Now is the time to understand where we are and what it’ll take to win. Win the brokenhearted, win the disenchanted, win the angry spirits. Now is the time.
Stevie Wonder
Sounds of a rising tide Sonidos de una marea creciente
Not many of the people at the Democratic National Convention, nor many others in the USA, have heard the tale of Donald Trump’s ill-fated Panama project, the Trump Ocean Club. The dude was trying to sell to other customers. It’s the sail-shaped building at the left side of this photo by Eric Jackson, a knock-off of Dubai’s famous Burj al-Arab. At its inception it was built on a flood plain — but hey, if the price is right and there’s no bank guarding the quality of its collateral, building inspection is a problem that can be “arranged” in a place like this. Inaugurated in knee-deep flood waters, the Trump Ocean Club became the hangout for thugs and fugitives from all over, with an infamous sales crew to promote it. Trump’s ownership came crashing down by order of a US bankruptcy court. At the time, however, The Donald was president of the United States and he used his office to lean on then-president of Panama Juan Carlos Varela to thwart both the bankruptcy sale and condo owners’ rights under the laws here, which give the owners the right to oust the management — in this case The Trump Organization. It came to naught. Maybe some folks in the USA remember the iconic photo of the Trump name being chiseled away? It all became too moot — and perhaps a threat to too many bigwigs with assets stashed in Panama — for anyone to raise the legal issue whether Donald Trump used his high office to solicit an unconstitutional foreign emolument.
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Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier got its nickname the “Doomsday Glacier” for its potential to flood coastlines around the world if it collapsed. It is already contributing about 4% of annual sea-level rise as it loses ice, and one theory suggests the glacier could soon begin to collapse into the ocean like a row of dominoes.
But is that kind of rapid collapse really as likely as feared? A new study of Thwaites Glacier’s susceptibility to what’s known as marine ice cliff instability offers some hope. But the findings don’t mean Thwaites is stable. Polar scientist Mathieu Morlighem, who led the study, explains the results. The calving front of Thwaites’ ice shelf. The blue area is light reflecting off ice below the water. James Yungel/NASA Icebridge
Thwaites Glacier won’t collapse like dominoes, study finds, but that doesn’t mean the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is stable
by Mathieu Morlighem — Dartmouth College
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier got its nickname the “Doomsday Glacier” for its potential to flood coastlines around the world if it collapsed. It is already contributing about 4% of annual sea-level rise as it loses ice, and one theory suggests the glacier could soon begin to collapse into the ocean like a row of dominoes.
But is that kind of rapid collapse really as likely as feared? A new study of Thwaites Glacier’s susceptibility to what’s known as marine ice cliff instability offers some hope. But the findings don’t mean Thwaites is stable.
Polar scientist Mathieu Morlighem, who led the study, explains the results.
Why is the Thwaites Glacier so important?
Thwaites Glacier drains a huge area of Antarctica’s ice sheet – about 74,000 square miles (192,000 square kilometers), an expanse bigger than Florida. If a snowflake falls within that drainage system, it will eventually end up as part of an iceberg in the ocean off Thwaites.
What we are seeing with Thwaites Glacier right now is a disaster in slow motion.
The bedrock under Thwaites Glacier sits below sea level and slopes downward going inland, so the glacier gets deeper toward the interior of the ice sheet. Once the glacier begins losing more ice than it gains from new snowfall and starts to retreat, it’s very hard to slow it down because of this slope. And Thwaites is already retreating at an accelerating rate as the climate warms.
Thwaites Glacier holds enough ice to raise global sea level by more than 2 feet (0.65 meters). Once Thwaites starts to destabilize, it also will destabilize neighboring glaciers. So, what happens to Thwaites affects all of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and that affects sea-level rise along coastlines everywhere.
What is marine ice cliff instability?
Marine ice cliff instability is a relatively new concept proposed by scientists in the past decade.
Many of the glaciers around Antarctica have huge floating extensions called ice shelves that buttress the glacier and slow its ice flow into the ocean. With the climate warming, we have seen some of these floating extensions collapse, sometimes very rapidly, in the span of a few weeks or months.
The front of Thwaites’ floating ice shelf is over 200 feet (60 meters) tall in places. It becomes higher closer to land. James Yungel/NASA Icebridge 2012
If Thwaites’ ice shelf were to collapse, it would expose a very tall ice cliff facing the ocean along its 75-mile (120-kilometer) front. There is only so much force that ice can sustain, so if the cliff is too tall, it will collapse into the ocean.
