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Bernal, Disturbing numbers

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Informal 1
One of the things that is not well enumerated in the Panamanian economy is the state of its informal sector. The bean counters like to pretend that it, and those who work in it, don’t count – whenever they can get away with that. Archive photo by Eric Jackson. 

Raw reality smashes people in the face with disturbing numbers

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

The end of the year is approaching and national problems are increasing, far from diminishing. The country resembles a drifting ship that is leaking, in addition to not having a captain and crew with the ability to successfully bring it to a port.

During the last three years, government propaganda hasn’t ceased to misinform about the real situation of our country at all levels. Government authoritarianism, with its mix of populism and demagogy, has been disrupting the fragile existing institutions and weakening the pillars and functioning of the worn-out state institutions.

These disquieting figures – not to say disturbing – will also bring a lot of social unrest. For now, let’s list some of them:

  • Public debt amounted to $43.175.31 million (as of June 30, 2022)
  • Pending debt interest payments for December added up to $597.73 million ($467.79 million for foreign debt interest payment and $129.94 million for national debt interest payment).
  • The interest on the debt between January and September of this year is estimated at $1.3698 billion, and more than $3.5 billion in 2024 and 2026. (see La Prensa, December 2, 2022)
  • The general budget of the government for 2023 reaches the sum of $27.579 billion (Law 336 of November 14, 2022).
  • The projected budget deficit is $2.184 billion.
  • 1.1 million Panamanians live in poverty, while half a million live in extreme poverty, out of a population estimated at 4.3 million (see Annual Report on Poverty and Extreme Poverty-Panama).
    353,412 Panamanians earn less than $600 per month, while 166,475 earn $1,500 per month. (National Institute of Statistics and Census)
  • According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) between August 2012 and April 2022, the population of productive age (over 15 years), grew by 632,940 people. However, today there are 59,252 fewer formal private salaried workers, but 249,633 more informal ones. (René Quevedo in La Prensa Financial Tuesday, November 29, 2022).
informal 2
The official numbers don’t list failing informal businesses, but you can see them all around.
Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

 

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Editorials: A bit of progress; and Right-wing thugs

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CSS
Visible progress, after all these years. Hematology patients and staff are moving into the long-delayed Ciudad de Salud hospital complex, still under construction. Seguro Social photo.

At least SOMETHING to show

The country and metro area NEEDED a new hospital complex. The Ciudad de Salud, however, was within that generally acknowledged need a series of wrong answers.

There was the idea in Ricky Martinelli times that a new complex would be part of an overall privatization scheme in which primarily Venezuelan doctors, nurses and technicians would be brought in to smash the public health care workers’ unions and there would be a new complex oriented toward medical tourism by bringing in rich gringo tourists. Those ideas were crushed for the time being, but the Ciudad de Salud ambled on in its zombie walk.

There was the eternally thuggish public construction contracting game, with all of its graft, bid rigging and litigation as built-in expectations.

Things were delayed by new budget priorities, or new favoritism, or new administrations coming in to find empty coffers, with each change of government.

It’s not that Nito has significantly cleaned up any of those acts, but he has overseen gears going back into motion. We have at least this to show for all the money, and the promise of more.

 

Traffic jam as residents flee Moore County, North Carolina after neofascist terrorists caused a massive wintertime power outage by attacking the power grid there.

The civil war that Republicans want

They published photos of themselves, their spouses and their children toting guns as a political statement. They ran TV ads of themselves firing assault rifles. They’ve been running a nonstop defamation campaign against the LGBTQ communities. They put the Proud Boys into influential positions in the Miami area Republican Party. They laughed about a brutal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s home and husband. They attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to nullify the 2020 US presidential election. They stole a massive cache of public documents, some of them including the identities of vulnerable US agents overseas. They sent armed vigilantes to intimidate people at ballot drop boxes in Arizona. They’re jamming up the courts as best they can. They have called for the suspension of the US Constitution, so that without any procedure they can replace the elected US president with Donald Trump as dictator.

And now they have attacked the power grid in a North Carolina county, because they hate queers and wanted to shut down a drag show.

It didn’t work. Americans can’t and won’t let it work.

Is it an unfair generalization to say “Republicans?” Was it, in 1945, an unfair generalization to say “Nazis?”

