso en español por la Presidencia:
Señor Presidente Sus Excelencias Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno Honorables Jefes de Delegación
Señoras y señores:
Hace poco más de dos meses, asumí la Presidencia de la República de Panamá. En los cinco años que durará mi mandato, tendré que afrontar, en nombre de todos los panameños, grandes retos, varios de ellos que atañen no solo a mi país, sino al hemisferio.
Nuestra privilegiada posición geográfica nos convirtió en el punto de paso y encuentro de las Américas. Tuvimos el primer ferrocarril que une el Atlántico y el Pacífico en nuestro continente, la primera aduana del continente y la primera ciudad española en Tierra Firme. Nuestro Canal y el “hub” aeroportuario nos convierten en socios estratégicos para todos los países del mundo.
En la actualidad, nuestro Canal sirve a un total de 180 rutas marítimas que conectan 1,920 puertos en 170 países, constituyéndose en un gran valor agregado para productos de todo el mundo.
Conscientes de nuestra importancia como lugar de convergencia, nuestras puertas siempre han estado abiertas a todas las nacionalidades que, en buena lid, quieran aprovechar las ventajas competitivas de ser, como dice nuestro escudo, “PRO MUNDI BENEFICIO”.
Pero hoy Panamá enfrenta una inmensa problemática producto de su ubicación estratégica: la inmigración ilegal por la selva del Darién que está siendo utilizada como llave de paso por cientos de miles de migrantes, desde hace tiempo, que huyen de los graves problemas económicos, políticos y sociales en búsqueda del llamado sueño americano.
Conozco ese territorio muy bien, pues hace poco más de una década, cuando fui Ministro de Seguridad de Panamá, lideré las fuerzas que recuperaron el Darién de la narcoguerrilla.
Hoy, genera un dolor inmenso ver el drama social que significa este camino improvisado, que es recorrido por mujeres, niños y personas mayores que inician una travesía inhumana a través de ríos, selvas y lugares inhóspitos a merced de cualquier tipo de riesgo para su integridad.
Ese tránsito de personas es liderado por organizaciones criminales, con base en países vecinos, que reciben dinero maldito para lucrar con la necesidad y la esperanza de miles de seres humanos.
Comprendo de manera cabal la dura decisión de migrar para escapar de la miseria y opresión que viven en su lugar de origen. La gran mayoría de las personas quieren vivir, desarrollarse y progresar en la tierra donde nacieron.
Reitero, las causas son conocidas, pero solos no podemos atenderlas. Ya son demasiados los problemas sociales y financieros que enfrentamos como nación. No disponemos de recursos ni de posibilidades materiales para darle una solución a la crisis migratoria por cuenta propia.
La inmigración ilegal por Panamá es parte de un problema global inmenso y debe ser aquí, en Naciones Unidas, que debe ocupar un lugar de importancia en su agenda.
Estamos orgullosos de ser un país de conexión al comercio mundial, pero no permitiremos ser utilizados para el tránsito de inmigrantes ilegales con los correspondientes costos sociales, humanos y ambientales que esto supone para nuestro territorio.
Panamá paga hoy un alto costo ambiental producto de este flujo ilegal de personas, ocasionando un daño severo a nuestra biodiversidad.
Quiero decirles que existe una inmensa diferencia entre analizar esta problemática desde recintos como este, en pleno Manhattan, a ser testigo presencial del drama como yo lo he sido. Ver a niños que han quedado huérfanos por la inclemencia de la travesía por la selva, tocaría el alma del más frío analista que estudia estas cuestiones desde la comodidad de una oficina.
No son problemas aislados en el Darién o, por dar otro ejemplo, en el Mediterráneo. Es un complejo sistema del crimen organizado que lucra con la desdicha humana.
Por la frontera del Darién, en 2023, ingresaron más de medio millón de inmigrantes ilegales. Esto corresponde al 12% de la población total de Panamá. Si lo mismo ocurriera en los Estados Unidos, significaría el ingreso de 40 millones de ilegales en un año; es decir, un número 20 veces mayor al que reciben hoy.
Otro ejemplo, a Italia —que también tiene un grave problema migratorio— el año pasado ingresaron cerca de 150 mil personas de manera ilegal. Si fuese en la proporción de Panamá, significaría el ingreso de unos 7 millones de ilegales a este país europeo.
