He can no longer COMMAND respect. He still has some admirers, and a probably somewhat larger group that can be paid to feign admiration. Archive photo by the Presidencia.
State Department upholds Martinelli extradition
by Eric Jackson
Warning that Martinelli suffers from certain chronic ailments and basing its action on four of the pending criminal charges against Panamas former president, the State Department has approved the decisions of US courts. At any moment Ricardo Martinelli will be put on a plane headed for Panama, where with or without a crowd of supporters police will take him into custody and conduct him to a jail cell of some sort.
La Estrella reports a political skirmish between former first lady and illegally state-financed 2014 Cambio Democratico vice presidential candidate Marta Linares de Martinelli and President Juan Carlos Varela on just what sort of flight will bring the fugitive former president back. Linares de Martinelli wants him put on a Copa Airlines flight so that supporters here will be able to converge on Tocumen Airport to welcome him home, while Varela want him brought on a private flight with undisclosed time and place of arrival to avoid any such demonstrations.
The man is a proven flight risk but it can be expected that lawyers will be in court arguing for his release on bail or into house arrest, and it should not be a surprise is a judge is purchased to issue such a ruling. Now that his old legal Mr. Fixit, former Supreme Court presiding magistrate Alejandro Moncada Luna, is out of prison on parole and practicing law again, perhaps Moncada Luna might represent him in such efforts. In any case, look for Martinelli to send in phalanxes of attorneys to delay and obstruct, early in the process to argue that ONLY the four cases for which the United States extradited him may proceed. (General Noriega tried that one with respect to his French extradition, lost, but then by that time he was too ill to withstand any more trials.)
At the top of the docket is the invasion of privacy and theft of state purchased espionage equipment case. Using Israeli hardware and Italian softwear, Martinelli not only tapped people’s phones but remotely turned on their cell phones and computers to turn them into room bugs. He had a top enemies list fo 150 people, about whom he received daily logs. Those who communicted with members of that list also were picked up, and in that much larger crowd you find this reporter. Martinelli misappropriated hundreds of millions of dollars from state coffers and had persons of different races than his killed, but it says a number of things about Panamanian culture that the case that got top billing in the courts here has been the intrusion into the private lives of mostly white professionals.
Cambio Democratico, which along with other parties in the legislature is embroiled in a battle with the comptroller general and public opinion about theft of public funds by way of the National Assembly’s payrolls, indicates that the defense of Ricardo Martinelli will be a key priority in this election year. For that to work as a path to victory for Martinelli’s party it would probably be necessary to get election authorities to knock anti-corruption independents off the ballot and have a race among the three discredited major parties. There would be a possible opening for small parties, some of them new, but their problem — with the exception of the far leftist Broad Front for Democracy (FAD) — is that the smaller parties are implicated in the peculations of the big ones and in fact exist not to promote any principle but to secure a piece of the action for their owners.
Yesteryear’s connections only go so far. But far enough for the special prosecutor to take a look at the man on the right, Donald Trump’s erstwhile business associate Roger Khafif? Archive photo by the Presidencia.
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How’s that art work? Is there going to be a large purchase as part of the deal?
Are YOU brainwashed?
by Yuri Avnery
It’s frightening. Unprincipled psychologists, in the service of a malignant regime, use sophisticated techniques in order to control the mind of a person from afar.
The term “brainwashing” was born in 1950. It is a Chinese word (“xinao,” literally wash brain). Originally it served to describe a technique used — so it was claimed — by Chinese masterminds to manipulate the minds of American prisoners in the Korean War. They changed their unconscious mental processes and turned them into agents of sinister forces.
Many books and movies purported to show how this works. For example, the classic film “The Manchurian Candidate” shows how the communists take an American prisoner-of-war in the Korean war, an officer, manipulate his mind and give him an order to kill the US presidential candidate. The American officer does not know that he has been turned unconsciously into a communist agent. He does not remember the order given him under hypnosis and does not know that he acts accordingly.
This plot is ridiculous, like most of the pseudo-scientific descriptions. In practice, it is much easier to manipulate the minds of people, individuals and collectives.
For example, the Nazi “propaganda.” It was invented by Adolf Hitler himself. In his book, “Mein Kampf,” he describes how, as a soldier on the Western front in WWI, he witnessed the extremely successful British propaganda. The British dropped leaflets over the German trenches and shattered the soldiers’ confidence in their leadership.
