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Riding with the heavies / Cabalgano con los pesados

September 22, 2023
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The outlaw bikers of lore, or something. Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov’s sketch of the painting of St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv. State Museum of the history of religion, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Oil on canvas, 1887. A Wikimedia graphic. “Warriors of The Apocalypse.”

A scenic ride for all times – or the end of times
Un paseo panorámico para todos los tiempos

Arlo Guthrie – Motorcycle Song
https://youtu.be/i9S1o2RvcaE?si=qqVd00bIX6KnkZ8a

The Shangri-Las – Leader of the Pack
https://youtu.be/Q8UKf65NOzM?si=0EpbXunWY2h_QWID

Yomira John – Mala Paga
https://youtu.be/oLLoAicSnSI?si=tdGKMo8JMsPpXlOl

Eric Burdon – The Black Plague
https://youtu.be/3ZGbGYms2eI?si=U-EXh0ex4n8kFCee

Robbie Robertson – Fallen Angel
https://youtu.be/0MGXnMLESEA?si=pRAmxCykAQEPT9wR

Carlos Vives – Concierto Viña del Mar 2018
https://youtu.be/07cmLSq8VOY?si=QKw9LUqsxoNbi7B9

Tracy Chapman – Fast Car
https://youtu.be/yvGfVdx-gNo?si=GIhHq-V-pYD8KNO5

Aterciopelados – Maligno
https://youtu.be/ih1XaIi9BBM?si=AvdZpvi4gGcCzFfZ

Bruce Springsteen – The River
https://youtu.be/lc6F47Z6PI4?si=6LOkzBdTNSeVFPYA

Buffy Sainte Marie – Universal Soldier
https://youtu.be/zYEsFQ_gt7c?si=j-SLYKk30tsLuy_Y

Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower
https://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY?si=xdJdsvh8K5mCu5GX

Atahualpa Yupanqui – Los ejes de mi carreta
https://youtu.be/w9g9jvZ4yJ0?si=vD7oBPf7F882pfsA

Mercedes Sosa – Acústico
https://youtu.be/uooknhj5EiU?si=ivVK8YFiZaWkl4JN

Fugees – No Woman, No Cry
https://youtu.be/kOmhVEiq95I?si=KL0_G6SmdQ8RFqFb

Rubén Blades – Tierra Dura
https://youtu.be/ooZYWgwJfqc?si=OTlTjnMKhjnD4g9H

The Cranberries – Zombie
https://youtu.be/6Ejga4kJUts?si=lxyJZ17rOUHnw0rt

Jan & Dean – Dead Man’s Curve
https://youtu.be/yrCuMPeSu9s?si=c9Fg6pyuV1AeZxLu

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What Western Hemisphere leaders are saying, part 2

September 21, 2023
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“The solution does not depend on how much money a state has, but on how much political will its rulers have.” Guillermo Lasso, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly. UN photo.

What leaders in the Americas said at the United Nations General Assembly – Part 2

Ecuador – Guillermo Lasso Mendoza

Suriname – Chandrikpersad Santokhi

Guyana – Mohamed Irfaan Ali

Honduras – Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento

Dominican Republic – Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona

Chile – Gabriel Boric Font

Editor’s note: The links above are to the English side of the UN website, the videos of which are in English. You can go to the Spanish side and listen to the videos in Spanish.
Nota de la redacción: Los enlaces anteriores llevan al lado inglés del sitio web de la ONU, cuyos videos están en inglés. Puedes ir al lado español y escuchar los videos en español.

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Tuesday afternoon running errands in Penonome

September 20, 2023
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You’re dealing with a bus rider, a guy on a limited budget who is neither singing the blues nor hitting you up for the money to buy an SUV. This is actually an out-the window picture from the bus about to head home, from the bus piquera on the east end of the El Boulevard shopping center, looking north with the mountains of Cocle in the distance.

