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

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DEG
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?

  

2
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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Larres, The US-Iran prisoner swap

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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.

Hundreds of people stand on a sidewalk waving American flags and yellow ribbons at a line of passing buses.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, some sitting, others standing protest outside. Some hold placards while others use their hands to demonstrate the peace sign.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.

A woman standing outdoors holds two signs in her hands. One reads, 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.The Conversation

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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El festival de cine ICARO 2023 se centrará en el desarrollo de nuevos artistas

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icaro
La maestra española, realizadora Helena de Llanos.

Potente programa de actividades formativas
ofrecerá el Festival de Cine ICARO Panamá

por Roberto Enrique King – GECU

El 16° FESTIVAL DE CINE ICARO PANAMÁ 2022, que tendrá como sede principal en la ciudad capital al Cine Universitario del 2 al 7 de octubre próximo, además de ponernos al día con recientes películas centroamericanas, busca dar un aporte al desarrollo y capacitación de los cineastas y estudiantes audiovisuales de nuestro medio, a través de un programa de actividades formativas que de manera gratuita serán dictadas por talentosos especialistas nacionales e internacionales, organizado por el GECU de la Universidad de Panamá y Fundación FAE, gracias a los auspicios de DICINE del Ministerio de Cultura.

La programación formativa tiene previstos los talleres presenciales de Gerencia de Locaciones con estándares internacionales, por el especialista de México, Armando Escobar; El arte de la Asistencia de Dirección, por el experto de Venezuela, Daniel Isaac y de Post producción – Material On Set, a cargo del cineasta de Panamá, José Guardia, y los virtuales: Distribución cinematográfica para proyectos en desarrollo, que dictará la productora, Luisa Padilla, de Nicaragua y El guion y la ficción de archivo, por la realizadora Helena de Llanos de España. Todos gratuitos, previa inscripción.

También se dará, en el marco del festival y en coordinación con el Centro de Formación y Capacitación Cinematográfica del GECU, el taller presencial de Foto Fija para cine, que dictará el fotógrafo de México, Hans Brauns, este con un donativo de inscripción y con opciones de becas parciales. Info sobre este en específico al 6667-1379.

Además, se realizarán mesas redondas, conversatorios y encuentros de distintas temáticas durante los días del festival, con realizadores nacionales e internacionales. Mayor información sobre el programa de talleres y el festival en general al 6252-5255 o escribir a icaropanama@gmail.com y en Facebook, Twiter, Instagram: @IcaroPanama / www.icaropanama.com El festival se trasladará a Chiriquí y Bocas del Toro del 9 al 13 de octubre, con su selección de películas de la región.

 

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Bernal, Enough of this complicit silence

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In Santiago #PanamaValeMasSinMineria. This is no mere academic debate, nor some business dispute playing out through partisan politics. As broad as the movement against the Mining colony is, it’s also so deep that neutrality gets taken as complicity on campus. Photo from Raisa Banfield’s Twitter feed.

Open letter to the rector

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

Citizen Eduardo Flores
Rector of the University of Panama
ESD [a Spanish abbreviation that means “left in your office”]

Mr. Rector,

The deafening silence that you maintain, as rector of our main house of higher education, in the face of the leonine contract signed by the government (behind the population’s back) with Minera and First Quantum, is clearly unacceptable.

Your silence and that of the organizations, institutes and university authorities is also worrying given that it is the institution that you direct, towards which not only its students, but also the youth of other academic institutions look, waiting for the information, instruction and education on the subject that the government and its vegueres today deny.

At such a crucial moment for the country, not assuming the principles and teachings of Octavio Mendez Pereira tarnishes him before the face of the country and does not make him worthy of the position, as he betrays the country.

