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Jackson, Another deception from Panamanian justice

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It’s neither madness nor genius that makes Bernal see the attorney general’s deal as unacceptable. It’s because he doesn’t owe anybody and he doesn’t let fear of anybody cloud his judgment about it. Photo by SIN (Dominican Republic television).

Odebrecht: another deception here, firestorms elsewhere, silence in the USA

by Eric Jackson

Attorney General Kenia Porcell’s August 1 announcement that the scandalous Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht would be providing the Panamanian people with the names of those whom they bribed here and paying fines and restitution was initially greeted with enthusiasm by some anti-corruption activists. Now, nearly two weeks later, we don’t have the list of those who took bribes, we don’t have the full details of the agreement, and those details that have been released indicate that major parts of Odebrecht’s criminal activity in Panama are being left out of the case.

While Libertad Ciudadana, the Panamanian chapter of Transparency International, immediately hailed the agreement, Miguel Antonio Bernal — now an independent candidate in the 2019 presidential race — said at a demonstration the day after Porcell’s announcement that “I realized that the attorney general’s story is a sea of falsehoods, and it had done mortal damage to society.” There immediately began a chorus from figures overt and pseudonymous in President Juan Carlos Varela’s Panameñista Party deriding Bernal, the law professor, radio show host and activist, as “Dr. No.” It’s an old refrain from that quarter, recycled from the days when they were supporting the clumsy criminal Bosco Vallarino against Bernal in the 2009 Panama City mayoral race. But in La Prensa people were also attacking Bernal, and especially questioning the statements of Spanish-Brazilian attorney Rodrigo Tacla Durán that concurred with previous allegations that Varela had taken money from Odebrecht and added that Varela used his influence to hinder Panamanian cooperation with Brazil’s investigation of the company.

We can get into political rivalries, the partisan orientations of Panama’s various news media and fears that a way of life might end. But the structure of the announced settlement and its justification tend to support the professor’s complaint. It’s a $100 million fine to be paid by Odebrecht for bribes paid, plus $120 million in restitution. The problem with the restitution is that the full extent of Odebrecht bribery in Panama has yet to be investigated, and Porcell herself admits it when she promises that the investigation is continuing and will get into everything. An overview of the Odebrecht corruption that has been revealed in other countries, typically it’s an overcharge with about 10 percent kicked back directly or indirectly to politicians. If that rate prevailed in Panama with all of the Odebrecht public contracts since they began in the Torrijos administration, the $120 million restitution figure would be very low.

Also, excluded from the settlement and anything that Porcell is talking about is the matter of Panama being used as a money laundering mill and for the concealment of evidence with respect to public corruption in other countries. Early in the Brazilian investigation of the scandal there were claims that computer hard drives and key records were sent to Panama to keep them away from authorities there. Requests were made for Panamanian help, but it seems that not only were none of those materials recovered, but if there were police or proseutor raids looking for those things they have never been publicized. Those money laundering and concealment of evidence matters don’t appear to be in the attorney general’s settlement with Odebrecht.

Might the money laundering and concealment or destruction of evidence figure in the criminal cases against some 43 individuals, most of whom have not been named? Well, we don’t know and as of the most recent notice Porcell intends to conduct secret investigations and secret trials, after which only the names of those convicted would be made public. Secret trials could be a great new weapon for an authoritarian government, but at their inception under Porcell they stand to be a great new shield from the democratic consequences of public corruption.

The money laundering has not been entirely submerged, however.

The general rule has been that legislators are not allowed to engage in any private business while serving in the National Assembly. However, the deputies have carved out an exception for those who are practicing law. It might be reasonably argued that a deputy could be all the more effective in guarding the public interest if she or he could also file the public interest lawsuit when such is called for. But that’s pretty unheard-of.

However, one legislator moonlighting as a lawyer is Jorge Alberto Rosas, of the Rosas & Rosas law firm, and until recently the president of the National Assembly’s Credentials Committee, which hears complaints of corruption against Supreme Courts magistrates and several other classes of public officials. His creativity at coming up with reasons not to investigate complaints is something of a legend.

It turns out that Rosas & Rosas incorporated the money laundering shell companies for Odebrecht, and that the company’s seized records indicated millions of dollars going into that law firm. So lawyers at the firm were called in for questioning and it turned out that the legislator handled that account and was paid at least $1.3 million for doing so. Not long after than came to light he stepped down as head of the Credentials Committee. But so far as is known Rosas is neither charged with any crime nor under investigation.

Panama stands in contrast to most other Latin American places where Odebrecht did business, where politicians are being prosecuted.

In Peru it may lead to the elimination of most of the political class. Former President Alberto Fujimori is in prison for other things, his daughter and political heiress Keiko Fujimori is accused of taking payoffs, former President Alejandro Toledano is an international fugitive on Odebrecht-related charges, and most recently his successor Ollanta Humala and ex-first lady Nadine Heredia have been jailed for taking from the Brazilian company.

In Colombia the right is in turmoil, as both the political parties of former President Álvaro Uribe and current President Juan Manuel Santos apparently took money from Odebrecht. Neither of these two men have yet to be personally charged, but one of Uribe’s former ministers has been and the high court has called in Santos to testify.

In Ecuador there has been a spectacular falling out on the left, with current President Lenín Moreno having turned on his Vice President, Jorge Glas, whom he has stripped of official tasks that include earthquake reconstruction due to allegations that Glas was on the take from the Brazilians. That has caused a falling out between former President Rafael Correa and Moreno. Factions of the left have chosen sides that pit human rights and anti-corruption activists from whose ranks Moreno comes against harder left supporters of Correa, some of whom accuse Moreno of selling out to the CIA over the Odebrecht affair.

Where, actually, are the CIA, and more importantly, the NSA at, about Odebrecht? The NSA would have records of any electronic money transfers or incriminating emails or telephone calls, and lots of time to figure out any that may have been heavily encrypted. For a long time there have been suspicions of the US government starting the whole Petrobras / Odebrecht scandal by feeding information to police and prosecutors.

Odebrecht does business in several US states, including in its American subsidiary’s base of Miami. The company gave to Jeb Bush’s foundation and former Miami Democrat boss Xavier Suarez’s political action committee, then received huge state and local contracts for things like Florida highways and the expansion of Miami International Airport. But by the US way of reckoning, the statutes of limitation would have run on those things. (Perhaps not on laundering any proceeds, though.) Still, if Americans are in a big argument about foreign influence in US elections one might think that somebody in the mainstream of politics or mass media would have pointed out that the Russians are far from the only suspects over the years, citing Odebrecht as well as several Middle Eastern governments as examples to look into en route to reform legislation.

Panama’s legal response to the Odebrecht affair mostly derives from a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case that Washington brought against the Brazilian company, wherein it alleged some $59 million paid to foreign politicians or their entourages in 12 countries, including $6 million to Ricardo Martinelli’s two sons. But a Swiss money laundering investigation put the two Martinelli sons’ take at more than $20 million. There is a perception that authorities here are taking the lower US figures and such evidence as the United States feeds Panama because Washington still wants things out of Varela and is not prepared to turn on him at this point.

