Home Blog Page 277

This day in Colon, 115 years ago…

0
plot
A carbon copy of a note from the skipper of the USS Nashville to the US consul in Colon, telling him that he had directed the Panama Railroad not to transport Colombian troops.

Colon Day: a very Panamanian revolution

by Eric Jackson

So, what were the details of Panama’s smashing military victory over the 500 Colombian Army troops stationed in Colon to maintain Bogota’s authority on isthmus?

First of all, understand that most of these soldiers were bored and war-weary, people who had been mobilized for the Thousand Day War that has ended about a year earlier. Second, consider that throughout the war the Conservatives held control of Colon, Panama City and the Panama Railroad route between the two cities.

Politically, this was traditional Liberal turf. It was under Conservative control due to a great Liberal blunder at the war’s outset, an insane charge into machine gun fire on Panama City’s Calidonia Bridge over the Curundu River. There were some 500 Liberals killed in that battle, but many of their weapons were rescued and sent to the Interior, for Liberals to fight another day. That they did, in a civil war that essentially depopulated and scorched Cocle province with Liberal guerrilla general Victoriano Lorenzo grabbing the weapons from the Conservative mayor of San Carlos who died trying to intercept them, leading a retreat to a mountain stronghold northwest of El Valle, then sweeping down to take Penonome and Aguadulce. But Lorenzo had been betrayed, then executed at the Casco Viejo’s Plaza Francia some six months earlier.

VL
The execution of Liberal guerrilla general Victoriano Lorenzo in Plaza Francia on May 15, 1903. Carried out under Conservative auspices after US “intermediaries” had excluded Lorenzo, whose army held Cocle, from peace talks, this execution assured white rule in Panama.

In Colombia the Conservatives had everything rigged but could not muster a quorum for the senate to approve any treaties nor muster the votes in the rump senate to pretend to do so. In Panama City, the Conservatives were politically in a bad way, not because they didn’t rule with an iron fist but because the city’s food supply from Cocle and points west was cut off both by loss of production and by a Liberal blockade. The blockade lifted with the war’s end but those who had fled their farms for the city mostly did not go back and Panama City was starving. In early 1904, when the first US Army medical mission arrived in the city, they found that the leading cause of death was beriberi, a starvation disease.

After the rump of the Colombian senate had declined to ratify a canal treaty with the United States the previous August, things were getting desperate for the shareholders in the moribund but still existing French canal company. Its concession would expire at the end of the year. Thus its shareholders, the biggest of which was the Panama Railroad, would have little or nothing to sell. The railroad company and the local Conservatives needed a new paradigm, quickly.

So a coup plot was hatched, essentially a Panama Railroad and Conservative Party conspiracy, with the connivance of the US government. The new president, Manuel Amador Guerrero, was the railroad company doctor.

The top Colombian military officers were bribed. Orders went out for the next levels of military commanders to take the train from Colon to Panama City for urgent consultations.

They got on the train, and out in the jungle near the Continental Divide the engine decoupled from the officers’ car and sped away. The troops at the Colon garrison were thus left leaderless.

And besides, November 3 was a Colombian holiday. Even though Ecuador had gone its separate way, on November 3, 1820 Cuenca had declared independence from Spain and the Colombians still celebrated it. A boring day for bored soldiers, and the bars, stores and banks were mostly closed. However, the Colon office of the Star & Herald had money in its safe, the publisher, the mayor and those with liquor sales licenses were in on the plot and courtesy of the press all available liquor in town was purchased and delivered to the garrison. The troops got drunk en masse.

By the time that anyone sobered up enough to notice, the USS Nashville had landed and disembarked its Marine contingent. US forces were patrolling the streets.

What were the troops to do? The mayor made a gracious offer. They could get on a ship and sail back to Colombia, with guarantees of no violence or abuse from the Americans or the fine citizens of Colon.

That offer was accepted, and on November 5 the soldiers got on a ship and sailed away.
Thus went the resounding military victory in Panama’s war of independence from Colombia. Colon has celebrated it ever since.

invasion
US Marines in control of the railroad company headquarters in Colon on November 5, 1903.