Señoras y señores, les pido que vean la magnitud de lo que está sucediendo, porque sentimos que no contamos con todo el apoyo internacional que corresponde para hacerle frente a una situación tan angustiante desde el punto de vista humanitario, tan costosa en lo financiero, tan riesgosa para nuestra seguridad y tan alarmante por la devastación ambiental que nos dejan.
Y es precisamente del estrago ambiental que quiero hablarles ahora. Darién es una de las selvas neotropicales más grande del mundo. Cuando medio millón de personas pasan y dejan toneladas de residuos a lo largo de los años, algunos altamente contaminantes como baterías y plásticos, genera serias consecuencias ecológicas.
También —y es doloroso decirlo— quedan cuerpos en descomposición por la vera del camino o en los ríos. No todos sobreviven a esta terrible odisea de 20 días a través de la selva. A Panamá le toca atender un problema que no es nuestro, pero lo hacemos, en la medida de lo posible, con los recursos que tenemos.
Nadie se imagina y menos aceptaría a 500 mil personas dejando basura sin ningún tipo de planificación ni tratamiento en el bosque de Bavaria, en Alemania, o en el Parque Nacional de Yellowstone, aquí en los Estados Unidos. Medio millón de almas en situación irregular pasando sin documentos y sin control.
Tal vez la razón de la falta de indignación global por la devastación de nuestra provincia de Darién, el gran pulmón verde de la región, es porque está en un lugar inhóspito de la frontera entre Panamá y Colombia.
Entiendo que parte de la responsabilidad de que esto ocurra recae en funcionarios de anteriores gestiones en nuestro país, que no tuvieron la decisión y la fuerza para poner este tema en la agenda mundial. Pero eso cambió. Este Presidente sí lo denunciará y utilizará cada foro internacional para exigir un esfuerzo compartido para frenar el flujo de la migración ilegal.
Señor Presidente: en Panamá hoy está la nueva frontera de los Estados Unidos, porque por el Darién pasan los que buscan, aquí en este país, una mejor vida.
Panamá, que siempre ha estado del lado de la paz y del progreso de las naciones, hoy necesita ayuda y apoyo de esos países a los que ha ayudado históricamente en este y otros recintos. Cooperación concreta y un trabajo frontal para evitar que usen nuestro territorio como el inicio de un sueño, que gran parte de las veces es generado por organizaciones criminales vinculadas al narcotráfico y a la trata de personas.
La inestabilidad política es una de las causas generadoras de la migración masiva. Cuando existen casos graves de crisis institucional a lo largo del tiempo, tienen como consecuencia inmediata la deserción de sus ciudadanos. Venezuela es un ejemplo concreto.
Es por eso que quiero hablarles de nuestra situación política regional que, casualmente, es el gran hilo conductor de la crisis migratoria que vivimos.
La creciente degradación de su sistema institucional ha ocasionado la desbandada de casi 8 millones de venezolanos, según datos de la Agencia de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados. Esta cifra representa una verdadera tragedia migratoria a la que los organismos internacionales no le han dado una respuesta contundente y creíble a lo largo de estos años.
Los últimos acontecimientos en Venezuela han minado aún más la mancillada institucionalidad del país. Seamos claros, adjudicarse un triunfo sin mostrar las actas es como querer ganar un juicio sin presentar pruebas; querer ganar sin mostrar las actas es lo mismo que perder y no aceptar los resultados. De hecho, el régimen actual ha perdido el sustento de sus más fervientes defensores en la región o, en el mejor de los casos, ha recibido el frágil apoyo del silencio.
Es más que evidente que el actual régimen no dejará el poder ni reconocerá su derrota. Es por eso que hago un llamado a las organizaciones correspondientes, a que actúen de forma enérgica contra las actitudes y comportamientos manifiestamente antidemocráticos.
Quiero ser enfático en que esto no es un tema ideológico o de diferencia de pensamientos; es sobre la obediencia estricta de la voluntad popular, que es la madre de todas las voluntades. Panamá está abierto al diálogo con el resto de los países donde se respete el sistema político y representativo que emana de la Constitución nacional de cada territorio.