Bernal warns of a possible violent explosion, but the anti-corruption protests, while growing again, still remain divided and relatively small. The larger ones are led by the hard left FRENADESO. As the 2019 elections draw inexorably closer the mainly middle class and professional coalition of which Bernal is a part would seem vulnerable to splintering over rival presidential campaigns. Figure from the polls that President Varela may not be on the verge of ouster by popular demand, but that his Panameñista Party will not retain the presidency in the next elections. But so far there is no groundswell of support for any particular alternative.

So figure that if the attorney general says that nothing much happened and if it did she’ll tell us after the court cases are over, nobody will believe her. But nobody seems ready to die to call her bluff, either.

 

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Avnery, Anyone but Bibi

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Two men in trouble pose for the photographers. White House photo.

“Anyone but Bibi”

by Uri Avnery

The vultures are circling. They can see the wounded man on the ground, and are waiting for his end.

So are the human carnivores — the politicians.

They sing his praises, swear to defend him with all their heart — but in their heads they are already calculating who might be his successor. Each of them mutters to themself: Why not me?

Binyamin Netanyahu is facing the greatest crisis in his long career. The police are about to conclude their investigations. The Attorney General is under huge pressure to issue official indictments. The large demonstrations near the Attorney General’s home are growing from week to week.

The Attorney General, the Inspector General of the Police and the Minister for Internal Security were all personally picked by Netanyahu (and his wife). Now even this does not help. The pressure is too strong.

The investigations may drag on for another few months, but the end seems certain: State of Israel v. Binyamin Netanyahu will go to court.

When a member of the government is indicted for a felony, they usually resign, or at least take leave of absence. Not Netanyahu. No sir!

If he resigned, who would guard Israel and save it from the numerous dreadful dangers threatening the state from all sides? The Iranians are promising our extinction, the evil Arabs all around want to kill us, the leftists and other traitors threaten the state from within. How can we survive without Bibi? The danger is too awful to contemplate!

Netanyahu seems to believe this himself. He, his wife and his eldest son behave like a royal family. They buy without paying, travel as guests of others, receive expensive gifts as a matter of course.

Popular humor accompanies all these transgressions. The police has entered this spirit and decorated his files with many zeros.

File 1000 concerns the gifts. The Netanyahus are surrounded by a crowd of billionaires, who compete with each other in presenting gifts. Many jokes were made about the expensive cigars and pink champagne given to the family — until it transpired that their value amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. And the donors expect something in return from the donees.

File 2000 concerns a peculiar matter. Yedioth Ahronoth (“Latest News”) was Israel’s largest daily newspaper, until Israel Hayom (“Israel Today”) appeared — a paper distributed for nothing. It was founded by Sheldon Adelson, an admirer of Netanyahu and the owner of huge casinos in Las Vegas and Macao. It is devoted to the single task of glorifying King Bibi.

In a recorded private conversation, Netanyahu offered Noni Moses, the owner of Yedioth, a deal: Israel Today would reduce its size and circulation if Yedioth started to glorify Bibi. Legally, this may amount to bribery.

And then there is File 3000, deep beneath the sea. The German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp (two names well remembered as Hitler’s weapons suppliers) builds our submarines. Three, six, nine. The sky — or the sea — is the limit.

What do we need submarines for? Not to sink enemy fleets. Our enemies, such as they are, have no powerful fleets. But they may obtain nuclear missiles. Israel is a very small territory, and a nuclear bomb or two could destroy it. But no one will dream of doing so if they know that out there lurk submarines, which will respond with nuclear missiles within minutes.

The German shipyard, with the support of the German government, sells the submarines to the Israeli navy. No middlemen needed. But there are middlemen who put millions in their pockets. How many pockets? Ah, there we are. Quite a number of pockets, and all these pockets belong to people very close to the Prime Minister.

Perverted minds may imagine that tens of millions have reached the PM himself, perish the thought.

This week, a prestigious TV program aired an investigation, and the picture was shocking. The entire military and civilian environment seems to be infected by corruption, as in a failed African state.

One of the few lessons I have learned in my life is that nobody reaches the top of any profession if they are not devoted to it absolutely, totally.

To get stinking rich, you must love stinking money. Not the things money can buy, but money itself. Like the miser of Moliere, who sits all day and counts his riches. If you also want something else, love or glory, you will not get to be a multi-multi-billionaire.

Don Juan did not care for anything but women. Not love. Just women, more and more of them.

David Ben-Gurion wanted power. Not the pleasures of power. Not cigars. Not champagne. Not several villas. Just power. Everything else, like his Bible club and his reading Don Quixote in Spanish, was just pretense. He wanted power and held on to it as long as he could. (In the end, when he surrounded himself with a praetorian guard of youngsters like Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, his colleagues ganged up on him and kicked him out, with some help from me.)

A person who wants political power, but also the amenities of life, several villas and a lot of money will not really reach the very top. Netanyahu is a good example.

He is no exception. His predecessor is in prison, and so are several former ministers. A former President of the State was just released from prison (for sexual offenses).

Netanyahu grew up in the a family which was not affluent. So did Ehud Olmert. So did Ehud Barak. So did Moshe Dayan. They all loved money too much.

Sarah Netanyahu, the Prime Minister’s wife, is also about to be indicted. She is accused of paying for her extensive private needs with government funds. She is not widely appreciated. Everybody calls her Sarah’le (“Little Sarah”), but not from love. She also grew up in straitened circumstances and was a low-grade air stewardess when she met Bibi in a duty-free shop.

I was lucky. Until my tenth birthday, my family was quite rich. When we fled to Palestine, we soon became as poor as synagogue-mice, but much happier.)

Another lesson: no one in power should stay there for more than eight years.

People in power attract flatterers. Every day, year after year, they are told that they are just wonderful. So wise, so clever, so handsome. Slowly they become convinced themselves. After all, so many good people can’t be wrong.

Their critical senses become blunted. They get used to being obeyed even by people who know better. They become immune to criticism, and even get angry when criticized.

After the 12-year tenure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a wise and successful president, the American people changed their constitution and limited the terms of the president to two, altogether eight consecutive years. Very sensible.

I speak from experience. I was elected to the Knesset three times. I very much enjoyed the first two terms — eight consecutive years — because I felt that I was doing the right things in the right way. During my third term I felt that I was less keen, less innovative, less original. So I resigned.

Netanyahu is now in his fourth term. High time for him to be thrown out.

The Bible enjoins us: “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth” (Proverbs 24, 17). I do not rejoice, but I shall be very glad if he goes.

I do not hate him. Neither do I like him. I don’t think that I have spoken with him on more than two or three occasions in my whole life. Once when he introduced me to his second — not last — wife, a nice young American woman, and once when he saw my picture in a photo exhibition, wearing a pilot’s cap. He told me that I looked like Errol Flynn.