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

30 years after the world’s first cyberattack

0

 

File 20181025 71038 keksxv.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
Floods of traffic can clog up an internet server and the wires connecting it to other systems. BeeBright/Shutterstock.com

30 years ago, the world’s first cyberattack set
the stage for modern cybersecurity challenges

Scott Shackelford –Indiana University

Back in November 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, son of the famous cryptographer Robert Morris Sr., was a 20-something graduate student at Cornell who wanted to know how big the internet was — that is, how many devices were connected to it. So he wrote a program that would travel from computer to computer and ask each machine to send a signal back to a control server, which would keep count.

The program worked well — too well, in fact. Morris had known that if it traveled too fast there might be problems, but the limits he built in weren’t enough to keep the program from clogging up large sections of the internet, both copying itself to new machines and sending those pings back. When he realized what was happening, even his messages warning system administrators about the problem couldn’t get through.

His program became the first of a particular type of cyber attack called “distributed denial of service,” in which large numbers of internet-connected devices, including computers, webcams and other smart gadgets, are told to send lots of traffic to one particular address, overloading it with so much activity that either the system shuts down or its network connections are completely blocked.

As the chair of the integrated Indiana University Cybersecurity Program, I can report that these kinds of attacks are increasingly frequent today. In many ways, Morris’s program, known to history as the “Morris worm,” set the stage for the crucial, and potentially devastating, vulnerabilities in what I and others have called the coming “Internet of Everything.”

Unpacking the Morris worm

Worms and viruses are similar, but different in one key way: A virus needs an external command, from a user or a hacker, to run its program. A worm, by contrast, hits the ground running all on its own. For example, even if you never open your email program, a worm that gets onto your computer might email a copy of itself to everyone in your address book.

In an era when few people were concerned about malicious software and nobody had protective software installed, the Morris worm spread quickly. It took 72 hours for researchers at Purdue and Berkeley to halt the worm. In that time, it infected tens of thousands of systems — about 10 percent of the computers then on the internet. Cleaning up the infection cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for each affected machine.

In the clamor of media attention about this first event of its kind, confusion was rampant. Some reporters even asked whether people could catch the computer infection. Sadly, many journalists as a whole haven’t gotten much more knowledgeable on the topic in the intervening decades.

Robert Tappan Morris, in 2008.
Trevor Blackwell/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

 

Morris wasn’t trying to destroy the internet, but the worm’s widespread effects resulted in him being prosecuted under the then-new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced to three years of probation and a roughly $10,000 fine. In the late 1990s, though, he became a dot-com millionaire — and is now a professor at MIT.

Rising threat

The internet remains subject to much more frequent — and more crippling — DDoS attacks. With more than 20 billion devices of all types, from refrigerators and cars to fitness trackers, connected to the internet, and millions more being connected weekly, the number of security flaws and vulnerabilities is exploding.

In October 2016, a DDoS attack using thousands of hijacked webcams — often used for security or baby monitors — shut down access to a number of important internet services along the eastern US seaboard. That event was the culmination of a series of increasingly damaging attacks using a botnet, or a network of compromised devices, which was controlled by software called Mirai. Today’s internet is much larger, but not much more secure, than the internet of 1988.

Some things have actually gotten worse. Figuring out who is behind particular attacks is not as easy as waiting for that person to get worried and send out apology notes and warnings, as Morris did in 1988. In some cases — the ones big enough to merit full investigations — it’s possible to identify the culprits. A trio of college students was ultimately found to have created Mirai to gain advantages when playing the “Minecraft” computer game.

Fighting DDoS attacks

But technological tools are not enough, and neither are laws and regulations about online activity — including the law under which Morris was charged. The dozens of state and federal cybercrime statutes on the books have not yet seemed to reduce the overall number or severity of attacks, in part because of the global nature of the problem.

There are some efforts underway in Congress to allow attack victims in some cases to engage in active defense measures — a notion that comes with a number of downsides, including the risk of escalation — and to require better security for internet-connected devices. But passage is far from assured.

