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AI, COVID-19 y derechos humanos

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police
Foto por la Policía Nacional.

La pandemia del COVID-19 no debe ser pretexto para violar derechos humanos

por Amnistía Internacional

Los Estados de las Américas deben priorizar el enfoque en derechos humanos al combatir la pandemia de COVID-19 que ha puesto de manifiesto las grandes brechas de desigualdad y discriminación de la región, dijo Amnistía Internacional en una carta abierta a los y las jefes de Estado que asistirán a la Asamblea General de la Organización de los Estados Americanos.

“La estrategia para combatir la pandemia del COVID-19 en muchos países de las Américas se ha caracterizado por el empleo de medidas represivas y el uso innecesario de la fuerza. Estas medidas, sumadas a los desafíos estructurales y las grandes brechas sociales y económicas que anteceden a la pandemia, coadyuvan a perpetuar la desigualdad y la discriminación en el continente”, dijo Erika Guevara Rosas, directora para las Américas de Amnistía Internacional.

En países como El Salvador, Paraguay y Venezuela, entre otros, las estrictas medidas tomadas para combatir el COVID-19 incluyeron que decenas de miles de personas fueran confinadas en centros de cuarentenas administrados por el estado bajo custodia policial o militar. La imposición de cuarentenas obligatorias bajo control del estatal, sin conocer el tiempo de su duración, en entornos que carecen de medidas mínimas de prevención y control de las infecciones, y sin garantías de procedimientos independientes que cumplan con lo establecido por el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos, podría constituir una detención arbitraria. Asimismo, si los centros de cuarentena propician situaciones discriminatorias y las autoridades estatales no proporcionan agua, alimentación y atención médica adecuada, estas condiciones podrían constituir tratos crueles, inhumanos o degradantes y una violación del derecho a la salud.

Por otra parte, en países como Chile y Nicaragua, donde en años recientes se han cometido violaciones de derechos humanos e incluso crímenes del derecho internacional – como tortura – es indispensable que los Estados miembros de la OEA, en virtud de la obligación compartida de garantizar derechos humanos, urjan a las autoridades nacionales competentes a investigar seria y exhaustivamente dichas situaciones.

En el caso particular de Nicaragua, es imperativo que se tomen medidas para prevenir el contagio del COVID-19 en el país, se libere a las personas detenidas sólo por ejercer sus derechos y se implementen acciones para proteger a quienes se desempeñan en el sistema de salud nicaragüense, ante las medidas intimidatorias que sufren por disentir con las políticas del gobierno.

Por otro lado, la cooperación entre los Estados de las Américas debe garantizar que los tratamientos médicos para combatir el COVID-19 y la potencial vacuna estén disponibles y sean accesibles sin discriminación, estableciendo medidas especiales para apoyar a los grupos específicos que corren un mayor riesgo ante el virus, o cuya posición marginal significa que podrían quedar rezagados al acceso a las vacunas o a los tratamientos.

“Los Estados de las Américas deben procurar evitar enfoques exclusivamente nacionales en la asignación de tratamientos y eventual vacuna contra el COVID-19, la cooperación internacional debe centrar sus esfuerzos a fin de evitar que acuerdos bilaterales se impongan sobre las necesidades regionales de toda la población continental en su conjunto, debiendo ser los criterios orientadores, para esta asignación, siempre acordes con las normas y estándares de derechos humanos”, dijo Erika Guevara Rosas.

Asimismo, Amnistía Internacional considera que en este momento histórico es indispensable contar con un sistema Interamericano de derechos humanos fortalecido. En este sentido, la organización exige a los Estados miembros de la OEA y a su Secretario General que respeten la autonomía y la independencia de los órganos del sistema interamericano de derechos humanos. Además, la organización llama a instaurar los canales de investigación independientes que permitan dar un curso adecuado a las denuncias que se puedan haber planteado desde el seno de la CIDH, asegurando así el cumplimiento de todas las garantías para las partes, la transparencia en la gestión pública, y eventualmente, si correspondiera, la determinación de responsabilidades y medidas de reparación.

 

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Hightower & Bendib, Where the GOP is really at

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DTs
Delirium tremens up top, ever more violent racism in the rank-and-file. Cartoon by Khalil Bendib — OtherWords.