Errands in Penonome

photos and notes by Eric Jackson

The town of Penonome is a fascinating little place, including for a history major like I was and for a long-time urban policy observer. The city center is this congested stronghold of small and medium-sized businesses, from the sidewalk stalls of informal vendors to the often ethnic Chinese or Arab owned stores to the public market. The place, said to be named after the Spanish conquerors’ execution of an indigenous resistance leader named Nomé — “aquí penó Nomé — was a place for ranchers and farmers to buy what they needed and sell what they could, around which a provincial government and religious center grew up. Much later came the internal combustion engine, which made the city center terribly congested, one part of which was nightmarish to find parking. There have been adaptations over the years but the downtown is still pretty bad in that sense.

This reporter has seen it much worse, but too many cars is a feature of downtown Penonome. Would it be a heresy over which political careers would be destroyed if parking on the street were limited and pay-to-park structures erected at spots around the downtown. Probably. Bear in mind that car owners are outnumbered by bus riders but the former include almost all of the political donor base.

What’s a would-be small-time capitalist to do? Grab a space on the sidewalk. Sell from the back of a truck. Set up shop in one of the alleys or walkways between the rows of storefronts. Open a shop upstairs in a place that used to be home for the owner of a downstairs business.

Conversion of old land uses is an interesting feature of Penonome, surely the stuff of dissertations and books on legal, architectural and economic history if there are enough nerds like this reporter to buy them. However, seeing something and knowing that it must have a history is not the same thing as knowing that history. Part of the problem in Panama is the legacy of criminal defamation laws wherein alleged defamation of a dead person could be considered a crime, EVEN IF what is published is absolutely true but makes some historical figure with that sort of a living relative who would press charges look bad. The crime is “injuria,” as in ‘You damaged my late great-grandfather’s reputation by telling the tale of this affair he had with a teenager when he was in his 50s and the urban policy consequences of that’ — even if the story is true.

In any case, it makes for enhanced charm, mystery and opportunities when shopping in downtown Penonome.

‘Come with me to the Kasbah!’ Penonome is not a North African citadel, but it’s not such a huge stretch of the imagination to see a line of urban culture that runs right back through Arab Spain. I go to other barbers but I may be back here to get new eyeglasses. And is the Internet cafe upstairs from one of these warrens still in business?

So, through the built-up alley to the next street over to more stops on my mission. Food for myself, bones for the dogs, maybe a fish to share — Penonome’s public market! On this Tuesday afternoon the place wasn’t very full or busy — nothing much in the butchers’ and seafood vendors’ section. The pickings would likely have been much better there had it been a morning visit. Broccoli, piva nuts and onions, ¡sí hay! And some tools that I need to get but don’t care to carry with me on this afternoon. Just got me a chacara in El Valle, but that and other handicrafts are in an upstairs loft at the market. And then on the corner, in the same building as the market but apart from it, the little bakery with the excellent cheese bread that I can’t resist when in the area.

Along the side street that runs by the market, there are all of these little hardware and farm supply businesses. I go to some of these in search of garden seeds, and on the other side of the street sometimes the informal plant vendors have some worthy things for the garden, usually more on the decorative than the food production side. But I was in search of dog medicine here. Did not find what I needed at Melo, in front of which this unfortunate little guy was camped out. A couple of doors down I found the mite spray for dogs that I needed.

I could have found the rest of the items for which I specifically searched at the mini-supers in the area, but as a bus rider there are limitations. Often times, how much I can afford is not so nearly as important as how much I can — or want to — carry.

Plus, as the COVID epidemic was about to hit us, the local government was making a move against congestion. The main terminal for Penonome to Panama buses was moved just across the Pan-American Highway from the entrance to the downtown area, and the main place to get a bus to other destinations in Cocle province moved to the east side of the El Boulevard shopping center. This move made that place, economically, and I wonder about the details of that set of political decisions. In any case, the move of most of the bus congestion out of the downtown area made urban planning sense from that perspective, even if it meant urban sprawl to the west.

The new configuration, for me, meant that I could go to El Boulevard and there shop at El Rey for dinner for myself, the cats and the dogs, pick up some things at the bakery, grab a cold little bottle of a South American soft drink, get me a couple of pieces of hsiu mai to snack upon, AND catch a bus that would let me off very close to my home in El Bajito de Juan Diaz de Anton. How much I have to carry, how far — AND how many buses I need to take — all figured into the calculation.

