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Reparations for slavery and subsequent oppression is a long-running debate on which African-Americans have varying opinions. There are questions like “Who would qualify?” and “Does anyone think that a check from the government can make a person, family or nation whole for generations of chattel slavery?” There are observations about how Germany paid reparations to some of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
Black nationalism for Dems with blue eyes (etc.)
by Eric L. Jackson Malo (perhaps bad by definition, but a guy with blue eyes)
Did you notice? Joe Biden won the presidency not by splitting off disaffected Republicans, but on the strength of huge African-American turnouts in key states, mostly but not entirely in the major cities.
Did you notice? Among African-American voters, and in the lineup of black elected officials, there are generational, ideological and dynastic changes underway. Yes, there are a few more black conservatives than before, as shown by Donald Trump’s slightly better among black voters showing in 2020 than in 2016. But the 2016 numbers were skewed by a low black turnout. We might argue about why that was — Democrats already — but the striking datum this year was in the turnout of younger voters and that applied across most American raicial divides
Younger African-Americans went to the polls in droves, and only some 50,000 of them were so foolish to cast ballots, listed or write-in, for Kanye West. (Perhaps the verdict on both him and Donald Trump was a watershed cultural event that sounds the death knell for “reality” TV. Perhaps among black people young and old it was a ratificaion of Barack Obama’s old verdict: “Kanye West IS a jackass….”)
Black nationalism in the USA has a long history, heroes and villains and many, many strains. but as an electoral fact, sum up a cardinal tenet as as all other things being more or less equal, most black people prefer to be governed by other black people and vote accordingly.
All things very rarely ARE equal, so notice how black Detroiters, after a series of scandals reached their nadir with the mama’s boy — who ruined his mother’s honorable and progressive career as a congresswoman — “hip hop mayor” of infamous lore, chose a white mayor. Far more recently, Michigan Republicans ran a black candidate for US Senate. Mr. James, the black Republican, might have run on a platform in many ways similar to the record in office of Mr. Peters, in most ways a stodgy corporate Democat, but Michigan’s black voters went with the white man, who notwithstanding any faults can not be said to have aligned himself with white supremacists as everyone who supported Donald Trump’s re-election did.
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African-Americans trend Democratic, but woe to the Democrat who, in office, egregiously offends the black community. If it’s someone from a majority-black constituency, look for that elected official to be ousted by a primary challenger. If it’s from a larger, mostly non-black constituency, look for black voters to abstain more than cross over to the Republicans.
An infamous example was when the big business Democratic Leadership Council sort of Democrat, Jim Blanchard, ran for re-election as Michigan’s governor. The pre-election polls suggested that he would win in a romp. But he ran ads playing “tough on crime” aimed at battleground white suburbs — the white guard standing over a young black inmate screaming abuse was the worst — and on election day on the governor’s line only some 18% of Detroiters cast ballots. He lost, his friend Bill Clinton made him ambassador to Canada, and never again was Jim Blanchard prominent on the national or Michigan Democratic stage. He sobbed and moaned about having been betrayed by black leaders.
African-American voters sometimes make mistaken choices, and sometimes stick with black leaders with egregious faults in their performance. “Better the devil we know than…” and all that stuff. Or a basic Christian sense that we are all sinners. Or a social judgment that if you are poor, or are the target of discrimination, the economic pressures to be less than pure are greater. Trump’s crowd, of course, treats it as something very else.
From these circumstances white Democrats ought to gather another basic bottom line tenet of black nationalism as practiced in the USA: African-Americans will make their choices, which others may criticize but must respect. None of this white substitution of a “responsible negro spokesman” for the black community’s choice. Don’t complain after the fact about after black voters spurn a Democratic candidate, consult and take proper account beforehand.
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Appreciate diversity and complexity. Shallow “identity politics?” Those may be effective in some constituencies, and used to be more effective in other constituencies than they are now. The thing is to talk politics that matter to people with identities, speaking honestly as who and what you are, in terms that both speaker and listener understand.
After his break with the Nation of Islam, his hajj to Mecca and his travels in Africa, Malcolm X modified and deepened his thinking about the American predicament in general and about race relations in particular. In a famous incident in Detroit, he issued a stern rebuke to a black anti-Semite. He came to opine that racism is a diseast that any person of any race or nationality can catch, and that in his time, in the USA, it was a minor problem among black people and a big problem among white people. Seems that he was both right about that and that things have not changed all that much.
