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¿Wappin? Irie holidays to all

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resistance
Rastafari’s Ethiopian patriots, the Arbegnoch resistance fighters, using antiquated rifles, do battle with the Italian invaders. On May 5, 1941, after five long years of war, Rastafari returned to Addis Ababa with a British and African army, the Gideon Force.
Los patriotas etíopes de Rastafari, los combatientes de la resistencia Arbegnoch, usando rifles anticuados, luchando con los invasores italianos. El 5 de mayo de 1941, después de cinco largos años de guerra, Rastafari regresó a Addis Abeba con un ejército británico y africano, la Fuerza Gedeón.

Irie tunes for I and I
Buena música para nosotros

Bob Marley – Heathen
https://youtu.be/zrtlBTsqtAU

Séptima Raíz – De frente con Jah
https://youtu.be/frTxQHpWpf0

Lee “Scratch” Perry — Panic in Babylon
https://youtu.be/F8cXSqB5j0M

Mad Professor & Aisha — Jah Protect I
https://youtu.be/R5z1FXgM0G4

Alika – Ejercito Despierta
https://youtu.be/CvvAPBmRKyk

The Clash – Armagideon Time
https://youtu.be/PdRL6qH3YRM

Judy Mowatt — Many Are Called
https://youtu.be/rmUjuafnedw

Cultura Profética — La Espera
https://youtu.be/TxypVAeGGI4

Brushy One String, Nattali Rize & Playing for Change — Rasta Children
https://youtu.be/68calsldQ38

Gondwana – Pedigueño
https://youtu.be/Z_AaLiMskiE

The Melodions – Rivers of Babylon
https://youtu.be/CDYAqz603TE

Dread Mar I – Laberintos
https://youtu.be/mwHeCw_S6qw

Peter Tosh – Burial
https://youtu.be/eirblXMl30s

Kafú Banton — No me hablen de bala
https://youtu.be/QdMWMGxA1v8

Third World & Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley — You’re Not the Only One
https://youtu.be/64FYS6oGU7g

Boney M. — Mary’s Boy Child
https://youtu.be/cmm1gt_2SkQ

Sly & Robbie with Mykal Rose — Live in Argentina 2017 full show
https://youtu.be/Ny-Tjvd_Qwg

 

There is no historical evidence that Rastafari smoked the sacred ganja weed. He did, however, own a brewery.
No hay prueba histórica de que Rastafari fumó la marijuana. Sin embargo, era dueño de una cervecería.

 

 

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Changing of the prosecutorial guard

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Ulloa
Eduardo Rubén Ulloa Miranda, the former campus radical, veteran prosecutor and specialist in financial crimes, comes out of private practice to take charge of the Public Ministry. Photo by the Presidencia.

Cortizo nominates a new Attorney General and two new suplentes

by Eric Jackson

If the Attorney General (Procurador or Procuradora General) is to be investigated, who can investigate the Attorney General? That would fall to the Administrative Prosecutor (Procurador/a de la Administración). It’s kind of like how in Common Law jurisdictions if a case stays within the country, it’s the coroner who can arrest the sheriff.

But it all may seem a bit too in-house and chummy. Attorney Abdiel González Tejeira went to the Supreme Court with precisely such a claim, arguing that Administrative Prosecutor Rigoberto González is too friendly to Attorney General Kenia Porcell. Thus, the administrative prosecutor should not continue his investigation of apparent improprieties shown in the hacked Varela Leaks telephone text messages. But González Tejeira’s lawsuit was assigned to magistrate Luis Ramón Fábrega, who dismissed the challenge mainly on procedural grounds.

Porcell has resigned as of the end of the year, so come January the case may end up on the desk of the nominee to be her replacement, Eduardo Ulloa. Conflicts of interest and prior suggestions of prejudice seldom get accepted as ground for judges to recuse themselves, but an attorney general doesn’t have to rely on colleagues to determine if he or she must recuse, although a court may order that. And earlier this year Ulloa did criticize one of the events for which Porcell is to be investigated, the very lenient plea bargain that was accepted from Odebrecht, which allows the thug construction company to continue to bid on public works contracts here notwithstanding a long history of corrupt dealings in Panama and many other countries.