Traigo a colación el tema Venezuela porque se me hace muy difícil hablar de salud y medioambiente cuando ocho millones de nuestros vecinos se vieron obligados a salir de su territorio, huyéndole a la miseria que vive un país que debería ser una potencia económica.
¿De qué desarrollo sostenible regional podemos hablar ante esta interminable crisis política que afecta todo el continente? No pretendo disfrazar de verde natural mi discurso cuando hay sangre derramada de inmigrantes que arriesgan su vida en nuestra selva buscando un sueño de libertad. Cuando a su paso contaminan el Darién dejando una estela de destrucción y desolación que a los panameños nos toca recoger, reparar y costear.
Si realmente hay una preocupación por el desarrollo sostenible, le pido a los países miembros hacer una defensa férrea y establecer mecanismos precisos para revertir el daño producido en el Darién. Me refiero no solo a los daños medioambientales, sino a las causas que lo originan, como el autoproclamado triunfo del actual régimen en Venezuela.
Como tercer punto, quiero avanzar en mi ponencia refiriéndome a las injustas listas discriminatorias en las que ha sido incluido nuestro país. Listas que nos ponen junto a tiranías que han cometido las peores atrocidades. Con países que no abren sus puertas al mundo, no respetan la democracia o que fomentan el terrorismo.
No aceptamos ser parte de estas listas elaboradas por intereses particulares de naciones que no logran ser competitivas ni atractivas para sus conciudadanos. Panamá no puede ni debe permitir esta afrenta, menos después de todos los esfuerzos realizados.
Hemos implementado reformas significativas en nuestro sistema financiero y legal, a traves de los ultimos años, para cumplir con estándares internacionales de transparencia y prevención de lavado de dinero y otros delitos del crimen organizado. Pero eso no ha sido suficiente.
Nuestra nación ha mostrado disposición para colaborar con organismos internacionales y hemos firmado tratados de intercambio de información fiscal con varios países. Tampoco ha sido suficiente.
Como consecuencia, las recetas impuestas bajo la falsa promesa de desclasificarnos han sido catastróficas para nuestra economía y aun así no hemos logrado librarnos de esos temerarios señalamientos.
Panamá no es un paraíso fiscal ni nada parecido, como si lo son otras jurisdicciones afines a muchos países promotores de estas listas, que son analizados y se miden con otra regla diferente a la de mi país.
Es paradójico, pero las naciones que aprueban la inclusion de Panamá en esas listas usan nuestro Canal, participan en licitaciones públicas, lucran con consultorías pagas y hacen “lobby” a favor de sus empresas para lograr contratos en nuestro país.
Este Presidente ha tomado la firme decisión de no permitir que las empresas de los países que avalan y acompañan esas listas participen en licitaciones internacionales. Tampoco contarán con nuestro voto en los organismos internacionales.
Al tiempo que nos señalan, han gozado de muchas facilidades y ninguna medida restrictiva. Su visión sesgada pretende mantener un estigma infame sobre Panamá, que es un país responsable en materia de cumplimiento financiero.
Quiero lo mejor para mi amada Panamá. No llegué a la Presidencia para congraciar a otros países, sino para atender las demandas de mi Patria.
Hablando de listas, quiero contarles que Panamá es uno de poquísimos países en el mundo carbono-negativo. Es decir, que eliminamos más dióxido de carbono de la atmósfera del que emitimos. Pero tener esa deslumbrante condición ambiental no nos ha traído ningún beneficio.
Tener gran parte de nuestro territorio protegido implica desafíos mayores para poder lograr un auténtico desarrollo. Hoy, países que acabaron con su biodiversidad para desarrollarse, imponen a otros en vías de desarrollo el cuidado ambiental que ellos no tuvieron.
Esto supone una asimetría en cuanto a las oportunidades para el progreso. Por un lado, debemos mantener nuestras selvas en estado primario y, por otro, nos señalan en listas que complican la llegada de inversiones y truncan el desarrollo de un sistema financiero mundialmente competitivo. Panamá no acepta esas reglas de juego.
Quiero reiterar en este recinto el mensaje a la Nación panameña, cuando asumí el cargo de Presidente: “Panamá es un país amigo de las buenas causas y no permitiremos más señalamientos injustos que perjudican nuestra capacidad económica, nuestro prestigio y socaban la imagen de nuestro país”.