I allow myself to parody the note that, in 1921, the distinguished Foreign Minister Narciso Garay Sr. addressed to the US Secretary of State, to tell you, your vice-rectors, deans, directors of regional centers, directors of institutes and others, that they accompany by their complicit silence the government and its disgraceful concessions to the mining company that:

Faced with the unpatriotic standss assumed by the national government and sponsored by the complicit silence of you, citizen rector of the University of Panama and your spoliques, perhaps the Panamanian people will be forced to submit to their harsh destiny, but in their very weakness they will know how to find sufficient energy to cry out to heaven against the injustice and violence to which he is subjected, and to declare that as long as the hearts of Panamanians beat with dignity and love for the country, he will keep alive the deep wound that is being attempted to be inflicted on his dignity and haughtiness and will look, with growing anxiety, towards the immediate future as they await that redemptive justice that is being denied today, but that will come one day by the inexorable design of God.

by a leading citizen,

Miguel Antonio Bernal Villalaz
cedula 8-153-2773
full professor of the Faculty of Law at the University of Panama


Editor’s note: Shortly after this was written the rector announced that there will be a teach-in of sorts about the subject of the proposed mine contract with the aim of formulating an institutional position, but he has not stated a personal opinion about this matter.

 

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¿Wappin? Diciendo cosas subversivas con sus pies

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sinister footwear
Do they let you wear these in a Panamanian government office?
¿Te dejan llevar estos en una oficina del gobierno panameño?

Es viernes – ¿Cómo estás calzada?
It’s Friday – how are YOU shod?

Sofía Valdés — XPoNential Music Festival 2021
https://youtu.be/OuEwnIwC09s?si=I3cu0l-jd79JLP-z

Inti Illimani – El país que soñamos
https://youtu.be/vBuAbQ20ONY?si=2SrHUXkKcwHllGzJ

Randy Weston – With These Hands
https://youtu.be/K-MLAUP81mM?si=iz1qwFtxgp92-lH

Shakira – Hips Don’t Lie / Objección
https://youtu.be/zAxmn4ihqNg?si=P7L7glc7SmuihTMi

Mon Laferte & Enrique Bunbury – Mi Buen Amor
https://youtu.be/j2mUO4QElWE?si=uLs265hZTlFHzSGC

Mahalia Jackson – Live in London 1964
https://youtu.be/7_jGkJg0OFw?si=jHIpzCUH8R1ZOvgO

The Earls – Remember Then
https://youtu.be/4SAMTRHgNGQ?si=hCHRupoCQ2V-KmgW

Los Mozambiques – El Niño y El Perro
https://youtu.be/3CZiavWtv6Y?si=PYQhNujH1ZbpZrpj

Sippie Wallace – Trouble Everywhere I Roam
https://youtu.be/dIC7ZrzQjJQ?si=0Rctrr0VqMiAIKAK

The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra – Frank Zappa’s Sinister Footwear
https://youtu.be/PT0GSsllWYg?si=EC-MvLsknQxOvVFX

Tracy Chapman – Across the Lines
https://youtu.be/fEHXyFmdVeI?si=IRDuSgrOLGBoG_5b

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Dinero2

Dystopias could be worse…

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deviationism
Is there theramin music that goes with this?

A Panamanian way of life

by Eric Jackson

What can I say? I’m this weird old hippie with roots in the old underground press of the USA. Did that experience pervert me by exposing me to the personal classified ads in some of the raunchier media of the genre, like the old Los Angeles Free Press in which the late Harlan Ellison wrote his classic The Glass Teat television reviews? (Think that the actual case is that I was a sickie to begin with.)

Anyway in that old sub-genre of the US press, “SM” or “S&M” has a specific meaning, different from “SM” or “S/M” here. Go by a place in Panama that calls itself “S/M Ibeth” and you will not be greeted at the door by some lady named Ibeth and decked out in black leather regalia. It will be a little supermarket.

In the old LA Freep, the initials would more properly go with an ad like:

“You scummy CREEP! Call Vanessa RIGHT NOW for the discipline you crave”!

But then, for Gringos of yet a different mindset, “SM” could stand for yet another nightmarish perversion: SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.

I have been spending some time dealing with that lately. I was born in Panama to US citizens, and that makes me a dual citizen. And as a Panamanian I have had occasion to use the private and the bifurcated public health care systems. As a Panamanian working in the informal sector – by various counts among the majority or at least plurality of working men and women here, outnumbering the government employees and also those with formal jobs in the private sector – I am not covered by Seguro Social. However, I can pay to use their services, and in other cases I will use the Ministry of Health’s separate public system, which also charges fees for services.