We are a nation that by most indications is downright annoyed about the entire justice system. It might be that although the right to investigate Porcell devolves to Ulloa once he takes office, he’d prefer to have the administrative prosecutor continue with the investigation. We shall see.

And what if Rigoberto González gets removed from HIS post? Or if Ulloa wants the case back in the attorney general’s office, but with someone else handling it? President Cortizo is providing some of the options. There had been no suplentes — alternates — for either the attorney general or the administrative prosecutor, but the president has named two choices for these posts.

There may be a constitutional rumble about that — the constitutional chapter on the Public Ministry does not mention either of those offices, but rather the catch-all “other functionaries as the law establishes.” Figure that if the National Assembly ratifies appointments to these posts, then arguably they are established by law. But in Panama procedure seems to be 90 percent of the law and it might be argued that to validly appoint suplentes there would have to be a ordinary legislative process with committee hearings and a vote by committee, then two separate votes by the National Assembly. Get beyond the appointments and the constitution doesn’t mention the duties or succession of a suplente in those posts, although the power of the procuradores to delegate their own duties is specified.

Go even farther afield to Article 224 of the constitution and it provides that that the attorney general and the administrative prosecutor must meet the same requirements and are subject to the same prohibitions as Supreme Court magistrates. But it really doesn’t specify who, exactly, appoints people to these offices. It might be argued that these two posts are those of government minister or of heads of autonomous government agencies, thus within the purview of presidential appointment powers. But that the constitution does not clearly say, and that precedent counts for little in the Civil Code systems of justice of which Panama’s is one, is perhaps one more argument for the drafting of a new constitution.

In any case, the president has nominated veteran prosecutor Javier Caraballo as Ulloa’s suplente and the secretary general of the administrative prosecutor’s office, Mónica Castillo, as González’s suplente.

There are more than 70 public corruption cases in the system, and there are likely to be more coming. When taking office Cortizo said that he doesn’t want to concentrate on prosecuting his predecessors and those who served under them, but if things properly come before the legal system he’ll let them run their courses.

So with new faces coming into the prosecutorial picture, do we get continuity or change? We’ll have to wait and see.

 

Carballo

Castillo
 

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Editorials: Land tenure progress; and Today’s kids

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EC
El Himno Istmeño is the national anthem, but we also have original nations here, with anthems of their own. Here Emiliano Caisamo plays the Embera anthem. Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

A tiny start on a huge land tenure problem

Over what was a long holiday weekend for most Panamanians, MiAmbiente made an important policy change on behalf of some of the original Panamanians. They reversed the Varela administration policy of blanket opposition to the land claims of indigenous communities that are outside of the comarcas but within protected area. It came as a belated response to an old injustice, wherein the Inter-American Human Rights Court ruled that Guna and Embera communities that were flooded out by the Bayano Dam are owed compensation, even though their traditional lands were within parks or protected areas. The environmental ministry will now drop objections to collective land title claims that had been stalled for five years.

The existence of the resolution has been reported in La Estrella, but so far MiAmbiente has not seen fit to publish it on its website. We don’t know how far the new Cortizo policy will go, or whether it will affect the work and attitudes of other government ministries or agencies.

The post-invasion decades have been times of massive land-grabbing and massive issuance of land titles based on bogus premises, most of all based on supposed rights of possession to lands that nobody in the chain of claims ever lived upon or worked in any way. The Varela administration left us with some 38,000 land titles and a lot of those need to be investigated. Some of them are on their faces gifts to political figures and their families.

And Panama’s first nations? They have reasonable claim to everything, but they are a minority. A proper set of negotiations has never been held. The notion that things that are collectively owned by a community or a nation may be grabbed with impunity is a bit of hidalgo culture that needs to be relegated to the past, not only to protect indigenous land rights but everybody’s land rights.

Greta
Greta Thunberg addresses this past September’s climate march in Montreal. Wikimedia photo by Lëa-Kim Châteauneuf.

Kids these days!

