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From the canal to religion, four letters from abroad

The fix is in

I enjoy looking at the web cams for the canal and always wondered why there were not more ships in transit. I have to agree with your assessment, “the fix is in.” Below are just a few of my observations that also confirm you assessment. As a side note I’d encourage you to take a look at The Goal by Goldratt. It is a book for manufacturing but his Theory of Constraints as it relates to throughput is directly applicable to the canal. Beside that, any one who enjoys thinking will enjoy the book. It a quick read!

Just some things I noticed:

On Monday, March 13, a record 1,070,023 PC/UMS tons transited the waterway. This breaks the record of 1,006,807 set on March 16, 2004. A total of 46 vessels, comprised of super and regular ships, transited the record tonnage. That means maximum throughput could be 46 vessels a day or 16,790 vessels per year. 1990 saw approximately 12,150 cargo and passenger vessels transit the canal. 2003 saw an average of 32 vessels a day and 2002 slightly higher for 11,754 vessel transits.

EXCESS CAPACITY IS 5,000 transits a year!

The canal continues to push forward with initiatives under its Permanent Modernization Program, which contains projects designed to increase capacity when it already has excess capacity! Current projects under development within the program include: the deepening of Gatun Lake and the Atlantic and Pacific entrances, the construction of a second Tie-up station in the Gaillard Cut and the further widening and straightening of the Gaillard Cut. With these projects, the ACP is maximizing the canal’s resources with the goal to attain 330 million PC/UMS tons over the next two years. But it already has capacity for 330 million PC/UMS!

I am really surprised that someone is not upset about the revenue being lost! But then as your article pointed out, "From 2000 to 2006, we received $2 billion" from the canal, the sociologist pointed out. "So what --- what did we do with this money?"

name withheld
El Paso, Texas 

Roy "Pollito" Paddy 1/20/30 - 5/06/06

I became friends with Roy when I moved to Gatun and started working at the Mt. Hope Fire Station in early 1980. I quickly learned that he was a great fire supervisor and was well respected by his co-workers and the Atlantic community. There was something special about his personality and his ability to lead his fire subordinates. After he was promoted to fire lieutenant and became station commander of Gatun Fire Station, many fire fighters requested to be transferred to Gatun Fire Station just to have the opportunity to work under Roy’s supervision.

There was never a fire division task assigned to Roy that he did not take as a challenge and he always gave his all to see that it was accomplished. He was always the center of attention at all of our gatherings and anytime you entered a room of people and heard people laughing you could be assured that Roy was there, making people laugh. He was assigned to numerous fire promotion boards and always had the best interest of the fire division and its future in mind with the selection of new fire officers.

Before Roy made his first trip to the States, he could tell me the locations of all the highways comprising the Interstate Highway System, including the cities located on each of them. He knew all the state capitols and he knew most of the states’ highway systems. He could tell me all the major cities in all the states and what roads ran through them. He had a set of maps and would just study them. In the mid 80's, Janny and I gave him a set of National Geographic road maps. Frequently when I’d visit the fire station he would have the maps spread out all over the desk, kitchen table, and bed and would just be studying the maps.

Roy and Janny loved each other very much and were the best of friends. But after his retirement and his move to Santiago is when we became closer and better friends. Anyone that has read my e-mails from Panama knows that I have written about Roy several times. For the past seven years on my returns to Panama I have always spent time with him in Santiago. In Santiago he was truly a roving ambassador. I have never seen anyone that could make so many friends and be loved by so many people. He literally knew everyone in the town of Santiago. It was his daily routine and pastime to give friends and strangers rides in the town for errands, shopping, and appointments. Roy was the only person I know who could enter a bank before its opening for daily business. The bank security guards would open the door to the bank for him so that he could come inside to visit with his bank friends before the bank opened. Roy would take a handful of candy from dishes on the counters by the bank tellers and go outside and share the candy with the people on the street and the children.

We rode the streets of Santiago with Roy each day of our visits. First thing in the morning, we’d ride down main street and a newspaper vender would always come to the car to give Roy a paper in exchange for some coins. Roy’s favorite lottery vender sales lady would always come to his car with his special numbers. Every morning he had breakfast at his favorite restaurant and his special table was always reserved for him when he came in. No one could sit at this table in the morning before Roy was served.