Republicans unleash their inner Jim Crow

by Jim Hightower – OtherWords

If you’re a rich Republican who’s done nothing in the House of Representatives for so long that you’re essentially seen as a piece of furniture, what do you do when faced with a popular, well-organized, grassroots opponent who’s about to overtake you?

Apparently, you unleash your inner racist.

Across the country, endangered Republican incumbents are resorting to a shameful, Jim Crow-era political tactic in a panicky effort to deflect attention from their own records: assailing their challengers as zealots who will let Black, Latino, and other “criminal elements” rampage through white neighborhoods.

Take longtime Texas congressman Michael McCaul. Used to strolling to victory, McCaul has found himself in a dead heat with Democrat Mike Siegel, a former schoolteacher with a progressive-populist program of Medicare for All and worker and environmental protections. Siegel has forged a surging and enthusiastic movement for change.

So here comes McCaul with a last-minute, down and dirty, million-dollar TV blitz, howling that Siegel is a crazed criminal justice radical who’ll shut down the police and empty prisons. McCaul himself doesn’t appear in this ludicrous dog-whistle piece of racist fabrication. Instead, he’s put Joe Trimm, a white Republican constable (wearing his official uniform), on camera to do the dirty work.

The partisan constable cartoonishly tries to gin up voter fear: “Take it from me,” he dramatically intones, “Mike Siegel is a threat to your family.”

Problem is, Trimm is a notorious right-wing race baiter who justifies police violence against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, calling them “thugs.” But he’s just the dummy — McCaul is the ventriloquist mouthing fear and hate to save his political hide.

 

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Fundación Libertad, Perspectiva liberal sobre matrimonio igualitario

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fundies
Unos 300 manifestantes ‘pro-familia’ (anti-LGBT) frente a la Corte Suprema de Justicia.

Libertad para todos sin discriminación

por la Fundación Libertad

El país que defendemos es uno libre, sin discriminación, donde el estado de derecho impera y todos los ciudadanos son iguales ante la ley. Sin embargo, el país que queremos y defendemos no es el país que tenemos y no lo será mientras los derechos fundamentales de las personas estén siendo negados, utilizando como pretexto valores morales y religiosos ajenos al derecho civil.

Hablando específicamente del matrimonio igualitario, desde Fundación Libertad vemos con preocupación las manifestaciones de grupos que llaman a perpetuar la discriminación en base a la orientación sexual de las personas, y coartándoles, a través de la negación a su derecho al matrimonio, la oportunidad de realizar su plan de vida de forma plena, así como una serie de derechos civiles y económicos.

Desde una perspectiva liberal, es importante entender que la institución del matrimonio no es exclusiva de ninguna religión y que su propósito, más allá de la procreación, procura a sus partes provisiones jurídicas, económicas y de seguridad social, fundamentales para la vida en sociedad. Bajo esta premisa, ceder a presiones de grupos opresores de las libertades de los individuos atenta contra el estado de derecho y la soberanía de nuestro país.

El matrimonio es un derecho básico del ser humano, el cual en nuestro país está siendo violentado mientras nuestras instituciones de gobierno guardan silencio ante la tiranía de las masas. Entre tanto este o cualquier otro derecho no sea accesible a todos los ciudadanos por igual, estamos como sociedad coartando el plan de vida de nuestros compatriotas, incluyendo hermanos, amigos y a nuestros propios hijos.

En Fundación Libertad queremos hacer un llamado al respeto de los derechos humanos de todos los ciudadanos por igual y denunciamos cualquier tipo de discriminación que atente contra las libertades individuales y la plena realización del ser humano.

Exhortamos también a nuestras autoridades de justicia a mantenerse firmes en el deber sagrado de proteger los derechos de todos los panameños, por encima de sus intereses particulares y de las presiones de grupos que ven en los derechos humanos como un privilegio.

Solo así, a través del respeto de todos y cada uno de los individuos que conforman el tejido social de nuestro Panamá, podremos decir que somos genuinamente una nación libre, soberana y próspera.

 

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Finn, What the militias believe

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fascist insects
Pete Musico, left, is one of the founding members of the Wolverine Watchmen, as is Joseph Morrison, right. Both were charged in the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. (Jackson County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

Plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor grew from the militia movement’s mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths

by John  E. Finn, Wesleyan University

The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar – and unquestionably mistaken – interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties.