My attitude towards him is not based on emotion. It is purely political. He is a talented politician, a clever demagogue. But I believe that he is leading Israel slowly but surely towards a historic disaster.

People believe that he is devoid of principles, that he will do anything — just anything — to stay in power. That is true. But underneath everything there hide some ironclad convictions — the weltanschauung of his late father, the history professor, whose special field was the Spanish Inquisition. Father Benzion Netanyahu was an embittered man, convinced that his colleagues despised him and blocked his career because of his extreme right-wing views. He was a fanatic, for whom even Vladimir Jabotinsky was far too moderate.

The father admired his elder son, Yoni, an army officer who was killed in the famous Entebbe raid, and did not respect Bibi very much. He once said that Bibi was not fit to be prime minister, but could make a good foreign minister — a very shrewd observation.

If Binyamin Netanyahu falls, which seems possible, who will replace him?

Like every clever (and unsure) leader, Bibi has destroyed every likely rival along the way. Now there is no obvious heir around.

But many people are now repeating a slogan: “Anyone, Just Not Bibi!”

 

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What Democrats are saying

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Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail — but she says that she’s concentrating on the Senate and won’t run for president in 2020. Photo by mdfriendofhillary.

Heart and soul

Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Netroots Nation convention

Before I begin, I would like to say a word about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — DACA — that was just discussed.

The fights that we fight for — they matter. In 2012 — because of persistence of many of you in this room — 800,000 young men and women were protected from deportation.

Because of DACA, DREAMers, who are as American as you and me, were promised a chance. The chance to work. The chance to live without the fear of being ripped away from the only home most of them have ever known. The chance to build a future.

Now, President Trump will make a decision on DACA. DREAMers’ future hangs in the balance. This Tuesday, August 15, people are mobilizing to protect DREAMers. Let’s not sit back. Let’s stand together to say: President Trump, let DREAMers stay. They are our friends, our family, our future. Give DREAMers the chance to build their dreams.

These fights matter. These fights matter, and that’s why it’s good to be back at Netroots Nation!

Thank you Mary, thank you Eric, thank you Arshad, and thank you to the entire Netroots Nation team for bringing us together again. And what a treat it is to be here in Atlanta — the hometown of a man who has taught us the importance of necessary trouble, my friend and hero John Lewis.

I look out here and see 3000 progressives, people of every race, gender, religion, and color, all committed to building a better future. I look out here and I see Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.

Yes, Trump’s worst nightmare, but also a big threat to everyone who kind of likes things the way they work now. A few weeks ago, I saw an op-ed in the New York Times from a so-called Democratic strategist titled, “Back to the Center, Democrats.”

It was all about how we have to stop caring about, quote, “identity politics” and stop waging, quote, “class warfare.” Apparently, the path forward is to go back to locking up non-violent drug offenders and ripping more holes in our economic safety net.

I even got a shoutout! Apparently, I’m the face of the problem. So is Bernie. But let’s be really clear here — the real power, the real threat, is not me — it’s you, all of you. It’s your energy, your passion, and your commitment to our values that threaten the bland, business-as-usual establishment.

We’ve been warned off before. Give up, keep your heads down, be realistic, act like a grown-up, keep doing the same old same old.

But here’s what’s interesting: instead of lots of lots of ferocious back-and-forth and piling on, this time, no one cared. Big yawn. Why? Because the Democratic Party isn’t going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill. It is NOT going to happen.

We’re not going back to the days of being lukewarm on choice.

We’re not going back to the days when universal health care was something Democrats talked about on the campaign trail but were too chicken to fight for after they got elected.

And we’re not going back to the days when a Democrat who wanted to run for a seat in Washington first had to grovel on Wall Street.

Democrats are heading forward. We are looking ahead — and we will not, we shall not, we must not allow anyone to turn back the clock.

A lot of you have been coming since the very first YearlyKos in 2006. That feels like a long, long time ago. Way back in 2006 and still when I first started coming in 2010, a big part of what we were trying to do was to “crash the gate” and get the Democratic Party to listen to us.

We wanted a party led by people who weren’t afraid to call themselves progressives.

We wanted a party that would defend progressive values.

We wanted a chance to fight for progressive solutions to our nation’s challenges.

We wanted a movement. And now, look around. We got the progressive movement, and we gather here every year to organize, to energize, and to sing karaoke.

And now?

We are not the gate crashers of today’s Democratic Party.

We are not a wing of today’s Democratic Party.

We are the heart and soul of today’s Democratic Party.

But, boy, we’ve inherited a hell of a challenge, haven’t we?

We’re gathering here in Atlanta in a moment of crisis for our country. And I’m not just talking about Donald Trump and his Twitter account. More and more working families today are hanging on by their fingernails in a country with an economy and a government that works only for those at the very top.

This crisis didn’t start when Donald Trump walked into the Oval Office. And it won’t just magically disappear the day he walks out of it.

Me, I’ve been shouting about this crisis from every rooftop I could find for years — talking about how our middle class was squeezed to the breaking point, how chances to move up in this economy were disappearing, and warning that, if we weren’t careful, the very promise of this nation — the commitment to expand opportunities — would be lost.

That’s the fight that got me into politics. That’s the fight that brought me to my very first Netroots all those years ago.

How about you? By applause: Who got into the fight because they were passionate about economic justice? Who came to fight for reproductive rights? How about clean air and clean water? How about immigration? Civil rights? Human rights? Anti-war? Campaign finance reform? Net neutrality? Any other bankruptcy nerds in the house?

That’s one of the things I love about coming to Netroots. We all came to this fight from different experiences. We all get fired up about different issues.

But if we’re going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness and lead our country out of this dark time, then we can’t waste energy arguing about whose issue matters most or who in our alliance should be voted off the island.

We need to see each other’s fights as our own. And I believe we can.

In the wake of the last election, I’ve heard people say we need to decide whether we’re the party of the white working class or the party of Black Lives Matter.

I say we can care about a dad who’s worried that his kid will have to move away from their factory town to find good work — and we can care about a mom who’s worried that her kid will get shot during a traffic stop.

The way I see it, those two parents have something deep down in common — the system is rigged against both of them — and against their kids.

Over the last generation, the most powerful people in this country have gotten way more powerful. Corporate profits and CEO pay are near record highs. But workers’ wages haven’t budged, and, one after another, workers’ rights are getting wiped away. Unions are under attack. Millions of people are struggling to piece together two, three, or four jobs just to pay the rent.

The balance of power is shifting in other parts of our economy, too. In industry after industry — airlines, banking, health care, agriculture, tech — a handful of corporate giants control more and more and more. The big guys are locking out smaller, newer competitors. They are crushing innovation. Even if you don’t see the gears turning, this massive consolidation means prices go up and quality goes down for everything from air travel to broadband service. Rural America is left behind, dismissed by corporate giants as fly-over country.