Two years ago when Beverly Jones and I visited Roy, Beverly presented him with a complete set of all the AAA tour guide books and with a new complete AAA set of US road maps. When he saw what the present was his face lit up with a big smile as if to say, "Now I’ll learn all there is to know about those small towns." He and Beverly had a special bond and he loved showing her the Santiago November parades.

Roy learned how to speak Japanese in a class in Santiago!! As we traveled, we collected tourist brochures in Japanese to bring to him. It seemed so strange to walk the streets of Santiago with Roy and have him speak Japanese with Spanish speaking friends. Roy also became a Christian two years ago and he often spoke of his young new Bishop friend from Santiago. Roy had given up any consumption of alcohol two years ago.

Six years ago Roy and I decided that we had talked about having a Panama Canal Fire Fighters Reunion long enough and it was time to do something about it. When we pondered how many would attend Roy said if only you and I are there it will be a reunion. He and I organized the first reunion in 2000 for our fire fighter friends. We have had annual reunions ever since, alternating between South Florida and Panama, and they have been well attended.

Roy had recently purchased a new automobile after which it was difficult to contact him at home by phone. I had learned to call him late at night or early in the morning. As Roy said, "I have a new car now, my friends need a ride and so why should I be home." And that is what he was doing when the automobile accident happened. It occurred no more that one-half mile from his home. He had just dropped a friend off at the bus station.

Roy will be dearly missed by so many friends. I will especially miss him but Roy had some friendships that go back to his childhood days growing up in Colon. Kids that played in the streets together and later entered the Canal Zone Fire Division together and worked together for thirty years. I can’t imagine how much Balma must miss him. They talked almost every day by phone. I can’t imagine how much Aubrey must miss him. So, yes BH, when I hold up my right hand and look at my palm, Roy was one of them.

On 5/10/06 at 1100 hour when Roy’s memorial service was held in Margarita, Beverly and I stopped by the roadside along the Tetsa River in British Columbia. The river was completely frozen, so white and beautiful, and the rushing water was silenced by the ice. The mountains were so steep and tall and up above the tree line the tops of the mountains were covered with snow. We had our own memorial and reminisced. I felt like I could have described this setting to Roy and he would have known where I was because he had studied the maps. If you have a friend that you have not spoked to in a while or someone that you have been thinking about, why not pick up the phone?

Wallace Teal

Does cultural identity lead to violence?

The simple answer is no --- cultural identity per se does not necessarily lead to violence, even though people mobilize along the lines of cultural identity to commit violence.

Normally, when people cite cultural identity as the reason for violent acts, it is because they feel aggrieved over perceived or real threats to their cultural identity. Such threats may be either real or invented for some other purpose, such as personal desire for power.

When it is perceived as real, cultural identity can become a site on which the aggrieved mobilize. One example is the Afro-Guyanese mobilization and threats of violence on the bases of perceived injustice.

In this case, we have a situation where the "aggrieved" party simply wants electoral power through violence as they see their numerical minority status as preventing "their" political party from winning national elections.

The perceived threat to Afro-Guyanese which is cited by their leaders may indeed have some truth to it, but in the climate of threats of violence, it is difficult to determine the nature and extent of it, much less design viable solutions.

One interesting thing about this situation is that the Indo-Guyanese majority also feel a serious threat to their existence, perhaps more so than Afro-Guyanese. This is because although they are the numerical majority and an Indian-led party has formed the government since 1992, they have consistently been at the receiving end of violence mainly from Afro-Guyanese.

This was the case when the Afro-Guyanese based political party was in power for 28 years from 1964 to 1992, and has continued to the present.

Most recently, Minister Satyadeow Shaw, three members of his family and his security guard were murdered. Some are celebrating this on the Internet and "their" political parties and intellectuals have stepped up the threat of more violence as election approaches in September 2006.

Two points related to cultural identity can be made from this. First, Afro-Guyanese have mobilized on the basis of black nationalism, an ethnocultural ideology which has wide currency in the Caribbean, the USA, the UK and elsewhere.

