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Editorials: Things fall apart here and there; and Running scared

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empires of the past
The former Trump Ocean Club, the curved building on the center left. Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

Crumbling empires

Donald Trump and Ricardo Martinelli had a falling out over this place. Trump saw fit to put his name on a construction project in a locally notorious flood plain, he came to cut the ribbon with Martinelli one rainy season morning and the streets around it were underwater. The Donald blamed Don Ricky.

Title to the property and The Trump Organization’s management contract were lost in a US bankruptcy court and by operation of Panamanian laws protecting condo owners’ rights. They chiseled the Trump name off of it.

Trump and Martinelli still cherish dreams of political comebacks but they’re both on losing streaks, directly and indirectly. Trump propagandists Fox News suffered a huge defeat to their credibility when they were forced to settle a libel suit by the Dominion voting system company. Martinelli stands to lose his newspaper chain and his eligibility to run for president if he loses the New Business case, which is about the alleged diversion of public funds to buy the media properties that he turned into crud propaganda outlets. 

Both Martinelli and Trump face onslaughts of multiple criminal cases this year. They both have annoying civil lawsuits against them as well. Their respective shrunken teams of acolytes are as loud and strident as ever — but it may be much worse for Trump as his crowd features nuts with guns who may add yet more violent incidents to the US political narrative.

So, what to do? Remain calm. Speak out in low voices. Insist upon equal rights — and duties — for all. Register and vote. Do not let Trump’s or Martinelli’s bullies shut you down.

History’s pages are turning. But when evil empires fall, it’s never a pretty sight and some people who didn’t deserve it are likely to be hurt by the falling rubble.

Insistent that justice be done as we ought to be, we should be looking beyond that to assert what we want ourselves and our countries to be. It’s not a game. 

responding to a smear
Responding to a smear. That it’s needed says many things about Panama these days.

The uninspiring run scared

Above we see the Lombana campaign play defense. Some sleazy online operative tried to link him to UNACHI rector Etelvina de Bonagas, a very unpopular public figure who aligns with the PRD. So one of Lombana’s friends responded in this way. The candidate himself avoided comment.

He’s running in single digits in most presidential polls, but former diplomat Ricardo Lombana, who ran for president as an independent last time, also shows lower negative ratings than all of those who are running ahead of him in the polls. So the usual suspects are going out of their ways to drag him into negativity pits.

Lombana has a party this time – Otro Camino – but does not appear to be ready to play the usual small parties game, wherein alliances are made on the basis of a negotiated division of political patronage spoils. We shall see if he can be elected without passing out goodies on the campaign trail.

He runs at a time when all of the established parties are discredited. He runs having served as a diplomat for both PRD and Panameñista administrations, as an attorney I a top corporate firm and as an editor at La Prensa. He had an internationally prestigious education. He takes social and economic stands that would mostly annoy the left, but stands for a new constitution that ditches political patronage and big money influence, both of these mainstays of the oligarchy’s power. He’s the sort of guy who when in the room with an ogre opponent, will be civil with the ogre.

The main Lombana advantage is that he comes along at a time when the leading proffered options are so horrible. “He stole but he got things done” versus a guy with a big fake smile from whom you’d expect an offer of a “heads I win, tails you lose” coin toss. It’s a unique moment and traditional politicians and power brokers are afraid of him.

Consider. If you have to attack Lombana for being cordial with Martinelli, if you have to stick PRD sleaze to his name and reputation, if based on old associations rather than his behavior it’s alleged that he’s some sort of grifter, these are signs of weakness.

It will be sometime early next year when we see who is running and which alliances have been made. THEN The Panama News may consider whom, if anyone, to endorse. However, in the here and now Mr. Lombana’s campaign is deeply impressive when one looks at those who are moved to destroy it before it gets off the ground.

Sculpture of Confucius in Nanjing. Wikimedia photo by Kevin Smith NYC.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Confucius

Bear in mind…

Religion without humanity is poor human stuff.

Sojourner Truth

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

Hannah Arendt

 

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¿Wappin? The old buzzard’s late dry season mix

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buzzardly

La mezcla de finales de verano del pavón viejo

Natalie Merchant & Abena Koomson-Davis – Big Girls
https://youtu.be/Q7XJb7aWv80

Marvin Gaye’s Greatest Hits Playlist
https://youtu.be/AUaGBrp1HFQ

Roger Waters – Wish You Were Here
https://youtu.be/16C741fQ1s4

Karol G – Viña del Mar 2023
https://www.youtube.com/live/6hvu2GXYr8o

Annie Lennox – Both Sides Now
https://youtu.be/P2NfgLlJ6zQ

Carly Simon – Coming Around Again
https://youtu.be/hjM4SWoJ59E

Orestes Vilató – It’s About Time
https://youtu.be/KUkYKf0vS8w

Cyndi Lauper – Blue
https://youtu.be/c_VrzLuy2WY

Denise Gutiérrez – Sesiones Prodigy 2013
https://youtu.be/qszTY_7XN2c

Rómulo Castro – La Rosa de los Vientos
https://youtu.be/QUoV65mVgss

Carlos Santana & Gato Barbieri – Europa
https://youtu.be/h4Mrp6wuSwk

Mon Laferte – Festival del huaso de Olmue 2023
https://youtu.be/-hGqyeg3Dbo

Norah Jones & Robert Glasper – Let It Ride
https://youtu.be/GDvqIME7zgI

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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.