HOW FAR to the west, along the Pan-American Highway, should Penonome sprawl? This is looking west from the west end of El Boulevard, with a ticky-tack subdivision in the background and windmills beyond that. Do not let the windmills coat everything in your mind in shades of green. Urban sprawl is a hydra-headed set of environmental issues in its own right. Even when it helps to solve some downtown congestion problems.

On the way home, I noticed banners and spray-painted slogans against the mining colony project. But on this afternoon the broad masses of workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals were not blocking traffic.

The cars, buses and trucks DID slow down a bit to watch a street juggler, a young man talented at what he does. People were opening their windows to give him money for his service. Life and the informal economy in Cocle’s provincial seat.

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What Western Hemisphere leaders are saying, part 1

September 20, 2023
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Nito Cortizo: “The climate crisis is a ticking time bomb and time is running out for all of us.” UN photo.

What leaders in the Americas said at the United Nations General Assembly – Part 1

Panama – Lauretino Cortizo Cohen

Brazil – Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Colombia – Gustavo Petro Urrego

Cuba – Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez

Bolivia – Luis Alberto Arce Catacora

El Salvador – Nayib Armando Bukele

Argentina – Alberto Fernández

Uruguay – Luis Lacalle Pou

Paraguay – Santiago Peña Palacios

United States – Joseph R. Biden

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Pizzigati, Auto Workers give hope to the rest of the working class

September 18, 2023
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We’re not the problem. Corporate Greed is the problem!#StandUpUAW pic.twitter.com/h65Q7cRrIa
— UAW (@UAW) September 18, 2023

Unionized workers are showing the rest of us that the rich don’t always have to get richer — at everyone else’s expense.

UAW strike gives us new hope for the working class

by Sam Pizzigati — Common Dreams

This past Thursday night, just hours before the expiration of the United Auto Workers contract with Detroit’s Big Three, UAW president Shawn Fain had plenty on his mind.

Most of that plenty would be obvious and predictable. The impending expiration of his union’s auto industry contract, with no new pact in sight. The state of the union’s readiness for what could be the UAW’s most pivotal strike since 1937. But Fain had something else on his mind as well: the continuing and unforgivable maldistribution of America’s income and wealth.

“Just as in the 1930s,” Fain reminded his fellow auto workers, “we’re living in a time of stunning inequality throughout our society.”

Back then, in those 1930s, UAW members began a generation-long struggle that put a significant dent in that “stunning inequality.” By the early 1960s, auto worker struggles and sacrifices had helped give birth — in the United States — to a mass middle class. A majority of a major nation’s households, after paying for life’s most basic necessities, actually had money left over.

In all of world history, that had never before happened.

We have numbers that can help tell this dramatic story. In 1928, just before the Great Depression hit, households in America’s richest 0.1 percent held a quarter of the nation’s wealth, households in the bottom 90 percent only just over 15 percent. By the mid-1970s, that bottom 90 percent wealth share had more than doubled, to a third of the total.

And the richest 0.1 percent? The super wealthy’s share of the nation’s wealth had plummeted — over those same years — from a quarter of America’s treasure to just over 7 percent.

But then a grand turnaround began. Since 1976, as the economists Thomas Blanchet, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman have detailed, the pretax incomes of America’s top 0.1 percent have jumped ten times faster than the incomes of working adults in the nation’s middle 40 percent.

Over those same years, the real incomes of working-age adults in the top 0.01 percent have soared 856 percent. The poorest half of the nation’s working adults, in that same 47-year span, have hardly seen any increase at all, with their incomes rising just a minuscule 21 percent.

Autoworker take-homes have been doing even worse. Their real wages have actually been sinking over recent years. Between 2008 and July 2023, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute reported earlier this week, real average hourly earnings for US auto manufacturing workers fell 19.3 percent.

Top auto industry execs, meanwhile, have been watching their earnings skyrocket. CEO compensation at the auto industry’s Big Three — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, the corporate outfit that’s swallowed up Chrysler — has jumped 40 percent over the past four years, with each of the three CEOs last year taking home at least $21 million. GM’s current chief exec has pocketed over $200 million since 2014.