There are outstanding examples like Greta Thunberg, who will fall short of sainthood and unconquerable genius, much to the notice of oil company execs, FOX News and vulgar demagogues in high offices. No matter. She’s done the world a great service and deserves the honors she’s getting. She and her peers in so many places and situations give their elders hope for posterity and the planet.

burnout

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Hosea 8:7

 

Bear in mind…

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Virginia Woolf

Today we see something very different and far more sinister. Nihilistic forces are dismantling policies to protect our air, water, and climate. And they seek to discredit the pillars of our democracy: voting rights and fair elections, the rule of law, the free press, the separation of powers, the belief in science, and the concept of truth itself.

Paul Volker

The best protection a woman can have is courage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton            

 

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Hightower, Who’s afraid?

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Whole Hog Hightower
Not ordinary Democrats or independents – just insurance companies, lobbyists, and old-line politicians. Supporters rally for universal health care in Chicago. Shutterstock photo.

Who’s afraid of Medicare for All?

by Jim Hightower – OtherWords

We might expect that corporate billionaires and Koch-funded Republican right-wingers would be howl-at-the-moon opponents of a wealth tax, Medicare-for-All, and other big progressive ideas to help improve the circumstances of America’s workaday majority.

But Democrats, too? Unfortunately, yes. Not grassroots activists, but a gaggle of don’t-rock-the-corporate-boat, fraidy-cat elected Democrats.

These naysayers are the party’s old-line politicians, lobbyists, and other insider elites who are now screeching that Democratic candidates must back off those big proposals.

Why? Because, they squawk, being so bold, so progressive, so — well, so Democratic — will scare voters. As one meekly put it: “When you say Medicare for All, it’s a risk. It makes people afraid.”

Excuse me, but in my speeches and writings I say “Medicare for All” a lot — and far from cowering, people stand up and cheer.

In fact, the New York Times just reported that 81 percent of Democrats (and two-thirds of independents) support Medicare for All. Even apple pie doesn’t score that high! It’s simply a lie that the people are “afraid” of the idea of everyone getting public-financed health care.

So who really fears it? Three special-interest groups: Insurance company profiteers, Big Pharma price gougers, and the political insiders hooked on funding from those corporations.

Not only is it a pusillanimous fabrication to claim that the people oppose any changes stronger than corporate minimalism, it’s also political folly. If the Democratic Party won’t stand up for the transformative structural changes that America’s middle and low-income majority clearly wants and needs, why would those people stand up for Democrats?

As the 2016 presidential election taught us so painfully, a whole lot of the working class Democrats the Party counts on won’t.

 
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Bendib, World class hypocrisy

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Kh BD
 

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What Democrats are saying

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boricua

What Dems are saying

 






 

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What Republicans are saying

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MOOOOOO!

GOP voices

 

https://youtu.be/8RdTbhi3FwQ


https://youtu.be/D9lA01gwzIc

https://youtu.be/ajJKUPRpZA8

 

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SOA Watch, Human rights in Chile

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chile

Chile: No more murders, torture, or
sexual violence against protesters

by School of the Americas Watch

Today on International Human Rights Day, SOA Watch reiterates our deep condemnation of the brutal state violence and systematic human rights violations — murders, sexual violence, torture, and serious injuries — that the Chilean military and police are exercising against the protesting civilian population. Since October, protesters have been calling for a new Constitution and demanding that the State, led by President Sebastián Piñera’s government, end abusive neoliberal policies.

According to Chile’s Prosecutor General’s office, at least 23 people have died during the protests. The National Human Rights Institute (INDH) has filed six official manslaughter complaints before Chilean courts for cases where there are clear records that state agents killed these individuals. Additionally, more than 2,808 people have been injured during the demonstrations as a result of police or military brutality, and according to the INDH, the vast majority of these injuries are from bullets, pellets, and beatings.

Concerningly, numerous protesters have lost an eye as a consequence of the vicious state repression that seemingly targets their faces. As of November 30th, 241 people had officially reported serious eye injuries, and the New York Times even published an article called “A Bullet to the Eye Is the Price of Protesting in Chile.” The head of Chile’s Medical College, Patricio Meza, stated, “Unfortunately in Chile, we have had a greater number of cases than in any situation of social unrest that has occurred in the world. The only world statistic that is a little closer to what we have seen in Chile is from Israel, where there were 154 patients with injured eyes, but in six years.”