This concentration of power strikes at the heart of our democracy. Our government is supposed to be the one place where everybody gets the same fair shot, no matter how powerful or powerless they might be. But thanks to the revolving door between Capitol Hill, K Street and Wall Street, powerful people have more and more influence in Congress. Thanks to Citizens United, corporate money slithers through Washington like a snake. Washington works great for the rich and powerful, but for everyone else, not so much.

Yes, the system is rigged — and if you don’t feel like anyone in politics is doing anything to un-rig it, well, that’s how a lot of folks who should have been with us last November wound up voting for Donald Trump.

For many Americans, it isn’t news that the balance of power in our country has seriously tilted away from them. African Americans. LGBTQ Americans. Immigrants. Muslims. Women. Poor people.

No, I have not personally experienced the fear, the oppression, and the pain that many of my fellow Americans endure every day. But I do know this: For a lot of our fellow citizens, the system is rigged now and it has been rigged for a long, long time.

Don’t take my word for it. Just look around.

  • When women aren’t invited to the debate over our own health care and health insurance must cover Viagra but not birth control.
  • When we’re almost two decades into the 21st century and we still don’t have equal pay for equal work.
  • When a man running for President of the United States can get caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and Republican party leaders turn a blind eye.

Yeah, the system is rigged.

Keep going.

  • When the black-white wealth gap triples over the past three decades.
  • When racist voter ID laws and voter suppression tactics sprout like weeds all across the country.
  • When a man too racist to become a judge in the 1980s now runs the Department of Justice
  • When communities like Flint are living with poisoned water and polluted air.
  • When there’s still no justice for, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile and so many more.

Yeah, the system is rigged.

Keep going.

  • When you can still be fired from your job because of who you love.
  • When you can’t use a public restroom or serve in the military because of your gender identity.
  • When you’re afraid to report a rape because ICE could split up your family.
  • When you’re treated like a suspect every minute of your life.

Yeah, the system is rigged.

And if you don’t feel like anyone in politics is doing anything to un-rig it, or it’s too broken to un-rig at all — well, that’s what a lot of folks felt last November, a lot of folks who should have been with us on election day but who stayed home.

So spare me the argument about whether we ought to be trying to bring back folks who voted for Donald Trump or trying to turn out folks who just didn’t vote.

Because we can’t do either of those things until we can show that things CAN change — and that WE will fight to change them.

It’s easy to make the case that Donald Trump and the Republicans aren’t the answer to any of these problems. Heck, they aren’t even trying. Look at the Republican priorities:

  • Cut health care coverage for 25 million Americans and drive up insurance costs for millions more.
  • Cut taxes for billionaires and giant corporations.
  • Roll back Wall Street regulations, gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and let the big banks wreck our economy again.
  • Turn polluters loose and let them spew, dump and destroy whenever and wherever they want.
  • Zero out the programs that help people keep a roof over their heads.
  • Double down against Planned Parenthood, against an undocumented immigrant’s right to due process, against a black American’s right to vote in an election.
  • And this week, play a stupid, reckless game of chicken with a dangerous foreign power and threaten nuclear war.

The Republican agenda will make the powerful more powerful — and leave everyone else further behind. The Republican leadership is willing to threaten our health, our economy, and our basic safety.

All true, and we should say so clearly. But that’s not the end of our job. We have to show people that, when we get a chance to lead, things WILL start getting better.

And that starts with showing some backbone. Not just backbone when we stand up to Donald Trump, but backbone when we put forward an agenda.

For so many Americans, every day is a battle against powerful interests. It’s time for us to pick sides and get in the fight.

So let’s talk about picking sides:

It’s time for us to say: Democrats are on the side of working people, on the side of Moms and Dads who dream of a better life for their kids, on the side of people in every part of this country and people of every race, gender, and religion who just want a level playing field and a chance to build a future.

And we know how to show them that their fight is our fight.

Let’s start with jobs.

  • It’s time to re-think the basic social contract on labor. We’re going to fight for fully portable benefits for everyone. And we’re going to fight to make sure that all work — full-time, part-time, gig — carries basic, pro-rata benefits.
  • We’re going to fight to make it easier for workers to come together to form a union so they can take power into their own hands.
  • And we’re going to turn the minimum wage into a living wage. Fight for $15!

It’s time for us to say: Democrats are on the side of hard working families who are getting pounded every day.

  • We’re going to fight for universal pre-K, and to make it easier for every family to get child care.
  • We’re going to fight like hell to stop Republicans from jacking up the cost of health insurance and taking coverage away from millions. Trumpcare will not get one Democratic vote — not now, not ever. But it’s not enough just to defend the Affordable Care Act, we’re going to improve it, starting with bringing down the costs of prescription drugs — and leading the fight for Medicare for all.
  • We’re going to make it possible for young people to go to college or get a technical degree debt-free.
  • We’re going to fight for affordable housing and good schools across our country, from the biggest cities to the smallest towns and most remote rural homesteads.
  • And we will fight our hearts out to defend — and expand — Social Security and Medicare.

It’s time for us to say: Democrats are on the side of consumers.

  • So we’re going to fight to break up the monopolies that are killing competition.
  • We’re going to put a cop on the beat so that no one can steal your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street.
  • And whether you’re shopping for broadband or a student loan, an airline ticket or health insurance, we’re going to go to bat for you to help make damn sure you don’t get cheated.

It’s time for us to say: Democrats are on the side of science.

  • We’re done arguing about whether climate change is real — and we’re going to fight it with everything we have.
  • We’re done arguing about whether trickle-down economics works — and we’re going to fight to build this economy so it works for working families.
  • We’re done arguing about gun safety — and we’re going to fight for the common-sense reforms the overwhelming majority of Americans want.

It’s time for us to say: Democrats are on the side of fairness and equality.

  • So we’re going to fight for equal pay for equal work.
  • We’re going to keep Planned Parenthood open, and we’re going to make sure women have access to safe, legal abortions.
  • And we’re going to fight to put more women in positions of power, from committee rooms to boardrooms to that really nice Oval-shaped room at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
  • And we’re going to reform our criminal justice system so that getting caught with a baggie of pot doesn’t mean your life is ruined, and getting pulled over by the cops doesn’t mean your life is at risk.

It’s time for us to say: Democrats are on the side of American values.

  • So we’re going to fight for comprehensive immigration reform. And we’re going to say to every DREAMer in this country: You are an American. This country is your home. And we have your back.
  • We’re going to fight to wipe the stain of Donald Trump’s Muslim ban off the books once and for all. And, by the way, Mr. President: We’re never, ever going to build your stupid wall.
  • We’re also going to fight for our democracy. That means we’ll fight to reverse Citizens United so big corporations can’t BUY our elections, and we’ll fight to stop voter ID laws so Republicans can’t STEAL our elections either.

And, by the way: it’s time for us to up front about whose side we’re not on.

We’re not on the side of big Wall Street banks that break the law — we think everyone needs to be accountable. When bank CEOs break the law, they ought to go to jail just like everyone else.