When Hitler came to power in Germany, he entrusted one of his faithful henchmen, Joseph Goebbels, with the creation of a Ministry of Propaganda. Goebbels turned propaganda into an art form. Among other means he turned all the German media — newspapers and the radio — into government agencies. In German that was called “Gleichschaltung” — connecting all components to one electric line. Thanks to this, Nazi Germany continued fighting long after it was clear that it had lost WWII.
One of the means was the disconnection of the German public from any other source of information. The official propaganda was blared from every medium. Listening to a foreign broadcast was a major crime, punished severely.
Thus it happened that the Germans still believed in their final victory — the Endsieg – even after the Soviets in the East and the Anglo-Saxons in the West had already crossed the borders into Germany.
Does it take a dictatorial regime — Nazi or Communist — to turn the media into a brainwashing machine? Common sense says that this is impossible in a democracy. Common sense is wrong.
It will be remembered that Hitler attained power by democratic means. Even now, fanatical nationalists are winning democratic elections in many countries. All their leaders are busy destroying the courts, stuffing the parliaments with useful idiots and — especially — turning the media into brainwashing instruments. In our country, too.
How is this done? It’s quite simple, really: one has to suppress all other voices. One has to make sure that the citizen hears only one voice. One that repeats a few messages over and over, endlessly. This way the lie becomes truth.
In such a situation, the ordinary citizen becomes convinced that the official line is really their own personal opinion. This is an unconscious process. When one tells a citizen that they are brainwashed, they are deeply insulted.
This has been happening in Israel over the last few years. The citizen is not conscious that it is happening. He or she absorbs diverse newspapers, TV programs and radio broadcasts, and sees that all these media are freely arguing with each other and even quarreling with each other. The citizen is not conscious of the fact that on the one critical subject of our life — war and peace — all the media are “connected” to one singular line of brainwashing.
During the last few weeks we have been seeing a perfect example of this mechanism. The events on the Gaza Strip border have activated a mechanism of brainwashing that dictatorial regimes in the world can only envy.
Let’s examine ourselves: what have we heard over the radio? What have we seen on TV? What did we read in the papers?
Within a few weeks more than a hundred human beings were shot dead, and many thousands were wounded by live fire. Why?
“We were forced to fire at them because they were storming the border fence.” And indeed, did the Gazans themselves not proclaim their will to “return home” — meaning, to return to Israeli territory?
But on May 14, “Black Monday,” 63 unarmed demonstrators were shot dead and over 1500 wounded by live fire. Every Israeli knows that this was necessary because the demonstrators stormed the fence and were about to swarm into Israel. Nobody paid attention to the simple fact that there was not a single photo showing such an occurrence. Not even one. In spite of the fact that on both sides of the fence there were hundreds of photographers, including Israeli army photographers, who filmed every single detail. Tens of thousands stormed, and not a single picture?
One should notice the use of the word “terror.” It has turned into an adjective attached to everything. There are not just tunnels — they are all always “terror-tunnels.” There are “terror-activists.” There is “the Hamas terror-regime” and there are “terror-bases.” Now there are “terror-kites.”
Notice: not just “incendiary kites,” or “destruction-kites,” only “terror-kites.” The same every day in all media. Someone has made the terminology decision. Of course, everyone who has the word “terror” attached to his name is “a son of death,” as you say in biblical Hebrew. Another proud term of the brainwashing.
The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are “terrorists.” (In Hebrew, a special term has been invented: “Mekhablim”). All of them? Of course, no question. Especially Hamas members. But Hamas is a political party, which has won democratic elections in all of Palestine. A civilian party which has indeed a military wing. But in our media all party members and supporters are “terrorists,” sons of death. Of course.
The use of these terms, hundreds of times every day, clearly constitute brainwashing, without the citizens noticing it. They are getting used to the fact that all Gazans are terrorists, mekhablim. This is a process of dehumanization, the creation of Untermenschen in the Nazi lexicon. Their killing is allowed, even desirable.
In such an atmosphere, even abominable sentences pass unnoticed. For example, this week I heard on one of the TV news programs this sentence from the mouth of a military correspondent, speaking about the coming Gaza demonstration: “Iran wants dead demonstrators, and it seems that they will get them.” One has to read this sentence twice to realize what it says: that the Israeli sharpshooters serve Iranian interests.
