The nurses’ delegation arrives to join the protest in front of the Supreme Court. La delegación de enfermeros llega para unirse a la protesta frente a la Corte Suprema.
Cuando ese policía te esté diciendo algo, no pidas una traducción al inglés When that cop is telling you something, don’t ask for an English translation
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The police move in to prevent further violence in Tierras Altas, Chiriqui. From an anonymous online video.
Let the court close the question, if it will. Then Panama must make other decisions.
Who, if anyone in public office here, is to be trusted? Maybe the better question is who will do the right thing?
The Supreme Court has an odious reputation, but most of that was earned with a different set of magistrates than we have now. They are the ones who are in the best position to go with the weight of expert opinion, public opinion and a decision made long ago, so as to reaffirm that the concession under which First Quantum operates a notorious copper mine is unconstitutional. If they do that, it would rest primarily on the shoulders of the president to obey and carry out that ruling.
God help Panama if by some slick sophistry the plain words of the constitution and laws get set aside and the establishment for generations of a mining colony is “legalized.”
Give the National Assembly another whack at it, and all those bribery opportunities? From the perspective of those who oppose the mining colony, that’s an impractical idea.
The court holding that the mining contract is illegal and First Quantum being allowed to continue operating as if nothing happened? That would be incendiary. Anyone looking forward to such a conflagration as a political or financial opportunity would be a dangerous fool.
A few limited terms and timetables would be proper topics for negotiation. First Quantum overreached the scope of any concession that they arguably had, and interfered in Panama’s sovereign political affairs. Are corporations persons? THIS foreign corporation has behaved far too obnoxiously — claiming territorial rights to Panama’s Caribbean waters, conniving with corrupt legislators to insert its employees at public hearings so as to exclude the public, sending its employees to block the road in Penonome, conducting a media and social media campaign to affect a decision reserved for Panamanians…. First Quantum is and ought to be declared to be persona non grata in Panama, its Panamanian subsidiary dissolved for illegal activity, leaving its only remaining operations the exit of the company, its equipment and its foreign employees from Panama in an orderly fashion.
They’re going to sue? Let them sue. Their exit will disrupt all sorts of PRD economic and political calculations? That’s the PRD’s tough luck.
In the wake of all of this Panama needs to address many things that have been allowed to drift along in their disastrous ways for years. How are we going to govern ourselves? The dictatorship’s political patronage constitution will not do. What should a mutually respectful and beneficial co-sovereignty of Panama and its seven indigenous nations look like? How do we write a proper constitution with the same old operatives going around with bags of groceries for which voters might be induced to sell out Panama in elections for convention delegates?
Panama needs both a change of constitution and a change of culture. Easier said than done, but a country that has endured this past month’s sacrifices can endure those kinds of changes, too.
Alexandra Kollontai, Europe’s first female ambassador, whom Greta Garbo famously lampooned in the romantic comedy Ninotchka.
I’ve read enough novels to know just how much time and energy it takes to fall in love and I just don’t have the time.
Alexandra Kollontai
Bear in mind…
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Charles Baudelaire
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
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Once in Anton, the calculations of unknown equations began.
It took me long enough
photos and article by Eric Jackson
On my part, a long-neglected health issue. For my brother Nick, he is and has been more diligent. As it was, November 7 was our arranged in advance morning to visit a dermatologist in Punta Pacifica, whom we had both seen in the past.
Am I gonna die? Well, I have gotten past the Biblical three score and ten, and should know and do know that sooner or later we all do. But if it’s just an age spot or a cyst or a wart – or a skin cancer that needs to be removed – those are questions best posed to a qualified professional.
As the appointment date approached, Panama was in a roadblock strike. Moreover, his health issues and lifestyle and mine sharply diverge, such that his suggested travel plan would not make sense to me. Overnight at the clean and pleasant but reasonably priced Hotel Marbella in El Cangrejo, a few blocks away from the Via Argentina Metro station, then get a cab to our morning appointments? That works.