This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot to overthrow Michigan’s government and kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

As I wrote in “Fracturing the Founding: How the Alt-Right Corrupts the Constitution,” published in 2019, the crux of the militia movement’s devotion to what I have called the “alt-right constitution” is a toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addressing the state.The men arrested were charged in a plot to kidnap and place on trial Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan Office of the Governor via AP

Private militias

The term “militia” has many meanings.

The Constitution addresses militias in Article 1, authorizing Congress to “provide for organizing, arming and disciplining, the Militia.”

But the Constitution makes no provision for private militias, like the far-right Wolverine Watchmen, Proud Boys, Michigan Militia and the Oath Keepers, to name just a few.

Private militias are simply groups of like-minded men – members are almost always white males – who subscribe to a sometimes confusing set of beliefs about an avaricious federal government that is hostile to white men and white heritage, and the sanctity of the right to bear arms and private property. They believe that government is under the control of Jews, the United Nations, international banking interests, Leftists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and so on. There is no evidence of this.

On Oct. 8, the FBI arrested six men, five of them from Michigan, and charged them with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. Shortly thereafter, state authorities charged an additional seven men with, according to the Associated Press, “allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a “civil war.” Included were the founders and several members of the Wolverine Watchmen.

As revealed in the FBI affidavit accompanying the federal charges, the six men charged claimed to be defenders of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, some of the men in April had participated in rallies in Lansing, the state capital, where armed citizens tried to force their way onto the floor of the State House to protest Governor Whitmer’s pandemic shut-down orders as a violation of the Constitution by a “tyrannical” government intent upon sacrificing civil liberties in the name of the COVID-19 fight.

According to the FBI’s affidavit, the conspirators wanted to create “a society that followed the U.S. Bill of Rights and where they could be self-sufficient.”

Militia members imagine themselves to be “the last true American patriots,” “the modern defenders of the United States Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.”

Hence, the Bill of Rights – and especially the Second Amendment, which establishes the right to bear arms – figure prominently in the alt-constitution. It is no accident that the initial discussions about overthrowing Michigan’s so-called tyrannical governor started at a Second Amendment rally in June.

According to most militias, the Second Amendment authorizes their activity and likewise makes them free of legal regulation by the state. In truth, the Second Amendment does nothing to authorize private armed militias. Private armed militias are explicitly illegal in every state.

William Null at a statehouse protest in Michigan.
William Null (right), arrested in the plot to kidnap Whitmer, also participated in this rally on April 30 in the Michigan State Capitol to protest the state government’s pandemic measures. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

No restrictions on rights

Additional foundational principles of militia constitutionalism include absolutism. Absolutism, in the militia world, is the idea that fundamental constitutional rights – like freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and the right to own property – cannot be restricted or regulated by the state without a citizen’s consent.

The far right’s reading of the First and Second Amendments – which govern free speech and the right to bear arms, respectively – starts from a simple premise: Both amendments are literal and absolute. They believe that the First Amendment allows them to say anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone, without consequence or reproach by government or even by other citizens who disagree or take offense at their speech.

Similarly, the alt-right gun advocates hold that the Second Amendment protects their God-given right to own a weapon – any weapon – and that governmental efforts to deny, restrict or even to register their weapons must be unconstitutional. They think the Second Amendment trumps every other provision in the Constitution.

Another key belief among militia members is the principle of constitutional self-help. That’s the belief that citizens, acting on their inherent authority as sovereign free men, are ultimately and finally responsible for enforcing the Constitution – as they understand it.

Demonstrating this way of thinking, the men arrested in Michigan discussed taking Gov. Whitmer to a “secure location” in Wisconsin to stand “trial” for treason prior to the Nov. 3 election. According to Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf – a member of the militia-friendly Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officer Association – the men arrested in Michigan were perhaps not trying to kidnap the governor but were instead simply making a citizen’s arrest.

Leaf, who appeared at a Grand Rapids protest in May of Gov. Whitmer’s stay-at-home order along with two of the alleged kidnappers, mistakenly believes that local sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the United States, invested with the right to determine which laws support and which laws violate the Constitution. The events in Michigan show how dangerous these mistaken understandings of the Constitution can be.