Or a sentence that is repeated again and again, even by respected commentators: “Iran wants to destroy the State of Israel.” I don’t know what 80 million Iranians want, nor does the writer. But the sentence itself is ridiculous. Israel is a nuclear power. How does one annihilate a nuclear power (with submarines that can launch nuclear devices in the hour of need). Are the Iranians ready to turn their country — one of the cradles of human civilization — into a graveyard and a desert?
Or a forecast “Friday another violent demonstration will take place.” “Violent?” “Another?” There is no argument about the fact that all the demonstrations along the Gaza fence were completely non-violent. The demonstrators did not shoot one single shot, when thousands of them were wounded by live fire, and more than a hundred killed. Yet the lie passes without comment.
Not a single one of the hundreds of TV news program presenters ever corrects such statements by correspondents. Because the directors, presenters, commentators and correspondents are themselves thoroughly brainwashed. The army spokesman knows the truth, of course, but he is a central cog in the brainwashing machine.
Events reached a climax with the murder of the 21-year old female paramedic Razan Ashraf al-Najjar, when she was trying to save the life of a wounded demonstrator. The sharpshooter who shot her in the chest saw that she was a medic treating a wounded person. It was a clear war crime.
Was there a public outcry? Did the media demand an investigation? Did the media report this event in their page one headline? Did the Knesset observe a minute of silence? Nothing of the sort. A minor news item in some papers (by no means all). An excellent article by the admirable Amira Hass in Haaretz. And that’s that.
A few days passed, and abroad there were outcries. The Argentine soccer team, with the admired Messi, canceled a friendly game against the Israeli team in Jerusalem.
The brainwashers realized that it was impossible not to react. So the army spokesman published a statement saying that an investigation had taken place. What did it discover? Ah, well. It was clearly established that nobody had shot Razan. She was hit by the ricochet of a bullet that had hit the ground far from her. That is such a blatant lie that even the army liar should be ashamed of producing it. It was accepted by the brainwashed public.
One of the hallmarks of brainwashing is a phenomenon that everyone can notice: the total absence of a second opinion. When a commentator voices the official line on an event, does anyone express an alternative version? Is there a debate between the official spokesman and a contrary commentator? In the democratic media, that would be commonplace. Here it is very, very rare.
What can be done to counter such brainwashing?
Not much.
First of all: there is a vital need for a second voice. Brainwashing can be efficient only when the official voice enjoys a complete monopoly. That was one of the aims of Haolam Hazeh, the weekly which I edited for 40 years. It met every untrue government version with a contrary version. Although our voice was weak, compared to the powerful government machine (even in those days), the very fact that there are two voices, however unequal, prevents a total brainwashing. The citizen hears two versions and wonders “who is right?”
If all the peace and human rights groups in Israel set up a joint center for information, which will be heard, perhaps the monopoly of official propaganda can be broken. Perhaps.
There is in the country a tiny band of commentators who are not afraid to tell the truth, even when this is considered treason. Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and a few others. We must ensure that their voice is heard. They must be encouraged.
All the media must be pressured to present a variation of views on matters of war and peace, to let the “internal enemy” be heard, so that the citizen is able to form an opinion of their own.
The foreign media must be allowed free access to the sources of information, even when the foreign media are critical, “hostile” and “anti-Semitic.” Friends of Israeli-Palestinian peace abroad must be encouraged to pressure the media in their homelands to publish the truth about what is happening here.
I don’t like the word “must.” But in this context, no other will do.
The power of the truth against a brainwashing machine is always limited. But in the end, even if it takes time, truth will prevail. It needs courage.
The movie “The Manchurian Candidate” has a surprise ending: in the last minute, instead of killing the presidential candidate, the brainwashed man shoots the communist agent who was supposed to take his place.
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Miguel Antonio Bernal and some fellow independents at the Electoral Tribunal, with more than 15,000 more signatures to submit. Photo from Bernal’s Twitter feed.
Bernal’s move in the race for a ballot spot
by Eric Jackson
The basic rules are that come January 5, the top three independent candidates for president with the most signatures accepted as valid by the Electoral Tribunal get on the ballot, provided that they have at least 18,500 signatures. The limit is three, arbitrarily set at the behest of the political parties that notwithstanding all denials the electoral magistrates and prosecutor represent. In effect it’s less because they allow for and encourage ringers to bump real candidates off the ballot.