Once that happens, a new ice cliff farther back would be exposed, and the new cliff would be even taller because it is farther inland. The theory of marine ice cliff instability suggests that if the cliffs collapse quickly enough, that could have a domino effect of ever-higher ice cliffs collapsing one after the other. However, no one has observed marine ice cliff instability in action. We don’t know if it will happen, because a lot depends on how quickly the ice collapses.
Watching the Larsen B ice shelf collapse over less than six weeks in 2002. Once the ice shelf was gone, glaciers it had buttressed began flowing several times faster into the ocean. AGU.
What did you discover about the risk to Thwaites?
When the theory of marine ice cliff instability was first introduced, it used a rough approximation of how ice cliffs might collapse once the ice shelf was gone.
Studies since then have determined that ice cliffs won’t fail systematically until the ice is about 442 feet (135 meters) high. Even at that point, they would fail more slowly than projected until they became much taller.
We used three high-resolution models to explore what this new physical understanding of ice cliff instability would mean for Thwaites Glacier this century.
Our results show that if Thwaites’ entire ice shelf collapsed today, its ice front would not rapidly retreat inland due to marine ice cliff instability alone. Without the ice shelf, the glacier’s ice would flow much faster toward the ocean, thinning the front of the glacier. As a result, the ice cliffs wouldn’t be as high.
We found that Thwaites would remain fairly stable at least through 2100. We also simulated an ice shelf collapse in 50 years, when the glacier’s grounding line – where its grounded ice meets the ocean – would have retreated deeper inland. Even then, we found that marine ice cliff instability alone would not cause a rapid retreat.
Satellite data shows Antarctica losing ice mass since 2002. The area with the fastest ice loss includes Thwaites Glacier. NASA.
The results call into question some recent estimates of just how fast Thwaites might collapse. That includes a worst-case scenario that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mentioned in its latest assessment report but labeled as “low likelihood.”
Thwaites is the glacier everyone is worried about. If you model the entire ice sheet, this is where marine ice cliff instability starts and where it propagates far inland. So, if Thwaites isn’t as vulnerable to ice cliff failure as we thought, that’s a good sign for the entire ice sheet.
But marine ice cliff instability is only one mechanism of ice loss. This finding doesn’t mean Thwaites is stable.
What else is causing glaciers to retreat at an accelerating rate?
There are many processes that make the Antarctic ice sheet unstable, some of them very well understood.
Ice-ocean interactions explain most of the recent ice mass loss so far. Antarctica is a very cold place, so atmospheric warming isn’t having a large effect yet. But warm ocean currents are getting under the ice shelves, and they are thinning the ice from below, which weakens the ice shelves. When that happens, the ice streams flow faster because there is less resistance.
Ocean-bottom water temperatures reach above freezing under parts of the Thwaites ice shelf. Thwaites Glacier is outlined in dashes, with colors showing how fast the ice flows. Ocean areas in gray are too shallow to affect the glacial undersides. NASA JPL/CalTech
Over the past few decades, the Amundsen Sea sector, where Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers are located, has seen an intrusion of warm water from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which has been melting the ice from below.
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The oldest non-indigenous settlements in the USA were Spanish-speaking, and then came the Anglos. After English and Spanish, the next-most-spoken languages by state make a interesting map. In Michigan and Ohio, the original United Automobile Workers’ stomping grounds, it’s Arabic. That set of ethnic constituencies is reflected in the UAW membership, and this is a union whose sense of social justice includes both a strong attachment to the Democrats and militant defense of its members and their families.
“If we want peace, if we want real democracy, and if we want to win this election,” the UAW said, “the Democratic Party must allow a Palestinian American speaker to be heard from the DNC stage tonight.”
Major union backing Harris-Walz joins call for Palestinian-American to speak at DNC
by Jessica Corbett – Common Dreams
The United Auto Workers—a major union backer of the Harris-Walz presidential ticket—added its voice Thursday to the growing chorus demanding that a Palestinian American be invited to address the Democratic National Convention in Chicago over Israel’s US-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
“If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian Americans in the Democratic Party,” the UAW said on social media. “If we want peace, if we want real democracy, and if we want to win this election, the Democratic Party must allow a Palestinian American speaker to be heard from the DNC stage tonight.”