Suffice to know that “people of color” is only a relevant category in terms of understanding the broad spectrum of those who are often the targets of white racism. It is not a natural community.
In Brooklyn, there are some significant cultural differences among the descendants of American slaves and the progeny of the Afro-Antilleans who built the Panama Canal — even if they are intermarried, even if they have gone to the same New York schools. Just like “Hispanic” is not so useful a political category if you try to lump Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans and Puerto Ricans as having much more in common than at some point (in some cases now) their families or lineages having varieties of the Spanish language in common.
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Democrats face an uphill double US Senate runoff that gives us a shot at taking control of the US Senate and removing the major obstruction to a successful early par of the Biden presidency. Our candidates are Rev. Warnock, the pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s old church and a black man, and Mr. Ossoff, a former Capitol Hill Democratic staffer and a Jew.
We should expect that Republicans will try to play off of anti-Semitism among black people to diminish Ossoff’s chances, and that they will play off of racism among Jews against Warnock. Just two items from a much larger slime bucket that they will throw at us.
So talk to people with identities that we may or may not share, about things that matter. And know that one of the identities that we do share is that fellow Americans are talking among ourselves, about the future of our country.
Lot of good armed resistance did for Malcolm. Members of the Nation of Islam with which he had broken gunned him down, and meanwhile two of his three bodyguards that day were police agents — one was FBI and the other the NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services “red squad.” Can we set aside the conspiracy theories, cutting down with Occam’s Razor to the simple appearance that violent rhetoric, not an intricate plan, set off a few violent men to do the deed? But guns are a recurring question among black nationalists — and with a wannabe black militia operating in Georgia, may again become an election factor in the coming weeks. This reporter recalls a 1970 debate between a member of the Black Panther Party and and a member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the latter criticizing the Panthers for their emphasis on guns and recalling what the federal troops who were sent into Detroit did after the crowds and snipers ran the police off of the streets in the 1967 rebellion. “They will crush you as if you were a tiny bug, and here you go talking about being bad.”
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What if they gave a riot, and nobody came? Just in case, the riot squad was deployed near the PRD party headquarters. FRENADESO Noticias photo.
All that counts for them under control, to an outsider nearly total disarray
by Eric Jackson
The National Assembly has two regular sessions, one from early January through the end of April, the other from the beginning of July to the end of October. During the previous session the new new coronavirus hit us and President Laurentino “Nito” Cortizo Cohen responded by declaring a state of emergency, invoking constitutional powers drafted with war in mind.
To “prevent panic” word went out from the government that any information about the health crisis that didn’t come from them was false. For a time most of the rabiblanco media obeyed those restrictions, while at the same time the journalists of most of the small media were locked down like everyone else, as were most government offices. News from Panama about Panama shriveled down to little more than government announcements and accidental videos circulated on social media.
Were there private contacts between the reporters and editors of the main media businesses and the rest of the business community? Of course there were, but at first taboos about telling how bad off a business is limited that part of crisis reporting.
What to do in the swirl on an information black hole? On Twitter, to hit the trending in Panama feed was to find that other than government announcements the usual fare was stuff about European soccer teams.
WHAT? An information hole? What a great opportunity for a politician who loves the limelight! That’s not all or even most of the deputies, though. Those interested in being president some day may grow in the glare, but those who are in it for the money, or making deals with those who are, prefer to work in the shade
At first some of the more extreme deputies who take their guidance from far right movements in other lands grumbled, as in Zulay Rodríguez standing up the assembly chamber to denounce quarantine rules and question the use of masks. The health minister at the time was on a continuum from dismissive to derisive, the deputy didn’t take her advice to self-quarantine, but in any case politicians used to thinking themselves immune to everything and acting like it quickly figured that other than in sparsely populated areas most Panamanians were taking the matter seriously.
By the start of this session a lot of people had died and the PRD caucus had been caught violating the decrees by meeting at a restaurant that was supposed to be closed to divide up the jobs. There were a few things that had to be done, a few things in which this or that legislator believes, but mostly some shows to be staged in a time when presidential decrees pre-empted a lot of what they might otherwise do.