Actual conservatives, those who would like to conserve something – like, say, the United States of America as a constitutional republic with democratic institutions – would do well to leave the Republican Party behind.

People and businesses resist the terrorist attack.
…and the show went on in the dark.

 

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Bell Hooks speaking at the New School in 2014.
Wikimedia photo by Alex Lozupone (Tduk)

No insurgent intellectual, no dissenting critical voice in this society escapes the pressure to conform…we are all vulnerable. We can all be had, co-opted, bought. There is no special grace that rescues any of us. There is only a constant struggle.

Bell Hooks

Bear in mind…

Ignorant men don’t know what good they hold in their hands until they’ve flung it away.

Sophocles

Write what should not be forgotten.

Isabel Allende

It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.

René Descartes

 

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Biden, Changing the presidential primary lineup

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GA runoff
Line for early voting in the 2022 Georgia US Senate runoff. Photo from Rachel Aragon’s Twitter feed.

Reflect the overall diversity of our party and our nation

by Joe Biden
joe on primaries

 

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¿Wappin? Hold onto The Dream! / ¡Aférrate al Sueño!

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Christine Perfect
The late Christine McVie. Photo 2019 by Ralph_PH.

A Friday mix, some translated
Una mezcla de viernes, algunos traducidos

Christine McVie – Got A Hold On Me
https://youtu.be/Xg1t-fqhbf8

Junior Murvin’s Wailers – Rototom Sunsplash 2015
https://youtu.be/eVy7CpwcQiY

Bratty – Quédate
https://youtu.be/wnb689upngA

Bruce Springsteen – Follow That Dream
https://youtu.be/dac_PqCINA8

Rubén Blades & Jerry García – Muevete
https://youtu.be/ZWfYew3s_Nw

Zahara – Phendula
https://youtu.be/MU6oHf9oxTw

Susana Baca – Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
https://youtu.be/7WiGD2vOqDk

Irene Cara – What a Feeling
https://youtu.be/ba309hHIrwI

Of Monsters And Men – Wolves Without Teeth
https://youtu.be/qC2iNAhcm98

John Coltrane – Blue Train
https://youtu.be/HT_Zs5FKDZE

Paul McCartney – Tug of War
https://youtu.be/HlKaGm06Mn8

Florence + the Machine – Flow Festival 2022
https://youtu.be/ykHppfi-Nxc

Roger Waters – Two Suns in the Sunset
https://youtu.be/9wlisCoX6Nk

 

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Consulado de EEUU acelera proceso de visas / US Consulate speeds up visas

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US consulate

CONSULAR ANNOUNCEMENT

If you have a US visa interview appointment scheduled between October 2023 and November 2024, your appointment has been brought forward.

Your new appointment has been rescheduled for early 2023.

You should check your email and your profile at ustraveldocs.com/pa for your new appointment date.

If you cannot access your profile or have any questions, please contact the Consulate at ustraveldocs.com/pa

This advance date does not entail any additional cost. Please do not pay anyone to advance your interview appointment. The US Consulate does not require an additional payment for this advance appointment.

The US Embassy will continue to do everything possible to facilitate travel between the US and Panama. Thanks to a recent increase in staff, we have been able to move up a considerable number of interviews already scheduled.

 

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

 

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Musk and right-wing troll teams move to purge leftists from Twitter

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antifa
Prominent antifa leader instructs armed men about to launch a deadly assault on unsuspecting fascists on the other side of an international border. US Army photo in the Library of Congress Eisenhower archive.

Evidence grows of left-wing Twitter purge directed by Musk

by Brett Wilkins — Common Dreams

While claiming to have bought the social media giant in order to make it “an inclusive arena for free speech,” multibillionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk is apparently overseeing what critics claim is a purge of anti-fascist voices, The Intercept reported Tuesday.

“Several prominent anti-fascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations,” The Intercept‘s Robert Mackey and Micah Lee wrote.

Among the suspended Twitter accounts are those of journalist Vishal Pratap Singh, who covers far-right protests in California; the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, which provides security for LGBTQ+ events in Texas; the anarchist collective CrimethInc; and anti-fascist researcher Chad Loder.