The UAW had endorsed President Joe Biden and swiftly threw its support behind Vice President Kamala Harris after he passed the torch to her last month. While speaking at the DNC on Monday, the union’s leader, Shawn Fain, wore a T-shirt calling the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, a “scab,” and said that Harris “is one of us, she’s a fighter for the working class.”
If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian-Americans in the Democratic Party.
Despite its vocal support for the Democratic ticket, the union has also been outspoken in calling for a cease-fire in Gaza since last year, including during police and campus administration crackdowns on anti-genocide student protesters this spring. Fain said that “the UAW will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice.”
The UAW’s statement came on the final day of the DNC and after the Uncommitted National Movement—which has dozens of delegates thanks to hundreds of thousands of Democratic primary voters—led a Wednesday night sit-in over the party’s refusal to give a Palestinian speaker just five minutes while welcoming remarks from the parents of an Israeli-American hostage in Gaza.
I've been at this event all week. The talk of joy and hope feels real. Until you get to this. It's part of the platform they put out to listen to and care about the Palestinian voices impacted by the war.
In These Times executive editor Ari Bloomekatz reported Thursday that “at this morning’s Uncommitted press conference, the UAW’s statement earned applause as a key window of hope. It’s difficult to express how important this contrast is at this press conference where so many are in tears from how insulted and rejected they feel by the DNC.”
Others—including union members—praised the move on social media. Gen-Z for Change executive Director Elise Joshi said that “UAW’s nonstop solidarity gives me hope in this moment of immense frustration. From UAW’s UC Academic worker strike to this.”
“Huge kudos and proud to be in this movement with you,” Joshi told Fain and the UAW.
Brandon Mancilla, director for UAW Region 9A, stressed that “there is still time to change course and do the right thing by allowing a Palestinian American to address the DNC from the stage.”
In addition to the Uncommitted delegates and the UAW, the Democratic Party is facing pressure from lawmakers and others.
Families of Israeli hostages are joining the demand for Palestinians to not be barred from DNC stage.
— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action #JewsForKamala (@jewishaction) August 22, 2024
US Representatives Summer Lee (D-PA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) joined the sit-in at the convention, while Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—who addressed the DNC on Monday— called in to the action via FaceTime.
“Just as we must honor the humanity of hostages, so too must we center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment,” Ocasio-Cortez said on social media. “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”
Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian American in Congress, suggested that the reason the party has so far resisted the pressure is because “to hear what we’ve done to generations of families shatters the false narrative of hope and joy.”
Tlaib also called in to the Uncommitted news conference. She said that “we shouldn’t have to beg” to have a Palestinian American speak at the DNC and recalled the courageous example of Emmett Till’s mother insisting that her son’s casket be open for his funeral so people could see “what doing nothing looks like.”
This convention has been a powerful display of so many stories that make plain our shared humanity.
I carry with me daily the personal stories of Palestinians raw with grief, fearing for their lives, mourning their loved ones. Babies. Elders. Students. Journalists. Doctors.… pic.twitter.com/cCIbdWfjNJ
Both members of Congress recently defeated by Democratic primary challengers candidates who are backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies—Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO)—took to social media to call on the DNC to have a Palestinian speaker, as did Representative Greg Casar (D-TX).
“The vast majority of Americans want to see an end to the bombing, the hostages returned, and long-term peace,” Casar said. “Palestinian Americans deserve to share their stories on the DNC stage. And we should listen and take action for human rights. #NotAnotherBomb.”
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Venezuelans march through Caracas to demand that Maduro respect the results of the election. Wikimedia photo by someone unwilling to make his or her name known to the current Venezuelan authorities.
By proper standards – and improper
old ones – Maduro should go
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was democratically elected to power in 1998 with that country’s voters choosing a rebel army officer, Hugo Chávez, to lead them. The US Southern Command immediately declared its government’s hostility, arguing that no country in Latin America – especially one with all that oil – would be allowed to leave the globalized economic order set up by the United State and some of its allies at the behest of multinational corporations.
Always in the face of US opposition, with his share of triumphs and mistakes, Chávez was re-elected again and again, legitimately so. In the end cancer took him out of the game, with Nicolás Maduro his designated successor.
Blame it on whomevery you want, but Maduro has not been able to retain the support of the Venezuelan people. He has clung to power by various machinations while millionis of his country’s citizens – men, women and children –have fled to wherever they can. This exodus has destabilized the whole region, most of all Colombia, where gangster with the roots in the old AUC right-wing death squads have taken over the principal migration route, through Colombia and then Panama’s Darien province and beyond. A lot of other Venezuelans have made their ways down the Andes, through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. A lot of them made their way through the Amazon Basin into Brazil, where they were met by a generally welcoming federal tgovernment and some often very hostile locals.