Do you want to hear her “unmask” the journalists and independent politicians whom she despises and brands as foreign – again? You can go to her YouTube channel (from which this still is taken) to hear that rant. Zulay Rodríguez has her following but by and large her colleagues don’t take her too seriously.
So what did they actually do?
…The city fathers, they’re trying to endorse The reincarnation of Paul Revere’s horse But the town has no need to be nervous…
Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues
Word came breathlessly down from the legislative palace at the foot of Ancon Hill that from July 1 through October 29, the deputies had passed 62 laws. They varied widely in importance and infamy.
EDITOR’S NOTE: At about this point on November 1, the laptop on which The Panama News is produced started to go haywire. It proved impossible to go on at the time, and the computer is still not fixed. But the story was and is intended to go on into the things things that the National Assembly did —the veto fights with President Cortizo, the very important matter of the national budget and so on — and was to end with the tale of police attacking protesters and arresting a journalist outside the legislative palace as the session ended. We will get to all of that, AND the subsequent Budget Committee meetings during the legislative recess, in a future article.
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A group of prominent former world leaders on Thursday expressed “deep concern” over President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede defeat to President-elect Joe Biden in the US presidential election, warning that his failure to do so is “putting at risk the functioning of American democracy.”
The Elders—a group that includes numerous former heads of state and government, as well as cabinet ministers, diplomats, activists, two former United Nations secretaries-general, and seven Nobel Peace Prize recipients—issued a statement decrying the “continued assertions of electoral fraud” by Trump, leading members of his administration, and the Republican Party.
Such allegations lack “any compelling evidence” and “convey a lack of respect for the integrity and independence of the democratic and legal institutions of the United States,” the group said.
Warning of “far-reaching consequences beyond the United States’ borders,” The Elders said “those who stand to benefit from the current impasse are autocratic rulers and malign actors who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law across the world.”
“Notwithstanding any continuing legal challenges, President Trump should follow the example set by his predecessors and declare himself willing to accept the verdict cast by the American people at the ballot box,” the group added. “The executive powers available to the president until his successor assumes office… should be used judiciously in the interests of the whole United States, rather than for partisan gain.”
“Continued baseless accusations of subversion risk further deepening the instability and polarization in American society, and eroding public faith in institutions that is the bedrock of democratic life,” it warned.
Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders and a former Irish president, added: “It is shocking to have to raise concerns about US democratic processes as The Elders have previously commented on volatile and undemocratic situations in states such as Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe.”
The refusal of @realDonaldTrump to follow the norms and processes of a transition of power puts the functioning of US democracy at risk. Republican leaders must respect the verdict cast by the American people at the ballot box.
“President Trump’s refusal thus far to facilitate a smooth transition weakens democratic values,” stressed Robinson. “His fellow Republicans must now affirm their faith in the US Constitution, democratic institutions, and the rule of law, so the country can begin a process of reconciliation.”
This is the second time The Elders have weighed in on the US presidential election this week. On Monday, the group released a statement congratulating Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory and expressing hope that “the incoming administration, as well as seeking to unite a divided country, will seize the opportunity to renew America’s commitment to the multilateral system at a time when US leadership is urgently needed.”
“This includes taking a leading role in efforts to keep global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius by recommitting the US to the Paris climate agreement, supporting global collaboration on tackling Covid-19 by reversing plans to withdraw funding for the World Health Organization, and prioritizing the strengthening of nuclear arms controls,” the statement said.
The Elders congratulate President-elect @JoeBiden and express hope for a sea-change in #US engagement on global issues.
Created in 2007 by anti-apartheid activist, Nobel Peace Laureate and former South African President Nelson Mandela, The Elders works to promote “a world where people live in peace, conscious of their common humanity and their shared responsibilities for each other, for the planet, and for future generations.”
Current members include former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, and former Liberian President and Nobel Peace Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Among the group’s former members are four Nobel Peace Prize recipients: former US President Jimmy Carter, South African archbishop and anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.
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Puerto Rico: el independentismo en su despegue electoral
por Nils Castro — Rebelión
Se especula sobre el valor del plebiscito según el cual el 3 de noviembre, junto con las elecciones norteamericanas, el pueblo de Puerto Rico habría votado por su anexión a Estados Unidos. Al contrario, ese día los puertorriqueños volvieron a demostrar que el estatus colonial de la Isla está en crisis.