These same three corporate auto giants, the Economic Policy Institute adds, have “paid out nearly $66 billion in shareholder dividend payments and stock buybacks” over the past decade, not counting the $14 billion in dividends and buybacks shelled out so far this year.

The Big Three’s overall $250 billion in profits since 2013, the EPI goes on to point out, “amounts to nearly $1.7 million for each of the roughly 150,000 workers covered by UAW collective bargaining agreements.”

UAW president Shawn Fain seems to understand — just like his UAW predecessors back in the middle of the 20th century — that any real economic justice for auto workers is always going to demand imaginative struggle on multiple fronts. Striking UAW workers in 1937 didn’t just walk the picket line. They staged sit-down strikes that captured the imagination of working people the nation over.

And that early UAW didn’t just bring imagination to collective bargaining. UAW activists advanced bold egalitarian proposals on other key fronts as well, most strikingly on taxes.

In April 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent federal income tax rate on income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $470,000 in today’s dollars. Who convinced FDR to push for that income cap? A New York Times report gave that credit to the UAW.

FDR didn’t end up getting Congress to give him a green light on that 100 percent top tax rate. But by 1944 our nation’s richest would face a 94 percent tax rate on income over $400,000, and that top rate would hover around 90 percent for the next two decades, years that would see the distribution of US income and wealth become significantly more equal.

In other words, the rich don’t always have to get richer — at everyone else’s expense. The distribution of US income and wealth can change, over relatively brief stretches of time and to a consequential extent.

The last time that consequential change took place in the United States, the UAW played a consequential role. That role may now be re-emerging.

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Editorials: Alleyne’s baggage; and A changing world order

September 18, 2023
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A protest in Los Santos of those denied compensation for DEG injuries or deaths in their families. Uncredited photo from Twitter.

Triple whammy – or worse – for the PRD

You have to consider what the real objectives of all the players really are to fully evaluate the PRD’s blunder over the weekend. If it’s the acceptance of a forgettable and losing slate at the top of the ticket but retention of as many down-ballot elected offices as possible there might be a certain sense to it. If it’s a party purge with an eye toward the future, an exchange of catastrophic defeat in the next elections for a party without its current dissidents for how many years it may have to wander in the political wilderness, that also might make a certain perverse sense

Gaby Carrizo is a cartoon character candidate running at the head of Omar Torrijos’s party on a platform of establishing a vast foreign-owned mining colony across much of Panama. That’s bad enough for them, and bad enough for Panama. Now he has chosen Dr. Camilo Alleyne as his running mate in the vice presidential slot.

As in Dr. Alleyne, Martín Torrijos’s health minister during the 2006 mass poisoning by the government scandal. As in delaying prompt public notice that there was a problem, ostensibly to prevent panic, but really to avoid political embarrassment until after a referendum. People eventually did panic, but the most important thing to remember is that people died of taking government-issue cough syrup made with deadly poisonous diethylene glycol – DEG – because that danger was kept secret from them.

Then, as people were dying and becoming so sick as to become disabled, the Torrijos administration with Alleyne as its health minister cut corners on assistance to the victims. Knowing full well that DEG quickly decomposes so as to be undetectable in the human body, whether living or dead, the government took the position that if no DEG was found in the body or corpse the poisoning didn’t happen and so no assistance was owed to the victims.

Now that Martín Torrijos has strayed from the fold, most probably the Alleyne nomination will bring this sordid history front and center and doom both the PRD and the Torrijos campaigns.

Meanwhile, PRD legislator turned independent fascist presidential candidate Zulay Rodríguez – who got slaughted by Nito Cortizo in the 2018 PRD presidential primary but not so badly as Camilo Alleyne did – suddenly has her political troubles enhanced. The Electoral Tribunal is considering a motion to lift her candidate’s immunity, which might require her to spend much of the campaign season defending herself before the Supreme Court against allegations that as a lawyer she stole from one of her clients.

Will other unfavorable things come up to make it a quadruple or quintuple whammy for the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party? Perhaps.

Will the Ricky Martinelli be in prison before Election Day, perhaps having been thrown off of the ballot? That’s a likely scenario. He has already been convicted and faces new trials shortly. Will Roux and Blandón come off as a ridiculous ticket, new faces on an old alliance between two parties that failed when it was tried before? Could be.