Washington has been like the boy who kept crying “WOLF!” about Venezuelan elections, and first bet on the old oligarchy whose abuses led to Chávez’s rise, then to this tawdry pretender, a Mr. Guaidó. It’s easy enough, but wrong, to say that the Americans are making bogus accusations again.
Not so. The Venezuelan electorate is fed up and massively demonstrated this in recent elections. The truth of the matter is that Maduro got crushed in a landslide. As Brazil’s leftist president Lula da Silva puts it, Maduro owes the world an explanation.
The Washington-based OAS? None of the key players in the Americas consider it to be a useful or desirable intermediary. An imposed by the USA resolution to the Venezuela crisis is not much wanted below the Rio Grande and would be unlikely to work.
The United States could do some useful and appreciated things about the problem, but it should be a matter of Washington supporting those closest to and most affected by the problem. First of all, by supporting the Venezuelans not with some Washington-drawn road map that calls for new elections but by recognizing that elections have taken place and that the chosen man, Edmundo González Urrutia, should replace Nicolás Maduro and run Venezuela without any foreign overlords.
Perhaps best situated to make this happen, other than the crowds in Venezuela, are Brazil, with its powerful friends in the BRICS alliance whose starting point is a rejection of US hegemony, and Colombia, the closest and most affected neighbor. The Biden administration should be asking them what to do rather than issuing any imperial decrees.
Actually, he’s not. Graphic from Raúl Pineda’s Facebook page.
Gangland PRD
There have been rumors and accusations for years, but the infamous summary proof rule has barred any investigation of PRD legislator Raúl Pineda, one of the top party bosses who until recently was head of the Credentials Committee that could and did bar many another corruption investigation.
Now the deputy’s son, Abraham Rico Pineda, is in jail awaiting trial on charges of running a vast drug smuggling and money laundering ring. The courts won’t allow cops and prosecuitors ot ask about any role the father might have played in that, or about any of the government contracts that the son’s companies got with the former PRD administration.
Everyone is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Let’s not ditch that bedrock legal principle. The legislator has not even been credibly accused in the son’s case. But let’s restore the just as important notion of equal justice, that all are accountable before the law.
It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
Bear in mind…
Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.
Petra Kelly
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
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Babe Ruth sliding into third base, a US National Archives photo. And do you want to believe stereotypical jokes about dumb jocks? Talented would be the football player who aces a basketweaving course from one of Panama’s top indigenous Embera or Wounaan craftswomen.
Elite athletes are generally smarter than us – cognitive sciences can explain why
The year was 1920. It was George Herman “Babe” Ruth’s first season playing for the New York Yankees.
During that season, he scored an amazing 54 home runs. He alone scored more home runs than any team.
However, “The Bambino,” as he was nicknamed, was far from an example of athletic prowess. He was chubby, did not like to practice and was constantly seen at parties drinking and gambling.
So, how could he achieve such greatness on the baseball field?
To answer this question, a prominent sportswriter from the New York Times, Hugh Fullerton, knocked on the door of the Columbia University psychology lab where two graduate researchers, Albert Johanson and Joseph Holmes, were prompted to answer.
Fullerton’s enquiry was simple: if Ruth’s achievements could not be explained by physical abilities, then what other factors might be involved?
It was no surprise when the researchers discovered Ruth scored higher than the average population in every psychological test he did.
These findings changed the popular perspective on sport performance, suggesting physical attributes weren’t the only reason athletes were able to excel – mental skills were finally on center stage.
The evolution of sports psychology
Ruth outperformed normal people in attention, memory and cognitive tasks.
It took almost a century for sport scientists to find out whether those high-level skills were a common trait for elite athletes or if Ruth was just a genius.
In an exploratory meta-analysis published in 2018, focusing on athletes only, my colleagues and I found athletes recruited brain areas involved with attention, memory and motor control when making sport-related decisions.
Then, in 2022, a review by Nicole Logan and colleagues from Northeastern University in the United States gathered 41 studies comparing professional athletes and normal controls (people like us).
Data from 5,339 participants (including 2267 athletes) was meta-analyzed. The results showed significantly higher scores in attention and decision-making among professional athletes compared to normal people.