On June 7 law professor, activist and radio show host Miguel Antonio Bernal showed up with more than 15,000 signatures to present, adding to more than 3,000 he had previously submitted. The tribunal, offering no particular explanations, struck about one-third of the signatures he had submitted, leaving him in fourth place at the end of May. Bernal is prepared to challenge the disqualifications one by one, and has had vague assurances that his complaint will be reviewed.
As it now stands an unknown, who makes references to public offices he has never held — nor even sought — has never been know to engage in any sort of public advocacy and who says that he is a law student with sufficient time and funding from an unidentified business he says he has leads the pack. That’s Dimitri Flores, this election cycle’s ringer — more could come forward — whom the magistrates say has submitted more than 50,000 signatures so far. Campaign finance secrecy laws not only encourage bribery but also deny the public any financial information about who Flores’s backers actually might be.
Independent legislator, former attorney general and one of Bernal’s students way back when, Ana Matilde Gómez, registered second at the end of may with 27,418 signatures accepted by election authorities. Journalist and attorney Ricardo Lombana had been in third place with 12,726 signatures, with Bernal in fourth. Now, perhaps Bernal has vaulted into third place. Given the going rate of rejected signatures, and that the others are certainly not standing still, perhaps he’s still running fourth.
Gómez is accepted by some of the power brokers here, like the Motta family for one of whose businesses she once worked, as a reliable establishment candidate. She was appointed as attorney general during the Martín Torrijos administration and took care not to move against a number of corruption cases — in particular the political ties of Colombian racketeer David Murcia Guzmánwith the government and political parties in that time — but did go after several key people in the Ministry of Education who were caught stealing in rather flagrant fashion. She was removed by the Martinelli administration on a corruption complaint — one of the prosecutors under her was shaking down the family of a woman accused of a crime by threatening to imprison her under harsh conditions unless they paid him, and that family asked her to tap their own phone to prove it. She acceded to that request, caught the prosecutor in the flagrant act of extortion, fired him and charged him with a crime. But she was charged with illegal wiretapping and convicted while the extortionist went free. As a legislator she has fit in, but without putting her family on the payroll or engaging in other such abuses common among her colleagues. She has by and large opposed impeachment charges against high court magistrates, with the noteworthy exception of Alejandro Moncada Luna, who was jailed for amassing millions of dollars while on the bench and being unable to explain a legal source for this income. Moncada Luna is now out of prison and practicing law again.
Lombana is an advocate of ethics in journalism, who tends to accept the model that a journalist should not express his or her opinion on the substance of a controversial issue. Thus, while his name and face are known from newspaper columns and cable television shows, he has not been known as a leader of any movement for anything in particular.
Bernal was known as an opponent of the dictatorship — twice exiled and once beaten nearly to death — and these days is perhaps best known as the leading advocate of a constitutional convention to replace our current document, which is a 1972 relic of the military regime of that time.
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El día 9 de junio se conmemora un aniversario más de la desaparición del sacerdote Héctor Gallego, en Santa Fe de Veraguas. Pese a ser el caso de desaparición forzosa más conocido de la historia panameña, pese a haber sido condenados por el hecho cuatro agentes de la fuerza pública panameña, que cumplieron sus condenas, sigue manteniéndose la inoperancia del Ministerio Público y del Instituto de Medicina Legal en dar correcta identificación a los restos encontrados en el cuartel de Tocumen, en los que se ha denunciado que, a propósito, se confundieron los de Gallego y Heliodoro Portugal.
El encuentro de Héctor Gallego y el movimiento campesino veragüense no fue casualidad. Su llegada a Santa Fe constituyó la confluencia de una creciente lucha de campesinos pobres por la tierra, frente a la voracidad de los terratenientes, situación que se repetía en todo el continente latinoamericano, y que produjo un vuelco en la Iglesia católica de los años 60, con el Concilio Vaticano II, y la “opción preferencial por los pobres” de la Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano en Medellín del año 1968.
Por supuesto, hay dos lecturas de este proceso, una como compromiso real de la Iglesia; otra, como una política inteligente de contrainsurgencia, cuando el continente ardía en conflictos por todos lados. De Antioquia, Colombia, cuya capital es Medellín, procedía Gallego.
