letters

Readers' discourses on four different subjects

Work restrictions and the maleantes

The right to work at age 16 should be considered as part of the solution to the maleante problem.

A three-man team due to install sixty-foot continual aluminum gutters was one man short and having problems. A young man watching was offered a day’s pay to help. Jorge turned out to be a natural. Whatever tool the lead installer needed, he had it on hand before being asked. At the end of the day he was offered full-time employment. On the following morning when Jorge presented his cedula to the company administrator, it was found that this mature looking person was a 16-year-old. By law Jorge must wait until his 18th birthday before he can be legally employed.

Intelligence and enterprise comes in many different forms and is not limited to those who are the brightest students in the classrooms. Jorge does not have a mind suited to formal academic study and school is no longer the right place for him to be. He should be free to use his initiative and energy to earn a wage and contribute to the welfare of his family but instead the law dictates that he must remain idle until his 18th birthday.

Idleness is not in Jorge's nature. For almost two years he will be faced with the temptation to use the initiative and energy he showed on his one day of work to gain money illegally.

The crimes committed by young maleantes are a threat to all who live in our cities. Many of the young men and women who are now a part of this evil cult might never have joined its ranks had they been allowed to use their energies working for a wage.

It is time to change this law and give the young the right of employment from the age of 16. If it is necessary to pay the academic students a stipend to continue their schooling, this would better than facing a continuing increase in the number of maleantes, whose violence is eroding Panama's reputation.

Militarizing a famous fishing spot?

What the hell is going on down there? Could they have picked a more pristine, unspoiled fishing spot to destroy?

'The US and Panama will sign before October 30 an agreement on the deployment of two naval bases on the pacific coast of our country to fight international drug-trafficking,' said Minister of Government and Justice Jose Raul Mulino.

'One of the bases will be located in Bahia Piñas --- 450 kilometers [280 miles] east of the capital, Panama City, and another one --- in Punta Coca about 350 km [217 miles] west of the capital,' Mulino added.

The US government will also allocate additional $7 million to Panama this year for the fight against organized crime and illicit drug trade.

Editor's note: So what ISN'T foolish and counter-productive about this so-called "War on Drugs?"

Identity denied: abuses in Panama

Cast out again into the cold, forbidding and indefinable void which surrounds any nation adrift --- having lost its moral compass and its sense of justice --- the battered Naso people of Panama have, once again, been denied what every human being requires to survive: the recognition of one’s own identity.

Their hopes dashed, their homes destroyed, their village life a distant dream, their call for justice unheeded by a nation that turns a blind eye to them. Even international organizations to which they have appealed appear as adrift as everyone else pretending not to see.

The Naso are being forced to draw even deeper on their dwindling reserves of courage, conviction and determination to continue to insist on their human rights.

Yesterday, September 24th 2009, the Naso were expelled. Again. This time, having come to Panama City with dignity and in peace, sleeping humbly camped on public ground, seeking help from a new government they hoped would offer what every citizen who has been wronged has a right to expect, troops descended instead.

Once again they are being forced to “move on.” But move on to where? Troops in the name of “society” destroyed their villages and their homes: their identity.

They were expected to disappear “into the mountains, there are plenty of those” as a radio commentator in the city was heard to say. Just an inconvenience. Move on. We barely recognize our own existence. Why care about yours? Blend into the masses.

Organized expulsions of the Naso, a people among the few of Panama’s original inhabitants, were ratcheted up early on this year with the systematic razing of not only their dwellings and belongings, but the complete destruction of their food supplies and fields. Whole villages, bulldozed and buried along with every recognizable landscape of their ancient homelands. Identity denied.

No explanations, no acknowledgment, no compassion, no empathy, no provisions of even the most basic kind in this world of refugees. Simply pretending they are not there. No recognition. Move on.

This is the edge of the void, the face of evil. It has begun by eating at the far edges of society, preying on peaceable people, wearing them down even while they believe that the part they played in Panama’s multi-faceted cultural life would be defended by society.

But in a nation where co-existence with one’s fellow man was once the hallmark of national life, an insidious rationalization process is spreading which turns the victim into the perpetrator. How “dare” the Naso “expect?” Just move on. Blend into the masses. Become as adrift as the rest of us.

Yesterday’s actions against the Naso will not stop with them, if indifference continues to reign. By failing to protect our fellow man, we ultimately deny our own identity. We forsake our defense. Emboldened and unrestrained, evil will target the next “inconvenient” tribe, or group, or neighbor, and then the next, and then the next. And so, the holocaust is reborn.

The Pope’s visit to the Czech Republic

I commend Pope Benedict XVI for condemning communism and for illustrating, during his visit to the Czech Republic, how such systems that chase power and deny God are bound to collapse. The pope’s warning has special relevance for the world’s democratic governments that are increasingly becoming socialist in nature. Under the guise of freedom they seek to impose on society a culture of death that includes homosexuality, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, cloning, euthanasia and abortion.

The increasing tendency of Canada, the United States and European nations to repudiate their Christian roots is not, as some think, the expression of some morally superior tolerance for other cultures but rather the authorization of an absolute way of thinking and living that is radically opposed to the variety of cultures --- cultures which, in the end, are dogmatically relativized.

Communist-socialist governments falsely present themselves as the authentic spokesmen for the aspirations of the people. Under such systems, every affirmation of faith or of theology is subordinated to a political criterion.

In truth, atheism and the denial of the human person, his liberty and rights, are at the core of Marxist belief which requires a total subordination of the person to the collectivity. Communism ultimately subsumes the autonomous nature of all spheres of existence: religious, ethical, institutional and cultural.

In a democracy, however, it is the state that conforms to the society it serves --- not the other way around. Alternatively you end up with dictatorship and totalitarianism.

News | Economy | Culture | Opinion | Lifestyle | Nature
Noticias | Opiniones | Archive | Unclassified Ads | Home