En realidad, en esa fecha se votó para elegir gobernador, así como senadores y diputados el Congreso borinqueño. A esto, el saliente gobierno anexionista local le añadió un llamado plebiscito sobre si los electores desean o no la “estadidad”, es decir, anexionarse. Un evento cosmético, ya que el Congreso norteamericano ‑el órgano facultado para decidir sobre la situación de Puerto Rico‑ no lo consideró vinculante.
Lo sustantivo del día fue la elección de autoridades y legisladores, y sus resultados transparentan el verdadero estado de cosas. El tradicional bipartidismo puertorriqueño se hunde. El anexionista Partido Nuevo Popular (PNP) pudo elegir por un pelo al nuevo gobernador Pierluisi, y el Partido Popular Democrático ‑el del régimen de Estado Libre Asociado‑ logró sacar una mayoría de uno en ambas cámaras. Pero los dos sacaron sus peores votaciones (el ganador obtuvo 20% menos sufragios que en la elección anterior), ante el ascenso de los independentistas.
Tras décadas de enfrentar persecuciones políticas, clientelismo oficial e imposiciones coloniales, el Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP) saltó de su tradicional 5% al 14%. Junto a él, dos nuevos partidos afines, sumaron otro 20%. En total, un inédito 34% de votación independentista. Como se sabe, en la Isla la legislación colonialista le prohíbe aliarse a los partidos con registro, so pena de perder el registro, lo que impide a las organizaciones afines compartir candidaturas.
En cuanto al plebiscito, que esta vez jugó un papel marginal, la votación no fue por la estadidad, sino contra el Estado Libre Asociado (ELA), su única alternativa. Solo confirma que el ELA ya está demasiado agotado, sistema político de la inoperancia, la corrupción y la crisis. Antaño ofrecía la ficción de una alternativa “blanda”, sin la vergüenza de la anexión ni los imponderables de la independencia, a la que por décadas le restó electores.
Lo ocurrido destapa dos cosas que ahora pesarán: uno, que la estadidad ganó por un margen exiguo; demasiado pobre para dar justificar una discusión en Washington ni considerarlo algo de peso en Puerto Rico. Si ahora habrá discusión en el Congreso norteamericano será por el abrupto crecimiento electoral independentista, no por este desleído plebiscito.
La otra, que el PIP tuvo la mayor votación de su historia y reeligió a sus senadores y diputados. Sus líderes históricos están más que satisfechos, particularmente por el buen desempeño de sus principales relevos, Juan Dalmau, nuevo secretario general y senador reelecto ‑que fue su candidato a gobernador‑ y María de Lourdes Santiago, vicepresidenta del partido y también senadora reelecta.
Nils Castro es un analista político y escritor panameño.
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The straightforward diplomat behind Arafat and Abbas — in memoriam Saeb Erekat
by Adam Keller – Gush Shalom (the Israeli Peace Bloc)
My first contact with Saeb Erekat was when he was not yet in politics – as a lecturer at Al-Najah University.
When I was invited to a university ceremony which I could not attend, and I called him to express my regret.
At the later occasions where I went as part of a Gush Shalom delegation to meet President Arafat, and still later President Abbas, Dr. Saeb Erekat was always there at the President`s side.
In conversations with him he was strikingly open and straightforward.
Also in more official appearances he was an unlikely diplomat who conveyed confidence, courage and emotion, and that he is interested in doing business with those who had something real to offer.
The Trump Middle East approach made him very bitter.
That he died days after Trump`s demise, of which he probably was not aware, is intensely sad.
He will be missed in whatever hopeful turn to come.
May the memory of his devotion be a consolation for his family and friends.
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A final attempt of a desperate, bitter man to cling to power
by Robert Reich – Common Dreams
Joe Biden has won. He will be our next president.
Normally, the loser of the race would give a gracious concession speech, and accept the results.
That won’t happen this time around, because Donald Trump is a pathological narcissist who will never admit defeat. But there’s no legal requirement for the losing candidate to formally concede—it’s just another tradition Trump will choose to ignore.