Start well in advance the day before and go in together? He’s allergic to dogs and cats. I am surrounded by them and subordinate much of my lifestyle to their feeding. A November 6 and 7 trip into the city? For me it had to start late in the afternoon after feeding the furry residents of my household, and end in time to feed them reasonably close to the same hour the next day. He’d go in separately and get the room with two beds, and I’d get a later start and meet him there.
At the caseta by the entrada to El Bajito de Juan Díaz de Antón I hardly had to wait to get a bus, and at the Pan-American Highway about five or six kilometers away the SUNTRACS guys who had been blocking earlier were standing by but letting traffic pass. There was a Transito cop by a motorcycle monitoring the situation a short distance away. I got through right away, and got off at the puente.
First things first – get hard copy newspapers with stories that would run me into paywalls online. No, not any of Don Ricky’s degraded rags. Nor a sex-and-death tabloid, unless its cover promised tales of drivers stuck in traffic being set upon and eaten by cannibals. But no such luck. My travel tale wouldn’t get THAT lurid.
Then to the fonda, for a light dinner of hampao, hsiumai and caffeine with sugar, picking up a bottle of something to drink on the bus as indicated.
Back to the bus stop, but only relatively short run intraprovincial buses were stopping there. Check Anton’s inter-urban piquera? They were shut down. So, a short walk to the barricade, just a few steps beyond the Transito substation.
WHAT?!?!? No invincible red banner? Could the comrades be called that, if every few minutes they opened one side of the roadblock or the other to let the broad masses pass, and for emergency vehicles – including the police – opened up right away. Call it revisionism if you must, but it was in keeping with Panamanian strike manners that I have observed from time to time over many years. I got on a half-full Penonome to Panama bus that was near the front of the eastbound line.
The sun was going down, the barricade opened up, and as we approached the town of Rio Hato, another roadblock, another wait. This time, behind a pig truck.
Something about Panamanian public transportation terminology and divisions of labor here, which might confuse the gringo newcomer:
The conductor? That’s the driver. The guy who collects the money, calls for the stops, makes sure that if someone gets off to take a leak he or she does not get left behind? That’s the secretario, or in less respectful Panamanian Spanish, the pavo.
This was kind of a prolonged blockage, led by local teachers. Most of us sat it out, a lot of folks listening to music or otherwise fiddling with smart phones, people going momentarily in and out to relieve themselves or to stretch their legs, ambulatory vendors popping in to sell food or beverages. Processes for the secretario to oversee. And the driver? He was on his cell phone a lot, I believe to check in with a network of drivers and bus stop overseers, very likely with links along the chain with the police. Maybe even directly with the protesters.
See, President Cortizo and his cabinet made a careful show of not talking with the protesters. Was it to appease the hardcore machine bosses within his own party? Was it that his illness has him barely functioning? Was there some term in some undisclosed deal with the mining company? Was it…? But notwithstanding that, and not wanting any publicity about it, on the ground all through the strike there was a set of tacit and quietly negotiated agreements among cops, protesters and bus drivers.
Do you want to get into “vulgar Marxism” and look at all this as rich versus poor? It really doesn’t work that way here. Yes, the oligarchic families and executives of companies with government contracts are huge parts of the politicians’ donor bases, and many of the politicians are these grasping nouveaux riches. But on the ground, such people can’t be bothered with the details.
On the ground, it’s a matter of middle class elements making arrangements among themselves. Unionized government employees, the teachers, and government workers who are not allowed to form unions, the police. Small-time capitalists, the bus drivers who are members of syndicates that ultimately depend on politicians to have their charters to operate. Organized private sector workers, the SUNTRACS construction workers’ union. Smaller time capitalists, the informal vendors who sell to people stuck behind roadblocks.
On the ground, the people who keep things running – or stalled – and the people who as an immediate practical matter keep the peace, these are folks of similar origins, often from the same families, often people who went to the same schools. They may have job duties, social allegiances or different belief systems that put them at odds but you’d have to be very dogmatic to just discount what they have in common.
The road opened, we passed the cheering protesters without anyone shouting back at them, and but for a delay around La Chorrera, went smoothly on our way. It took about twice as long to get from my house into the city than it ordinarily would.