We’re not on the side of the giant companies that want to twist government rules for themselves. We’re going to slam shut that revolving door, and we say enough is enough with corporate money that is drowning our democracy.

We’re not on the side of the bigots and the misogynists — and unlike the so-called Republican “leadership” in Washington, we’re not afraid to say it to their faces.

And we’re not on the side of foreign governments that hack our elections or politicians whose fragile egos put our national security at risk.

Folks, we don’t have to tip-toe. We don’t have to hedge our bets. We don’t have to ask permission from the pundits or the corporate CEOs — and we sure don’t have to ask permission from Mitch McConnell.

Actually, that’s a good thing because I think he would probably tell me to sit down and shut up. Nevertheless, I would persist.

We don’t have to fear the wrath of the powerful, because when we’re bold enough to stand up for our values, when we’re bold enough to stand up for our fellow Americans, that’s when we ARE powerful.

Isn’t that the spirit that brought us all to this movement?

Isn’t that the reason we’re proud to call ourselves progressives?

Isn’t that the Democratic Party we want to call our own?

This fight is our fight.

This fight is the fight Americans have been waiting for someone to take on.

This fight is the fight Americans are ready to rally behind.

This fight is the fight Americans are counting on us to win.

This fight is my fight. This fight is your fight.

So let’s go win it!

Thank you!

 

 

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What Republicans are saying

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“I do defend whites heritage of European extraction make no mistake about that” — a fool’s comment on The Panama News Facebook page. Photo of the alt-right at the University of Virginia by @mykalmphoto.

What Republicans are saying

 

 

 

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¿Wappin? Another Cultural Friday / Otro Viernes Cultural

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C3
Joshue Ashby. Photo by Eric Jackson.

Cultural Friday / Viernes Cultural

Joshue Ashby & C3 Project – Colón Surgirá
https://youtu.be/u4t_uOzc-84

Thievery Corporation live on KEXP
https://youtu.be/5eK6SYVyZRk

Lord Cobra Calypso (full album)
https://youtu.be/5LmYyvDs2Fw

Big Mama Thornton et al, London 1965
https://youtu.be/vLg8K7U7w7M

Carlos Santana with John McLaughlin live in Switzerland 2016
https://youtu.be/k0KcWyZ8II0

 

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Benson & Pickard, The new media oligarchs

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Jeff Bezos taking over The Washington Post is not the only example of the trend. Photo by danxoniel.

The slippery slope of the oligarchy media model

by Rodney Benson & Victor Pickard — The Conversation

On July 28, Apple heiress Laurene Powell Jobs bought a majority stake in The Atlantic.

It’s the latest media purchase by the billionaire class, a group that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (the Washington Post), Boston Red Sox owner John Henry (the Boston Globe), billionaire Glen Taylor (the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (the Las Vegas Review-Journal).

Some have praised this growing trend, arguing that wealthy individuals are journalism’s last, best hope. And there are notable cases of rich philanthropists, like Pierre Omidyar and Gerry Lenfest, making significant donations toward public service journalism.

Nonetheless, potential hazards arise when news outlets increasingly rely on private capital and billionaires’ largess.

The upside of privatizing the news

Private ownership of news organizations is, of course, nothing new.

Since at least the late 19th century, most major US magazines and newspapers have been owned or controlled by wealthy individuals or families. Often these owners distinguished themselves by their commitment to journalistic excellence: at The New York Times, the Ochs-Sulzberger family; at the Los Angeles Times, the Chandlers; and at the Washington Post, the Grahams. In the magazine world, Condé Nast, privately owned by the Newhouse family’s Advance Communications, continues to produce magazines highly regarded for their journalistic rigor, from the New Yorker to Wired.

Between the 1970s and early 2000s, however, media companies increasingly became publicly traded stock corporations that often expanded into large chains. Gannett, owner of USA Today and over 100 other daily newspapers, and Sinclair, proprietor of 173 television stations, are currently two of the largest publicly traded media companies.

In contrast to a private company — which can forgo profits if it chooses — a publicly traded company has obligations to maximize shareholder value. Emphasizing profitability often comes at the cost of professional excellence or civic commitment, even at media companies like the Washington Post, where the founders retained control of voting stock after going public in 1971.

As Kathryn Weymouth, the last Graham family publisher of the Washington Post, remarked when she passed the baton to Bezos: “If journalism is the mission, given the pressures to cut costs and make profits, maybe [a publicly traded company] is not the best place for the Post.”

So compared to Wall Street control, private ownership has many potential advantages. As Bezos has demonstrated, a private owner can absorb short-term losses in service of long-term gain. While most news organizations are still in austerity mode, the “new” Washington Post is increasing staff and budgets. Many believe it’s also dramatically improving its quality and impact.

How benevolent is the billionaire model?

But private ownership is no guarantee of either commercial or professional success. And not all private owners are the same. Today, one of the fastest-growing forms of private media ownership is the investment company, linked to hedge funds or other forms of private equity.

These companies are just as focused on profits as a publicly traded firm — and perhaps even more willing to close down a media outlet when its economic performance is sub-par. The largest investment groups include New Media/Gatehouse (125 daily newspapers, now larger than Gannett), Digital First Media (62 daily papers), and Tronc/Tribune (owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and 17 other dailies).

Moreover, what might be called the “benevolent billionaire model” for supporting journalism begs the obvious point that not all billionaires are benevolent.

Exhibit A is Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul and conservative activist who bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2015. He kept the purchase secret at first, and his representatives reportedly pressured the newspaper’s staff to cover Adelson and his allies in a positive light.

Notorious press barons of yore such as William Randolph Hearst and Robert R. McCormick often used their papers to push far-right agendas, including admiration for Adolf Hitler and advocating for strict isolationism.

In more subtle ways, private ownership also raises concerns about partisan bias, self-dealing and lack of transparency. Donald Trump has exploited these vulnerabilities by posting tweets attacking the “AmazonWashingtonPost” and has threatened government anti-trust investigations of Amazon to try to intimidate Bezos.

Though Trump’s motives are suspect, the concern is valid: As Amazon gains market share in industry after industry, the potential for the Washington Post to have serious conflicts of interest increases exponentially.

Laurene Powell Jobs’ purchase of The Atlantic via her Emerson Collective (a nonprofit limited liability company) is comparable, in some ways, to the Poynter Institute’s ownership of the Tampa Bay Times. In both cases, nonprofit organizations are overseeing entirely commercial news outlets.

The difference between Poynter and Emerson lies in their missions. Whereas Poynter is devoted to nonpartisan journalism education and research, Emerson’s self-proclaimed mandate encompasses advocacy around education, immigration and the environment. Jobs has moved to the forefront of efforts to dramatically transform American education. Will she see The Atlantic as another vehicle for her to promote these views?