There will be more

The Wolverine Watchmen are not a Second Amendment militia or constitutional patriots in any sense of the word. If they are guilty of the charges brought against them, then they are terrorists.

The FBI and Michigan law enforcement shut down the Watchmen before an egregious crime and a terrible human tragedy unfolded. But as I concluded just last year in my book, “there is little reason to think the militia movement will subside soon.”

Unfortunately, I did not account for the possibility that President Trump would encourage militias “to stand back and stand by,” which seems likely to encourage and embolden groups that already clearly represent a threat. Expect more Michigans.

 

This story incorporates material from a story published on April 15, 2019 in The Conversation.The Conversation

John E. Finn, Professor Emeritus of Government, Wesleyan University

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

 

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Barrett’s Notre Dame faculty colleagues: Stop this

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star chamber
Go back to Common Law traditions? There was the Star Chamber.

An open letter to Judge Amy Coney Barrett from your Notre Dame colleagues

October 10, 2020

Dear Judge Barrett,

We write to you as fellow faculty members at the University of Notre Dame.

We congratulate you on your nomination to the United States Supreme Court. An appointment to the Court is the crowning achievement of a legal career and speaks to the commitments you have made throughout your life. And while we are not pundits, from what we read your confirmation is all but assured.

That is why it is vital that you issue a public statement calling for a halt to your nomination process until after the November presidential election.

We ask that you take this unprecedented step for three reasons.

First, voting for the next president is already underway. According to the United States Election Project (https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html), more than seven million people have already cast their ballots, and millions more are likely to vote before election day. The rushed nature of your nomination process, which you certainly recognize as an exercise in raw power politics, may effectively deprive the American people of a voice in selecting the next Supreme Court justice. You are not, of course, responsible for the anti-democratic machinations driving your nomination. Nor are you complicit in the Republican hypocrisy of fast-tracking your nomination weeks before a presidential election when many of the same senators refused to grant Merrick Garland so much as a hearing a full year before the last election. However, you can refuse to be party to such maneuvers. We ask that you honor the democratic process and insist the hearings be put on hold until after the voters have made their choice. Following the election, your nomination would proceed, or not, in accordance with the wishes of the winning candidate.

Next, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish was that her seat on the court remain open until a new president was installed. At your nomination ceremony at the White House, you praised Justice Ginsburg as “a woman of enormous talent and consequence, whose life of public service serves as an example to us all.” Your nomination just days after Ginsburg’s death was unseemly and a repudiation of her legacy. Given your admiration for Justice Ginsburg, we ask that you repair the injury to her memory by calling for a pause in the nomination until the next president is seated.

Finally, your nomination comes at a treacherous moment in the United States. Our politics are consumed by polarization, mistrust, and fevered conspiracy theories. Our country is shaken by pandemic and economic suffering. There is violence in the streets of American cities. The politics of your nomination, as you surely understand, will further inflame our civic wounds, undermine confidence in the court, and deepen the divide among ordinary citizens, especially if you are seated by a Republican Senate weeks before the election of a Democratic president and congress. You have the opportunity to offer an alternative to all that by demanding that your nomination be suspended until after the election. We implore you to take that step.

We’re asking a lot, we know. Should Vice-President Biden be elected, your seat on the court will almost certainly be lost. That would be painful, surely. Yet there is much to be gained in risking your seat. You would earn the respect of fair-minded people everywhere. You would provide a model of civic selflessness. And you might well inspire Americans of different beliefs toward a renewed commitment to the common good.

We wish you well and trust you will make the right decision for our nation.

Yours in Notre Dame,

John Duffy, English

Douglass Cassel, Emeritus, Law School

Barbara J, Fick, Emerita, Law School

Fernand N. Dutile, Professor of Law Emeritus

Joseph Bauer, Emeritus, Law School

Jimmy Gurulé, Professor of Law.