As of December 3rd, the INDH had also filed 517 official complaints of torture and cruel treatment, as well as 106 complaints of sexual violence. On November 25th, in an effort to call out and organize against the Chilean State’s use of sexual violence, an interdisciplinary women’s collective called LASTESIS led a mass mobilization in Santiago, where they preformed a piece called “A Rapist on Your Path” and likened the oppressive state to a male rapist. This creative demonstration of resistance went viral, being replicated in numerous countries, and is a direct affront to the use of sexual violence by state forces and the Chilean police’s motto of “a friend on your path.” Members of LASTESIS told El País that “many women detained in the protests see how the police and the State use sexual violence to sow fear and that women do not express themselves and exercise their right to protest.” The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25th) was initially established in memory of the Mirabal sisters, who were brutally murdered in 1960 under the Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

It is important to note that the Chilean State is also prosecuting protestors. Chile’s Prosecutor General’s office reported that 30,102 people have been arrested and taken to Detention Control Hearings from October 18th through November 22nd. Of those arrested, 20,000 have been charged or formally accused for protest-related events, and 1,957 political prisoners have been held in pretrial detention.

US Training and Responsibility

On October 18th, President Sebastián Piñera declared a State of Exception, thus militarizing the streets during the first 10 days of protests. For context, it is important to keep in mind that Chile is only second to Colombia in terms of the number of military and police personnel sent to train at the US Army’s SOA/WHINSEC. One of the demands of the Chilean organizations in the protest is an end to the training of Chilean state agents at the School of the Americas.

In Chile earlier this year, US Army Southern Command sponsored “Command Force” training exercises. Years ago, these exercises for Elite Special Forces were held in Guatemala for the Kaibil Special Forces Brigade, which has an abysmal human rights record.

We also denounce the training that the Carabineros Special Operations Group (GOPE) received in 2017 from US Special Forces under the pretext of Pope Francis’ visit to Chile. The Carabineros are heavily implicated in the ongoing violent repression against protesters. In 2018, 40 Chilean police officials received training in Colombia — a country with one of the worst human rights records in the Western Hemisphere. This “Jungle Command” course is supported by the US and developed in coordination with US Special Forces. This “anti-terrorist” or civilian-targeted warfare training has been under intense scrutiny and last year, a GOPE member murdered Camilo Catrillanca, a member of the Mapuche community.

At SOA Watch, we reject and denounce the logic of military and police training that targets civilian populations and teaches state forces to look at their own population as an “internal enemy”, the results of which are currently playing out in Chile and throughout the Americas.

 

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La conservación de tiburones

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helphelpit'saSHARK
“Un recurso explotable”. Foto por Alejandro Tagliafico.

Estudio ayudaría a gestionar manejo y conservación de tiburones en Panamá

por Sonia Tejada – STRI, fotos por Alejandro Tagliafico y Kevan Mantell

Los tiburones juegan un papel fundamental para mantener los océanos saludables, equilibrar la cadena alimentaria y garantizar la diversidad de especies. Sin embargo, la demanda de derivados de tiburones conduce a su explotación, a menudo sin estrategias de gestión adecuadas. En una evaluación de las pesquerías del Pacífico de Panamá publicada en Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, los científicos del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI) e instituciones colaboradoras proporcionan una base para el desarrollo de regulaciones locales para la conservación de los tiburones.

Los estudios de campo, realizados durante dos años, revelaron que las pesquerías artesanales e industriales a lo largo de la costa del Pacífico de Panamá explotan regularmente al menos 18 especies de tiburones de seis familias. Una gran cantidad de estos son capturados mientras aún son inmaduros. Esto es preocupante para las especies en peligro de extinción, como el tiburón cabeza de martillo (Sphyrna lewini), para la que los inmaduros representaban entre el 63 y el 90 por ciento de la pesca total. El tiburón cabeza de martillo también se encontraba entre las especies más explotadas, junto con las especies de la familia Carcharhinidae, representando hasta el 80 por ciento de las capturas.