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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These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
 

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Dinero

GOP 2024 strategy: suppress college students’ votes

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Cleta
Cleta Mitchell, a video still from US Representative Tom Cole’s website.

Audio reveals top GOP lawyer’s 2024 strategy: make it harder for college students to vote

by Jake Johnson — Common Dreams

A longtime Republican lawyer who aided former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election told GOP donors that the party should be working to roll back voting on college campuses and other initiatives aimed at expanding ballot access, according to audio obtained by progressive journalist Lauren Windsor.

“What are these college campus locations?” Cleta Mitchell, a top GOP attorney and fundraiser asked during a presentation at the Republican National Committee’s donor retreat in Nashville last weekend.

“What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed,” lamented Mitchell, an avid voter suppression campaigner who has represented Republican organizations, individual lawmakers, and right-wing groups such as the National Rifle Association.

According to The Washington Post, which reviewed a copy of Mitchell’s Nashville presentation, the GOP attorney’s remarks “offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.”

“Mitchell focused on campus voting in five states—Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia, and Wisconsin—all of which are home to enormous public universities with large in-state student populations,” the Post reported Thursday. “Mitchell also targeted the preregistration of students, an apparent reference to the practice in some states of allowing 17-year-olds to register ahead of their 18th birthdays so they can vote as soon as they are eligible.”

Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, noted in response to Mitchell’s presentation that “Wisconsin has 320,000 college students.”

“If the GOP had won the state Supreme Court race, they would’ve—as this speech makes clear—engineered a crackdown on student voter freedoms,” Wikler wrote on Twitter. “Instead, thanks in part to student turnout, democracy lives on in Wisconsin.”

“The Trump machine wants to disenfranchise students,” Wikler added. “We’re fighting them in WI. They’ve got their eye on our state, and NC and VA too.”

Republican lawmakers in dozens of states across the country have introduced at least 150 bills aimed at restricting ballot access this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

“Two of the more radical proposals include a Texas bill that would allow presidential electors to disregard state election results and a Virginia bill that would empower a random selection of residents to void local election results,” the group observed.

In her speech to Republican donors, Mitchell said GOP lawmakers should be using their dominance in state legislatures to “combat” voting by college students and measures such as same-day voter registration.

Mitchell pointed specifically to North Carolina, where Republicans now have veto-proof majorities in both legislative chambers thanks to erstwhile Democratic state Rep. Tricia Cotham, who recently switched parties.

“Instead of fighting for the people or actually earning the votes, Republicans’ only plan is to try to ‘combat’ voting on college campuses and prevent students and young people from participating in our democracy,” Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) wrote Thursday. “They are SHAMELESSLY and DESPERATELY saying the quiet part out loud.”

The New York Timesreported last month that Republicans, “alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box,” have already been “trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students” in recent weeks.

“In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly… to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification,” the newspaper reported. “But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters. Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia.”

“Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future,” the Times added.

The intensifying GOP campaign against youth voting comes after young people had a major impact on the 2022 midterms. As researchers noted in a recent analysis for the Brookings Institution, strong enthusiasm and turnout among young voters “enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground statewide contest and increase their majority in the US Senate.”

“To the GOP: I hope you’re afraid,” tweeted Olivia Julianna, director of politics and government affairs at Gen-Z for Change. “I hope you wake up every morning haunted by the chants of young voters protesting your attacks on our rights. You should be afraid. Because you’re going to lose power, one vote at a time.”

 

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Amaya, El Niño is coming…

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Pompanitas
Marine heat waves can reach the ocean floor as well as surface waters. Photo CC by Sebastian Pena Lambarri via Unsplash.

El Niño is coming, and ocean temps are already at record highs – that can spell disaster for fish and corals

by Dillon Amaya — National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

It’s coming. Winds are weakening along the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Heat is building beneath the ocean surface. By July, most forecast models agree that the climate system’s biggest player – El Niño – will return for the first time in nearly four years.

El Niño is one side of the climatic coin called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It’s the heads to La Niña’s tails.

During El Niño, a swath of ocean stretching 6,000 miles (about 10,000 kilometers) westward off the coast of Ecuador warms for months on end, typically by 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius). A few degrees may not seem like much, but in that part of the world, it’s more than enough to completely reorganize wind, rainfall and temperature patterns all over the planet.

White corals indicate bleaching from heat stress.
Marine heat waves can trigger coral bleaching. Photo by Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images

I’m a climate scientist who studies the oceans. After three years of La Niña, it’s time to start preparing for what El Niño may have in store.

How El Niño affects the planet

No two El Niño events are exactly alike, though we’ve seen enough of them that forecasters have a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen.

People tend to focus on El Niño’s impact on land, justifiably. The warm water affects air currents that leave areas wetter or drier than usual. It can ramp up storms in some areas, like the southern United States, while tending to tamp down Atlantic hurricane activity.