Of course, The Atlantic isn’t a newspaper with any pretense of objectivity. It’s a magazine, both online and off, with a point of view that also provides space for other views. Like the Washington Post, it’s been profitable in recent years. With attention-grabbing journalism and skillful use of social media, The Atlantic is netting significant earnings online without cannibalizing its print magazine, whose circulation is growing as well. Behind the scenes, The Atlantic also generates revenue from organizing corporate and government forums and special events.

This model may be a formula for economic success, but is it an unalloyed boon for democracy? The Atlantic’s digital rise has been fueled by sponsored content (now 60 to 75 percent of its total revenues) — a type of advertising that tries to be persuasive by looking like news — while the magazine’s profitable off-the-record salons can, as one media columnist has argued, have a corrupting effect by driving “a measurable quantity of political discourse out of the public sphere and into the private.”

What about the public interest?

In fact, The Atlantic and the Washington Post are the bright and shiny faces of an increasingly oligarchic media system in the USA. The oligarchs’ values and priorities, however, may not align with democratic objectives. Their business model — and definition of journalistic success — tends to exclude audiences or issues that cannot be monetized. High-end advertisers favor content that appeals to high-earning demographics, which can skew coverage away from concerns of the working class and poor.

So instead of reaching out to underserved readers, these billionaire-owned news organizations may exacerbate economic and racial divides by privileging views and voices more in line with higher socioeconomic groups. We shouldn’t be surprised: The biggest beneficiaries of a highly stratified economic system are unlikely to take the lead in addressing inequality.

Under Bezos’s stewardship, the Washington Post was conspicuous for its harshly critical coverage of Bernie Sanders’s inequality-focused candidacy. Powell Jobs is no doubt sincere in her reformist zeal, yet her single-minded push for educational “innovation” conveniently shifts attention from the massive imbalance in resources available to low-income versus high-income school districts. While the new media oligarchs might value profits less than their Wall Street compatriots, they may be more determined as “thought leaders” to shape — and limit — public policy debate.

Instead of being in thrall to these benefactors, it’s important to redouble efforts to truly democratize the ownership and funding of our media system. One way is to increase government support for US public media, the worst-funded in the Western world.

Research shows that public media tend to be more independent, ideologically diverse and critical of dominant policy positions compared to commercial news organizations. Furthermore, strong public media systems correlate with higher political knowledge and democratic engagement. Public media are also the best positioned to withstand various kinds of market failure, which will likely only worsen in the coming years.

Numerous sources can help fund public options and foster structural diversity in our media system, ranging from spectrum auctions generating revenue to support local journalism to having Facebook and Google pay into an investigative journalism trust. Tax incentives and policy protections can ensure a commitment to public service and bottom-up governance by citizens and journalists instead of absentee owners. Indeed, one possible silver lining to commercial journalism’s struggles is a renewed search for structural alternatives, especially public and nonprofit models.

These are obviously long-term solutions. In the meantime, a truly diverse media ecology could have public-spirited oligarchs playing a positive role. But when they become the dominant players — as is increasingly the case today — they may threaten, more than strengthen, our democracy.

 

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Gandásegui, ¿Distrito Norte?

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chilibre
¿Pronto para ser condos de lujo vacíos para los lavadores de dinero del mundo?

El Distrito Norte

por Marco Gandásegui, hijo

El nuevo Distrito Norte que aprobó la Asamblea Nacional de Diputados, y que espera la sanción del Ejecutivo, tiene más de mil kilómetros cuadrados y una población que supera los 200 mil habitantes. Aún más importante, contiene dentro de lo que serían sus fronteras las fuentes de agua que alimentan a la ciudad de Panamá (un millón de habitantes) y al Canal de Panamá (principal exportador de servicios del país: B/2,500 millones). Además, el distrito Norte se ha convertido en los últimos 40 años en ‘ciudad dormitorio’ para trabajadores que viajan todos los días a la ciudad de Panamá. El 90 por ciento de los trabajadores son migrantes de otras regiones del país que vienen en busca de nuevas oportunidades para ellos y sus familias. Todos estos antecedentes – agua potable para la ciudad capital, agua para el Canal, espacio para los trabajadores que llegan en busca de nueva oportunidades – constituyen problemas que no son contemplados por la ley que pretende crear el Distrito Norte.

Más aún, hay una fuerte presión por parte de inversionistas urbanistas en construir nuevas barriadas de lujo en el área. En la actualidad, hay regulaciones muy estrictas sobre este tipo de construcciones por los efectos negativos que tendrían sobre la cuenca del río Chagres (que provee de agua potable a la ciudad y del líquido precioso al Canal de Panamá). Por lo menos uno de los diputados que presentó la ley para crear el Distrito Norte a la Asamblea es promotor de estas nuevas urbanizaciones.

La propuesta de los legisladores de la Republica es incompleta y desordenada. (No tiene una justificación y tampoco presenta una consulta realizada en las comunidades). Es importante participar en el debate en torno a la pertinencia de crear un nuevo distrito en el norte del actual distrito de Panamá.

Hay que contestar algunas preguntas sencillas. ¿Cómo beneficiará el nuevo distrito al país? ¿Qué beneficios recibimos todos los panameños? Además, ¿cómo se beneficiará el nuevo distrito Norte? ¿Cómo se beneficiarán sus habitantes y otros residentes del nuevo distrito? Los beneficios para el país se pueden medir tanto por los aportes que haga el nuevo distrito a la economía, así como a la cultura. Asimismo, por el ordenamiento territorial y las conexiones que pueda establecer con los demás distritos de la Republica (77 en total). No existe un plan en la ley, tampoco una estrategia, ni propuesta alguna para determinar como beneficiará el nuevo distrito al país. Tampoco existe una idea de cómo el distrito Norte podría beneficiar a todos los panameños. La Asamblea Nacional (de Diputados) al debatir una ley tiene que recordar que legisla para todos los panameños.

También hay que ver como se beneficia el área norte del Distrito de Panamá con este cambio político-administrativo. Según los proponentes, el nuevo Municipio ‘Norte’ tendría acceso directo a todos los impuestos locales, sin necesidad de pedirle al Municipio de Panamá un centavo. En la actualidad, el Municipio de Panamá le transfiere a los 4 corregimientos del Norte más fondos de los que generan esas divisiones administrativas. No es casual que el alcalde del Distrito de Panamá se siente algo contento con la idea de deshacerse de esa carga financiera que representaría el posible futuro distrito Norte.

La población no se siente parte de la propuesta de los diputados que quieren crear el distrito Norte. Opinan que hay más corrupción envuelto en la ley que ya aprobó la Asamblea, pero que el Presidente todavía no sanciona. La propuesta no habla de centros de salud, escuelas o de seguridad en las comunidades. Todo indica que tiene otras prioridades.

Hay indicios que el proyecto del nuevo distrito fue concebido en las oficinas de abogados que trabajan con inversionistas que quieren construir barrios de lujo en esos corregimientos. La iniciativa puede beneficiar a unos pocos pero no a la población que supera los 200 mil habitantes y crece a una tasa muy alta.