The National Bus Terminal in Albrook, early on a Monday evening with the nation on strike. The ATMs and some of the eateries were working, but the place was nearly shut down. This view was from the pedestrian bridge from the bus station to the train station.
Into a nearly deserted bus terminal, and part of Plan B immediately broke down. Carrying a failing in many respects laptop with a long-dead battery, the arrangement was to contact my brother when I got in, via email or Facebook chat. But no such luck. The waiting lounges where ordinarily I would plug in my machine to do this were locked. No plug-in, no communications. So, off to the hotel. Up the escalator, across the footbridge with stops to take pictures of the near-silent and dark scenery, down escalators and through turnstiles and off to catch a Metro train.
I got off at the Via Argentina stop and emerged to streets extra-darkened by closed or boarded-up businesses, and an array of establishments that, like every time I come into the city, had changed quite a bit.
Not all of the boarded-up businesses were closed. It was a matter of precaution mostly, and I stopped into one boarded up but open mini-super to pick up a few things I had forgotten to pack with me before leaving the village.
A lot of the plywood on El Cangrejo businesses had political slogans or artwork spray-painted onto them. I wondered how much of this was the kids, and whether any of it was by or at the behest of the business owners. Think about it – a middle class way to express disgust or at least annoyance with the government but be able to blame it on somebody else if taken to task for the content.
Conflicts like these don’t tend to last too long, so don’t be so foolish as to let some hustler sell you plywood futures. That said, while most of Panama was in a state of economic shock, the people who sell plywood in Panama surely did very well for themselves.
Once upon a time I used to live on Via Argentina and walk its streets by night. Never was it so spooky and deserted in my memory. But not THAT deserted. Here and there, and off on the side streets going toward Via Veneto, there were people making their nests to sleep outside for the night. This sort of homelessness wasn’t a visible feature of the neighborhood in previous years.
So, before started to get late, into the hotel and upstairs to the room. AND A HOT SHOWER! That’s a luxury generally missing in my rustic semi-rural life, one that I thoroughly enjoyed first thing.
Then, to plug in the machine, catch up on the news and commentary, add a few things on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, process a few photos and then conk out for the night.
The arts and sciences of navigating around street closures, traffic jams, accidents and unusual events are highly developed among Panama City’s better taxi drivers. This national strike against a foreign mining colony and all of the corruption and infamy that goes with it has surely brought those skills to a higher level.
Up early in the morning – and most of the newspapers aren’t available. Stores and street vendors well stocked to feed cigarette or sugar or salty junk food chip additictions, but not MY addiction to hard copies of things to read.
(Could I get into a rant about RUMORS taking hold in a society that isn’t well read? But then, given the standards of today’s rabiblanco media, reading what gets into print these days is not necessarily the way to being better informed. Better to understand the particular biases, read critically and chuckle at some of the stuff.)
Then, check out of the hotel and take off by taxi to Punta Pacifica. I’m not dying, but I do need to visit again. Then back by taxi to Via España to take care of some errands, down into the Iglesia El Carmen Metro station, and on to Albrook and onto the bus back home.
The way back would have a lot more disruptions than the trip into the city, and a great national trauma along the way.
Stuck in Arraijan, starting at the Bridge of the Americas.
The traffic jam that backed up onto the Bridge of the Americas was SUNTRACS people, with their barricade just before the turnoff for Howard – call it whatever the developers may, it’s Howard, as in the old US Air Force base. The similar name adopted by some hustlers and the lack of a central unifying theme for what they were and are trying to do made Howard the more convenient name to keep, even if the signs on the highway now say Panama Pacifico. Perhaps if a purpose and a name and a use catch on for the aviation facility – there are presently a few commercial flights going in and out of there, mostly between there and places in Colombia – a different name might become the popular reference, as Tocumen Airport remains despite earlier attempts to have it known as Omar Torrijos Airport.