Aircraft problems get thoroughly investigated, resulting in public reports and recommendations for industry to improve performance and safety. NTSB via AP

 

There is cause for hope, though. In the wake of the Morris worm, Carnegie Mellon University established the world’s first Cyber Emergency Response Team, which has been replicated in the federal government and around the world. Some policymakers are talking about establishing a national cybersecurity safety board, to investigate digital weaknesses and issue recommendations, much as the National Transportation Safety Board does with airplane disasters.

More organizations are also taking preventative action, adopting best practices in cybersecurity as they build their systems, rather than waiting for a problem to happen and trying to clean up afterward. If more organizations considered cybersecurity as an important element of corporate social responsibility, they — and their staff, customers and business partners — would be safer.

In “3001: The Final Odyssey,” science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke envisioned a future where humanity sealed the worst of its weapons in a vault on the moon — which included room for the most malignant computer viruses ever created. Before the next iteration of the Morris worm or Mirai does untold damage to the modern information society, it is up to everyone — governments, companies and individuals alike — to set up rules and programs that support widespread cybersecurity, without waiting another 30 years.

 


The Conversation

Scott Shackelford, Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics; Director, Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance; Cybersecurity Program Chair, IU-Bloomington, Indiana University

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

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

Jackson, This republic of ours

0
bombera
The bomberos — and bomberas — are always the coolest people in the parades. Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

This republic of ours

a Panagringo perspective by Eric Jackson, cédula 3-721-1318

Formally, Panama became an independent republic on this day back in 1903. Before then it was something of a distinct society, both within the shrinking Colombia that Simón Bolívar established but could not manage and before that in the Spanish Empire as part of the haphazardly created Viceroyalty of New Granada.

The de facto realities are more complex. On the state level, and on personal levels, there are things that an awful lot of Panamanians would rather deny. Panama’s independence is and always has been an ongoing process of many levels of decolonization, one that has met resistance every step of the way. The initial skirmishes were led by Quibian and Christopher Columbus respectively. The battle is not over.

The November 3, 1903 separation from Colombia was an almost bloodless coup by a conspiracy of three forces. There was a New York corporation with significant French shareholders, the Panama Railroad Company, which held the residue of the French canal concession and stood to lose a lot of money if nothing drastic happened before that contract expired on December 31, 1904 as scheduled. There was the local branch of Colombia’s Conservative Party, a minority force on the isthmus albeit because of Liberal military errors in firm control of Panama City and the railroad route since the outset of the 1899-1902 Thousand Day War. Then there were the Americans, Teddy Roosevelt and the forces under his command.

By bribery, treachery and a carefully timed set of US naval moves the third great secession from Bolívar’s Gran Colombia was pulled off. (Venezuela and Ecuador left earlier, and centrifugal forces still support local warlords in modern Colombia.) Exhausted by Colombia’s never-ending wars and exasperated by the clueless and aloof Bogota political scene, even the Liberals were willing to accept it, provided that the old merchants’ dream of a canal, a work in progress begun under French sponsorship, would become something real.

The construction of Panama as an independent republic? That began to take force after Roosevelt left the White House and the political protection for the unpopular Conservatives went with him. But actually, there was evidence of it right from the start. November 4 is Flag Day, when something perhaps too similar to the US flag was unveiled in lieu of a different knockoff provided the the Wall Street law firm and Washington lobbyists for the Panama Railroad Company. Also ditched at the time was the draft of a declaration of independence that came with those consultants’ revolution kit.

But it was Belisario Porras, the Liberal leader who became legally Panamanian by popular demand after an initial Conservative ban, who came to lead Panama toward being a nation in its own right. He never much liked the arrangement with the Americans that came with the separation from Colombia, but in his time made small incremental changes on parts of that which he could change and avoided confrontations over the rest. Mainly he began to build the institutions that distinguished the new Panama as a sovereign nation rather than a wayward department of Colombia.

The political institutions? The Conservative Party died out on Porras’s shift, not by any process of harsh repression but because it just didn’t represent anything particularly relevant to the great majority of Panamanians.

But weren’t there Panamanians with different ideas and temperaments than those of Belisario Porras? Indeed there were – and these differences were fought out within the Liberal Party and later among its splinters. It was to be expected. The Liberals here were starkly divided long before the days of Porras. The old notion of “They have an exclusive deal with this choice sponsor, so to stay in the game I’ll go looking for another sponsor” kept the colonial mentality going in the minds of many Panamanians and through them in the new country’s institutional expressions.