The ULAPS clinic in San Jose, a short walk from Coronado, was doing a senior citizens’ health checkup drive in August and at my brother’s suggestion we went to partake. He’s covered by Seguro Social, but I am not. I have to pay a dollar to see the doctor, he gets that service for free.

La doctora, this overworked lady, does largely triage and referral work. After a cursory history taking and very basic exam, she sent me elsewhere for this and that test. Blood and urine work. An EKG. A series of blood pressure tests. A prostate cancer screening. Most of that done, I came back with a sheaf of test results papers and paid another dollar, waited most of the morning and into the early afternoon, and she reviewed the results and gave me a prescription. No gout problems this time. Nor blood sugar issues of concern. She did warn me about greasy foods and cholesterol in my diet.

HOWEVER, I have grown so old and buzzardly and cantankerous that she put me on blood pressure medication. I took her prescription to the pharmacy window at the other side of the little building, and after another brief wait, got a month’s supply.

The medicine stash cost me $1.50.

The horrors of Panama’s socialized medicine.

 

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Editorials, Despite the news suppression…, and An odd alliance

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GULP!
The old adage has been stated in myriad ways, and however put, unity is now common sense around the world. No matter the stuff that a widely despised old political elite and those looking for some crumbs from them might do to make things look otherwise.

The Revolution will not be televised

…but while the street protests were kept out of the mainstream media and well nigh invisible in the social media, in Chiriqui the Chamber of Commerce weighed in against the PRD mining colony proposal and the previously noncommittal neofascist independent presidential candidate – also a PRD legislator – Zuay Rodríguez took here balated stand against this boondoggle.

The handwriting is on the wall. The draft of history’s verdict is edited and polished. But do understand that not everybody counts the same way. PRD politicians may have already counted their money, or may be counting on a landslide defeat next year, which nevertheless leaves a lot of the diputados and representantes in place. Notwithstanding the polls, the popular opinion expressed from nearly all corners of a complex society and the weight of scientific assessments.

Those who are putting Panama up for sale as a colony may prevail this week or next. It may take generations to undo what they might do. They might get the courts to penalize those who publish the truth about what they are doing. But Panama has reached a consensus and what remains is to get more organized and adamant about it.

  

2
It’s about this, all across Panama. Even if they jam it through the National Assembly now in hopes that voters will have forgotten by next May. Even if they cede Panama’s airspace to a foreign corporation so that nobody can see what they’re destroying.

Alliance time

Now isn’t that the dumbest presidential and vice presidential slate that ever was? Two erstwhile political allies of Ricardo Martinelli, who like Donald Trump is running for president and vowing revenge in hopes of avoiding prison, have papered over their most important disagreement with the announced intention of stopping somebody. Stopping Ricky Martinelli, stopping Gaby Carrizo. Rómulo Roux, a corporate lawyer directly tainted by scandalous mining ties and in favor of a next wave of colonialism for Panama, is on the wrong side of these times. José Isabel Blandón says he’s against the mine contract, but he’s going to be Roux’s running mate anyway. Already we see resignations of old Panameñistas. Plus, while Blandón is signing on with the pro-colonial Roux, the vice mayor from his years of running Panama City’s municipal government, Raisa Banfield, is the de facto main leader of the opposition to the mining colony project. Blandón does not bring all of his party’s base and old friends with him into a pact with Roux.

History and his innately corny demeanor will relegate Carrizo to a place in the national memory that he will not like. Will MOLIRENA stick with him in hope of retaining control over the national lottery? How far Panamanian liberalism has fallen, but that prospect tells us that it can get worse for them.

Martinelli is what he is, and Panama risks unpleasant new impositions from the north if that’s what we get. A coup d’etat, a military invasion, crippling economic sanctions – those sorts of things Panama has seen before. Martinelli will say anything he thinks is convenient, but history shows us his true promise. Uncle Sam’s stated specific objections are about certain financial transactions – points well taken, actually – but at the time and since there has been nary a peep from the US Embassy about burning teenagers to death in front of television cameras. Are Panamanians so desperate as to go for that in exchange for a bag of groceries and a promise of chump change to come? A lot of folks are that demoralized and corrupted and it doesn’t take a majority to elect a president – just a plurality under the dictatorship’s constitution that we still use.