Thomas Kselman, Emeritus, History

Catherine E. Bolten, Anthropology and Peace Studies

Karen Graubart, History and Gender Studies

Margaret Dobrowolska, Physics

Aedín Clements, Hesburgh Libraries

Cheri Smith, Hesburgh Libraries

Antonio Delgado, Physics

Atalia Omer, Peace Studies

Eileen Hunt Botting, Political Science

Jason A. Springs, Peace Studies

David Hachen, Sociology

Manoel Couder, Physics

Jacek Furdyna, Physics

Carmen Helena Tellez, Music

Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Biological Sciences, Philosophy

John T. Fitzgerald, Theology

Debra Javeline, Political Science

Philippe Collon, Physics

Cara Ocobock, Anthropology

Amy Mulligan, Irish, Medieval Studies and Gender Studies

Stephen M. Fallon, Program of Liberal Studies and Dept of English

Jessica Shumake, University Writing Program and Gender Studies

Mandy L. Havert, Hesburgh Libraries

Dana Villa, Political Science

Stephen M. Hayes, Emeritus, Hesburgh Libraries

Catherine Perry, Emerita, Romance Languages & Literatures

Olivier Morel, Film, Television, and Theatre.

Darlene Catello, Music

Encarnación Juárez-Almendros, Emerita, Romance Languages & Literatures

James Sterba, Philosophy

Laura Bayard, Emerita, Hesburgh Libraries

Susan Sheridan, Anthropology

Mary E. Frandsen, Music

Mark Golitko, Anthropology

Christopher Ball, Anthropology

Gail Bederman, History

G. Margaret Porter, Emerita, Hesburgh Libraries

Cecilia Lucero, Center for University Advising

Peri E. Arnold, Emeritus, Political Science

Amitava Krishna Dutt, Political Science

Julia Marvin, Program of Liberal Studies

Julia Adeney Thomas, History

Michael C. Brownstein, East Asian Languages & Cultures

Christopher Liebtag Miller, Medieval Institute

Maxwell Johnson, Theology

John Sitter, Emeritus, English

Robert Norton, German

Hye-jin Juhn, Hesburgh Libraries

Denise M. Della Rossa, German

Sotirios A. Barber, Political Science

Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Film, TV and Theatre

Jeff Diller, Mathematics

Ann Mische, Sociology and Peace Studies

Zygmunt Baranski, Romance Languages & Literatures

Robert R. Coleman, Emeritus, Art History

William Collins Donahue, German, FTT, & Keough

Sarah McKibben, Irish Language and Literature

George A. Lopez, emeritus, Kroc Institute

Mark Roche, German

Nelson Mark, Economics

Vittorio Hosle, German, Philosophy and Political Science

Tobias Boes, German

A. Nilesh Fernando, Economics

Fred Dallmayr, Emeritus, Philosophy and Political Science

Greg Kucich, English

Kate Marshall, English

Mark A. Sanders, English

Christopher Hamlin, History

Meredith S. Chesson, Anthropology

Ricardo Ramirez, Political Science

Stephen Fredman, Emeritus, English

Dan Graff, History and the Higgins Labor Program

Henry Weinfield, Program of Liberal Studies (Emeritus)

Mary R. D’Angelo, Theology (Emerita)

Asher Kaufman, Kroc Institute, History

Stephen J. Miller, Music

Janet A. Kourany, Philosophy and Gender Studies

Michelle Karnes, English

Jill Godmilow, Emerita, Film, Television & Theatre

Mary Beckman, Emerita, Center for Social Concerns

Clark Power, Program of Liberal Studies

Richard Williams, Sociology

Benedict Giamo, Emeritus, American Studies

Ernesto Verdeja, Political Science and Peace Studies

Catherine Schlegel, Classics

Margaret A. Doody, English, Professor Emerita

Marie Collins Donahue, Eck Institute of Global Health

David C. Leege, Emeritus, Political Science

 

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ANOTHER colonial scheme to fleece foreigners and gin up bribes for locals

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RP
The Republic of Panama and its maritime exclusive economic zones. While our territorial seas extend only 12 miles from the coasts, our oceanic economic zones go out 200 miles, except where they run into other countries’ zones and then the boundaries get negotiated. Now we have a bitcoin hustler announcing that he will establish a floating city in the Gulf of Panama, without regard to any Panamanian authority. Two things that are alarming: the lack of an immediate Panamanian government warning; and those Americans who live here and think it’s a good idea.

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money than brains

by Eric Jackson

Gold stock swindles. Own a miracle fruit plantation, not with title to the land but with shares in a company that you don’t control and which doesn’t own the land. An investment fund run by a former right-wing militia radio personality who did time for fraud in Colorado. Multi-level marketing with a former Klansman who did time for a plot to invade a small Caribbean country. Your very own chain of offshore shell companies organized by the most politically connected of lawyers. Ponzi schemes hiding behind names and logos similar to those of  the rich and famous. Welcome to Panama.