So athletes generally outperform us in cognitive tasks – but why?
It was the emergence of cognitive neuroscience that allowed scientists to map neural networks involved in sport imagery (such as athletes’ abilities to reproduce sport-related situations in their minds) and athletes’ decision-making regarding in-game situations.
Elite athletes are generally well-matched in terms of their physical abilities but their mental skills can set them apart.
Elite athletes are smarter than amateur athletes as well
Decision-making is a human skill. The more you practice, the better you get.
But good decision-makers such as elite athletes rely on other cognitive skills to simulate in their minds the potential outcomes of any given situation.
Here is an example – imagine a rugby league match.
A halfback is starting a play with his team close to the try line. He has several teammates to pass the ball to but he decides to tuck the ball under his arm and sprint to score a try – he had seen open space in the opponent’s defensive line.
In a fraction of a second, he had to make a decision based on the information he had available. Using imagery, he had to consider every other player’s position in the field, calculating the best route for each possible pass or run he could make.
It requires high levels of attention to visually scan the field, stop any distraction from clouding thoughts, memory to hold and retrieve information while processing all alternatives, and creativity to imagine the same play from different angles.
These three skills – attention, memory and creativity – have technical names: inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility, respectively.
They are the three core executive functions used by the brain to execute complex tasks.
The most groundbreaking study about the role of executive functions in sport performance came out in 2012.
Torbjörn Vestberg and colleagues from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden compared the three core executive functions of elite soccer players from the first division with their counterparts from the fourth division (usually only semi-professional athletes).
Similar results were found in other studies through the past decade, including one from my colleagues and I in 2023, which compared female soccer and futsal players with their amateur counterparts.
We found elite athletes outperform regular people in decision-making and executive functioning.
Athletes outsmart us for a reason: practice
Elite athletes are highly specialized decision-makers because they practice it every day.
However, the scientific literature still lacks evidence on the other core executive function, the working memory. In my current research I am trying to fill this gap.
Being creative and finding better solutions to overcome an opponent is what sport is about, whereas many normal people like us struggle when facing large amounts of information at the same time.
Practice, and a bit of biological disposition, makes most elite athletes smarter than us.
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Luis Arteaga y Rómulo Castro en las peñas de “El Zaguán”, Panamá, 1990. Foto por Rómulo Castro. Luis Arteaga and Romulo Castro at the “El Zaguan” club, Panama, 1990. Photo by Romulo Castro.
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Para defendernos de los piratas informáticos, los trolls organizados y otros actos de vandalismo en línea, la función de comentarios de nuestro sitio web está desactivada. En cambio, ven a nuestra página de Facebook para unirte a la discusión.
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What the locals were eating when, 505 years ago, Pedrarias The Cruel occupied an ancient indigenous village and began to set up what has become Panama City. Photo from Kristof Zyskowski & Yulia Bereshpolova’s Cataloging Nature.
Piva nut soup – a more international way to consume one of Panama’s most ancient staples
by Eric Jackson
We now get to mid-August, that traditional time when the Bactris Basipaes – piva in Zonian English, or variously styled pixbae, pifá, pibá, or peach palm (etc.) is fruiting in many places across the tropical and subtropical Americas. It’s a stick-to-the-ribs starchy staple – the edible orange flesh of each piva nut has about 180 calories. These things, most commonly prepared by boiling in salted water, then peeled with the hard pit in the middle discarded, are loaded with Vitamin C and has lots of Vitamin A, phosphorus, iron, calcium and magnesium. It’s rich in polyunsaturated fats, which help to lower blood cholesterol.
So, when Pedraias the Cruel took over this ancient village 505 years ago today, he subjugated people who grew the palm trees that produce these fruits and boiled them in seawater to sustain themselves. That tradition and recipe continue to this day, but Panama was conquered, colonized and otherwise culturally influence by wave upon wave of foreigners and their tastes. The Spaniards brought in African slaves. The Americans first came in great numbers to build a railroad, bringing, among others, a lot of Chinese laborers to work on the project. The French were here to build a canal, a project finished under US direction and with the establishment of a colony known as the Canal Zone. Britannia ruled the waves, and its ships and sailors regularly called at Panama.
You would expect many of these foreigners to acquire the taste. You wouldn’t be so unreasonable as to expect them to leave it at that, would you?
Can you notice the French and Gringo influences?