He can bluster and protest all he wants, but like it or not, the Constitution and federal law establish a clear timeline of how electoral votes are processed, and when the new president takes office. Here’s how that process normally plays out, how Trump might try to undermine it, and why he is unlikely to succeed.
The first date to look out for is December 8th. After Election Day, states have until this date, called the “safe harbor” deadline, to resolve any election disputes. Each state has a unique process outlined in its state constitution for this, and the federal deadline was created so that state electoral disputes don’t drag on endlessly.
Next is December 14th. This is when the electors meet in their states, and cast paper ballots for president and vice president. And then governors certify the electors’ votes.
The governor sends these certified results to Congress by December 23rd.
On January 6th, 2021, the newly sworn-in Congress meets in a joint session to officially accept each state’s Electoral College votes and count them. This is normally a ceremonial event in which the already-settled results of the election are simply made official. This is when the presidential race formally ends.
Lastly, on January 20th, the president and vice president are inaugurated.
Normally, no one pays much attention to this process before Inauguration Day because it goes off without a hitch. But we’ve seen that Trump will do anything to hold onto power. It’s important to know how and when he might try to undermine this process, and also understand how unlikely it is he’ll succeed.
Trump backers are trying to push Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint their own slates of Trump electors. That’s why the campaign has launched empty legal challenges to perfectly normal vote counts—trying to sow enough doubt to give the state legislatures political cover to appoint their own electors.
This isn’t likely to happen. It would be challenged as an unconstitutional power grab, since state legislatures have almost always deferred to the results of the state’s popular vote in assigning electoral votes. And not to mention, it would spark massive public outrage.
Thankfully, it doesn’t look like Republican legislators in any of the key swing states want to expend their political capital defending a failed president, and some have even explicitly come out against this plan.
All this is to say, be patient, keep the faith, and don’t fall into Trump’s cry for attention. We must see this for what it is: A final attempt of a desperate, bitter man to cling to power.
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Biden and Harris must strongly advocate for working people
by Thea M. Lee
Now that the 2020 presidential election is finally decided, working people can look forward to a moment of hope and opportunity. In January, Americans will have a president and vice president who have pledged to prioritize the needs of working families. Despite extraordinary and unconscionable efforts to silence voters, the democratic process has prevailed in the most important election of our lifetime.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris won on a platform that addresses the urgent needs of working people. EPI has long called for policies that would shift bargaining power back toward workers, curb accelerating income inequality, shore up the nation’s infrastructure and educational systems, protect and expand social insurance programs, and help close gender and racial wage gaps. We look forward to working closely with the incoming administration to systematically undo the harm caused by the Trump administration—and to build an economy that works for everyone in America, elevates the contributions of working people, and is committed to addressing and reversing systemic racism.
Many elections across the country demonstrated that progressive, pro-worker policies are not just good economics, but also can be electoral winners. By overwhelming margins, Florida residents voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, and Colorado residents voted for a 12-week paid family and medical leave program. As EPI’s work has shown, the progressive agenda is both popular and necessary for a robust and fair economic recovery at this precarious moment in history.
We encourage the incoming administration and Congress to focus on building worker power, fighting for racial justice, and making the transformational changes we need to invest in America, including through clean energy and other forms of climate crisis mitigation, public health, the care economy, the immigration system, and public education. This is not a time for timidity or austerity. This is a time for courage and ambition, and we are ready to work with Congress and the incoming administration to achieve the changes our country needs.
Thea M. Lee is president of the Economic Policy Institute.
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Rufina Alfaro, in the official imaginations of Panamanian guys.
Today in legend and history
by Eric Jackson
What Panamanian guy would be so unpatriotic as to question the magnificence of Rufina Alfaro’s tits? Or so sexist as to doubt that she was a machete-wielding badass revolutionary?
Those questions raise deeper historical questions about the suppression and falsification of our history. But given all that, might it actually be the case that the Rufina Alfaro legend is very close to the historical truth?
The legend has it that Rufina Alfaro was a young campesina who would sell vegetables and eggs to the soldiers at the La Villa de Los Santos army base. Using her friendship with the soldiers, it is said that she convinced the troops to rebel against the Spanish crown, a key elements of “El Grito de La Villa de Los Santos” on November 10, 1821.