Into the 20s vestiges of the protectorate remained strong. Panama looked to the Americans to solve a border dispute with Costa Rica and their relations with Gunas who did not care to assimilate themselves out of existence and launched a bloody race war over that. US maraines suppressed a rent strike in which were involved a lot of West Indian former canal construction workes and Spanish and Italian anarchists whom later generations of radicals forgot but were important founders of the Panamanian left.

Then a liberal faction that fashioned itself after the Ku Klux Klan, advanced racial definitions of who and what is Panamanian and thought very highly of the then emergent European fascist leaders split away. The organizational heir to that schism is today’s Panameñista Party.

Observing all this while stationed in Panama was an up-and-coming US Army officer, one Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As US entry into World War II approached and German u-boats prowled about the Caribbean Sea, Washington could not abide the Nazi symp Arnulfo Arias in the Panamanian presidency. It was all bloodlessly and “constitutionally” arranged in October of 1941 when Arias took a private trip to Cuba without notifying the legislature. The cops enforced the coup, and rising through the police ranks to become the real power even before he became the formal commander, then later becoming president until his assassination, was Colonel José Antonio Remón Cantera. Remón was careful in his relations with the Americans as Arias was not, and also had an understanding counterpart in US President Eisenhower. They call it Torrijismo after General Omar Torrijos, but Remón’s moderately social reforming militarism, also an offshoot of the Liberal tradition, gave rise to today’s Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).

The left insisted, most Panamanians, who were not of the left, agreed with them and the Pentagon understood. The Canal Zone ended, the US military bases and US canal management were phased out, and Panama became whole in a more formal sense.

However, not all that completely. That special deal with a foreign sponsor, that underestimating of self, that craving to get rich without producing anything, that urge to protect self or family or social strata by denigrating “others” in our midst, the attraction of kleptocracy — these ways of thinking and their standard bearers are Panama’s present-day foes as we strive to perfect our incomplete project of national independence.

This weekend we celebrate our nation. People come from afar to join the party. Small and imperfect as it may be, Panama is wonderful. We celebrate that as we look ahead to better things.

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

¿Wappin? Este sentido pangringo / This Panagringo sense

0
bash
The assault against Miguel Antonio Bernal in 1979. Gringos will tend to understand — Trump people approving, Democrats appalled. A great many Panamanians are still mystified. / El asalto en contra de Miguel Antonio Bernal en 1979. Los gringos tenderán a comprender: la gente de Trump lo aprueba, los demócratas se horrorizan. Muchos panameños siguen desconcertados.

Este sentido pangringo

Rubén Blades & Roby Draco Rosa – Patria
https://youtu.be/ql0G312R2IQ

Prince – Free
https://youtu.be/qnE775jB0Ik

Aretha Franklin – People Get Ready
https://youtu.be/V4cknWqVnVg

Crosby, Stills & Nash – Find the Cost of Freedom
https://youtu.be/0nlXmYVE_X8

Luci & The Soul Brokers – Sal de Mar
https://youtu.be/JNMQfU9uzyg

Iggy Pop – Some Weird Sin
https://youtu.be/mUTH_SDktlw

Señor Loop – El mono y la culebra
https://youtu.be/VbBQZdStpSY

Llevarte a Marte – Chance
https://youtu.be/9ghgbcBihRY

Mississippi John Hurt – I Shall Not Be Moved
https://youtu.be/tLc8YeXP8FY

Carlos Camacho – Rapsodia Panameña
https://youtu.be/ruVgGkMCnL0

Bernstein (West Side Story) – America
https://youtu.be/Qy6wo2wpT2k

The Golden Gospel Singers – Oh Freedom
https://youtu.be/veiJLhXdwn8

Joshue Ashby & C3 Project Live at Trama 2018
https://youtu.be/wdxYjFgomoc

 

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

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

little donor button

FB_2

Tweet

Tweet

FB CCL

vote final

Spanish PayPal button

spies

Prosecutors go after sports money diversions to politicians

0
FW
Franz Wever, secretary general of the National Assembly, former legislator, bus driver syndicate goon before that and long-time beneficiary of Panama’s sports budgets even though he’s not an athlete. As the head of the baseball federation he notoriously asked sportswriters if they wanted to see his dick — and elicited the also notorious response of “Sorry, I don’t have a microscope handy.” In the wake of that got thrown out of the legislature by the voters. An attempt to get back into elected office in another circuit met with rejection, as have efforts by his son with a similar name. But he has kept himself on the National Assembly payroll, and also on the sports dole, now as head of the swimming federation. Photo by the Asamblea Nacional.