“Las políticas de conservación y gestión no protegen a los tiburones como una especie de vida silvestre”, comentó Héctor M. Guzmán, investigador de STRI y autor principal del estudio. “Por ejemplo, aunque los jaguares y los tiburones juegan un papel similar en el funcionamiento del ecosistema, solo el preciado jaguar está protegido en Panamá como especie de vida silvestre, mientras que los tiburones se consideran un recurso explotable”.

Los tiburones son especialmente vulnerables a la pesca intensiva. Por lo general, crecen lentamente, maduran tarde y tienen pocas crías. Por lo tanto, las pesquerías mal gestionadas, como las de la costa del Pacífico de Panamá, ejercen una presión considerable sobre su supervivencia. A pesar de trabajar con datos incompletos (estudios independientes estiman que el 75 por ciento de las capturas de tiburones no se informan), los investigadores confirmaron esta preocupación. Descubrieron que entre el 2001 y el 2011, las capturas de tiburones cayeron en más de un 90 por ciento en Panamá.

“Si se implementa una prohibición de pesca estacional, que prohíba el uso de redes y palangres cerca de la costa y dentro de áreas críticas de cría durante al menos seis meses durante la migración de estas especies amenazadas de extinción, aún es posible revertir esta tendencia”, comentó Guzmán.

Si prevalece el panorama actual, la recuperación de las poblaciones de especies que han sido explotadas intensamente durante décadas será una tarea difícil. Además, las pesquerías de tiburones podrían comenzar a reportar pérdidas económicas y volverse insostenibles a corto o mediano plazo.

“El estudio expone la necesidad urgente de obtener más información científica y pesquera para mejorar el manejo de tiburones y las estrategias de su conservación en Panamá”, comentó Jorge Morales, investigador de STRI y coautor del estudio.

Con base en estas conclusiones, los investigadores proponen varias estrategias para la protección y explotación de los tiburones en el Pacífico de Panamá. Esto incluye el desarrollo de programas de monitoreo para la supervisión de las capturas, la protección de hábitats críticos y el establecimiento de zonas de exclusión de pesca para la reproducción y el crecimiento temprano de los tiburones. A este respecto, el estudio identifica 11 áreas potenciales de cría de tiburones locales comunes y migratorios, que podrían apoyar los esfuerzos de conservación de tiburones en Panamá y la región.

“Esta investigación aporta una línea base hacia el manejo de las pesquerías artesanales e industriales de los tiburones que se vienen explotando en Panamá bajo un esquema de acceso abierto que atenta de manera significativa contra la sostenibilidad de tan importante pesquería”, comentó Flor Torrijos, administradora general de la Autoridad de los Recursos Acuáticos de Panamá (ARAP). “Para la ARAP nos permitirá trabajar un plan de manejo integral que derive en una pesca sostenible de este recurso”.

Los miembros del equipo de investigación están afiliados al Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, la Red MigraMar, el Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas de la Universidad Estatal de California y el Departamento de Biología Marina y Limnología de la Universidad de Panamá-Sede Veraguas. La investigación fue parcialmente financiada por el Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, la Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación de Panamá (SENACYT), el Sistema Nacional de Investigación y el Grupo Panalang-Union.

aborto
Foto por Kevan Mantell.

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Say WHAT? A noteworthy denial from on high

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them
Deputy Arquesio Arias (PRD-Guna Yala), on the left, receives his credentials as a member of the legislature’s Population, Environment and Development Committee from the National Assembly’s president, Marcos Castillero (PRD-Herrera). Arias is under house arrest pending proceedings against him in the Supreme Court on several counts of rape, including one against a minor. National Assembly photo.

“No deputy has lacked ethics”

by Eric Jackson

Thus pronounced National Assembly president Marcos Castillero in a remarkable interview published in La Prensa

What with several deputies facing accusations of one criminal sort or another and many who were in the last legislature still refusing to account for how they spent money that went through their offices, an awful lot of Panamanians find Castillero’s statement ridiculous.

There will be claims that it’s criminal to suggest anything contrary to Castillero’s claim, but it’s not likely that there will be any court cases arising from that, given that he’s an elected official. But when the legislature seeks public approval of constitutional changes, this claim will be a hot-button issue, taken to mean very different things by the opposing sides.

 

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