So, a foxy young lady with a machete, calling out the troops and perhaps threatening to cut the nuts off of those who did not comply?
At the time, all sorts of people had reasons to lie about who did what. There were at the time political prisoners of the Latin American independence movement held on the isthmus. Some of such folks had been executed at Fort San Lorenzo, then a Spanish prison, overlooking the mouth of the Chagres River. Rebellion against Spain was, after all, a capital offense.
It was also quit a popular thing to do. Panama’s place in the Spanish Empire had been as part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, more or less encompassing today’s Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama. Simón Bolívar and a badass Irish and Vene crew, decimated and defeated in Venezuela and driven into the snake-infested swampy boonies, had hacked their way through the bush, scaled the snow-covered Andes and showed up behind Bogota. Taken by surprise, the Spanish troops put up a token bit of resistance but retreated, and their commanders and the viceroy fled. As the rest of the viceroyalty was falling, Panama became the more or less administrative center in exile while great effort was being made to preserve a Spanish presence in Ecuador, from whence to launch a restorationist counteroffensive.
That was apparently not a very attractive thought to demoralized Spanish soldiers stationed in the Azuero boonies.
Nor was being drafted into the army, nor paying extra taxes to support a recolonizing venture, an attractive venture for local farmers.
Back then, the miracle of Panama’s geographical position had worn down to almost nothing. The last trade fair had been almost a century ago and the heyday of that era was even longer gone. The isthmian economy still had a few trade route related components, but this was a provincial backwater that depended of producing things by farming the land or fishing the sea for its livelihood. La Villa de Los Santos and the other provincial towns were there to serve as markets and supply stores for the farmers. In this largely illiterate rural society, forget about much in the way of an administrative bureaucracy. The learned ones, such record keepers and teachers as there were, were concentrated in the Catholic Church. Baptismal certificates were far more common than government birth certificates. It would not be so unusual for a rural midwife or a campesino family to ignore the paperwork.
At the inception of the Spanish Conquest, the Catholic Church was better about these roles. By treaty with the Spanish Empire, these were church obligations that came in exchange for a cut of the loot from the golden kingdoms and farmlands to be conquered, plus land and buildings for the churches. But when Napoleon conquered Spain and put his brother — to this day reviled by Spaniards as Pepe El Borracho — on the throne in Madrid, the old deal more or less became a dead letter. Napoleon was ephemeral, but the attempt to restore the old Church and State order was resisted by colonials who had done well enough without orders from Spain and by a new breed centered around freemasons like Bolívar, San Martín and O’Higgins, men who favored secular government and religious freedom. Meanwhile, even if farther up the hierarchy there were bishops and so forth who looked to restore the old arrangements, down the ranks of the clergy there were people grown accustomed to carrying on without much funding from a decadent and no longer so legitimate state.
So, does the lack of a church or state record of Rufina Alfaro’s existence prove her to be a myth? Probably not. But the lack of records about an Alfaro family in the area is taken as persuasive.
In any case, troops and townspeople rebelled against Spain on November 10, 1821, called a town meeting — cabildo abierto — and mainly at the behest of the local merchants drafted a resolution calling for independence from Spain. That was what the shouting was all about.
A few days later, the priests, bishops, merchants and bureaucrats in Panama City accepted the wisdom of this argument and they declared both independence from Spain and allegiance to Bolívar’s Gran Colombia. For the church is was a new state with which to make new arrangements and that maneuvering was a source of tremendous grief for 19th century Colombia, of which Panama was a part. A lot of people were killed about it.
By the time that Panama separated from Colombia in 1903, the country had been devastated by too many civil wars about which whether the Catholic Church would be the official religion was one of the issues. With independence came deal to exclude priests from government, maintain state support for things like church buildings and catechism in the public schools, and not to talk about the religious history of Panama. Now, more than a century after that we have a country intentionally raised to be ignorant about that and many other parts of our history. And if somewhere in some archive there is a church record about Rufina Alfaro’s existence, it has been neglected.
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Science, not End Times religion. NASA graphic with caption by The Panama News.