Llega a una provincia atravesada por conflictos agrarios, donde el obispo Vásquez Pinto había trazado una estrategia denominada “Plan Veraguas”, que consistía en la creación de un sistema de cooperativas con asistencia social, CEPAS y la Juan XXIII, que mitigaran ese conflicto. En la comunidad de La Mula, en Santa Fe, donde se instaló Héctor, se había producido una ocupación de tierras por parte de campesinos pobres, la cual era confrontada por los terratenientes de la zona, encabezados por la familia Vernaza.
La Iglesia competía con el Partido del Pueblo por la dirección del creciente movimiento campesino, que se había empezado a organizar en Soná a mediados de los años 50, enfrentando a los Martinelli, donde se distinguió Carlos Francisco Changmarín. Este movimiento y los de otros municipios confluyeron en la llamada Federación de Ligas Campesinas, que llegaron a realizar varios congresos nacionales a lo largo de la década.
El resto de la historia es bastante conocida, pero para quienes desean una amena y minuciosa descripción de los sucesos que precedieron y prosiguieron a la desaparición de este sacerdote comprometido con los campesinos pobres, recomiendo la novela El calvario del padre Héctor Gallego, del sociólogo Pablo Asís Navarro Icaza.
La novela contiene todo. Desde los sentimientos de los campesinos sobre el conflicto agrario, hasta el proceso judicial, incluyendo el señalamiento de uno de los condenados, Melbourne Walker, contra Edilberto Del Cid y un equipo de los Macho de Monte, como los reales autores del secuestro. Pablo Navarro ha hecho una exhaustiva labor investigativa que convierte a esta novela en documento valioso a atesorar como parte de la historia nacional.
El libro culmina con una denuncia que ya ha hecho también Alexis Sánchez (La Estrella, 1/3/18): los restos de Gallego y Portugal fueron cambiados a propósito para confundir las investigaciones; que los restos de ambos ya fueron identificados en laboratorios extranjeros con las muestras de ADN extraídas de los huesos encontrados en el cuartel de Tocumen de las antiguas Fuerzas de Defensa. La desidia y complicidad de la Procuraduría y del Instituto de Medicina Legal han impedido hasta ahora cumplir con la exhumación de los restos de Portugal y poner orden en la investigación final. Increíble.
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The gauntlet thrown down: the legislature moves to stop an audit of its payroll. The comptroller then cut off all payments to all National Assembly deputies’ staff members.
After nine more deputies get their payrolls suspended by the
Comptroller General, the National Assembly boots his auditors
by Eric Jackson
The legislature is a bunch of thugs? Doesn’t almost every Panamanian more or less perceive this to be the case, with the real division in society between those who are on or hope to be on the gravy train and those who would derail it?
On May 28 Comptroller General Federico Humbert ordered the suspension of payments to those on the legislative payrolls of 11 deputies: José Luis Varela, Elías Castillo, Jorge Alberto Rosas, Carlos Motta, Melitón Arrocha, Athenas Athanasiadis, Fernando Carrillo, Jaime Pedrol, Aris De Icaza, Juan Serrano and Salvador Real. On June 5 he ordered payments suspended to the legislative staff of nine more deputies, Adolfo “Baby” Valderrama, Dana Castañeda, Ausencio Palacio, Crescencia Prado, José Castillo, José Domínguez, Iván Picota, Néstor Guardia and Felipe Vargas.
Humbert cited things from irregular paperwork to one deputy who has nine family members on the payroll to the standard “botellas” (no-show theoretical employees whose salaries the legislator typically pockets). In some cases, in a direct slap at long-established political patronage traditions, Humbert suggested and questioned campaign crews and mistresses appearing on payrolls. The 20 deputies whose payrolls were blocked represent more than one-third of the legislature and all party caucuses, and the audits were not yet over. Humbert had already reached a final conclusion about the control methods for the legislature managing its payroll, but the particulars of each payroll were still under investigation.
So National Assembly president Yanibel Ábrego, in the name of the legislature rather than in her own right, issued an order that Humbert’s work was over and his auditors were expelled from the legislature. Humbert responded by cutting off all payments for all legislative payrolls. Legislator and PRD leader Pedro Miguel González responded that this action gave the legislature cause to impeach Humbert.
How to put it in partisan terms? It’s the political parties against everybody else, with a caste accustomed to doing things in a certain way opposing labor, business and civic groups.