How El Niño forms. NOAA.

El Niño can also wreak havoc on the many marine ecosystems that support the world’s fishing industries, including coral reefs and seagrass meadows.

Specifically, El Niño tends to trigger intense and widespread periods of extreme ocean warming known as marine heat waves.

Global ocean temperatures are already at record highs, so El Niño-induced marine heat waves could push many sensitive fisheries to a breaking point.

The problem with marine heat waves

A marine heat wave is just that: a “wave” of extreme heat in the ocean, not dissimilar to an atmospheric heat wave on land.

At their smallest, marine heat waves can inundate local bays and coves with hotter-than-normal water for a few days or weeks. At their largest, marine heat waves like the Northeast Pacific Warm Blob of 2013-2014 can grow to gargantuan proportions, with regions three times the size of Texas experiencing ocean temperatures 4 to 6 F (about 2 to 3 C) above average for months or even years.

An example of a marine heat wave showing intense heat.Fierce marine heat waves like this one in 2019 can wreak havoc on sea life off the North American Pacific Coast with temperatures about 4 to 6 F (2 to 3 C) above normal. Charts by Dillon Amaya.

Warm water might not seem like a big deal, especially to surfers hoping to leave their wetsuits at home. But for many marine organisms that are highly adapted to specific water temperatures, marine heat waves can make living in the ocean feel like running a marathon.

For example, some fish increase their metabolism in warm waters by so much that they burn energy faster than they can eat, and they can die. Pacific cod declined by 70% in the Gulf of Alaska in response to a marine heat wave. Other impacts include bleached corals, widespread harmful algal blooms, decimated seaweeds and increased marine mammal strandings. All told, billions of U.S. dollars are lost to marine heat waves each year.

Marine heat waves flare up for a variety of reasons. Sometimes ocean currents shift warm water around. Sometimes surface winds are weaker than normal, leading to less evaporation over the ocean and warmer waters. Sometimes cloudy places just aren’t as cloudy for a few months, which lets more sunlight in and heats up the ocean. Sometimes both weaker winds and fewer clouds happen at the same time, producing record-breaking marine heat waves.

Where El Niño fits in

In the climate system, El Niño is king. When it dons its fiery crown, the entire planet takes notice, and the oceans are no exception. But the likelihood of increased marine heat wave activity during El Niño depends on where you are.

Along the US West Coast during El Niño, surface winds that normally blow from the north tend to subside. This weakens evaporation and slows upwelling of colder, deeper water. That increases the chances of coastal marine heat waves.

Peruvian fishers have for centuries weathered periods of extreme ocean warming that drive fish away. It wasn’t until the 1920s that scientists realized that these South American marine heat waves were related to the Pacificwide ENSO.

In the Bay of Bengal east of India, interactions between El Niño and a tropical air flow pattern known as the Walker Circulation elevate the risk for marine heat waves.

Seafloor heat waves are another risk

Even if marine heat waves aren’t more obvious at the ocean surface this year, it doesn’t mean all is well down below.

In a recent study, my colleagues and I showed that marine heat waves also unfold along the seafloor of coastal regions. In fact, these “bottom marine heat waves” are sometimes more intense than their surface counterparts. They can also persist much longer. For example, a 1997-1998 bottom marine heat wave off the U.S. West Coast lasted an extra four to five months after surface ocean temperatures had already cooled.

Events like this can be related to El Niño and put a lot of stress on bottom-dwelling species. Bering Sea snow crab landings were down 84% in 2018 after a marine heat wave reached the seafloor.

We’re in (for) hot water

With El Niño on the horizon, what can we expect for this year?

The good news is seasonal forecast models can skillfully predict marine heat waves three to six months in advance, depending on the region. And forecasts tend to be most accurate during El Niño years.

Map showing where marine heat waves are forecast in October 2023.NOAA’s marine heat wave forecast issued in early April predicting October 2023. NOAA/Jacox, et al. 2022

The latest forecast predicts several active marine heat waves to persist into June-August, including in the North Pacific, off the coast of Peru, southeast of New Zealand and in the tropical North Atlantic.

The same forecasts predict El Niño to ramp up over the next six to nine months, increasing marine heat wave risk in January to March of 2024 for the US West Coast, the western Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the tropical North Atlantic.

That said, these predictions are far enough out that things could change. Time will tell whether they hold (hot) water, but we would do well to prepare. El Niño is coming.The Conversation

Dillon Amaya, Climate Research Scientist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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

 

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Bernal, A fifth ballot

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1941 coup
“Change” is not always positive, not always in a straight line, not always predictable. Arnulfo Arias and his brother Harmodio overthrew a corrupt Liberal administration, which led to some interesting jobs for younger brother Arnulfo. A physician, he was national health director at one point, publishing notorious “racial health” propaganda. He went to Europe as a diplomat, striking up friendships with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. When it was his time to be president, he promulgated a new constitution in 1941 — which stripped all black people descended from the non-Hispanic Caribbean islands, all of Asian ancestry, and all Sephardic Jews and those with roots in North Africa and the Middle East of their citizenship. This being in the months preceding US entry into World War II, when food and war materiel was being shipped from the US and Canadian west coasts through the Panama Canal to the UK, German U-boats were patrolling in our Caribbean waters, attacking the aid shipments when they could. Franklin D. Roosevelt was fairly intolerant of one of Hitler’s friends running Panama and engineered an October 1941 coup to send Arnulfo packing and rescind his racist 1941 constitution. Here we had US-installed President Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia riding with his foreign minister under US guard after the coup.