Finalizando, quiero expresar nuestra honra como panameños, pues en enero del próximo año seremos miembros no permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas por sexta vez en la historia.
Esto es fruto de un trabajo sostenido en el tiempo. Es por la conducta de nuestro país en la lucha contra el terrorismo, contra la trata de personas y contra el narcotráfico. Panamá contribuye a la paz y la concordia entre todos los pueblos.
Todo esto es contradictorio a las listas antes mencionadas. Perdón por mi insistencia, pero es inaceptable que, a un país con una conducta íntegra y coherente a favor de la libertad, la paz y la seguridad internacional, se le asocie con quienes hicieron todo lo contrario a esto, colocándonos en arbitrarios listados que no condicen con la realidad. Verdaderamente, inaceptable.
Continuaremos luchando, de forma pacífica y sostenida, para que se termine con este hostigamiento innecesario y, sobre todo, discriminatorio en manos de países que jamás aplicarían en sus territorios las condiciones que ellos nos exigen.
Para finalizar, quiero expresar que seguiremos construyendo un país al servicio de la humanidad. Cuidando nuestra biodiversidad, a pesar de las adversidades, defendiendo la democracia, a pesar de las amenazas concretas que hoy existen en nuestra región.
Panamá seguirá conectando el comercio mundial, luchando por la libertad, integrándose al mundo y exigiendo el respeto que damos y que nos merecemos, como una nación íntegra, con un pueblo noble, trabajador y que lucha todos los días para hacer de este mundo un lugar mejor para vivir.
Distinguidos miembros de esta Organización, en nombre de Panamá y de todo el pueblo panameño, muchas gracias por esta oportunidad.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
President Mulino at the United Nations. Photo from his Twitter / X feed.
It’s not as if…
President Mulino isn’t on a mission to the UN like General Torrijos undertook. He’s not rallying the non-aligned nations behind the cause of Panama’s decolonization. Unlike Che Guevara, he’s not at the UN imparting a photogenic young badass image on the cause of Latin American revolution. Instead, President Mulino is at the UN to threaten sanctions against countries that take Panama to task for laundering the funds of their tax evaders and gangsters.
They don’t even live in Panama, Mulino pleads. Is that his excuse about convicted money launderer Ricardo Martinelli, the leader of his party, who’s holed up in the Nicaraguan Consulate — technically a spot of Nicaraguan territory — and issuing political pronouncements from there instead of serving his long prison term for stealing more than $70 million from the Panamanian people and laundering the proceeds through several other countries as well as this one?
Will the Third World line up behind Panama as it resists European and OECD gray lists? Instead of hassling Venezuelans, will the police go out of their way to be discourteous to US or French citizens found on the isthmus? Will Russian or Chinese ships get better spots in the lines to transit the Panama Canal than Spanish or Swiss vessels?
Our president is making us look ridiculous at the United Nations. That image will cost ordinary Panamanians in the long run.
THIS Republican lady, Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobson, sent out absentee ballots to overseas and military voters with Kamala Harris not listed. She blamed it on a contractor, of course.
Implosion talk
So the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States says that Democrats intend to fly black women into the United States to have abortions.Is Part B of the hallucination that he’s going to turn in as many Democrats as possible to The Bogeyman?
Near the top of the North Carolina ballot, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson was outed in an online Mediaite column for some outrageous posts he made on a disgusting social mediium page, CNN picked up on it, checked it out and ran with it, the guy’s top campaign staffers quit, and now North Carolina becomes a major presidential battleground state with the GOP in retreat. So Robinson is threatening to sue CNN.
Meanwhile in Montana, the GOP secretary of state brazenly sent out absentee ballots to overseas voters without Kamala Harris listed as a candidate. In many a red state, with fewer than 90 day to go before Election Day, Republican elected officials have shut down thousands of voting site in African-American or Hispanic neighborhoods. It’s a great set of opportunities for the judiciary to define what is and isn’t a free and fair election, but we all ought to know better than to rely on the current US Supreme Court to do the right things.
For ordinary citizens, the thing to do is register, vote, swamp the desperate Republicans in a tidal wave of votes, and afterward insist on full civil and criminal accounting for the liars and cheaters.
Sir Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor of England, from a 1617 portrait by Paul van Somer.
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon
Bear in mind…
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
Dorothy Day
I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.
Miguel de Cervantes
Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