Piva soup in an international way
Ingredients (no need to be exact)
Piva nuts
Bacon (lonja or other)
Water
Onions
Potatoes
Carrots
Salt
Sour cream
Sherry
Directions:
Cut the bacon into bits and fry it to where it at least starts to brown. Set the meat AND the grease aside to add later.
Steam the pivas to be fully cooked enough to eat. Let them cool and then peel them remove the pits cut them into chunks and put them in pot with a cover with a bit of salt and simmer them until quite soft, then mash them.
Add more water if necessary, and cut up carrots, potatoes and onions. Mash and stir as you go. Add water if need to keep it as a viscous liquid. Add the bacon bits and grease and continue to simmer.
To get that perfect consistency, you may want to run the mix through a blender.
You got this orangey glop with the flavor sort of like you want it now? Heat it up again, add a dollop of sour cream and a bit of sherry, stir to mix it all in well, remove from heat.
You have a modified Jackson family recipe for Piva soup.
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Gerardo Solís – he’s been good at looking the other way. Photo by the Contraloría General.
To whom the comptroller job goes…
…is likely to determine the president’s reputation and fate – even though, according to Panama’s constitution it’s not his decision.
Nito Cortizo is and was a much better person than the leading lights of the National Assembly during his administration. But a thuggish legislature had its enabler in the Contralor General post, and the guy very rarely saw anything amiss in the course of a record-setting looting binge against the public trust.
This new and more fragmented legislature has some different faces in some of the posts, but well known and objectionable faces in the most important posts. Indications are that they will continue with what we have had into the indefinite future if they can. The creditors of the national debt would be one controlling factor, but woe to Panama if we put our fate in their hands.
We need a new constitution, which rather than a display of “depoliticization” of the comptroller general’s job, makes it elected and accountable. And which gives us more accountable elected officials by having more frequent and staggered elections, so that important posts other than the presidency that tend to be afterthoughts become the subjects of scrutiny and debates.
Not the sort of newsroom for aggressive young men.
Easy does it
Up to a point, anyway.
A smoke-filled, stressful workplace? That would be a traditional newsroom, and studies a few years back at Harvard and Stanford showed that second-hand smoke and high stress in workplaces are about equally harmful to affected working people’s health.
Is it any wonder why, after the work-at-home movement during the height of the COVID epidemic, around the world and in many professions people are resisting back-to-the-office orders from their bosses?
It’s not that there are no stresses in a more serene, less populous home setting, nor that people working in such places never set up health hazards of their very own. But living ande working where you can treat a neighbor’s horse with a star apple from the tree in your back yard might just prolong your working life.
Alas, nobody lives forever, and once past the biblical three score and ten estimated lifespan aching joints and muscles tend to put a limit to how much work you can do on the most idyllic little farm. The editor has spent a few days on a much put-off clean-up, and even if he has hired other to do the machete work, the exertion has slowed down work on The Panama News. Sorry about that.
Are there lessons to be learned?
Well, not from any discussions with “I’ll monetize it for you” hustlers. But it’s only natural to think of continuity and succession for The Panama News.
The doctors say I’m not dying, but warn of high blood pressure and other factors to keep under control if my preference is to die later rather than sooner. I’d better heed.
Bear with me on this, yet another incidence of a late editorial page.
Maria Montessori depicted in a Marche Tourism Italian currency graphic.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
Maria Montessori
Bear in mind…
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world.
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Atelopus zeteki: La rana dorada es el anfibio nacional de Panamá y su día se celebra hoy, 14 de agosto. Fue venerada por los pueblos indígenas precolombinos y sus imágenes fueron plasmadas en talismanes de oro y arcilla llamados huacas. La última observación confirmada de la rana dorada panameña en la naturaleza fue en 2009. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
Smithsonian celebra el XIII Festival de la Rana Dorada
por el Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales – STRI
El décimo tercer festival de la rana dorada, con distintos eventos a lo largo de Panamá, unirá a locales y visitantes de todo el mundo en la misión de celebrar y conservar los tesoros vivientes de Panamá: los anfibios.
La rana dorada de Panamá es endémica de Panamá central, donde fue descubierta en El Valle de Antón y sus alrededores. Esta preciosa rana, amarilla y negra, es un símbolo medioambiental y cultural en Panamá. Solía ser abundante desde El Valle de Antón hasta el Parque Nacional y Reserva Biológica Altos de Campana, pero debido a la enfermedad fúngica llamada quitridiomicosis, ha experimentado un gran declive en toda su área de distribución.