The idea of setting up a cruise ship and satellite boats as a floating city in the Gulf of Panama that claims immunity from Panamanian sovereignty? It may be looked at as just another gringo fraud, and seen as not the Public Ministry’s concern if only foreigners are defrauded. BUT…

1. If the European Union has financial sanctions against Panama NOW, consider what happens to Panama if we have this crypto-currency city that declares itself beyond all nations’ laws in our midst. It might trump the Panama Papers furor.

2. There is a new colonial mentality in Panama, mostly among gringos but with some South Africans, Europeans, Canadians and others who buy into it. How many people in Coronado think it unimportant that they learn Spanish but important to teach English to local kids? One example.

3. “Sovereign citizens,” “patriot” militia organizers, the religious right colonization attempt by Rick Wiles followers — lots of gringos have come over the years who have absolute contempt for Panamanian sovereignty. If Trump loses a new batch says it’s coming here.

4. There has been a gringo community here since the 1840s, with good and bad moments and a great colonial experiment that united Panamanians around ending it. Foreign residents of the US persuasion and the whole range of panagringo dual citizens — we don’t need this.

A fellow journalist and one-time co-defendant weighs in from The Netherlands.

 

Editor’s note: As Okke can also tell you, these fraud artists also corrupt the press, or try to do so. So much of what some of my detractors “know” about me is disinformation spread by a guy who had a website and was quite the right-wing rival until about five years ago he fled Panama when prosecutors started asking questions about a pump and dump stock swindle for which he was the shill. A more subtle but just as serious form of corrupting the press is the criminal element’s penchant for filing criminal defamation charges and civil lawsuits, which in turn causes the corporate mainstream media to mostly ignore the national sport of fraud, especially when practiced by foreigners here.

The case in which Okke and were co-defendants? The accuser is out of prison now, and into a new crypto-currency scheme. Back then, on the run from a more garden-variety swindle in Atlanta, he passed through Costa Rica to promote an island “kingdom” with no drug laws or taxes — in Tico territory — for which our neighbors kicked him out. Then he landed in Bocas del Toro to run a noni plantation scheme. Okke wrote about his prior exploits and over a few years both of us covered the developing story. The guy deployed multiple lawyers, politicians and prominent individuals against us. As in at the time vice president of Panama Arturo Vallarino endorsing his scheme. As in at the time mayor of Bocas town Eladio Robinson endorsing not on the noni swindle but also a “business association” scheme that promised to have the power to determine which foreigners could or could not open businesses on the archipelago. As in University of Panama journalism professor Tomás Cabal. As in attorney Barry Miller, who tried to set me up for a classic sting at the Hotel El Panama where there were undercover cops waiting a few tables over for me to touch the envelope so that they could make the bust. As in attorney Michael Pierce, husband of an American Society bigwig, who represented the sender of this extortion note by offering to drop charges if I altered the content of The Panama News. One long-running example.

So what would I want Nito to do about it? I want him to denounce this at the outset, to declare that any person in any way promoting this scheme is ineligible for a visa to come to Panama, to order SENAN to arrest this ship and its crew if ever they come into any part of Panamanian waters

 

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Colegio de Sociología, 12 de octubre

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suppression of the intellectuals
2
 

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Editorials: Welcome, tourists! and The best way out for the USA

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tourists
Today at Tocumen Airport. Tocumen Airport Authority photo.

Welcome, tourists – but beware

So many Americans were fed this anti-scientific nonsense that COVID-19 is like the flu, and with that erroneous rap the supposition that the northern winter makes it more dangerous while it’s less so in the warm tropics. Let’s hope that by the next equinox there will be a good vaccine available to limit the data available to prove or disprove that hypothesis. The disease has killed a lot of people here in Panama, and in Brazil and its neighboring South American countries. It seems as deadly in the tropics as anywhere.

Enjoy your time in Panama, all you visitors. Wear a mask in public. Obey the health decrees, even when they seem silly. Come and go, neither catching nor spreading any illness.

Perhaps you will fall in love with this place and look for a way to stay. True love, though, implies some detailed knowledge and lots of mutual respect. Love, learning and respect – the world always runs short of those, so your additions will be appreciated.