A fifth ballot? Yes, but…

by Miguel Antonio Bernal – Alternativa

Twelve years ago (August 27, 2012), in my weekly column in El Siglo, I raised the issue of the need for a fifth ballot in the 2014 elections.

It was not the first, nor the last time I did so. Already since 1992, following the referendum on reforms to the militarist constitution, held during the Endara government, I raised the need, then, for a third ballot next to those of the YES and NO, in which citizens could say whether or not we wanted a new constitution through a constituent assembly process.

For the 2004 elections, the need for a fifth ballot had also been raised. More than 200,000 signatures were collected, and all the aspirants to the presidential chair at that time declared themselves in favor of the initiative coordinated by the late Father Nestor Jaén. The magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal, Eduardo Valdes E., repudiated the initiative and argued that it was too late and that “there was no paper.”

For the last elections, the Movimiento Constituyente YA (Cristobal Silva) and the Movimiento de Ciudadanos Unidos por la Constituyente (CUCO), accompanied by other citizens, presented, through the office of citizen initiative, a draft bill to include the fifth ballot, which was also done at the time by the then deputy José Isabel Blandón Figueroa (2009-2014.)

The civic organizations and political parties were dismissive, negative and non-responsive. This, far from discouraging the members of the groups supporting a constituent assembly, committed us to insist on it, given the continuous and growing deterioration of the situation. The opposition to a fifth ballot has not ceased to find a fierce enemy in the managers of the Electoral Tribunal and in their partners promoting the cosmetic status quo of a misnamed “parallel constituent assembly.”

Today, more than ever before, it is mandatory to find a political solution through a constituent assembly. Not to do so is to go to the slaughterhouse of fraud.

We have insistently pointed this out:

For four decades we have postulated the need for a CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, a democratic, participatory and peaceful process, which is the solution and alternative that we must promote more and more every day in order to achieve a true updating of our social formation.

Such a new social contract has never been looked upon favorably by those in and behind power. Neither those of yesterday, nor those of today. But this, far from intimidating us, should motivate us to seek and reach ways to open a constituent process in our Panama.

A group of citizens has recently retaken the initiative of the national consultation by means of the fifth ballot on the convenience of a constituent assembly, which we consider opportune. However, we call attention to the presence of declared enemies of the constituent assembly among the petitioners who, in addition, have addressed the Electoral Tribunal. The magistrates see citizen participation, popular consultation and the drive for a constituent assembly as their bitter enemies.

In view of the emerging electoral situation, we must raise the demand for the inclusion of a fifth ballot in the elections of 2024, in which the citizens are asked:

DO YOU AGREEING WITH THE CONVENING OF A NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY NO LATER THAN THREE MONTHS AFTER THE INAUGURATION OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT? YES OR NO.

 

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Nito opens the door — just a bit — to a constitutional referendum

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Nito
President Cortizo, at the far end of the table wearing a mask, meets with the La Estrella / El Siglo editorial advisory board. At the near end is Abdul Waked, who for being of Lebanese extraction and for having a relative who took out a bank loan for one purpose and spent it for another, was stripped of his majority stake in the newspapers under pressure of the US Treasury Department, is at the table on the near end. Photo by the Presidencia.

President Cortizo, given the right wording, would support a 2024 “fifth ballot” about calling a constitutional convention

by Eric Jackson

In an April 19th meeting with a reconstituted GESE — Grupo El Siglo & La Estrella — editorial council, President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen made a number of noteworthy statements and gestures, even if nothing too binding.

For starters, the president met with former publisher and Colon Free Zone magnate Abdul Waked, whom the US government wrongly vilified as a big-time drug money launderer but failed to prove anything of the sort, nor specify any criminal activity of any sort by Mr. Waked, let along provide any proof. At the time the head of the US Southern Command was railing against Latin America’s Lebanese Muslim communities in vague, broad-brushed smears. Abdul Waked’s Lebanese-Colombian nephew did plead guilty to taking out a loan from a Miami bank for one purpose and using it for another, although he did pay off the loan and cheated nobody. Proof being deemed beside the point by Washington, Abdul Waked was forced to divest his companies via potential US penalties for anybody who did business with them, taking big financial losses and surrendering control of his newspapers to those found acceptable to the United States.

Thus the president’s publicized meeting with Abdul Waked was an implicit statement that Washington blacklists are not to be taken uproven at face value by this Panamanian administration.

(On the other hand, just a few hours earlier Panamanian police burst into a mansion in Costa del Este, rousting a couple out of bed, and arresting the man, a fugitive on various gang association and money laundering charges, and the woman who was sleeping with him, who worked for the Ministry of Government and is the daughter of a PRD representante in Colon province.)