With no absolute majority need to win nor likely to happen, might a PRD “We may stink but the other guys are worse” pitch work? Perhaps, but then there may come a question of whether a presidency arising from that would be able to effectively govern. The PRD move to revise the rules for electing legislators at this late date, it it succeeds, would mainly aggravate stability and governability questions for Panama.

Bad move, you guys. But could we have expected anything better?

Foreign Minister Janaina Tewaney explains this country’s diplomacy to some of Panama’s brighter high school kids. The world is changing and people of all ages will need to know how to adapt. Ministry of Foreign Relations photo.

Rearranging Panama’s foreign relations

The best defense for this country and its canal is neutrality, so as not to give anybody and special geopolitical reason to attack us. This past Thursday, Friday and Saturday Panamanian Foreign Minister Janaina Tewaney was in Cuba for the Group of 77+China summit, essentially the successor to the old league on non-aligned countries that had back in the 70s so solidly supported Panama’s drive to end the Canal Zone and gain control of this nation’s principal industrial asset, the canal. Earlier, Panama requested observer status in the BRICS groiup, so named after it founders Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa but in the process of expanding.

In Havana the subject of migrant invasions across our border with Colombia was one of the topics broached. Venezuela, Cuba and China are all sources of some of that migration and they were all at the conference. There was a consensus there that US economic strangulation moves against Venezuela and Cuba, and botched US efforts to determine how Haiti is governed, are major instigators of the migration crisis.

Panama looks for a savior in those groups only in vain. The countries have their problems with one another, and several of them have their histories of problems with Panama. A state-backed Brazilian company bribed successive Panamanian governments. Some of the countries involved make maritime territorial claims that Panama has historically rejected and should reject. Getting out of a straitjacket imposed by the USA or some consensus of Western powers is a generally worthy aim, but not at the price of Panama becoming a vassal to anyone else.

It’s a necessary, but not an easy, balance for a small country like this one.

Margaret Atwood in Toronto in 2022. Wikimedia photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach.

Nothing makes me more nervous than people who say, ‘It can’t happen here.’ Anything can happen anywhere, given the right circumstances.

Margaret Atwood
speaking to West Point cadets

Bear in mind…

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

Colette

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.

Doug Larson

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

George Orwell

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To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.

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Larres, The US-Iran prisoner swap

September 17, 2023
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Family members of American citizens detained overseas participate in a Bring Back our Families rally on May 3, 2023, in Washington. Photo by Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images.

Ransom or realism? A closer look at
Biden’s prisoner swap deal with Iran

by Klaus W. Larres, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Biden administration’s agreement with Iran for a planned swap of prisoners could be seen as a simple business transaction to free five Iranians from imprisonment in the United States and five Americans, some with dual citizenship, from detention in Iran.

But the agreement has broader implications for US-Iranian relations, the future of Iran’s nuclear program and for the tense relationship between Iran and Israel, which is largely defined by the status of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Under the deal, the United States unfreezes $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue so the Iranian government can purchase humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. The money was frozen in a restricted South Korean bank account in 2018 after then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and reinstated strict US sanctions against Iran. The USA, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany had reached the deal with Iran in 2015.

As part of the hostage agreement, Iranian officials can use the funds only under “strict oversight” of the US Treasury Department. The Biden administration issued a waiver in early September 2023 so that international bank officials don’t fear US penalties when they transfer the once-sanctioned Iranian funds to the central bank of Qatar.

Yet, in the world of global politics, matters are seldom as simple or straightforward as they may appear. In fact, in this instance, they could hardly be more complex. And the geopolitical and domestic stakes involved could hardly be higher. There are three primary reasons for this.

1. Iran has been a long-standing issue in US domestic politics

Ever since the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, which ended President Jimmy Carter’s hopes for a second term in office, few countries have aroused as much emotional hostility in the United States as Iran. As soon as President Joe Biden’s deal with Iran was announced, foreign policy hawks in Congress, mostly from the Republican Party, such as senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, issued dire warnings.

Buses carrying the 52 former American hostages from Iran are mobbed by well-wishers on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, on January 27, 1981. Photo from Bettmann/via Getty Images.