Prosecutors to probe sports
spending on politicians

by Eric Jackson

Most of the members of the National Assembly, in violation of laws and popular demand, have concealed their officeholder payrolls from public view. The few whose payrolls have voluntarily come to light have mostly shown that they had relatives picking up government paychecks, or had employees of their private companies being paid by the legislature rather than the companies. The vague and more legitimate sounding things that have turned up on many of the payrolls are people on salaries as “sports aides.” But now this long-running and fairly well known arrangement is getting some justice system scrutiny for a change.

Everyone who pays attention knows that FEDEBEIS, the national baseball federation, is dominated by legislators and has been for years. After Wever the presidency of that organization went to then-legislator Wigberto Quintero and now it is in the hands of PRD legislator and party president Benicio Robinson. But the big scandal was always thought to be a federation that paid too little attention to developing baseball talent and lavished too many funds on its leaders’ luxury travel.

A La Prensa investigation led by Mary Triny Zea has revealed that it’s way worse than that. As in, million-dollar appropriations to Guna Yala, which doesn’t even have a baseball federation. Of funding supposedly for baseball making circuitous routes through the neighborhood councils of certain corregimientos — which by law don’t get audited by the Comptroller General — and into the pockets of politicians, often via the some of these “sports aides.”

The hue and cry merges into the public movement to vote out all incumbent legislators. If somebody wants to diagram conspiracy charts there are fingerprints of independent forces aligned with businesspeople like Roberto Eisenmann and Stanley Motta. Both prominent athletes and the nation’s major business groups are complaining. The incumbents will have you believe that it’s all a sinister political plot, but like the business community turning against Ricardo Martinelli, this latest turn against the political caste in general is more a matter of small-c conservative estimates that what’s going on is unsustainable and damaging to the national economy as a whole. (And yes, if you are Stanley Motta a lame sports scene also means lost business opportunities for Copa Airlines.)

Comptroller General Federico Humbert, once a director of La Prensa, has been investigating legislative payroll corruption for some time and has referred a few cases to the Supreme Court for possible criminal proceedings. Now the tax prosecutor and the special anti-corruption prosecutor say that they are investigating as well. Just in time for an election season. The anti-corruption prosecutor is looking at the Panamanian Sports Institute (Pandeportes) in general — which of course has some folks like the Panamanian Olympic Committee and the Panamanian Football Federation protesting their innocence and profession support for a clean-up. The tax prosecutor, also with a mandate to track down misappropriated public assets, is following money trails where the comptroller is ordinarily not allowed to tread.

Stay tuned. It’s likely to be a big campaign issue, affecting the major parties and incumbent politicians and perhaps boosting the fortunes of outsiders of varying descriptions.

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

RSF blacks out Eiffel Tower for slain journalists, a month after Khashoggi death

0
RSF
Our fallen colleagues will not be forgotten, nor the fight for justice abandoned. Photo by RSF.

Lights out at the Eiffel Tower
to honor slain journalists

by Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

As the request of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Eiffel Tower’s lights were turned off for a minute at 6:30 p.m. today — the eve of International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists — as a tribute to Saudi newspaper columnist Jamal Khashoggi and all the other journalists in the world whose murders have so far gone unpunished.

While the lights were extinguished, a minute of silence was observed by RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire and all those gathered with him on Place de Varsovie, the square located opposite the Eiffel Tower, on the other bank of the River Seine.

It was thanks to the support the Paris city hall that this symbolic tribute was made possible on the eve of International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, which is observed annually on November 2.