But what did the president talk about with the folks from La Estrella and El Siglo?

Most notably there was the tacit admission that the Panamanian government, in all of its branches, has lost the confidence and support of a great many Panamanians, to the extent that proposals to restructure the constitutional order are valid to consider at this time. But Cortizo, who cut short moves earlier in his administration to consider constitutional changes by the passage in two successive legislatures or the parallel constituent assembly routes, still left a caveat. About a constitutional convention proposal he said: “It would be good for the magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal to make a good analysis of this. What would not be good is that it could contaminate the political process. It is a proposal that must be analyzed.”

We can be assured of arguments about an originating versus a parallel convention, as have been going on among advocates of constitutional change for years. And surely, among the dispensers and recipients of political patronage perks the burning question would be “What’s in it for me?” However, we should not discount Nito’s allowance that there is a popular demand for change in the ways that we govern ourselves.

Also taken up in his meeting with the GESE folks were the knotty problems of the Social Security Fund and so far inconclusive talks with US officials about a renegotiation of some of the terms of the US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Recall that at the time the agreement was made, during the Martín Torrijos administration, Nito resigned his cabinet position because he thought it was harmful to Panamanian farmers and ranchers.

 

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Cerro Patacon management deal falls through

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dump fire
The metro area’s Cerro Patacon dump smolders. Bombero Corps photo.

They said there was an agreement.
Then they got down to the details.

by Eric Jackson

It’s a problem in municipalities large and small across this country, and it has been not so cleverly concealed for many years. Take the breakdown in contract talks between the government and the Ecolimpia consortium as but another chapter in a book of how things should not be run.

At the end of March the government announced the results of online contract bidding between two companies that wanted to take over management from the Colombian-based Urbalia. The latter complained about payments due and not made, while the Panamanian government complained of jobs not done, or not properly done. People within a radius of more or less two miles were frequently subjected to rotten garbage odors and smoke coming off of the 325-acre dump. Leaching toxic waters from the dump had contaminated the groundwater of some 22,500 acres.

So the contract with Urbalia was allowed to expire, and online bidding for a replacement contractor was held. Ecolimpia, a Panamanian consortium, went against a Colombian firm. The per-ton bid by Ecolimpia was actually a few cents higher, but that didn’t stop them from winning the bidding.

An online process for a public process vital to public health? Then surely the public should have been able to go online and peruse the experience and qualifications of the bidders — right? Not so. There seem to be no data available from Ecolimpia and it components of waste management jobs that they have done.

Just one more thing about Panamanian waste management that’s concealed from public view.

This country’s public health care agencies don’t DO epidmiological studies among people who live near city dumps, nor among people in communities that don’t pick up the solid waste and so the residents burn theirs in improvised pits? Alcaldes and representantes — or on a national government level, the Urban and Household Sanitation Authority (AAUD) — don’t want the infamy of causing tax hikes or raising garbage collection fees, especially during hard times when many people can’t afford to pay? Then don’t let the national government conduct or publish studies about how destructive the status quo really is. The comparison of cost cutting with children who die of leukemia just isn’t politically correct.

The arts and sciences of waste management are ancient and modern, improving all the time and with promising developments which sometimes do and sometimes don’t work out. And with associated costs, and charlatans in public and private posts ready to take advantage if they can.

Consider what Golgotha was. It was a city dump, near one of Jerusalem’s gates. Both human remains and animal offal got discarded there and were scavenged by dogs and birds looking to pick the meatier bones. Some folks found things to recycle. A lot of discarded things were burned. It was this eternally burning place, the model for the Christian Hell. As a political statement by the Romans, by the local government of the time and previously, a hilltop there was considered an apt place to execute criminals — and political or religious dissidents — thus branding them as disposable human trash.

It’s neither religiously nor politically correct to compare Panama’s refuse dumps to the reality of what Golgotha was. But there it is. It’s cheaper if you don’t take all related costs into account to run a dump on the ancient Golgotha model.

Fast forward to a time of plastics and myriad household and industrial chemicals. And to a place with a much larger population than the Jerusalem of more than 2,000 years ago had. And a different climate, with much wetter and longer rainy seasons. Add in some different soil conditions, too.

Modern solid waste management is a known set of arts and sciences. It’s about fire prevention to protect the air that people have to breathe. It’s about preventing the spread of disease-causing pathogens from the refuse to human or animal populations. It’s about preventing, channeling and cleaning the toxic liquids that will run off of dump sites, or seep down into the groundwater from which people and animals drink. It’s a lot of work and significant expense to do properly. It can’t be well run if it’s subject to a massive change of personnel every five years, with minimally qualified political hirees going and coming.

Cerro Patacon is a problem that has been growing for years. At the start of Martinelli times the dump, although in San Miguelito, was a Panama City property. There were clearly problems and what to do, and who gets to collect, became a cadaver of contention between the slick and dishonest president and the stupid and dishonest mayor.