“What I believe happened is that I and other accounts have been mass reported for the last few weeks by a dedicated group of far-right extremists who want to erase archived evidence of their past misdeeds and to neutralize our ability to expose them in the future,” Loder told The Intercept.

 

“What I suspect happened is that Twitter’s automatic systems flagged my account for some reason and no human being is reviewing these,” Loder added.

A common thread connects the aforementioned suspensions: All were flagged by far-right conspiracy theorist and social media influencer Andy Ngo, who, in a Twitter exchange was invited by Musk to identify accounts for possible suspension.

“Andy Ngo’s bizarre vision of ‘Antifa’ seems to be the metric used to delete the accounts of journalists and publications, most of which engaged in verifiably good journalism and [have] done so completely above board and [terms of service] observant ways,” tweeted Shane Burley, editor of the anthology ¡No Pasarán!: Anti-fascist Dispatches From a World in Crisis. “Paranoid delusions about Antifa are driving it.”

In recent days, a list of thousands of purported “Antifa” Twitter accounts—including those of CNN, actor Danny DeVito, the World Health Organization, and a “professional dog rater”—has been circulating online.

While calling the list “absurd,” listee Nick Martin, publisher of the extremism monitoring site The Informant, warned: “Don’t dismiss it. A mass flagging campaign has begun based on the list and is already claiming victory for a number of bans. It’s a sign far-right extremists see Elon Musk as a ally who will empower them and destroy their enemies.”

The suspensions of left-wing accounts came as Musk restores the accounts of far-right figures, some of whom—like former US President Donald Trump—have called for or incited violence on the platform.

“The irony isn’t lost on us that our suspension coincides with a coordinated effort to reinstate the most vile antisemitic, transphobic hate accounts,” Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club told The Intercept. “Whether this is an indication of the future of leadership of Elon Musk’s running of Twitter, we cannot say but we can say that the timing and reasoning is deliberate and targeted.”

CrimethInc, which before the current suspension had never run afoul of Twitter’s terms of service in its 14-year existence, said that “Musk’s goal in acquiring Twitter had nothing to do with free speech. It was a partisan move to silence opposition, paving the way for fascist violence.”

Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic wrote Tuesday that “no one should’ve honestly believed Elon Musk would use his ownership of Twitter to champion free speech.”

“Besides the fact that the man is a professional bullshitter,” he added, “it was always dubious that a guy who slaps employees with gag orders and bars them from wearing pro-union messages had a genuine commitment to the proverbial marketplace of ideas.”

 

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Crime season…

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rob

At the corner of Via España and Via Argentina, of all places…

It’s crime season, and as is traditional, also the time when police make these sweeps to get the maleantes — and foreigners whose papers aren’t in order — off of the streets.

If you are a foreigner and newcomer — or for that matter a Panamanian citizen — remember that in Panama you need to carry ID whenever you go out.

Both the cops and the robbers profile for foreigners. Like these two women who assaulted an Irish tourist, trying to rob him, and were caught in the act both by a video camera and by a police patrol. Were they stupid? Or intoxicated? Perhaps. More certainly DESPERATE. Consumer fetish materialism takes a toll on society and its members in the commercial Christmas season. And there are also many women at a loss to feed themselves and their kids.

Given that there was a knife introduced into the act and the Irishman was cut on his arm, you’d think that it would be an armed robbery rap, with serious time. But for prison sentences of four years or less, the convict can buy her or his way out by paying a fine. Guilty pleas, prison sentences, and these assailants walked after paying $300.

Let’s not to raise any great hue and cry, nor argue the merits and demerits of aggravating and mitigating circumstances here. But publicized attacks on tourists can do great damage to a country’s economy, and any attempt to suppress information about it tends to make it worse. Panama needs to reduce and prevent such stuff, as a matter of national security. Which the cops did here, but maybe not the courts.

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Varios panameños, Carta abierta sobre Oscar René Vargas

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Oscar René Vargas en 2018. Foto por Uriel Molina — La Prensa de Nicaragua en exilio.