International Living said: “Outside the hurricane belt further north, Panama enjoys stress-free living” — and Panama’s leaders acted as if it were true
article by Eric Jackson, photos and videos by many others
Panama was unprepared for the destruction wrought by Hurricane Eta’s sideswipe. The photos and videos of the valiant rescue efforts that came days too late in our remote areas are both heartbreaking and a rousing reminder of humanity’s resiliency. If you don’t pay attention to media you may not have noticed the emergency effort to restore the roads into and out of some our our prime agricultural zones, but if you shop for food you will notice the problem reflected in prices and supplies.
Former SINAPROC disaster relief agency director José Donderis admitted, in a TVN television interview, that: “We did not visualize the potential risk, and the potential damage that could be generated in the country.”
The Panama Canal was unprepared for a prolonged drought that gave us four years of ship draft restrictions. Now the unelected and unaccountable Panama Canal Authority is looking to expand its jurisdiction to essentially control the entire nation’s water policy.
The growing competition from Arctic shipping routes which they denied could happen in the 2006 canal expansion referendum campaign? They don’t mention that business consideration.
The rise in mean sea levels has been going on slightly but inexorably for years. God help us when a huge Antarctic ice sheet slides away into the world’s oceans. Meanwhile people are abandoning communities on Guna Yala’s San Blas Archipelago. Meanwhile the old city center of Colon, which has seen a billion-dollar Odebrecht renovation and gentrification project, is subject to more frequent floods.
So where are the national housing and urban policies in the face of changes that we ought to know are coming? Will it just be this or that patch, and a belated admonition to people in remote areas where there has been little government presence that it’s not a good idea to build in flood plain’s that have never been well mapped in the first place? When will we start with dikes and levees around the Colon city center, or in the alternative an orderly abandonment of the place? When will Panama City, and smaller places like Rio Hato, act decisively on the reasonable expectation that chronic flooding problems are going to get worse?
It has been so very fashionable for our political caste and the power brokers behind them to presume that the Gringos will solve everything. Then the United States got a president who called climate change a Chinese hoax. Now a governor of Florida who banned the use of the phrase “climate change” begs for outside relief in the wake of tropical storm events that have ravaging his state. When we got hit by a global pandemic caused by a virus that just might have come into human ecology as the result of pathogens and their vectors moving around as climate changes affected their habitat, Uncle Sam was unavailable to help Panama in the crisis, Donald Trump having torn down his own country’s defenses against these things.
It’s good to see Panama’s growing contribution to the world of basic science, even if the global body of climate knowledge is and will continue to be mainly developed by others. Where we need to excel now is in the fields of APPLIED science. Looking at the world around us, and unafraid to bring in the right sorts of foreign experts, Panamanian policy makers, Panamanian civil engineers, Panamanian farmers and fishers and foresters, Panamanian public health specialists, Panamanian construction crews need to get down to the task of building our national defense. OUR national defense, not some policy order coming down from Washington. The defense of PANAMA, enlisting the talents and efforts of everyone who lives here, citizens and foreigners alike.
The facile denials must end now.
Below are some scenes of damage and heroism from the past few days, published by the Panamanian government or anonymously via social media:
The road to Bocas washed out. Work on reopening it is well advanced.
SINAPROC and SENAN close the beach in Santa Clara, due to warnings of unusual heavy waves and riptides.
Renacimiento, in Chiriqui.
The Panamanian Red Cross and others search for survivors and bodies in the Chiriqui Highlands.
With his cell phone, Elias Perez noted that by Sunday, November 9 the clouds were gone but the water was still rough in the San Blas Archipelago.
Under the auspices of the First Lady’s Office, people from various government agencies and volunteers store, package and move food and supplies from the donation center in Parque Omar toward distressed areas.
Ver estas imágenes me llenan de orgullo. Nuestros rescatistas son héroes al servicio del país, sin importar lo difícil que sea la misión o lo mucho que exponen sus vidas por los demás. ¡Gracias por amar a su patria! #PanamáSolidariopic.twitter.com/D3orKWDay1
Not a year or season for patriotic parades, but plenty of patriotism to go around.
With heavy storm damage to crops and access to and egress from some key agricultural areas disrupted, the government has scrambled to keep the public markets stocked and prevent both price gouging and panic buying.
Yes, we got all this water. But in some places, like here in El Volcan, water supplies were disrupted and systems had to be reconnected.
The road to Llano Tugri, in the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca, blocked by a mudslide.
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