The independents are barred from formal alliances with parties and are likely to serve the sole function of bringing up ideas in the course of lost cause campaigns. Intolerant fascist ideas in the case of Zulay Rodríguez, a leftist agenda which might get partly stolen by the eventual winner put forward by Maribel Gordón.

And then there is Ricardo Lombana. Will he go it alone, or ally himself with one or more political parties? He says that he’s already aligned with a lot of independents down the ticket. He also denounces the traditional parties as hopelessly corrupt and says he is not forming alliances with them. But over the course of this year he has met with Ricardo Martinelli and had cordial things to say, and now the “grand exposé” is that he met with Blandón. So, from the expected crowd of would-be kingmakers comes a hue and cry about how the former diplomat is a liar and a hypocrite. It can be supposed that if Lombana picks a running mate who has some experience in government those cries will go up in volume and pitch. But then, at a time of a weak economy, lives disrupted by a great epidemic, a major crime wave, uncertainties on the regional and world stages, many years of sneering public corruption on our isthmus and lots of nastiness out and about in society, there will be some voters who like the wild idea of a calm and cordial president of Panama.

By the end of the month, alliances will be formed. By the end of December we will know whether the convicted criminal Ricardo Martinelli will be on the ballot and if not, what his replacement would be.

By then the voters should have compiled personal mandatory lists of qualifications and disqualifications, and discerned who actually has a chance of being president. Panamanians should listen to what remains between that time and Election Day. We won’t see perfect government, but we may choose new leaders who do well enough.

  

TF
Tina Fey. Wikimedia photo by Gage Skidmore.

               Confidence is 10% hard work and 90% delusion.

Tina Fey               

  

Bear in mind…

 

There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.


Cicero

  

I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.


Frances Wright

 

  

Rejoice not at thine enemy’s fall – but don’t rush to pick him up either.


Jewish Proverb

 

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Varios, Rechazo abrumador a la colonia minera

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dig out the thugs

Opiniones desde las redes sociales,
realmente la opinón de Panamá

 

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Contact us by email at / Contáctanos por correo electrónico a fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com

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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An El Valle Sunday these days

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a drunk's best friend?
We really can’t be sure if this dog is a Rastafarian Terrier. Recall that Rastafari didn’t actually smoke the sacred ganja weed, but he DID own a brewery. Wouldn’t a well-trained Rastafarian Terrier watch your beer for you? In any case, there is an important background meaning in this photo. El Valle maintains bicycle paths. It also has some nice brick sidewalks. It’s local urban policy and maintenance was into that groove before the COVID epidemic hit, and in the hard times since the corregimiento has invested in its public infrastructures rather than in the representante and political entourage. Photo by Eric Jackson.

Impressions of El Valle on the second Sunday of September, 2023

by Eric Jackson

I did “the loop” in counter-clockwise direction more or less by accident. I might have gone to Anton, grabbed the bus from the piquera to Altos de La Estancia, then grabbed another bus and gone over the rim into the volcano crater floor that is El Valle. Instead the quickest thing available was to head west on the Pan-American Highway, get off at Las Uvas and take another bus for that uphill drive to El Valle. Then after my wandering and missions, take a bus uphill from El Valle to Altos de La Estancia and another downhill to my low-rent neighborhood of El Bajito.

The missions were to take some pictures, make some observations and purchases and most particularly to find me a new chacara.

I ended up getting a garishly colored new bag woven of thick nylon to replace my more typical chacara that now sports a hole that I patch with some safety pins. I’m thinking of a more appropriate and enduring patch, but that trusty old bag is ready for retirement.

First stop at the public market, first of all to use the men’s room, then to look at the handicrafts vendors about a chacara. Thing is, they are selling the little decorative ones at tourist prices, but are not into the thinking of quotidian functional customers, especially weird old hippies who would use a chacara instead of a knapsack.

Going up and down the street to the various merchants who deal in handicrafts, I found what will be a functional chacara. El Valle prices, however, tend to be a bit high. Not too high, given my need and resources and given how long I expect the new bag to last. Perhaps I miscalculate.