A big incinerator to magically turn trash into energy? Sounds reasonable to someone who hasn’t done any homework on the world’s ample experience that those sorts of things. But hey, Panamanian public education is intentionally held back from what it should be, and this country has criminal defamation laws to oppress those pesky journalists who might refer to the international problem between the US state of Michigan and the Canadian province of Ontario when the Detroit metro area was burning its refuse upwind from the greater Windsor area. Paper, plastic and food scraps are problem enough, but throw in batteries, aluminum and the residues of household and industrial solvents and it becomes a recipe for huge public health issues. You wouldn’t expect Bosco the Clown to know such a thing, nor to care. You might expect someone else to know perfectly well, go ahead and create the problem and designate a scapegoat onto whom blame could be shifted.

As it turned out Cerro Patacon was nationalized, and generally through private contractors run much as it had been. Urbalia was the latest of these, hired by the AAUD to manage the dump.

So, why didn’t Ecolimpia move right in? Because they insisted on being definitively given the job at once, without hammering out the details of the contract. Because when talking about the details, Ecolimpia balked at including security to, for example, keep people from coming onto the site and setting fires. Because Ecolimpia wanted control and remediation of the toxic runoff and seepage to be somebody else’s job. They also wanted the capture of methane gas from buried rotting garbage and the maintenance of roads within the dump to be somebody else’s costs. Ecolimpia, the AAUD complained, wanted something like the standard pay without delivering the standard services. So, some three weeks after the AAUD announced Ecolimpia as the winning bidder, the deal was called off by the government and the AAUD will start a new bidding process for Cerro Patacon management.

The Environmental Litigation Center (CIAM), a nonprofit public interest law firm, takes a grim view of it all:

Uncontrolled stormwater management, non-existent leachate treatment, lack of waste cover, free dispersal of biogas, lack of operator safety and poor landfill operation have been known for more than 20 years.

Many long-time observers have opined that Cerro Patacon is filled more or less to capacity and needs to be replaced, even if continued monitoring and management will be needed for a long time to come.

But to former Panama City deputy mayor, architect and environmental activist Raisa Banfield, the city dump doesn’t have to be a problem. She says that there are companies that have done good waste management jobs elsewhere, but that when none of them applied to bid on the Cerro Patacon job it said a great deal about the nature of the process.

Which opinion set off the predictable partisan troll farms. That she had served in government and was not politically aligned with the people running this process were as might be expected taken as proofs of her malicious partisan intentions. Even though she is and long has been an independent, and has not announced any plans to run for office in 2024.

 

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Reich, An off-the-wall settlement

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They LIE! Take them away.
His too. It’s a whole toxic culture of lies. Photo by Ted Eytan.

Why the Dominion-Fox News settlement is rubbish

by Robert Reich

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems have agreed to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million. (Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion over allegations that Fox defamed the voting company by knowingly or recklessly airing false claims tying voting machines to a conspiracy to undermine the 2020 presidential election.)

A lawyer for Dominion celebrated the agreement, saying, “Money is accountability.”

Rubbish. The Fox Corporation has an estimated value around $17 billion. The settlement amounts to a cost of doing business for Fox.

The settlement also means that Fox’s major figures — including Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, and Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Maria Bartiromo — won’t have to testify.

What about an apology from Fox? From these Fox hosts? A confession of complicity in Trump’s big lie? A promise to stop lying in the future?

Which in turn means they won’t have to explain all the pretrial evidence (emails, depositions, and so on) showing that they knew Trump lied about the 2020 election being “stolen” but they went ahead and joined Trump’s lie nonetheless — in order not to lose viewers to Newsmax, One America News, or any other group to their right with even fewer scruples — so they’d preserve their revenue stream.

Fox said in a statement that “we acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” It added: “We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

Move forward?

What about an apology from Fox? From these Fox hosts? A confession of complicity in Trump’s big lie? A promise to stop lying in the future?

Nada.

Dominion may have protected its trademark, but it hasn’t protected American democracy.
Nothing about the lawsuit or its settlement has been aired on Fox News. Fox viewers continue to be in the dark about all of it — Trump’s big lie, Fox’s amplification of the big lie, the lawsuit, and the emails and pretrial testimony showing that Fox News and its hosts knew it was all a big lie.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to push his big lie. Presumably, Fox News will continue to push it as well because, hey, it sells to the Trump base that Fox News helped create.

And that’s really what this is all about: Money. Money to Trump. Money to Dominion. Money to Murdoch. Money to people such as Carlson and Hannity and Ingraham and Bartiromo — all of whom long ago cashed in their integrity for big bucks.

Even though their traitorous behavior has brought America to the cusp of civil war — including an attack on the US Capitol — they’ll continue to do whatever is necessary (short of defaming a deep-pocketed voting machine company) to keep the money flowing in their direction.

Yesterday, the Grifter-in-Chief announced the release of a second round of superhero-style digital trading cards with cartoonish images of him at $99 apiece.

Fox’s and Trump’s grift goes on.

 

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Editorials: The legislature’s nonstarter; and Fox is just beginning to pay

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HIM
The PRD legislator from San Miguelito gets right to the point. But “his” people are a small circle. Graphic from his Facebook page.

Uh huh

The National Assembly has its “final draft” of a civil forfeiture law, we are told by legislative committee chair Leandro Ávila. Fortunes derived from drug trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism, sexual exploitation, money laundering, kidnapping, extortion, and contract killings could be confiscated. NOT fortunes derived from bribery, graft, nor theft by public officials of public assets.