  

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I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse.
Bernie Sanders on Joe Biden

Yes, a con man must be brought
to justice. But not just him.

Is election fraud in the cards? Donald Trump has been into just about every other sort of fraud.

Will another civil war be the manifest destiny for the USA? Donald Trump’s “fine“ young nazis are clamoring for that.

A lot of things might happen. That’s why the Republicans, who blocked all of Barack Obama’s judicial appointments for the last two years of his term then filled them with the most miserable imaginable lot under Donald Trump, are rushing through what looks to them like one last court pack.

It appears that after a prolonged right-wing period with some conservative Democratic interludes, American voters are on the cusp of a realigning election, under aged and somewhat stodgy leadership at the top perhaps, but stepping into a generational change. It’s not like when boomers came in and behaved much like their elders. That’s not so much about personalities or ideologies but because times are different. Unending wars all over the place, mass incarceration, the world’s most expensive health care and the rich paying no taxes are now unsustainable luxuries, no matter what promises have been made to which lobbyists.

Will Trump’s gunmen – and gun boys – drag the country down into an inferno, with judicial blessing, before change will be allowed? If you are an American citizen eligible to vote, it’s up to you. There needs to be a Democratic landslide to nullify all of the Republican tricks, to wrest control of the US Senate from the hands of Trump enablers and to unpack the courts. Vote blue, and leave any arguments about what shade of it to future primaries. America needs you right now.

  

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Bear in mind…

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

Discipline must come through liberty.

Maria Montessori

 

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Bernal, Missing history

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a coup
The October 11, 1968 coup. People did die. A constitution based the division of political patronage spoils and impunity for the powerful was imposed. And we live under that constitution to this very day.

The absent story

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

Our history is like a huge puzzle with many pieces missing. We do not know what happened to us because there are very large gaps and there are many false pieces, that is, lies that have been put as truth.

Brittmarie Janson Perez, in Coups and Treaties (1997)

The failure of the Universal Canal Company that shocked France – in the 19th century — was known as “the Panama scandal.” It was neither the first nor the last. It was a link in an endless chain that continues today.

Alfredo Castillero Calvo collects many pages of the many scandals that surrounded the authorities during the more than three centuries of colonization. Panama was being configured – the foreign forces with their internal allies – to be, not a country but a business, as stated at the end of the 20th century, Noriega’s personal Israeli military advisor, Mark Harris (“Panama is not a country, is a business ”).

And so, from tumble to tumble, the multiple vastly unknown scandals that our Panama has lived and lives are collected one after another. The twentieth century began with the Thousand Days War and Bunau-Varilla. This latest scandalous treaty turned us into a territory of scandals and a country of treaties to be mistreated.

In these two decades of the XXI century there has been no lack of scandals, presided over by the so-called and well cared-for “Panama Papers.“ What is serious within this chain of scandals is the serious ignorance that the majority of the current population has about them. The rulers have been concerned that we are a rude and uneducated society, which takes pleasure in the ignorance of its history.

Thus, we see how the coup plotters of ’68 and their epigones, celebrated yesterday under massive confinement, one more anniversary of the chain of lies, blackmail, extortion, deceit, threats, beatings, torture, disappearances, exiles, murders, which began on October 11, 52 years ago.

For those who today forget, those who make us forget, and those who today prefer not to have memory, it is good to remind them that history (testis temporum) also has its reasons that reason does not know, because it is the true teacher of life.

 

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Hollywood’s global malaise

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Charlie
No laughing matter: Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921). Wikimedia photo.

Hollywood is creating a void like the one that permanently stunted European film after the Spanish flu

by Gianluca Sergi, University of Nottingham

When Christopher Nolan’s latest sci-fi film Tenet opened in late summer, the hope was that audiences would return to the velvet seats and the waft of popcorn would engulf cinemas once more. Exhibitors everywhere had invested considerable resources to make their cinemas as safe as the other places of leisure and culture that were reopening.

Tenet succeeded globally, but underperformed in the United States. Of the $307 million taken at the box office by early October 2020, only $45 million is from the historically lucrative US market. Over 85% has come from outside the United States. The proportion of international non-US box office revenues has been rising for years, but 70% to 75% might have been more in line with studio expectations.