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Workout in the gym behind the public market – might the next global chop sockie superstar have begun the journey here? Photo by Eric Jackson.

Then, down to the other missions. A bag of garlic bulbs and another bag of mustard greens — fundamental staples to go with my usual fare of rice or noodles. My big limit, being a buses and on foot kind of guy, is what I can carry. Thus no serious plant shopping on this day. I will be back for some of that, and will also be looking for seeds or fruits and veggies that can produce the same.

Observations?

  • Compared to pre-epidemic times, it’s a dead market for a Sunday.
  • More European, less North American are in the mix of foreigners encountered. A business sign is in German. There are Teutonic young backpackers.
  • Interesting looking new restaurants and cafes have sprouted up, but there are few customers and lots of empty tables.
  • For all the hard times, there is an air of optimism in El Valle.
Looking down on the beaches
Looking down on the beaches from the road on the way downhill from Altos de La Estancia. I went past San Juan de Dios, El Chumical and all these churches en route to my barrio in Juan Diaz de Anton. Photo by Eric Jackson.

The way back? All these drunks, who were nevertheless outnumbered by the devout. In Altos de La Estancia, the mini-supers have everything behind barriers. It shouts out “HIGH CRIME.” I waited at a bus stop at one, right across from a store. Three drunks were congregated there. Was I the only guy who went into that store to purchase other than beer? Gotta do Gatorade to get through the sun and heat of mid-day.

The bus started out well nigh empty but filled up with people coming and going at churches along the way. The Catholics hold their own but mainly people’s Sunday missions were to worship at a plethora of Protestant denominations. One guy was carrying a box with a rooster. I didn’t notice any snake handling on the bus.

Coming and going, lots of abandoned houses and this palatial estate for sale on the road from Las Uvas to El Valle. And what IS that industrial or large-scale commercial thing going in north of me in Juan Diaz?

We will get by these trying times. And who will survive and thrive? Those with the will to endure, mostly.

 

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Latin America’s 9/11 – El 11-S de América Latina

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For many years Henry Kissinger, who as Richard Nixon’s secretary of state played a key role in the instigation of the September 11, 1973 fascist coup in Chile, has been unable to travel much abroad. He reasonably fears being arrested, extradited and put on trial for crimes against humanity. 9/11 in Chile took a death toll of more than 3,000 people, roughly similar to the fatality counts that were suffered by the United States from the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks, and also roughly similar to the casualties of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Durante muchos años Henry Kissinger, que como secretario de Estado de Richard Nixon desempeñó un papel clave en la instigación del golpe fascista del 11 de septiembre de 1973 en Chile, no ha podido viajar mucho al extranjero. Teme razonablemente ser detenido, extraditado y juzgado por crímenes contra la humanidad. El 11-S en Chile se cobró la vida de más de 3.000 personas, cifra aproximadamente similar al recuento de víctimas mortales que sufrió Estados Unidos por los atentados de Al Qaeda del 11 de septiembre de 2001, y también aproximadamente similar a las víctimas mortales del ataque japonés del 7 de diciembre de 1941 a Pearl Harbor.

It Is Forbidden To Forget
Prohibido Olvidar

El sangriento golpe de Pinochet y sus repercusiones en Panamá

por Olmedo Beluche

Se conmemoran 50 años del sangriento golpe de Estado de los militares chilenos, dirigido por Augusto Pinochet, propiciado y financiado por el gobierno de Estados Unidos, encabezado entonces por Richard Nixon y Henry Kissinger, contra el gobierno democrático y socialista del presidente Salvador Allende. Medio siglo desde aquellos hechos que parecen tan lejos, pero a la vez se sienten tan cercanos. La conmoción de aquel acontecimiento no solo afectó la vida del pueblo chileno, sino a la humanidad entera y Panamá no escapó a esa circunstancia.

No podían dejar de estremecer las conciencias los asesinatos de miles de personas, los fusilamientos, las torturas salvajes, los arrestos arbitrarios y tantas formas en que se pisotearon los derechos humanos, con el patrocinio del gobierno norteamericano. Ninguna persona decente podía dejar de llorar, interior o visiblemente, por ver ahogado en sangre el sueño de un mundo mejor, más justo, democrático e igualitario, buscado con métodos democráticos y pacíficos.