The American Embassy has been pushing hard for Panamanian legislation to expand the civil asset forfeiture that has for years been on the books here for the proceeds of drug trafficking. They have good arguments, one of which is NOT that Panama should copy all the abuses of forfeiture laws that happen under US law in the United States.

Panama should have Panamanian legislation on this matter to protect the interests of Panama and Panamanians, above all to curb the power of hereditary criminal aristocracies.

Make it a cornerstone of how we fund our public services and we become just another backwoods US jurisdiction with an abusive sheriff. Make it a matter of exceptional discretion and we get disreputable characters like former acting attorney general Guiseppe Bonnissi tooling around in a confiscated Maserati and armed goons at the Public Ministry threatening folks like The Panama News editor who would take a picture of it in his reserved parking spot. Exempt the proceeds of public corruption and we get the worst of our political caste mocking everyone else in this country.

How do we get through this obstacle course? By in a little more than one year’s time having one of those occasional bloodbath elections in which nearly all incumbent legislators are defeated. Then start again.

Mu.rdoch media boycott
At a New York City protest where Black Lives Matter called for a boycott of Murdoch family media. Wikimedia photo by All-Nite-Images.

“The Steal” has gone the way of “The New Economy”

Will Fox News survive the humiliation? Probably.

However, let’s look at another Murdoch family property, the British tabloid The Sun, after dozens were crushed to death in a stadium entrance tunnel when the management mishandled entry to a soccer game. The Sun invented lurid stories about savage Liverpool fans and pointed its finger at them. These lies were exposed, quickly and repeatedly. The reason for them has never been truthfully given, but was it building newspaper sales? That newspaper lost nearly 80% of its sales in the Liverpool / Merseyside area and much of its sales and advertising revenue. Nearly two decades later the newspaper’s editor admitted that its reports on the soccer stadium disaster were untrue, but then cast blame on a single source, a right-wing politician who was not even there.

Was the damage limited to the Liverpool area? Did it soon blow over? Hardly. It became the subject of a popular anthem. British politicians from all regions still refuse to talk to The Sun, and it’s a still a problem for Labour members of parliament who don’t go along with the newspaper’s shunning.

The company and its acolytes will say that The Sun is there but in the US here and now there is nothing to see, so move along. But despite the lack of a spectacular trial, a certain cultural moment has arrived and there will be no return. If Donald Trump isn’t a convicted felon who is ineligible to run for public office in a number of states by this time next year, his political career is mortally wounded even if he gets the GOP nomination for a third presidential run and Fox News is a major part of that story. The far right has people like Florida’s governor to step into Trump’s shoes but their politics of primitive hatreds and their prohibitions on telling many important truths by banning books and academic discussions do not play well across the USA.

Fox is going the way of Jimmy Swaggart’s and Jim Bakker’s ministries. But what of the Republican Party that those now scorned fake prophets boosted?

Even if the bulk of the GOP is going full fascist and making foolish snake oil claims, Democrats could hand overwhelming political power to them and have done so in a number of states. Just like Democratic Party disorders handed the White House to Trump in 2016. Ruthless power plays, cynical dishonesty, ambitions that don’t pass smell tests, dependence on amoral lobbyists and donors – these don’t exist only on one side of the US political aisle. Fox will fade into irrelevance, but its fan base is still around, will find other media onto which they will fix its attention and may come into absolute power riding on Democrats’ mistakes.

Life goes on and empty spaces tend to get filled. Fox News will live on, but the Murdoch brand is forever infamous and will be an oft-cited horrible example of unethical journalism for generations to come.

      

           Angry people are not always wise.

Jane Austen                

Bear in mind…

 

When a character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.

Japanese proverb

It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.

Scott Westerfeld

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

Ferdinand Foch

 

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What is Discord?

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app
An espionage tool? Graphic by Broome County, New York.

An internet researcher explains the social media platform
at the center of Pentagon leak of top-secret intelligence

by Brianna Dym, University of Maine

The Justice Department on April 14, 2023, charged Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. Media reports suggest that Teixeira didn’t intend to leak the documents widely but rather shared them on a closed Discord community focused on playing war games.

Some of the documents were then shared to another Discord community with a larger following and became widely disseminated from there.

So what is Discord and should you worry about what people are encountering there?

Ever since the earliest days of the internet in the 1980s, getting online has meant getting involved in a community. Initially, there were dial-up chat servers, email lists and text-based discussion groups focused on specific interests.

Since the early 2000s, mass-appeal social media platforms have collected these small spaces into bigger ones, letting people find their own little corners of the internet, but only with interconnections to others. This allows social media sites to suggest new spaces users might join, whether it’s a local neighborhood discussion or a group with the same hobby, and sell specifically targeted advertising. But the small-group niche community is making a comeback with adults, and with kids and teens.

When Discord was initially released in 2015, many video games did not provide players with live voice chat to talk to one another while playing the game – or required them to pay premium prices to do so. Discord was an app that enabled real-time voice and text chatting, so friends could team up to conquer an obstacle, or just chat while exploring a game world. People do still use Discord for that, but these days most of the activity on the service is part of wider communities than just a couple of friends meeting up to play.