The SUNTRACS pennant was on display at this roadblock but the preferred symbol was the flag of The Republic of Panama. Listen to the rightists, the PRD or the mining company acolytes and they will likely say that it’s all a cynical deception. The militant United Syndicate of Construction and Similar Workers — SUNTRACS — has founders and leaders from the November 29th National Liberation Movement, a secretive Marxist-Leninist party that was formed and grew up under the deadly harsh conditions of the 21-year dictatorship. There were a new left faction of the old Moscow-line Partido del Pueblo dating back to the mid-60s, but a little while after the 1968 coup the old liners made their peace with the dictatorship and the new leftists, led by Floyd Britton, rejected that deal. On November 29, 1969 dictatorship goons killed Floyd Britton at the Coiba Island Penal Colony, hence the party’s name.
Past the obstacles in Arraijan, into new blockages in and around La Chorrera. A vendor who has worked the bus stop on the westbound lane at La Espiga was working the road this time. She had churros with manjar – the sugar rush that the doctor would not advise, but I love that stuff and bought and ate some.
Past Chorrera, through Capira without incident, over Cerro Campana – then down the hill to a shocking scene at what was an ASOPROF teachers’ union barricade. It was like a sudden change of atmospheric pressure, the feeling that the overall environment had just become heavier, accompanied by that sort of depression that feels like trying to swim in jello must feel. (Depression I well know. Diving into a gelatinous pool I have yet to try.)
The sudden heaviness wasn’t just me. There were gasps and shudders as the bus moved slowly west. Cops and protesters were grouped separately, some of each visibly crying.
I did not then know any details. What I saw and tried clumsily to photograph from a moving bus, was a point of no return. There was a body shrouded in plastic in the middle of the highway. Somebody had been killed and the political and social dynamics of this strike would not be the same again.
He had a name. He had a profession. He was a teacher who had been armed with the Panamanian flag.
Questions came to this reporter’s mind. Who? What? …and so on.
But the words of an African-American spiritual came first, to this activist’s mind:
And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord And be free
The somber bus ride continued, to another blockage in Rio Hato. This time everybody got out, the bus turned around, and those looking to travel farther on lined up to catch another bus going in that direction.
Before getting in the line for a ride back into Anton, I asked people on the barricade about what had happened back there. Those who were talking didn’t know.
The ride, a few miles back to Anton, came up short, about a mile or so. The barricade up the road was back up. We all got off and I paid and thanked the driver, who had made a sacrifice and taken a risk to get us that far.
It was a trek across the bridge over the river, to the barricade, asking more people about the death back in Chame. There were wildly different versions from the protesters and the cops, as by the book, waved off questions. I continued my trek, stopping to get some dog food, cat food and fritura treats for the animals, chicharrones for the dogs, bofe to be cut up into chunks for the cats.
In the minibus we passed protesters waiting and ready, and cops watching, but we were not blocked. The cats and dogs ran out to greet me. The details of my ordeal they knew not, except that I had been gone longer than usual and had come home to feed them.
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US Marine Corps Corporal Fatima Velasco, a radio operator with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, demonstrates her foreign language proficiency during a training evolution at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California on August 27, 2019. Marines with various ethnic backgrounds often serve as cultural subject matter experts and unofficial linguists for their commands. The Marines and Sailors of the 13th MEU continue to focus on unit level training and readiness while in garrison. US Marine Corps photo by Lance Corporal Robert L. Kuehn.
Fewer US college students are studying a foreign language − and that spells trouble for national security
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, on October 4, 1957, it did more than spark fears about America’s ability to compete technologically. It also raised concerns that the United States had a shortage of Russian speakers capable of monitoring Soviet scientific and military activities.
In 1958, the National Defense Education Act authorized funding to strengthen US education in language instruction, in addition to math and science.
More than six decades later, a new Modern Language Association report is raising concerns about America’s foreign language capabilities anew. The report shows that the study of languages other than English at the university level experienced an unprecedented drop of 16.6% between 2016 and 2021.
The second-largest drop – of 12.6% – took place between 1970 and 1972.
This decline continues a trend that began in 2009. Even though we live in an increasingly globalized world, the number of college students taking languages is rapidly falling.