Khashoggi, who was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, is one of a total of 77 journalists and media workers who have been killed worldwide since the start of this year. Ninety percent of crimes of violence against journalists go unpunished.

“Jamal Khashoggi’s barbaric murder shows that there are no longer any limits to the deliberate elimination of journalists,” Deloire told the journalists gathered with him on Place de Varsovie.

“A powerful gesture was needed to protest against this unbearable situation, and the one we chose was to extinguish the lights of one of the world’s most emblematic monuments. By plunging the Eiffel Tower into blackness, the color of mourning, we pay tribute to our murdered colleagues, while the lights coming back on tells those who kill journalists that justice must sooner or later be rendered.”

Deloire was accompanied by Fabiola Badawi, a former colleague of Khashoggi’s, and by Andrew Caruana Galizia, the son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who was killed on October 16, 2017 by a bomb placed under her car.

He was also accompanied by Christophe Boisbouvier, a Radio France Internationale journalist representing the Association of Friends of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, the two Radio France Internationale journalists who were murdered in Mali exactly five years ago, on November 2, 2013.

After the Eiffel Tower’s lights were turned back on, those participating in the tribute brandished posters with the portraits of Khashoggi, Caruana Galizia, Dupont and Verlon, with the hashtag #NoImpunity.

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

Defense Committee, The Ancon Farmers Market

0
MA
The Farmers Market is not only essential to the poor from the nearby barrios being able to feed themselves. Nor is it just a hip place for foreigners to get a flavor of Panama. It’s also a bastion of small-time capitalism, where mini-super owners stock their stores with groceries without paying a wholesaler’s cut, where farmers cut out of the “globalized economy” can still hold out and stay in business. Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

The Ancon Farmers Market

by the Comite de Defensa para la Continuidad de la Operacion del Mercado de Abastos

Seven years ago there was the intention to move the Farmers Market (Mercado de Abastos), due to the need to build a Metro station – and other awkward and improper excuses.

Given the location of the new facilities, access will be impossible for the poor customers in Curundu, San Miguel, Santa Ana and other areas. The increased rent for the new facilities, would be transferred to the users, which would increase the cost of living, something critical due to the economic conditions that the country is experiencing.

The demolition of the existing infrastructures, valued at many millions of dollars, would constitute a property loss of all the investments. We have already lived through experiences of questionable demolitions, like the one of the former US Embassy in on Avenida Balboa and of the uilding of what was the Ministry of Health, where later the Ministry of Economy and Finance operated.

The deteriorated conditions of the existing facilities have been the product of total neglect by the mayor’s office, of the state of the streets, sanitary facilities, refrigeration equipment, etc. What is appropriate is that in the same place where the current facilities are, parking structures, new multi-story buildings, including elevator and refrigeration should be built. The best location is the existing one. Let’s not continue the campaign promises of the land where the current market is situated, nor of improved farmers market facilities.

To the extent that there are more locations where agricultural products from the Interior can be sold, the agricultural sector will be strengthened. The elimination of the Farmers Market will is a policy stad against the downtrodden agricultural sector.

Enough of this demagoguery and deceit!

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

Are you a US citizen? VOTE!

 

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

Editorial: Connecting to Colombia — old plans and common sense

0
solar
An elevated solar highway in China, with photovoltaic bricks covered with transparent concrete. They are working out initial bugs, but make no mistake, this is the transportation and energy policy of a future with solar cars. No matter what greedy energy and construction companies try to sell to Panama.

Do we pierce the Darien Gap? And how?

The government wants to revive that electrical connection with Colombia project, again with a proposed route through Guna Yala, along proposed new roads. The Guna leadership — and people — don’t want that.

Then there is the long-stated goal of a road connection between Panama and Colombia, which cattle ranchers, environmentalists and the indigenous communities in Darien don’t want.

The thinking is so clueless, so stereotypical, so clearly aimed at a mobbed up construction industry. We could have those connections, and a far better energy policy, with some thinking out of their boxes.

First of all, let us not romanticize the Dule culture of the Guna nation. Nor for that matter, the Embera way of life. There are remarkable and wonderful things about both of these original nations, but even if things are much improved between them, they are traditional enemies with different world views. They’re just people with their own ways and histories, and real human concerns that may vary from each other’s and yours and ours.