La rana dorada panameña fue observada en estado salvaje por última vez en el 2009. Anterior al declive causado por la epidemia de quitridiomicosis, el hábitat de esta especie fue degradándose debido a las actividades humanas, además que esta especie era capturada para el mercado de mascotas.
Este festival nació como un llamado de atención sobre la pérdida de ranas panameñas debido a esta enfermedad fúngica y el deterioro de sus hábitats. No obstante, poblaciones de ranas doradas se mantienen vivas en programas de cría en cautiverio en Panamá y los Estados Unidos. El Proyecto de Rescate y Conservación de Anfibios de Panamá (PARC por sus siglas en inglés), fue creado en el 2009 como una asociación entre los zoológicos New England Zoo, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Houston Zoo y Smithsonian National Zoo, junto al Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI), para rescatar y establecer poblaciones sostenibles de ésta y otras especies de anfibios que se encuentran en peligro de extinción en todo Panamá. También se centran los esfuerzos y experiencia en el desarrollo de metodologías para reducir el impacto del hongo quítrido, además de realizar ensayos de reintroducción a la naturaleza.
No existe por el momento un tratamiento eficaz para combatir la enfermedad, pero se mantiene el optimismo de poder devolver algún día la rana dorada a su hábitat natural.
El Q?bus, el Busito de la Ciencia visitará junto a científicos del PARC escuelas en Chicá, Panamá Oeste el 14 de agosto, Día de la Rana Dorada y El Centro Natural Punta Culebra en la Calzada de Amador organizará un día de actividades durante programa escolar y público en la Semana de los Anfibios, destacando la conservación a través de lecciones enfocadas donde los visitantes podrán ver las ranas (incluyendo ranas doradas nacidas en cautiverio), aprender sobre las valiosas contribuciones que los anfibios hacen a los ecosistemas panameños y descubrir cómo ayudar a conservarlos.
Durante este festival también recordamos a Lucrecia Arosemena (QEPD), cuya incansable labor ayudó a que la legislación panameña reconociera el 14 de agosto de 2010 como el primer día nacional de la rana dorada.
Ana Lucrecia Arosemena (q.e.p.d.) Gracias a su liderazgo, el 14 de agosto de cada año celebramos el Día Nacional de la Rana Dorada.
Andinobates geminisae adulta. Descubierta en Donoso, Panamá, esta rana de dardo venenosa, color rojo naranja, fue descrita en 2014 por científicos del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, la Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí en Panamá y la Universidad de los Andes en Colombia. Fue bautizada Andinobates geminisae en honor a Geminis Vargas, la esposa de uno de los investigadores. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
EAtelopus certus. Este sapo de color rojo o naranja, con manchas negras, se encuentra en áreas montañosas de la serranía del Sapo en Darién, Panamá. Los renacuajos tienen un gran disco de succión en el vientre, que les sirve para aferrarse a rocas y guijarros en los arroyos. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
Atelopus glyphus. Esta especie se encuentra en el este de Panamá, en la Serranía de Pirre, y en Colombia, en el Chocó. Las ranas adultas son marrones con pequeñas marcas amarillas. Gran parte del hábitat de esta especie se encuentra protegida por el Parque Nacional Darién, un sitio del Patrimonio Mundial, pero esto realmente no ayuda a mitigar el hongo que es su principal amenaza. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
Atelopus limosus. Esta especie es endémica de los bosques de tierras bajas en Panamá central y se encuentra típicamente en las laderas de arroyos rocosos. En algunas zonas, el patrón de color de esta rana se parece al limo de los riachuelos, por lo que puede pasar desapercibida. Además del hongo quítrido, otra amenaza es la disminución en la extensión y calidad de su hábitat, debido a la agricultura, contaminación y los proyectos de infraestructura. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
Agalychnis lémur. Esta especie vive en Panamá, Costa Rica y Colombia. Algunos componentes en la piel de las ranas adultas tienen propiedades antibacterianas y antifúngicas. El ‘lemur’ en su nombre científico se refiere a la forma en que camina esta rana, que es similar a la de los lémures. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
Atelopus varius. Vive en Panamá y en Costa Rica, donde está casi extinta. Uno de sus alimentos predilectos son las hormigas. Generalmente su piel tiene marcas negras y de otro color, como verde brillante, amarillo, amarillo-naranja o rojo. Se mueve muy lentamente y posiblemente las toxinas en su piel lo protegen de los depredadores. Foto por Brian Gratwicke, Zoológico Nacional de los Estados Unidos.