¿Necesitamos más distritos en la región metropolitana? No tengo los elementos necesarios para opinar con autoridad. En todo caso, requieren estudios más serios. El área ‘Norte’ tiene 1,028 kilómetros cuadrados. Comparado con San Miguelito (50 km2) o la ciudad de Panamá (150 km2) es un territorio monstruoso. Sin planificación y sólo para negociar la construcción de barriadas exclusivas, no se justifica la creación de un Distrito Norte. Hay que regresar a las comunidades y coordinar con su gente para saber qué quieren.

 

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Brooks, Politicians have stolen the right to vote before

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GUILTY!
The 1867 federal jury in Virginia, of which Joe Cox was a member, that was impaneled to hear evidence of a treason case against Jefferson Davis.

Trump’s ‘Election Integrity’ Commission harkens back to Jim Crow

by Diallo Brooks — OtherWords

One October morning in Richmond, Virginia, 32-year-old Joseph Cox watched his friends and neighbors go to the polls for the first time.

The fight to get to that moment had been long, bloody, and vicious. But as a black man newly eligible to vote after a lifetime of discrimination, Cox did something that would’ve seemed incomprehensible only a decade before: He won an election.

Cox was one of 24 black representatives elected across Virginia that year — 1867.

But the response to that progress was vicious.

Racist white politicians worked to find new justifications for stripping the voting rights of African American men (women could not yet vote), alleging voter fraud and implementing heinous tactics like literacy tests, poll taxes, and voting roll purges.

The fact that thousands of African Americans voted and held elected office during Reconstruction only to face a brutal Jim Crow backlash underscores an important theme in our country’s history: Voting rights have been won, then weakened, and then lost before.

Today, too many people take for granted that the advances achieved during the civil rights movement are still firmly in place. But progress is neither promised nor irreversible.

The latest incarnation of the long right-wing campaign to weaken voting rights is Donald Trump’s “Election Integrity” Commission, which Trump convened after absurdly claiming that he only lost the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally. But there’s not one shred of evidence of widespread in-person voter fraud in the United States.

The same sham justifications used to prop up voter suppression tactics during the Jim Crow era — claims that such measures preserve the integrity, efficiency, and sustainability of elections — are being unapologetically recycled today.

Trump’s new voter suppression commission, which met for the first time in July, is led by some of the most strident opponents of voting rights alive today — people who’ve built careers on stripping the voting rights of thousands upon thousands of eligible voters of color.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who co-chairs the commission, is among the worst.

After requiring Kansans to show a passport or birth certificate in order to register to vote — a move that blocked nearly 20,000 eligible voters — a federal court said Kobach had carried out “mass denial of a fundamental right.”

Kobach also promotes the “Interstate Crosscheck” program that claims to identify in-person voter fraud. But in reality, the Washington Post reports, the system “gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time” — putting voters at risk of losing their most essential right.

Another member is Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer described by former colleagues as “the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.”

Of course, no one should be allowed to vote twice in an election. But voter impersonation is basically non-existent. While the commission might claim to be about promoting the integrity of our elections, their true task is to find justifications for laws that make it harder for members of certain communities to vote.

The history of voting rights in America is a one filled with both progress and regression.

When I think of Joseph Cox winning his right to vote in Richmond in 1867, and when I think of my grandparents having to fight for that same right in that same place all over again a century later, I wonder how so many Americans have forgotten the fragility of this precious right.

I wonder how so many are blind and indifferent to the assault on the right to vote — a right people fought and died for — happening right before our eyes today. We’ve seen these attacks before. And not all of us have forgotten.

Diallo Brooks is the director of outreach and public engagement at People For the American Way.

Freedom Now
The struggle for voting rights, not long before passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Washington Area Spark/ Flickr

 

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Trial and arbitration upcoming in comarca land scheme

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beach} property
The property in question, with the mouth of the Rio Cañaveral at the bottom left and the beachfront purportedly acquired stretching up toward the east. A basic pointer about rights of possession land: if it’s not lived upon, nor used to grow crops, graze animals nor as business premises, it’s probably not “possessed” such as to support any claim to right of possession. Yeah, you can get a lawyer to tell you otherwise. You can also get a lawyer to handle your purchase of the Bridge of the Americas.

A trial and an arbitration over a land scheme

by Eric Jackson (most of this was broken in La Prensa over several years)

In 1997, after years of agitation and promises, the Pérez Balladares administration created the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca. There were complications. The Bugle — a minority that speaks Buglere rather than Ngabere which is itself divided among folks in the Veraguas highlands and along the Caribbean coast (the latter sometimes known as the Bokota) — were not all happy about being a minority within a larger indigenous entity. Ngabe politics are fractious. And then there were and are non-indigenous people living within to comarca, and pockets of indigenous populations that would not fit within a contiguous semi-autonomous commonwealth. When the comarca was created out of parts of Veraguas, Chiriqui and Bocas del Toro there were a few non-contiguous parts and guarantees for the property rights of the non-indigenous farmers and fishers already living within the entity’s boundaries.

Come 2004, the Panamanian government and the United Nations agreed to list more than 28,000 hectares of wetlands in the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran and designed to protect wetlands, particularly those of importance to migratory birds or of endangered species. Thus was born the Damani Guariviara Protected Area. Development that would adversely affect the wetland is prohibited there, as it is in all sites designated under the Ramsar accord.

Come March of 2010, one Feliciano Baker Valdes filed suit in a Bocas del Toro court to confirm squatters’ rights that he claimed to two beachfront parcels east of Rio Cañaveral, just under 220 hectares in all. Baker does not claim that he had rights of possession by actually having possessed the property. He says that he bought these rights in 2009 from attorney Evisilda Martínez.

Baker got Andino Archibold, the mayor of the comarca’s municipal district of Kusapin at the time, to sign off on his claim. The mayor would not have the authority to do this in any case, and the money claimed to have been paid did not register in the district’s accounts. Various third parties began offering the property, including an American who wanted to advertise it in The Panama News. University students from the comarca got wind of scheme and began to denounce it and Archibold. Residents of Kusapin began to complain to the regional government and others of helicopters frequently coming and going at the beach.

That June the two parcels, along with another adjacent 485 hectares, were sold by Baker to Desarrollo Ecoturistico Cañaveral, a company owned by Costa Rican legislator Antonio Álvarez Desanti. Mr. Álvarez Desanti is neither an ignoramus nor a back bencher. The attorney and businessman has twice presided over Costa Rica’s legislature. He was part of then President Laura Chinchilla’s delegation on a 2013 state visit with Ricardo Martinelli in the Palacio de las Garzas. In the 2018 presidential elections Álvarez Desanti will be the candidate of the National Liberation Party (PLN), one of his country’s historic major parties.

The Costa Rican politician said that his plan was to build a $40 million hotel on the beach. In a meeting with the now fugitive but then Martinelli administration tourism minister Salomón Shamah, the latter promised that if the permits were secured then there would be Panamanian government subsidies for the hotel project. Ricardo Martinelli’s cousin, attorney Francisco Martinelli Patton, handled the paperwork for the purported sale to Álvarez Desanti’s company.