Every few years since 1958, the MLA has conducted a census of enrollments in college-level language courses in the United States. Their data show that enrollments in languages other than English spiked after the National Defense Education Act became law.
Between 1958 and 1970, these enrollments nearly tripled, from about 430,000 to almost 1.2 million. The bulk of students studied French, German or Spanish. However, enrollments in Russian doubled in the first three years alone – jumping from roughly 16,000 in 1958 to over 32,700 in 1961. Enrollments in less commonly taught languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Arabic also rose steeply.
After 1970, the enrollments in language study began to fall. Arabic was an exception. Although very few US students studied Arabic to begin with – just 364 in 1958, increasing to 1,324 in 1970 – the 1973 oil crisis accelerated the trend, and enrollments passed 3,000 in 1977 before plateauing.
Role of geopolitics
College enrollments in Russian and Arabic courses illustrate how language study can be directly affected by – and have implications for – political events.
Enrollments in Russian peaked at nearly 44,500 in 1990. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to an immediate loss of interest in learning Russian. Enrollments dropped below 25,000 by 1995 and have continued to fall since. The latest MLA survey shows that between 2016 and 2021 alone, enrollments fell from 20,353 to 17,598 – just over 1,500 more than in 1958. The low number of US students learning Russian comes at a time when the current war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as Russia’s role as a top cyberthreat, makes knowledge of the language valuable to protecting national security.
Enrollments in Arabic, in turn, were low in 1998 – just 5,505 college students studied the language. Training and hiring speakers with professional-level Arabic proficiency was not a priority for the federal government at that time. As a result, the FBI had few translators who were proficient in Arabic, which caused significant delays in translating surveillance information in the run-up to the September 11 attacks.
A year after 9/11, college-level enrollments in Arabic almost doubled to over 10,500, and they peaked in 2009 at just under 35,000.
Expansion takes time
Overcoming foreign language shortfalls is easier said than done. Gaps cannot be filled overnight, as languages viewed as critical to national security require hundreds to thousands of hours of study to reach professional proficiency. And it also takes time for universities to expand their language offerings and staffing.
Therefore, shortfalls have continued. In 2016, nearly a quarter of the State Department’s overseas positions were held by people who did not meet the language proficiency requirements for their jobs. The numbers were even higher for positions requiring critical languages such as Arabic, Dari, Farsi and Urdu. These language gaps have hindered officers’ ability to protect embassies, manage emergency situations and more.
Steep declines
After peaking in 2009 at almost 1.7 million, college-level enrollments in languages other than English fell steeply. The new MLA report shows the decline has continued. By 2021, enrollments had fallen to under 1.2 million – a drop of nearly 30%.
Enrollments in almost all of the most commonly taught languages dropped significantly during this window. Arabic fell by almost 35%, Chinese/Mandarin by almost 25%, French by 37%, German by 44%, Japanese by 9% and Spanish by 32%. The only exceptions to this decline are enrollments in American Sign Language, which increased 17%, and Korean, which increased 128%. Korean in particular stands out, as its enrollments have increased steadily since 1974 and have been boosted recently by a global fascination with Korean pop culture.
Overall, enrollments for 2021 are on par with those of 1998. And they are only slightly higher than those of 1970 – even though more than twice as many students now attend college.
Meanwhile, according to the Pew Research Center, just 36% of Americans believe that knowing a foreign language is very important for workers to be successful. In contrast, 85% believe that the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, training in writing and communication, and understanding how to use computers are each very important.
National security initiatives
In 2006, President George W. Bush launched the National Security Language Initiative to increase the number of speakers and teachers of critical languages.
Since then, government agencies have developed additional language programs. The National Security Agency’s STARTALK, for example, organizes summer programs to teach critical languages to students in kindergarten through college and provides resources and opportunities for teachers. The program served almost 70,000 students and 15,000 teachers between 2007 and 2021.
Despite the important role these programs play, the MLA report observes that college-level language enrollments continue to decline – even at a time of growing need for knowledge of languages other than English in many industries. As history has shown us, these declines will likely have negative effects on national security, diplomacy and US strategic interests.