This ideology is buttressed by Caribbean historical discourse which sees Afro-Caribbean people as providentially and historically appointed emancipators, a teleology which results in an aggressive and violent assertion of cultural and political rights against everyone else. This ideology today serves as an empowerment and encouraging mechanism for Afro-Guyanese and Afro-Caribbean violence against others, even though it had progressive purposes in the anti-colonial period.

Interestingly, as black nationalism has constructed a common sense with attendant values and desires around its reading of history and its mission, and as it unleashes violence and terror on Indo-Guyanese and others, it has turned Indo-Guyanese into a psychological minority.

This is experienced as a highly restricted cultural space and a state of permanent terror and suspicion.

Secondly, the overwhelming dominance of "Africans" in the police and military in Guyana serves as another empowerment and encouraging mechanism for Afro-Guyanese violence against Indo-Guyanese. One prominent African leader recently pointed out quite frankly that given the composition of the security forces in Guyana, Africans cannot be militarily defeated.

What these points highlight is that people commit violence in the name of collective identity act when they are empowered and encouraged to do so.

This was true of whites during colonialism, of Serbs in Kosovo, of Fijians in Fiji, and of Afro-Guyanese in Guyana today.

The solutions lie in:

1. Genuine discussions and understanding of the perceived problems

2. Monitoring for violation of cultural and human rights

3. Protection for cultural and human rights

4. Developing a public culture that recognizes the grievances of both groups and the difficulties of attending to them because of a lack of trust, itself a consequence of the history

5. Focusing the education/school system on these issues as part of the attempt to cultivate such a public culture

6. Enhanced media/journalistic ethics to decrease inflammatory rhetoric

7. Establishment of a commission to study the problems and recommend solutions

Guyana, with a population of just 800,000, ought to be a place where all Guyanese want to live.

Unfortunately, it has the highest "peacetime" emigration in human history.

Walter H. Persaud

Gays continue to attack the Catholic Church

There are two basic degrees or types of homosexuality. Individuals in the first group may not know how to deal with their mental disorder, and therefore not all will seek professional counseling. This group struggles with their unnatural feelings and prefers to keep them private, and they deserve our compassion.

Some women who have a domineering father will only be attracted to those of their own sex because they have learned not to respect men. The same is true of some men who have a domineering mother. Others, should one of their parents/guardians not truly love them, from a very early age may unconsciously imitate certain masculine or feminine characteristics of the parent/guardian that they most admired. However, not all become homosexuals --- as with every human being, our moral state determines our ability to resist the temptations we experience.

The other more severe type is made up of individuals who are "avowed," practicing homosexuals. Through their own free will, they choose to live an immoral lifestyle. These individuals do not seek to change or confess their sinfulness --- they have no shame, and most have many partners. They desire acceptance of the scandal they create, and are openly proud of their unnatural behavior. These type homosexuals and lesbians seek the "right" to publicly practice their unnatural behavior, and accuse anyone who admonishes them of being "prejudiced," or of "discrimination."

They also frequently attack the Catholic Church because members of the Church often quote Romans, Chapter One, which reveals why Almighty God condemns homosexuality as a great evil: "For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error" (Verses 26-27).

These so-called "gay" individuals and others who live immoral lives, as well as those who give their approval or "consent" to any type of morally sick lifestyle, are included in the warnings and condemnations recorded throughout Sacred Scripture.

In the USA these "warnings" especially may be directed at those in the entertainment field, the media, and the vast majority of politicians in the morally corrupt Democratic Party, who not only approve of all forms of homosexuality, but also support "the right to kill" through abortion and euthanasia. In addition, like many atheists, many Democrats approve of experimenting with aborted fetal tissue, as well as fetal stem cell research, rather than the morally acceptable, and more promising adult stem cell research.

All of Romans, Chapter One deals with grave sins, but the final verse gives us a powerful example of one of these warnings: "They who do such things, are worthy of death (Hell), and not only they who do them, but they also that CONSENT to them that do them" (Verse 32).

Vincent Bemowski

Writer & Webmaster

Catholic Messages USA

Menasha, Wisconsin