The deal, they argued, would only give Iran incentives to imprison many more Americans on false charges in order to get US ransom payments, which the Iranian regime could use to sponsor international terrorism.

Nor did the deal do anything, they complained, to discourage Iran from attacking US troops in Syria and Iraq, from endangering ship traffic in the Persian Gulf or from selling dangerous drones and other arms to Russia for use in Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Iran may also use American money to support its nuclear program, they contended.

Much of this criticism, though, was based on speculation and false assumptions. For instance, only frozen Iranian funds are involved in the deal, not US money.

Nevertheless, the rancor undermined the Biden administration’s attempt to engage with the ayatollahs in Tehran and eventually use the prisoner swap deal to achieve a new nuclear agreement with Iran. I’d argue, however, that the administration could have communicated the terms of the deal to Congress earlier to better prepare members. While, for instance, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed the bank waiver on September 8, 2023, Congress was informed only three days later.

2. The protest movement in Iran

The prisoner swap is certainly a symbolic victory for Iran and is likely to be celebrated by the country’s government-controlled media. Still, the clerics have now ruled for 44 years, and there are very few people in Iran who have illusions about the totalitarian nature of the ruling elite.

People participate in a demonstration in Brussels, Belgium, against the death of Iranian Mahsa Amini. Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

By contrast, Iranians, especially young ones – those between 13 and 27 – view western movies, music, political freedom and products positively. After the 2022 ban on iPhone sales in Iran, people began buying used iPhones on the black market for much higher prices. More than two-thirds of Iran’s 89 million people are under the age 30.

Many of those young people are participating in the civil unrest and protest movement that is largely led by women. The movement erupted in Iran after the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini. She was a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was arrested by the morality police for allegedly not covering her hair properly.

The movement has severely undermined the credibility of the regime among the Iranian people. While it has given hope in the western world that political changes in Iran are happening, Iran has executed seven protesters and arrested thousands to put the movement down. The United States sanctioned Iran in October 2022 for repressing protesters.

The regime’s unrelenting brutal clampdown on the protests has driven the protesters underground, but the movement continues. In fact, the ongoing movement is the regime’s most severe domestic crisis ever.

3. The future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and global stability

The prisoner swap and the release of the frozen Iranian oil funds have eliminated a long-standing severe obstacle for improving US-Iranian relations. The countries’ interactions have been fraught for so long that their escalation into military conflict is quite feasible.

The prisoner swap confirms to the Iranian regime that the United States is a reliable negotiation partner. This is a crucial basis for the reopening of formal nuclear negotiations, which the European Union intends to begin in the next few months.

In the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, the Iranian regime agreed not to develop a nuclear bomb in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. But ever since the Trump administration withdrew from the deal, Iran has been ratcheting up its enrichment of uranium close to the 90% purity level needed to produce nuclear weapons.

All attempts to go back to the 2015 agreement have proven futile so far. In 2022, reconvened talks collapsed before they had even started. Iran wished to obtain a US commitment that any deal reached could not again be overturned by the next president. The Biden administration was in no position to promise anything like this.

Nevertheless, according to media reports, during indirect US-Iranian talks in Oman in May 2023, the United State and Iran reached an understanding on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Iran reportedly committed itself to not enriching uranium to a purity level beyond 60%, not allowing Iranian proxy forces to attack US troops in Syria and Iraq and not arming Russia more extensively. Omani officials served as messengers for the two countries.

Officially, both the Biden administration and Iranian leaders dispute that they reached an informal agreement. Each side fears a domestic backlash.

Roxanne Tahbaz, the daughter of Morad Tahbaz, who is being held in Iran, holds placards outside government offices in London on April 13, 2022. Photo by Rob Pinney/Getty Images

The planned prisoner swap will go well beyond getting imprisoned US citizens out of Iran and releasing frozen Iranian oil funds for humanitarian reasons. It may well be the basis for making sure that Iran will refrain from attacking American troops, endangering international shipping lines and arming Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Most importantly, the prisoner swap might be a decisive step for the West in reaching a new informal nuclear limitation agreement with Iran. This would stabilize the entire Middle East by preventing an Israeli attack on Iran if Iran were to further develop a nuclear bomb.