One of the things they share, however, is a concern about roads bringing in outsiders to grab their land and resources. In Guna Yala they are also careful to limit outside influences that might overwhelm their culture.

The ranchers? The Darien Gap is a forest barrier between cattle diseases that are endemic in Colombia and Panamanian herds that don’t suffer from those maladies.

The environmentalists? Tearing a hole through Panama’s main remaining forest, and then watching the deforestation and social conflicts spread from either side of the highway are scenes that nobody in any of the movements to defend nature want to see. (Astroturf “greenwash” front groups for the developers don’t count as movements.)

So why not make the connection via a series of tunnels, bridges and causeways from Meteti, across the Gulf of San Miguel and just off the Pacific Coast of Darien to Colombia? That is, a route designed to never touch land that somebody can use the road to invade. Better a road connection that’s perhaps set up to add a railroad alongside, and in any case through which power lines might be threaded. Better to have a forward-looking connection designed for the coming age of electric cars, a road paved with photovoltaic bricks to provide the power that might make the electrical connection with Colombia superfluous in the first place.

Yes, there would be the costs — additional for building to avoid an invasion route, offset by the reduced costs of land grabbing and patrolling against the creation of a new smuggling road. Also offset by reduced costs of land acquisition, although one suspects that the bottom line of the current Guna Yala proposal is a presumption that nobody owns lands that are collectively owned so white men can just take them without compensation. There would also be geological and marine environmental issues to address by going offshore. The Blue Apple boys and the land grabbers would probably pay people behind the scenes to emphasize such objections.

Let’s not be stampeded into 2Oth century follies that benefit only a few construction, energy and banking interests and thus forego development that looks toward Panama’s future in the public interest.

 

Beto

Bear in mind

 

It is easier to start a war than to end it.
Gabriel García Márquez

 

The people of the United States will do anything for Latin America, except read about it.
James Reston

 

Imagine, there is almost no possibility for a foreign language film to be distributed in America right now. That doesn’t just make the industry poorer, it makes the landscape of cinema poorer, in America. The impossibility to get a good release on a really good European, Latin American, Asian movie is a tragedy.
Guillermo del Toro

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

VOTE

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

Blandón and Méndez get past their primaries

0
Blandón
Panama City Mayor José Isabel Blandón Figueroa celebrates his primary victory with other Panameñistas. He got some 56% of the primary vote.

Blandón and Méndez secure their spots
on a crowded 2019 presidential ballot

note and captions by Eric Jackson, photos from the candidates’ Twitter feeds

The two primaries held on October 28 turned out more or less as expected. Saúl Méndez, leader of the SUNTRACS construction workers’ union, swept the presidential primary of the leftist Frente Amplio por la Democracia (Broad Front for Democracy, or FAD). Panama City Mayor José Isabel Blandón was slightly less of a consensus candidate but still beat his closest opponent by nearly 20 points.

Blandón now heads a major party ticket, but it’s the party of President Varela and Panamanian voters have this notorious habit of throwing any party that holds the presidency out of office in the next election. FAD is a minor party, but unlike the other small parties stands for certain things other than making deals to get government jobs and contracts for their members. The last time around FAD didn’t get enough votes to maintain its ballot status but this time there is not as big of a split on the left and the charismatic Méndez will look to grow the party into a force with which to be reckoned.

The Panameñistas chose candidates for other offices along with their presidential nominee, while FAD leaders will have a convention to do that at a later date.

All the results are yet to come in, but the Panameñistas have chosen legislator Adolfo “Beby” Valderrama as their candidate for mayor in the capital. They also resoundingly retired their scandal-tainted incumbent deputy from La Chorrrera, Gabriel “Panky” Soto, by a nearly 2-1 margin. There is going to be a crowded race for Panama City mayor. Valderrama will have to overcome a stigma that has so tainted the entire National Assembly that many voters are vowing not to vote for any of its members, no matter which post they seek.
 

Saúl
Saúl Méndez poses with his family before setting out to vote. He was FAD’s 92% consensus choice. A Colon native, he and his party will do well to get someone elected from that city. In 2014 intra-left faction fighting meant that the city’s leftist voters didn’t send anyone to the legislature, although there were enough of them to do so if they had joined forces. Méndez is of the breed of working class intellectuals, working his way through law school on construction jobs and as a labor leader.