Panamá recibió estupefacta la noticia. La televisión reprodujo el último discurso de Salvador Allende y mostró el bombardeo sobre La Moneda. El diario, El Panamá América del 12 de septiembre tituló: “Entre 500 y 1,000 muertos”. Ese mismo día la juventud universitaria, docentes y dirigentes populares marcharon hasta la embajada de Chile a expresar su solidaridad, no menos de 400 personas. Según diversos testimonios, esas manifestaciones se repitieron durante varios días.

Los pronunciamientos de todo tipo organizaciones y personalidades se hicieron durante los días subsiguientes, empezando con la Federación de Estudiantes de Panamá (FEP), vanguardia de la lucha por la soberanía panameña en el canal. Hubo corales poéticas, en especial con versos de Pablo Neruda, cuando llegó la triste noticia de su deceso. Debates en las aulas universitarias y programas de televisión. El Grupo Experimental de Cine Universitario (GECU) realizó el primer video documental de solidaridad con Chile, con guion de Chu Chú Martínez, titulado “¡Viva Chile, mierda!”.

En ese tiempo Panamá tenía una estrecha relación académica con Chile. Mucho más que en la actualidad. Esa relación era por doble vía, la negativa y la positiva. La mala era la existencia en nuestro país de la llamada “Escuela de las Américas” del Comando Sur del ejército de Estados Unidos. Incluía cursos de tortura. De sus aulas egresaron los más sanguinarios dictadores de América Latina, entre ellos Augusto Pinochet y Manuel Contreras.

Por la positiva, cientos de panameños y panameñas estudiaban sus postgrados, sobre todo en ciencias sociales en diversos centros académicos chilenos: la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), la Universidad de Chile y la Universidad Católica, entre otras. Una destacada panameña, Carmen Miró, dirigía el Centro Latinoamericano de Demografía (CELADE), entidad de Naciones Unidas, y ayudaría a muchos a escapar de los militares.

Esas decenas o centenas de estudiantes istmeños en Chile, que luego serían destacadas personas del ámbito profesional y académico, vivieron directamente el golpe de 1973 en toda su crudeza y vieron interrumpidos sus estudios. Incluso, al menos dos de ellos, una futura socióloga y un sacerdote, fueron internados en el Estadio Nacional de Santiago de Chile, donde no solo fueron testigos, sino que sufrieron en carne propia las torturas. Los padres y familiares de los cientos de estudiantes panameños en Chile tuvieron que pedir a su gobierno que intercediera, lográndose traer un primer vuelo humanitario de cerca de 100 personas de nacionalidad panameña, el 23 de septiembre.

Pero en Chile también vivía una colonia de exiliados panameños que habían sido expulsados del país por el gobierno encabezado por Omar Torrijos, algunos de ellos, pertenecientes a partidos de la oposición burguesa, como el “Panameñista”, la Democracia Cristiana, pero la mayoría de ellos militantes de izquierda, de Vanguardia de Acción Nacional (VAN) y del Partido del Pueblo (comunista).

En este grupo se encontraban los sobrevivientes de la familia González Santizo, cuyo padre y hermanos habían sido asesinados por el régimen militar panameño entre 1968 y 1969. Estos exiliados no contaron con la protección del gobierno panameño, por el contrario, se negaron a traerlos. De esa manera, Encarnación y Almesías González Santizo fueron a parar a la cárcel en Concepción. Sólo pudieron salir de Chile tiempo después, con rumbo a Suecia, gracias a la gestión de Carmen Miró.

La actitud del gobierno panameño ante el golpe de Pinochet tuvo dos caras: la solidaria expresada por Omar Torrijos, revestido en 1973, de su carisma populista; y la represiva, que representó Manuel A. Noriega, por entonces jefe de inteligencia (G-2) de la Guardia Nacional panameña.

El gobierno panameño no emitió una nota formal sobre el golpe en Chile, aunque sí protestó por el ataque que sufrió la embajada de Cuba en Santiago y la retención de un buque de ese país por parte de Estados Unidos. Omar Torrijos, que se encontraba en una gira europea promoviendo la exigencia panameña de un nuevo tratado del canal, expresó desde España, el 13 de septiembre: “La trágica muerte del presidente Salvador Allende me ha conmovido profundamente”.