Klaus W. Larres, Adjunct Professor of the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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

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De XIW (MIEDO) documental guatemalteco de 2022.

Películas sobre las realidades centroamericanas en el Festival ICARO

por Roberto Enrique King — GECU

De Domingo y La Niebla (drama costarricense de 2022)

6° FESTIVAL DE CINE ICARO PANAMÁ – OCTUBRE 2023PANAMÁ: – CINE UNIVERSITARIO – LUNES 2 AL VIERNES 7TANDAS: 3, 5 Y 7 PMENTRADA GRATISPROGRAMACIÓN SUJETA A CAMBIOS

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“Consistency matters. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat,” Ocasio-Cortéz asserted. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz speaks during an appearance on CBS “Face the Nation” on September 24, 2023. Photo: CBS News screen grab.

“Extremely Serious”—AOC becomes the first House progressive to call for Menendez resignation

by Brett Wilkins—Common Dreams

What leaders in the Americas said at the United Nations General Assembly – Part 3

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The outlaw bikers of lore, or something. Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov’s sketch of the painting of St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv. State Museum of the history of religion, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Oil on canvas, 1887. A Wikimedia graphic. “Warriors of The Apocalypse.”

A scenic ride for all times – or the end of timesUn paseo panorámico para todos los tiempos

Arlo Guthrie – Motorcycle Songhttps://youtu.be/i9S1o2RvcaE?si=qqVd00bIX6KnkZ8a

The Shangri-Las – Leader of the Packhttps://youtu.be/Q8UKf65NOzM?si=0EpbXunWY2h_QWID

Yomira John – Mala Pagahttps://youtu.be/oLLoAicSnSI?si=tdGKMo8JMsPpXlOl

Eric Burdon – The Black Plaguehttps://youtu.be/3ZGbGYms2eI?si=U-EXh0ex4n8kFCee

Robbie Robertson – Fallen Angelhttps://youtu.be/0MGXnMLESEA?si=pRAmxCykAQEPT9wR

Carlos Vives – Concierto Viña del Mar 2018https://youtu.be/07cmLSq8VOY?si=QKw9LUqsxoNbi7B9

Tracy Chapman – Fast Carhttps://youtu.be/yvGfVdx-gNo?si=GIhHq-V-pYD8KNO5

Aterciopelados – Malignohttps://youtu.be/ih1XaIi9BBM?si=AvdZpvi4gGcCzFfZ

Bruce Springsteen – The Riverhttps://youtu.be/lc6F47Z6PI4?si=6LOkzBdTNSeVFPYA

Buffy Sainte Marie – Universal Soldierhttps://youtu.be/zYEsFQ_gt7c?si=j-SLYKk30tsLuy_Y

Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtowerhttps://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY?si=xdJdsvh8K5mCu5GX

Atahualpa Yupanqui – Los ejes de mi carretahttps://youtu.be/w9g9jvZ4yJ0?si=vD7oBPf7F882pfsA

Mercedes Sosa – Acústicohttps://youtu.be/uooknhj5EiU?si=ivVK8YFiZaWkl4JN

Fugees – No Woman, No Cryhttps://youtu.be/kOmhVEiq95I?si=KL0_G6SmdQ8RFqFb

Rubén Blades – Tierra Durahttps://youtu.be/ooZYWgwJfqc?si=OTlTjnMKhjnD4g9H

The Cranberries – Zombiehttps://youtu.be/6Ejga4kJUts?si=lxyJZ17rOUHnw0rt

Jan & Dean – Dead Man’s Curvehttps://youtu.be/yrCuMPeSu9s?si=c9Fg6pyuV1AeZxLu

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“The solution does not depend on how much money a state has, but on how much political will its rulers have.” Guillermo Lasso, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly. UN photo.

What leaders in the Americas said at the United Nations General Assembly – Part 2

Errands in Penonome

photos and notes by Eric Jackson

Nito Cortizo: “The climate crisis is a ticking time bomb and time is running out for all of us.” UN photo.

What leaders in the Americas said at the United Nations General Assembly – Part 1

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Unionized workers are showing the rest of us that the rich don’t always have to get richer — at everyone else’s expense.