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

vote summer 18

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies

CEPR, Bolsonaro turns Brazil to the ultra-right

0
bolsonaro
Jair Bolsonaro praises former dictatorship, talks of purging left-wing opponents. Photo by Jeso Carneiro.

Brazilian democracy in crisis
after Bolsonaro’s election

by the Center for Economic and Policy Research – CEPR

The election of far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency throws Brazil’s democracy into “crisis,” Center for Economic and Policy Research Co-Director Mark Weisbrot warned tonight, following news of the election results. Bolsonaro’s rapid ascent from perennial and provocative fringe politician to presidential front-runner shocked observers and commentators in Brazil and internationally. There is much evidence his candidacy was aided by a massive, probably illegal, disinformation campaign against his opponents.

“This is a dark day for Brazil; Brazilian democracy is now in complete crisis,” Weisbrot said. “The international community must help preserve Brazil’s democratic institutions and stand up for the rights of its citizens by letting Bolsonaro know that there will be consequences if he follows through on his dangerous and hateful rhetoric.”

Bolsonaro has a long history of making statements praising Brazil’s dictatorship and disparaging its democratic institutions — notably when, in a TV interview, he said that voting “doesn’t change anything.” Rather, he said, Brazil would need a “civil war” killing 30,000 people. He’s also expressed admiration for Chile’s infamous dictator August Pinochet, saying Pinochet “should have killed more.”

In recent days, Bolsonaro has again raised alarm by talking of jailing or forcing into exile members of the main opposition Workers’ Party in “a cleanup the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history.” He also vowed that members of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) would be designated as “terrorists.” MST-affiliated schools and other institutions have been raided by police in recent years, and MST leaders murdered.

Bolsonaro is infamous for misogynistic and homophobic statements. He has also made a number of racist remarks in the past, infamously saying that descendants of Brazilian slaves “don’t do anything,” and, “I don’t think they’re even good for procreation anymore.” He’s chillingly told a campaign rally: “Let’s make Brazil for the majorities. Minorities have to bow to the majorities. Minorities will fit or just disappear!” He’s also warned that “Not one centimeter will be demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas [descendants of escaped slaves living on lands claimed by their ancestors]” were he to become president, leading to concern that Indigenous rights — including to ancestral lands coveted by mining and other business interests — may be trampled under a Bolsonaro administration.

Bolsonaro has signaled that he would support business interests over environmental concerns, and has spoken of withdrawing Brazil from the Paris Climate Accord, raising alarm among environmentalists and in the scientific community who have voiced concern over the likelihood of increased deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Brazil has for years been one of the world’s most dangerous countries for environmental defenders, and the Bolsonaro presidency could make their situation more dire.

“Governments around the world must make Bolsonaro understand that there will be a strong reaction against antidemocratic actions or rights abuses on his watch,” Weisbrot said. “While he may have been elected democratically, there are tens of millions of Brazilians who voted against him. The international community must help to safeguard the rights of Brazil’s most vulnerable.”

Just before the October 28 vote, 18 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging the State Department “to take a strong stand in opposition to such backsliding; leaving clear that US assistance and cooperation with Brazil is contingent on the upholding of basic human rights and democratic values by its leaders.”

Weisbrot noted that Bolsonaro’s rise was abetted by years of politicized attacks against the left-leaning Worker’s Party, led by hard right actors in the media, the judiciary, and Brazil’s Congress.

Many observers cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election after former president Lula da Silva was barred from running in contravention of the UN Human Rights Committee, and Lula had very restricted access to the media. The contested jailing of Lula, who was sentenced to 12 years on unsubstantiated charges, created a political vacuum which Bolsonaro was able to fill.

“By preventing former president Lula da Silva, Brazil’s most popular politician, from running in this election, the country’s right-wing elites subverted democracy and paved the way for a dangerous fascist to take power,” Weisbrot said.

 

~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.

 

vote summer 18

bw donor button

$

FB_2

vote final

Tweet

spies