In the Public Registry, the sale was said to be for $72,000. In a bank account set up by Baker to receive the payment from Álvarez Desanti, a $250,000 transaction was recorded. Whatever was claimed to have been paid by any party to the transaction to the municipality does not show up in any bank records.

In September of 2011 Willy Jiménez, the president of the Ño-Kribo Regional Congress (that is, overseeing the part of the comarca that used to be in the province of Bocas del Toro), filed a criminal complaint with the Public Ministry’s anti-corruption prosecutor. He cited falsified documents in local offices, including purported witnesses to prior possession of the property by persons who did not live in the area and never had. Afterward, however, Jiménez seemed to change his mind. The regional government signed an agreement with Álvarez Desanti’s company to approve the hotel. But by that time local residents were up in arms and filed their complaints against not only those whom Jiménez cited but also Jiménez himself.

But Martinelli’s minister of government, Jorge Ricardo Fábrega, came to the would-be developer’s defense. He said that the registered rights of possession to the property were not new and that in any case the beach is not part of the comarca so indigenous authorities or citizens have no standing to complain. By mid-2013 Álvarez Desanti was claiming that the complaints against the transactions and those involved had been dismissed.

A year later, Martinelli had lost his proxy re-election bid, all the paperwork for the project was not done and no public official was willing to sign or issue anything for the hotel project to proceed. Meanwhile the deal had already gone sour in the weeks before the 2014 elections, as the situation looked ugly enough to become an annoying campaign issue for the ruling Cambio Democratico party. In February of 2014 a local judge in Bocas opened a criminal investigation of the matter. The following month Álvarez Desanti filed for arbitration before a World Court panel in the United States, claiming that Panama had improperly stripped him of his property. He’s asking for $100 million in compensation.

Baker and Archibold go on trial for forgery and fraud on August 10. The arbitration case in pending.

So who’s making out like a bandit? Perhaps the US law firm of Hogan Lovells. This past May the Varela administration approved $3.77 million to hire them to fend off Álvarez Desanti’s claims before the World Court arbitration panel.

 

Background: one reason why we don’t do real estate ads

A digression about the evolution of our practices here. The Panama News does not take ads anymore, either paid display ads or the former free unclassifieds that we used to to. This story, in retrospect, is an illustration of one of the reasons why we don’t do that, apart from the primordial consideration that by going ad-free we can use certain content that is subject to cooperative commons restrictions that allow free use but not for commercial purposes.

Long about 2009, there was this American who wanted to place a real estate unclassified ad in The Panama News, seeking to sell a large tract of beachfront land east of Rio Cañaveral. But a faint bells rang from the past. Hey, isn’t this part of the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca, the lands of which are not supposed to be for sale to outsiders? Hey, isn’t this part of an internationally recognized and legally protected wetland area, more or less off-limits for developers?

Indeed — part of the Damani Guariviara Wetlands, protected by international treaty and nationl law in 2004. The Ministry of the Environment now, and its precursor the National Environmental Authority, then and now said and say that on the 24,089 hectare site there were and are no structures.

But this man said he had rights of possession and the approval of comarca authorities. Checking the man further, he was not registered to sell real estate in Panama and several people warned that he was a cut-out, a front for someone without rights or with very dubious rights to various properties trying to sell these to gullible foreigners. So his ad did not run. It was for the sale of the property that is the basis of the ongoing court cases discussed above.

We were not so quick to catch the one from the guy who was trying to sell a house in the Azuero to liquidate and conceal marital assets in the course of a divorce. He didn’t tell us that but SHE did and the ad came down. But the guy with the development in Boquete that was based on the appropriation of marital assets in violation of a US divorce decree? THAT angle was not known until after the fact, and his ads ran. But we routinely omitted the various ads for properties that allegedly included privately owned beaches, because that’s clearly illegal, no matter what the practices might be.

Looking up property titles and right of possession registries in this country is an arcane art, designed that way to provide income for lawyers and opportunities for swindlers in and out of public office. But there are rules of thumb. Rights of possession are essentially registered squatters’ rights, and such right depend on actual possession. To buy rights of possession to a parcel of land that nobody works, on which nobody grazes animals, on which no structure has been built is to buy from someone who is not in possession and thus has no interest to sell. It can get more complicated than that, but the abandonment of a property for which rights of possession are registered means that those rights are extinguished.

 

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Editorial, Venezuela and Panama

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Venes
Photographer, like the protester, anonymous.

And NOW in Venezuela…

We get more signs of military unrest. Given Venezuela’s history, Latin America’s history, the severe and intractable nature of a Venezuelan economic collapse and a Venezuelan civilian politics that’s about bitter power struggles with hardly a thought for what to do about the country, a military coup would not be a huge surprise. The Bolivarian army stepping in to depose a Bolivarian president who is in the process of tearing up the Bolivarian constitution? Might happen. Any number of other possibilities, most of them awful, may be in store for Venezuela instead. If there is an afterlife, poor Simón Bolívar — who experienced comparable bitterness in his lifetime.

What should it mean for Panama?

First of all, that President Varela uncritically joins with President Trump in efforts to topple President Maduro makes it reasonable to suspect that the present policy of Panama would sign away Panama’s sovereignty as an independent republic. Perhaps the worst victims along the way would be other sister Latin American republic from which this country would serve as a springboard for an attack from the north. Panama should work with other Latin American countries, and only act to the extent that there is a consensus, to assist Venezuela past its troubles. A return to servile foreign policies of the past is a concern for Panamanians, not just for the people in other countries that are targets for foreign intervention.

Second, Panama can’t solve the terrible individual problems of the millions of Venezuelans. Asylum for political figures facing arrest over political charges is a traditional expression of Panamanian neutrality and assistance for peace processes, but it should first be fairly impartial as the tides of fortune move in and out and second should not be a license for anybody to use Panama as a platform from which to direct, arm or incite a civil war in another country. The many Venezuelans who have already come here? The hatred against them needs to stop. So long as they obey our laws their integration into Panamanian society should unfold. But our own economy is weak and we just can’t take in a much more populous nation whose real income has been cut in half over the past few years. One thing should be certain for Panamanians: anyone who would become president of Panama running on a platform of hating our neighbors would ultimately turn on fellow Panamanians as well. That person is unfit to hold that office which she or he seeks.

Third, Venezuela has a large outstanding debt to Panama, but as a nation Venezuela also helped Panama through some of our hard times. As the chaos lifts Panama should be generous, astute and looking out for Panama’s needs in negotiations to settle the debt. A process in which Goldman Sachs gets dibs on Venezuela’s oil revenues and what’s owed to Panama gets forgotten ought to be an unacceptable outcome here.

 

Bear in mind…

 

Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.
Dorothy Parker

 

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.
Margaret Mead

 

All who have served the Revolution have plowed the sea.
Simón Bolívar

 

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