As studios scramble to make sense of the figures and adjust their film release schedules accordingly, one thing has become evident to exhibitors worldwide: Hollywood is focusing essentially on, well … Hollywood.

With theaters in Los Angeles (and New York) still closed due to the pandemic, studios are cutting their losses, grabbing their movies, and running for the hills to wait out the COVID-19 floods. The likes of Wonder Woman 1984, the Candyman and Dune remakes and new James Bond movie No Time to Die are all postponed, while others like Mulan bypassed cinemas to debut on streaming services instead.

Apocalypse any moment

Exhibitors point out that although US cinemas remain closed or underperforming, cinema is showing clear signs of life elsewhere. The strength of feeling amongst exhibitors on the lack of product was recently distilled by an unnamed UK cinema operator, who said, “It’s a fuck you to exhibitors”.

In the latest episode of the unfolding drama, Cineworld, the world’s second largest cinema chain, has responded by closing all of its UK and US cinemas for the foreseeable future. In the words of CEO Mooky Greidinger: “We are like a grocery shop with no food. We had to take this decision.”

It is perfectly understandable for studios to wish to protect their investment – blockbusters cost huge amounts of money. But Hollywood might wish to revisit its history to fully comprehend the threat. A quick revisit to the events surrounding the Spanish flu is particularly significant here.

It was 1918. The long, bloody war was coming to an end. The light at the end of tunnel flickered promisingly. But just as the world quickened its pace towards that inviting glimmer, a huge gaping hole opened under its feet.

A deadly pandemic – H1N1 – took hold with speed and ferocity. Its more “friendly” name, Spanish flu, belied the fact that this virus would infect 500 million people (roughly one-third of the world’s population) and over 50 million would die.

Prior to the first world war, Hollywood had been growing as a center for film production. But it was one of many national film industries, with strong competition from large European companies like Pathé and Gaumont.

Europe’s production and cinema infrastructure had been destroyed by the war, and the pandemic now prevented it from rebuilding. In the meantime, US entrepreneurs like William Fox and Jesse L Lasky, respective founders of the Fox and Paramount studios, were able to fill the void by developing an infrastructure in America that bet heavily on bigger picture theaters, state-of-the-art equipment and, crucially, feature films.

Heavily inspired by the multi-department production-line ethos of the Ford Motor Company, they started making lavish features such as Way Down East (1920), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Ten Commandments (1923).


California overtook New York as the center of this new industry, partly because the east coast had been harder hit by the pandemic, and soon it was creating stars such as Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921). Europe couldn’t respond – recalling Tony Curtis/Sidney Falco’s great line in Sweet Smell of Success, “Watch me run the 100-yard dash with my legs cut off”.

When sound production became possible later in the decade, the Americans were far better placed to invest heavily to cement their dominance – a position they have not relinquished since.

Reversal of fortune?

Fast forward a century, and the 2020 pandemic is in danger of ending Hollywood dominance. International box office has become more important in recent years principally because of China, which has become a huge cinema consumer in a very short space of time, while other markets like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria have grown quickly too. In three decades, non-US revenues have risen from about a third to an all-time high of 73% last year.

This situation is not unknown to studios and filmmakers in Hollywood, of course. Yet they seem unable or unwilling to fully appreciate the risk they are running now, namely that to vacate global cinemas is to create a void that could be their “1918 moment of reckoning”.

We have already seen that Chinese war movie The Eight Hundred has become the smash of the year in its home country. Also notably, Cineworld hasn’t closed its cinemas in eastern Europe and Israel because it thinks there is enough good local fare to attract audiences. The danger is that audiences in these markets develop more of a taste for local product and never return to Hollywood films to the same extent.


Elsewhere, there is a risk that cinema chains will not return to business as usual. How many of Cineworld’s 45,000 staff will be available when it’s time to open? And how long will shareholders tolerate temporary closure?

Starving cinemas responsible for 73% of Hollywood revenues just because the other 27% is currently not functioning well is not a logical strategy. As a recent UK newspaper article put it, “Bond is putting a bullet in his own head”.

The takeaway is brutally simple: bring that food to the grocery shelves, or you might just find they won’t be there by the time you come back.The Conversation

Gianluca Sergi, Director, Institute for Screen Industries Research and Associate Professor of Film and Television, University of Nottingham

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

 

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