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The country’s main road, on the west side of Penonome, with windmills at a distance in the background. Photo by Eric Jackson.
Should the editor tilt at windmills as the website comes back online? Don’t be foolish – he doesn’t even own a horse
by Eric Jackson
Well, yeah, there’s this man and this funny story he wrote, but who really learns about Cervantes the man, and his times, in a Panamanian or a US school? There are some good teachers and some kids learn, but so much of the subject matter is taboo here.
The Man of La Mancha? You mean that for his adventures in The Netherlands, Don Quixote sailed up through the English Channel? Not so. Another sense of the Spanish word, a writer projecting himself onto a character. The man with the blemish. As in defect or scar. As in he was a wounded war veteran who had lost the use of his left arm and hand.
Cervantes’s time was after the 1492 expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain, but before the 1648 end of the Wars of The Reformation on the European continent by way of the Treaty of Westphalia. He fought in wars between a papal-sponsored Holy League and the North African reaches of the Ottoman Empire and was in the major naval battle of Lepanto. From then on Cervantes was often referred to as “El Manco de Lepanto,” the one-armed man from the Battle of Lepanto. After surviving his wounds, his military career continued with a series of assignments and landed him as a prisoner of war in North Africa for five years. Cervantes’s “day jobs included as a purchase for the navy, a tax collector and an accountant. He never made significant money from his writing.
But though a gifted writer who often had the patronage of wealthy nobles or clerics, creative people were not much rewarded, Cervantes was from an obscure and poor family and it wasn’t until he was an old man that he got a measure of wealth and fame from his Don Quixote stories. And what about his origins? Was his family of the “New Christians,” as in formerly Jewish converts? You could get in big trouble being a Jew in the Spanish realms in those times – that’s what the Spanish Inquisition was all about. In any case, there aren’t any reliable records of Cervantes’s religious ancestry but some scholars speculate
Wars between Catholics and Protestants on the European continent? Religious persecution by the Holy Inquisition or its rival imitators? The Peace of Westphalia, which the pope at the time hated, divided up Europe, recognizing Catholic and religiously tolerant parts of the Low Countries, and left the Americas out of the deal. That was more than 30 years after Cervantes died, but the continuation of the Wars of the Reformation and subsequent religious strife had much to do with what’s taught about Cervantes in Panama today.
The Gran Colombia of which Panama was a part was a battleground between Liberal and Conservatives for that last four-fifths of the 19th century and into the 20th, with one of the major issues between the two sides whether Catholicism would be the official state religion as the Conservatives wanted or to the contrary, there wouild be the secular government that Liberals advocated. (No wonder that The Great Liberator, the freemson Simón Bolívar, died in despair.)
Panama came to its independence on the heels of one of the worst Liberal-Conservative wars, the Thousand Days War. The separation was part Wall Street manipulation, part Conservative military coup, part Liberal acquiescence in change seen as necessary and inevitable, part US military intervention. In Panama it set up generations of conflicts over what came out of it.
One result of Panamanian independence, however, was that not only were we no longer part of Colombia, but most especially we were to be out of the religious warfare business. The new understanding was that Panama is mostly Catholic with some official relations between church and state, but that there is freedom of religion.
One of the unofficial corollaries drawn from Panama’s abstention from religious warfare was a de facto suppression of incitement, and of history teaching that might lead to incitement. So in our popular culture we get these tales of a crazy knight and his long-suffering aide, but very little understanding of the context.
Does it come through that Don Quixote was a towering pioneer giant of the novel? About that much there is general agreement.
But shorn of the historical backdrop, how many Panamanians take Cervantes’s work be what the writer said it was, satire about knights and chivalry? And of those, how many see the thinking of a jaded disabled veteran at a time when people were getting very tired of religious war but were still more than a generation away from a truce that would largely end it for a time?
See, it was SATIRE. And by decision of a benighted Panamanian supreme court, in a case brought over a salacious cartoon about then-president Mireya Moscoso published by Ubaldo Davis, the magistrates held that ALL satire is criminal defamation here. Panamanian culture is still dumbed down and suffering from that nonsense.
Does it extend to business and advertising? You probably do not want to live within the shadows of a windmill’s blades, but for a lot of people a house with a view of windmills in the distance would be an attraction. However, clever advertising references to windmills are limited by some anti-historical and anti-cultural taboos here.
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