Pero Manuel Noriega siempre actuó de forma represiva. Envió a los oficiales Domitilo Córdoba y Nivaldo Madriñán a controlar a los panameños que regresaron en el vuelo especial de Air Panamá. Los mismos impidieron que se recogiera a los exiliados de izquierda. Luego desviaron el avión para que no bajara en Tocumen, donde esperaba la prensa, y lo llevaron a la base militar de Río Hato. Al menos una de las personas que volvieron en ese vuelo recuerda que Noriega los recibe en persona y les amenaza para que no testimonien lo que vivieron en Chile.

Torrijos logró que los militares chilenos autorizaran otro vuelo, el 7 de octubre, con más de cien personas que se habían apiñado solicitando asilo en la pequeña embajada panameña en Santiago. Ese vuelo llegó a Río Hato con 128 personas, entre ellas 35 niños, y fue recibido personalmente por el general Omar Torrijos. Ricardo Rangel y la periodista Itzel Velásquez, fueron encargados de atender, proveer recursos y buscar alojamiento en la península de Azuero a estas personas. Rangel tiene en su poder un registro detallado de sus nombres. Pero llama la atención que, salvo excepciones, no se les permitió instalarse en la ciudad de Panamá.

Estos vuelos humanitarios se repitieron y, todavía en 1975, Torrijos logró sacar más de 100 exiliados chilenos, algunos de los cuales venían directo de los campos de concentración, como testimonia Pedro Baeza, uno de ellos. Algunos se quedaron en Panamá, pero la mayoría emigró a otros países.

Lo dicho hasta aquí, es un fragmento de un ensayo testimonial, que es parte de una obra colectiva próxima a publicarse por la editorial Verso, titulada “Chile 1973 – 2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia”.

Esta obra está presentada en dos tomos que recogen las muchas aristas del acontecimiento, entre ellas cómo el golpe de 1973 impactó a otros países del mundo, y cómo sus vanguardias se vieron comprometidas con la solidaridad hacia el pueblo chileno. Este libro, que debe estar impreso en las próximas semanas, ha sido coordinado, por Viviana Canibilo Ramírez, Roxana Valdebenito Montenegro, Xabier Arrizabalo Montero y Robert Austin Henry, y ha contado con la colaboración de más de 200 personas, entre redactores y correctores.

Por la parte panameña, la reconstrucción de estos hechos se logró gracias a la colaboración testimonial de las siguientes personas: Enoch Adames M., Pedro Baeza, Diana Candanedo, José Cambra, Enilsa de Cedeño, Carlos Gasnell, Delia Sánchez Ponce, Ricardo Rangel, Eduardo Valdebenito y Manuel Zárate.

Remembering the 1973 Chilean Coup – from the archives of Brett Wilkins

Richard Nixon: “Si hay una forma de desbancar a Allende, mejor hazlo”

Fifty years on: the lasting tragedy of Chile’s coup

 

GP

 

Ire a Santiago de Chile.

A mis 13 años el golpe miliitar contra Allende me llenó el alma por primera vez de inquietudes polítícas y condenó a América Latina a dictaduras y guerras revolucionarias.

Hoy, a mis 63 años, después de una vida de lucha quiero ir a la Moneda, al palacio bombardeado después de 50 años, cuando la democracia avanza y se profundiza.

Voy a pedir la más profunda unidad del progresismo latinoamericano para configurar las fuerzas que puedan hacer perdurar la Vida y la Humanidad en el planeta.

Actuar en la gran definición política del mundo, de América y de Colombia. Si la humanidad cae en la barbarie y la autodestrucción de su existencia a través de los neofascismos, los nuevos Pinochets, que crecen por doquier a partir del miedo y la mentira o si profundizamos la democracia y logramos que cambien los sistemas para reinpulsar la vida y la intensidad de nuestra existencia.

A 50 años del golpe de Pinochet contra Allende, la democracia y el pueblo, el mundo se debate entre la codicia o la vida.

Contact us by email at / Contáctanos por correo electrónico a fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com

 

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