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The possible election of the extreme-right candidate Javier Milei in Argentina’s election on Sunday poses an unprecedented threat to the people and country, says economist Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“No one so extremist on economic issues has been elected president of a South American country,” he said.
Milei is on the record saying that he would abolish the Central Bank, a move that would radically go against the consensus of PhD economists worldwide, and that alone could cause economic havoc.
“His extremist views and values go far beyond macroeconomic policy — he hardly acknowledges any legitimate role for government in some of the most important policies that most people have come to see as necessary for a democratic, humane, and stable society,” said Weisbrot.
In an interview last month, Milei stated, “Every time the state intervenes, it’s a violent action that harms the right to private property and in the end, limits our freedom.”
According to Milei, this applies to trying to “fix the problem of hunger” or “fix the problem of poverty,” or employment.
Milei defines socialism to include almost any government action other than military or police functions: “Argentina is a country that has embraced socialist ideas for the last 100 years,” he said.
“Social justice,” not just “socialism,” is “abhorrent” to Milei … “what is social justice, truly?,” Milei asks. “It’s stealing the fruits of one person’s labor and giving it to someone else. So it means two things. First, it’s stealing. The problem with that is that one of the Ten Commandments is ‘thou shalt not steal.’ To support social justice is to support stealing. So one problem is that it violates the Ten Commandments.”
As for climate change, Milei has said, “It’s another one of the lies of socialism.” He’s also said, “There is a cycle of temperatures … a cyclical behavior … and therefore all the policies that blame humans for climate change are false.”
According to Milei, abortion, which was only made legal in Argentina in 2021, is murder: “As a matter of mathematics, life is a continuum with two quantum leaps, birth and death. Any interruption in the interim is murder.”
According to polling data, many Argentines support Milei in the hope that he will fix the economy and bring down high inflation. But historically, it has been his opponents who have followed a progressive agenda that has boosted the economy, after right-wing governments have gotten macroeconomic policies seriously wrong. This has been true over the past 20 years, as can be seen in multiple data series.
For example, Argentines suffered through a depression from 1998 to 2002, comparable to the US Great Depression, under a neoliberal program. More than 65 percent of the population fell below the poverty line, in a country that previously had one of the highest incomes in the region.
As Weisbrot has noted previously, in the 12 years that followed, there was a decline of 71 percent in poverty, and an 81 percent decline in extreme poverty, according to independent estimates. The government instituted one of the biggest conditional cash transfer programs for the poor in Latin America. According to the International Monetary Fund, GDP per capita grew by 42 percent, almost three times the rate of Mexico. Unemployment fell by more than half, and income inequality also fell considerably. There were large increases in living standards for a vast majority of Argentines, by any reasonable comparison.
This was under administrations headed by the Kirchners (Néstor and then Cristina Fernández), whom Milei refers to as “socialist” or “communist,” but are more commonly defined as part of the broad-based Peronist political movement.
The right-wing government of President Mauricio Macri took office in 2015 and did not do well at all, doubling the country’s foreign public debt as a percent of GDP (to 69 percent), including taking out the largest loan ever from the IMF, in 2018. By following the policies specified in the loan agreement, the government pushed the economy into recession. The IMF then doubled down on tightening fiscal and monetary policy, and the economy shrank further. Poverty increased by 50 percent. Inflation rose to 54 percent for 2019.
The Peronists were reelected in December 2019, oversaw a COVID recession in 2020, and then a sharp rebound in 2021, but have run into trouble since the second half of 2022. Annual inflation surpassed 140 percent in October.
“Much of the current crisis in Argentina is a result of what happened during the Macri administration, including unsustainable borrowing combined with large-scale capital flight, as well as an inflation-depreciation spiral that takes on a momentum of its own,” said Weisbrot. “But a crazed, economically suicidal approach would only make things worse — and as Argentina has experienced, things can get a lot worse.
“Milei displays a callous disregard for most people’s living standards, values, and well-being, as well as a commitment to widely discredited economic policies, that is unprecedented.”