Examining Discord is part of my research into how scholars, developers and policymakers might design and maintain healthy online spaces.

A little bit old school

Discord first came onto my radar in 2017 when an acquaintance asked me to join a writer’s support group. Discord users can set up their own communities, called servers, with shareable links to join and choices about whether the server is public or private.

The writer’s group server felt like an old-school chat room, but with multiple channels segmenting out different conversations that folks were having. It reminded me of descriptions of early online chat and forum-based communities that hosted lengthy conversations between people all over the world.

The people in the writers’ server quickly realized that a few of our community members were teenagers under the age of 18. While the server owner had kept the space invite-only, he avoided saying “no” to anyone who requested access. It was supposed to be a supportive community for people working on writing projects, after all. Why would he want to exclude anyone?

He didn’t want to kick the teens out, but was able to make some adjustments using Discord’s server moderation system. Community members had to disclose their age, and anyone under 18 was given a special “role” that tagged them as a minor. That role prevented them from accessing channels that we marked as “not safe for work,” or “NSFW.” Some of the writers were working on explicit romance novels and didn’t want to solicit feedback from teenagers. And sometimes, adults just wanted to have their own space.

While we took care in constructing an online space safe for teens, there are still dangers present with an app like Discord. The platform is criticized for lacking parental controls. The terms of service state that no one under 13 should sign up for Discord, but many young people use the platform regardless.

Additionally, there are people who have used Discord to organize and encourage hateful rhetoric, including neo-Nazi ideologies. Others have used the platform to traffic child pornography.

However, Discord does maintain that these sorts of activities are illegal and unwelcome on its platform, and the company regularly bans servers and users it says perpetuate harm.

Options for safety

Every Discord server I’ve joined since then has had some safeguard around young people and inappropriate content. Whether it’s age-restricted channels or simply refusing to allow minors to join certain servers, the Discord communities I’m in share a heightened concern for keeping young people on the internet safe.

This does not mean that every Discord server will be safe at all times for its members, however. Parents should still take the time to talk with their kids about what they’re doing in their online spaces. Even something as innocuous as the popular children’s gaming environment Roblox can turn bad in the right setting.

And while the servers I’ve been involved in have been managed with care, not all Discord servers are regulated this way. In addition to servers lacking uniform regulation, account owners are able to lie about their age and identity when signing up for an account. And there are new ways for users to misbehave or annoy others on Discord, like spamming loud and inappropriate audio.

But, as with other modern social media platforms, there are safeguards to help administrators keep online communities safe for young people if they want to. Server members can label an entire server “NSFW,” going beyond single channel labels and locking minor accounts out of entire communities. But if they don’t, company officials can do it themselves. When accessing Discord on an iOS device, NSFW servers are not visible to anyone, even accounts belonging to adults. Additionally, Discord runs a Moderator Academy to support training up volunteer moderators who can appropriately handle a wide range of situations.

A screenshot of a Discord community
Discord is another way for people to gather and communicate online. Graphic by Discord.

Stronger controls

Unlike many other current popular social media platforms, Discord servers often function as closed communities, with invitations required to join. There are also large open servers flooded with millions of users, but Discord’s design integrates content moderation tools to maintain order.

For example, a server creator has tight control over who has access to what, and what permissions each server member can have to send, delete or manage messages. In addition, Discord allows community members to add automations to a server, continuously monitoring activity to enforce moderation standards.

With these protections, people use servers to form tight-knit, closed spaces safe from chaotic public squares like Twitter and less visible to the wider online world. This can be positive, keeping spaces safer from bullies, trolls and disinformation spreaders. In my own research, young people have mentioned their Discord servers as the safe, private space they have online in contrast to messy public platforms.

However, moving online activity to more private spaces also means that those well-regulated, healthy communities are less discoverable for vulnerable groups that might need them. For example, new fathers looking for social support are sometimes more inclined to access it through open subreddits rather than Facebook groups.

Discord’s servers are not the first closed communities on the internet. They are, essentially, the same as old-school chat rooms, private blogs and curated mailing lists. They will have the same problems and opportunities as previous online communities.

Discussion about self-protection

In my view, the solution to this particular problem is not necessarily banning particular practices or regulating internet companies. Research into youth safety online finds that government regulation aimed at protecting minors on social media rarely has the desired outcome, and more often results in disempowering and isolating youth instead.

Just as parents and caring adults tell the kids in their lives about recognizing dangerous situations in the physical world, talking about healthy online interactions can help young people protect themselves in the online world. Many youth-focused organizations, and many internet companies, have internet safety information aimed at kids of all ages.

Whenever young people hop onto the next technology fad, there will inevitably be panic over how the adults, companies and society may or may not be keeping young people safe. What is most important in these situations is to remember that talking to young people about how they use those technologies, and what to do in difficult situations, can be an effective way to help them avoid serious harm online.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 15, 2022.The Conversation

Brianna Dym, Lecturer of Computer Science, University of Maine

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

 

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