UAW strike gives us new hope for the working class

by Sam Pizzigati — Common Dreams

A protest in Los Santos of those denied compensation for DEG injuries or deaths in their families. Uncredited photo from Twitter.

Triple whammy – or worse – for the PRD

Foreign Minister Janaina Tewaney explains this country’s diplomacy to some of Panama’s brighter high school kids. The world is changing and people of all ages will need to know how to adapt. Ministry of Foreign Relations photo.

Rearranging Panama’s foreign relations

Margaret Atwood in Toronto in 2022. Wikimedia photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach.

Bear in mind…

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Family members of American citizens detained overseas participate in a Bring Back our Families rally on May 3, 2023, in Washington. Photo by Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images.

Ransom or realism? A closer look at Biden’s prisoner swap deal with Iran

by Klaus W. Larres, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

1. Iran has been a long-standing issue in US domestic politics

Buses carrying the 52 former American hostages from Iran are mobbed by well-wishers on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, on January 27, 1981. Photo from Bettmann/via Getty Images.

2. The protest movement in Iran

People participate in a demonstration in Brussels, Belgium, against the death of Iranian Mahsa Amini. Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

3. The future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and global stability

Roxanne Tahbaz, the daughter of Morad Tahbaz, who is being held in Iran, holds placards outside government offices in London on April 13, 2022. Photo by Rob Pinney/Getty Images

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6° FESTIVAL DE CINE ICARO PANAMÁ – OCTUBRE 2023
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ENTRADA GRATIS
PROGRAMACIÓN SUJETA A CAMBIOS

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A scenic ride for all times – or the end of times
Un paseo panorámico para todos los tiempos

Arlo Guthrie – Motorcycle Song
https://youtu.be/i9S1o2RvcaE?si=qqVd00bIX6KnkZ8a

The Shangri-Las – Leader of the Pack
https://youtu.be/Q8UKf65NOzM?si=0EpbXunWY2h_QWID

Yomira John – Mala Paga
https://youtu.be/oLLoAicSnSI?si=tdGKMo8JMsPpXlOl

Eric Burdon – The Black Plague
https://youtu.be/3ZGbGYms2eI?si=U-EXh0ex4n8kFCee

Robbie Robertson – Fallen Angel
https://youtu.be/0MGXnMLESEA?si=pRAmxCykAQEPT9wR

Carlos Vives – Concierto Viña del Mar 2018
https://youtu.be/07cmLSq8VOY?si=QKw9LUqsxoNbi7B9

Tracy Chapman – Fast Car
https://youtu.be/yvGfVdx-gNo?si=GIhHq-V-pYD8KNO5

Aterciopelados – Maligno
https://youtu.be/ih1XaIi9BBM?si=AvdZpvi4gGcCzFfZ

Bruce Springsteen – The River
https://youtu.be/lc6F47Z6PI4?si=6LOkzBdTNSeVFPYA

Buffy Sainte Marie – Universal Soldier
https://youtu.be/zYEsFQ_gt7c?si=j-SLYKk30tsLuy_Y

Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower
https://youtu.be/TLV4_xaYynY?si=xdJdsvh8K5mCu5GX

Atahualpa Yupanqui – Los ejes de mi carreta
https://youtu.be/w9g9jvZ4yJ0?si=vD7oBPf7F882pfsA

Mercedes Sosa – Acústico
https://youtu.be/uooknhj5EiU?si=ivVK8YFiZaWkl4JN

Fugees – No Woman, No Cry
https://youtu.be/kOmhVEiq95I?si=KL0_G6SmdQ8RFqFb

Rubén Blades – Tierra Dura
https://youtu.be/ooZYWgwJfqc?si=OTlTjnMKhjnD4g9H

The Cranberries – Zombie
https://youtu.be/6Ejga4kJUts?si=lxyJZ17rOUHnw0rt

Jan & Dean – Dead Man’s Curve
https://youtu.be/yrCuMPeSu9s?si=c9Fg6pyuV1AeZxLu

These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
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These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
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Ransom or realism? A closer look at
Biden’s prisoner swap deal with Iran