Nicaragua: Libertad para el profesor Oscar René Vargas

por panameños defensores de las libertades democráticas y la justicia social

El martes 22 de noviembre el economista y sociólogo DR.Oscar René Vargas, quien a sus 77 años es uno de los más destacados intelectuales nicaragüenses , autor de más de 35 libros y otros tantos en colaboración, luchador por las libertades democráticas y la justicia social desde que enfrentó la feroz dictadura de los Somoza, y unido luego desde sus inicios al Frente Sandinista como asesor, aunque posteriormente critico del mismo, fue detenido sorpresivamente sin que se le haya especificado el “delito” por el cual se le ha privado de su libertad.

Enterados de tan bárbaro ataque a tan prestigiosa y respetada figura, se realizó de inmediato un llamamiento internacional en pro de su libertad, el cual en 24 horas logro las firmas de los más prestigiosos catedráticos e intelectuales de México, América Central y del Sur, así como de Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, Francia, Bélgica, Gran Bretaña, España, Italia, Portugal, Suiza, Austria y Alemania, sumando centenares de firmas de adhesión.

De igual manera, la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas ha calificado como arbitraria la detención, y las organizaciones de Derechos Humanos y Civiles de Centro América, al igual que la Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología, han exigido su inmediata liberación.

Dada la grave situación por la que atraviesa Nicaragua, la vida del intelectual Oscar René Vargas corre inminente peligro, tanto por su precario estado de salud – es portador de un marcapasos – como por haber sido detenido por ordenes de la juez Gloria María Saavedra Corrales, la misma que ha encabezado la represión contra los religiosos y laicos acompañantes de monseñor Rolando Álvarez, obispo de Matagalpa.

Ante tan grave atentado contra la libertad y seguridad personal del Dr. Oscar René Vargas los panameños defensores de las libertades democráticas y la justicia social no podemos permanecer mudos, y por ello lanzamos este manifiesto exigiendo la libertad inmediata de tan destacado intelectual.

Dado en la ciudad de Panamá, República de Panamá, el 30 de noviembre de 2022.

Firmas de Apoyo:

José Eugenio Stoute – Analista Político
Olmedo Beluche – Sociólogo
Giovanni Beluche – Sociólogo (Costa Rica)
Roberto Ayala – Sociólogo (Costa Rica)
Enoch Adames – Sociólogo
Keyla Rodríguez – Sociólogo
Marines Tapiero – Socióloga
Aurelio Robles – Abogado
Virgilio Araúz – Docente
José Cambra – Sociólogo
Rebeca Yanis – Socióloga
Briseida Allard – Socióloga
Marina Abrego – Socióloga
Luis Pulido R. – Sociólogo
Nicolasa Terreros – Socióloga
Azael Carrera – Sociólogo
Priscila Vásquez – Sicóloga
Xiomara Rodríguez – Socióloga
Luis Antonio Howard – asesor en seguros
Miguel Antonio Bernal – Catedrático Universitario
Cesar Ruiloba – Abogado
Stanley Heckadon Moreno – Antropólogo
Guillermo Márquez Amado – Abogado
Leonor Calderón – Consultora
Lilian Guevara – Escritora
Manuel Castillero – Diputado del Parlacen
Gerardo González – Luchador social
Aníbal Sánchez – Docente
Juana Camargo – Socióloga
Yolanda Marco – Historiadora
Fernando Aparicio – Historiador
Guido Rodríguez Lugar – Abogado y analista político
Claude Vergés López – Doctora
Cristel De León – Abogada
Ana Matilde Gómez – Ex Procuradora General de la Nación
Gregorio Urriola – Economista y docente
José Ángel Garrido – Especialista en lengua y literatura española
Bernardo Ezurmendía – Asesor de Seguros
Ricardo J. Bermúdez – Arquitecto
Renata Sponer – Bióloga
Florencio Díaz pinzón – Docente Universitario
Denis Chávez – Profesor Universitario
César A. Lore – Arquitecto
Celestino Araúz – Historiador
Reymundo Gurdian – Historiador
Miriam Miranda – Historiadora
Marcela Camargo – Historiadora
Ricardo Alberto Arias – Abogado
Siria Martínez – Trabajadora Social
Jesús Alemancia – Sociólogo
Josefina Zurita – Historiadora
Beatriz Rovira – Antropóloga
Joyce J. Araujo – Abogada
Carlos M. Lee Vásquez – Abogado
Héctor Endara – Luchador social
Teresita Yániz de Arias – ex diputada
María Rosa Muños – Historiadora
Nelva Reyes- Dirigente sindical y docente
Urania Ungo – Catedrática
Manuel Reyes – Fisioterapeuta

 

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On a Tuesday with few givens…

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cat's don't eat star apples
Cats won’t eat star apples — neither in a Zonian gringo nor Caribbean English sense.