A Milei presidency may also pose a threat to human rights in Argentina. He, and more strongly his vice presidential candidate, Victoria Villarruel, have made statements indicating sympathy with the violent military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983.
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We shouldn’t let far-right politicians strip our education system down to what corporate employers demand. Shutterstock photo.
The humanities are priceless
by Jim Hightower — OtherWords
The far-out right-wing’s latest political ploy takes extremism to the extreme. Escalating their divisive series of “culture wars” — banning books, suppressing women’s rights, whitewashing history, demonizing teachers, etc. — their next idea is to declare war on ideas themselves.
Specifically, they’re going after state university programs that teach creative arts and social studies, including history, languages, music, civics, literature, economics, theology, and other courses in the humanities that explore ideas, foster free-thinking, and expand enlightenment.
We can’t have that, can we?
Thus, GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, for example, are eliminating funding for top humanities professors in their universities, shifting those funds to programs in high-tech and engineering that are favored by the corporate hierarchy. Likewise, public universities in Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and elsewhere are being made to cancel their humanities programs and puff up their departments of business, finance, and marketing
The right wing’s shriveled view is that a university education isn’t about expanding one’s horizon and enriching America’s democratic society — but solely about training students to fit into a corporate workforce, sacrificing the possibility of a fuller life for the possibility of a fatter paycheck. As a Mississippi Republican official explained, under this minimalized and monetized concept of higher education, state spending on college degree programs will require that they match the needs of the economy.
What? Is America nothing but its economy? Is the value of students measured only by the size of their future paychecks? Is public spending only worthy if it serves corporate interests?
Ironically, the politicians trying to cancel teaching of the humanities are proving that such courses are essential. After all, the humanities strive to humanize today’s social order of corporate domination, exploitation, and inequality. The value of that vastly exceeds its price.
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As I get older I am less nearsighted and need to get new glasses to adapt to the changes. In any case, from decades ago I acquired these Rust Belt bureaucratic eyes from being a historic preservation guy, a lawyer who occasionally dealt with unsafe roads, a building inspection appeals board guy and a young hippie city council member. In my buzzardly old age, having covered the Panama beat for some 29 years now — The Panama News first appeared in December of 1994 — my eyes have become a bit jaded by games I have seen played.
So, walking up the road that goes from Las Uvas de San Carlos to El Valle de Anton, I saw this little street improvement of what was a little dirt lane that lets out at the main road near a mini-super. Is this a preliminary phase to paving, or is THIS the improvement?
It’s campaign season, and given Panama’s habit of ousting the party in power at the next opportunity, also governmental smash-and-grab time, played out in so many ways.
What do I see here? If this is the whole deal, shoddy construction with facile thought, if any, having gone into its conception. If this is a prelude to paving, or not, and even before any of this “improvement,” a dangerous intersection, going up a little hill onto a main road where, notwithstanding a speed bump in front of a nearby school, drivers often to go too fast. Too steep going into the intersection. To make it safer there needs to be a lot more material, or a structure, to greatly reduce the grade up at the top. Probably more than the representante’s or diputado’s dole allows.
Shoddy, unwise or short-lasting construction — WONDERFUL if you are a gravel company, I suppose — is to be seen all over Panama of late. You can read about some of the more massive abuses in La Prensa every day now.
Would some politician stand by this scene for a photo-op to tell the voters what he or she has done for them? Naaah — they’d send in a few of their downscale retainers with rakes to smooth out the gash before snapping the photo.
We have this rotating political patronage system, that over the years has put plenty of good people in public works jobs for a shift until the next election brings in new people. We have lots of competent and honest civil engineers in Panama. Driving safety is an underdeveloped art here in Panama but that’s mostly a political decision about resources, not a lack of qualified personnel.
All of these roadblock protests are about not only a mining colony but also a long list, going way back, of abusive practices. Do we get to a point when graying protesters can tell tall tales about these past few weeks to wide-eyed kids, but the odds of people being slaughtered on the roads have gone down because the government has gotten its act together about things like public spending, hiring contractors and consultants and national traffic safety standards that local Boss Hawgs can’t flout? That would be a nice attribute of The Revolution.
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