So, what to do?

On this Tuesday morning, I am not sure what I will feed the cats or dogs. I got a gun nut on my Facebook wall calling me a liar about a traumatic experience I had when I was 12 years old. House repairs, cutting the grass, a thorough cleaning of my surroundings — all left to slide. The water is heating for the morning caffeine fix. one month from today I will celebrate my 70th birthday, as the Arabs say In sha’Allah.

I am used to uncertainty, short rations, making do. There have been a lot of those things since the epidemic hit Panama in early March of 2020 and when I was attacked at my home by five maleantes in late June of 2021. I get by. I realize that nothing is eternal, especially not people. And I think about continuity for The Panama News.

This publication has been my mission, my project, for 28 years now. It started with another publisher, me as editor and these awful and unsustainable office politics.

When we first started posting online, it survived one of these “Canal Zone forever” zealots sending me a spam email.

When forced into informality, the vultures didn’t get fed and the prosecutor who demanded to know “Why haven’t you shut down The Panama News?” didn’t get any respite from the truth for her thug boss.

When a presidential aide threatened us with a criminal defamation charge over a story about his private business running a monopoly scheme at the expense of some canal retirees and the US government, I called his bluff.

When a bot from China shut down our website we bounced back in a few days but had to adjust in the form of me taking back some decisions that affected our resilience.

When a fraud artist from Georgia set up shop in Bocas del Toro, formed political alliances here and we published stories about it, we held on against HIS criminal defamation charges until there came the day when he was taken away in cuffs to face charges back in Georgia.

We retreated, advanced and side-stepped through or around many lean times and almost as many offers to “monetize” for someone else’s benefit.

When a “patriot” militia guy and convicted felon fraud artist came down here with an investment plan to sell, we wrote about that, he hired Noriega’s guy for shutting down the opposition press as his private prosecutor but we beat that criminal defamation charge, too. And we lived to report that thug lawyer become presiding magistrate of the Supreme Court, then get impeached and thrown into prison.

The Panama News also along the way made some corrections or retractions when they were justified, because truth is the first principle of journalism and it would be a hardcore lie to pretend infallibility like so many of highly paid TV news stars do.

When it became clear that the advertiser-supported business model for small media doesn’t work AND that it hardly works for big media corporations, The Panama News renounced ad sales and became reader supported. That left us a bit more dependent on copy commons / public domain content, on top of my own work and donated stories, photos and videos from readers and friends. And those copy commons news services? They’re also asking for money today.

Between 2013 and 2015 we had our old website destroyed and our archives deleted by a series of hacker attacks. I have reason to believe but can’t prove, in any way that the courts here would accept and given the resources available to me, that these electronic attacks were at the expense of the Panamanian government. Anyway, we retreated to publishing just on Facebook for a few months, then came back with a new website.

Then came the pandemic that closed many a business but not The Panama News, which, however, has been terribly gouged by the telecom oligarchs.

And there came the attack by maleantes — whom I believe but can’t prove had a backer — and I rejected all the advice about guns and moving to suburbia coming from usually well-meaning gringos. Through a head injury and slow recovery, I slogged on.

It’s the last “Giving Tuesday” before I turn 70, and to tell you the truth neither such unofficial holidays nor my coming birthday move me very much. I will survive until I don’t, but I am looking for ways for The Panama News to survive after I don’t.

Send money today and some immediate problems may be addressed, but longer-term, this publication needs some deeper thought and new commitments.

Eric Jackson
the editor

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The Panama News is expanding onto Mastodon

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old age caveman?

You MIGHT have trouble finding a Mammut americanum these days. You will find The Panama News at https://federated.press/@ThePanamaNews, part of the developing Mastodon social media network. It’s not a flight from Twitter, but a prudent move given Twitter’s decline. Graphic is shutterstock by mothsart.

 

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