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Utilizando un colorido busito, el Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales se toma las calles para trasladarse a escuelas públicas, organizaciones comunitarias y ferias en las provincias de Panamá, Panamá Oeste y Colón por medio del programa Q?Bus, llevando las ciencias del Smithsonian a la calle. Este programa tiene como objetivo principal proporcionar educación informal a niños y jóvenes que no han tenido la oportunidad de visitar las instalaciones de programas públicos del Instituto y encender su curiosidad e interés por las ciencias.
El Q?Bus proviene del programa Q?rius que maneja el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de la Institución Smithsonian en Washington, DC. Q?rius se implementará en Panamá en un futuro bajo el nombre de Q?rioso Panamá como un espacio de descubrimiento dentro del Centro Natural Punta Culebra en la Calzada de Amador.
El Q?Bus transporta equipo tecnológico, colecciones y todos los implementos necesarios para llevar a cabo actividades interactivas y divertidas a través del aprendizaje por indagación. Todas las actividades están relacionadas a alguna disciplina que estudia el Smithsonian en Panamá, como la entomología, la hidrología, la arqueología, la ecología microbiana, la biodiversidad y el monitoreo físico. Las actividades fueron desarrolladas para estudiantes de 1º a 9º grado y las mismas están alineadas a los estándares nacionales del Ministerio de Educación (MEDUCA).
El programa correrá de mayo a noviembre del presente año, gracias a una subvención otorgada por el Youth Access Implementation Grant (YAG), la Fundación Smithsonian y la oficina del Director del Smithsonian en Panamá. Para este año escolar (duración de la subvención), el programa Q?Bus tiene como meta brindar educación científica informal de alta calidad a 6,250 estudiantes de áreas socioeconómicamente desfavorecidas. El programa ya ha tenido una amplia acogida y confiamos que será exitoso en despertar el interés científico en los futuros ciudadanos del país.
Para mayor información sobre el programa Q?Bus, comunicarse al correo: hassellk@si.edu
Karina Hassell, Coordinadora del programa Q?Bus durante las actividades interactivas a través del aprendizaje por indagación. Foto por Jorge Alemán — Smithsonian
El Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, en ciudad de Panamá, Panamá, es una unidad de la Institución Smithsonian. El Instituto promueve la comprensión de la naturaleza tropical y su importancia para el bienestar de la humanidad, capacita estudiantes para llevar a cabo investigaciones en los trópicos, y fomenta la conservación mediante la concienciación pública sobre la belleza e importancia de los ecosistemas tropicales. Sitio web:www.stri.si.edu. Video Promocional:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9JDSIwBegk
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Coral reef conservation efforts will soon get a major boost with a global monitoring system that will detect physical changes in coral cover at high resolution on a daily basis.
The satellite-based system will enable researchers, policy makers, and environmentalists to track severe bleaching events, reef dynamiting, and coastal development in near-real time.
The system will leverage Planet’s daily high resolution satellite imagery, running the data through cloud computing-based algorithms to map reefs and chart changes over time.
Coral reef conservation efforts will soon get a major boost with a global monitoring system that will detect physical changes in coral cover at high resolution on a daily basis, enabling researchers, policy makers, and environmentalists to track severe bleaching events, reef dynamiting, and coastal development in near-real time. The satellite-based system — which is the product of a partnership between Paul G. Allen Philanthropies, Planet, Carnegie Institution of Science, University of Queensland, and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology — will launch at five pilot sites this fall, before rolling out globally in 2020.
“This system could be a game-changer for coral reef conservation,” Carnegie scientist Greg Asner, told Mongabay. “It will be the first large-scale monitoring system that can detect where reefs are changing thereby enabling direct action to mitigate losses.”
Planet satellite image of reef off Moorea Island in Tahiti.
The world’s coral reefs have been hard hit by a combination of rising sea temperatures, which trigger bleaching; coastal development that damages reefs directly and indirectly; unsustainable fishing practices, including overexploitation of key species and fish bombing; and run-off and sedimentation from agriculture, aquaculture, deforestation, and other forms of land use. Ocean acidification is another looming danger, threatening to undermine the very structural basis of reefs.
Given the importance of coral reef ecosystems in supporting local livelihoods through fishing and tourism, mitigating coastal erosion, and housing up to a quarter of ocean biodiversity, there are deep concerns about these trends. But current systems for monitoring coral health are spotty, usually based on scuba or aircraft surveys — which are limited in extent — or blunt proxy data like sea surface temperatures, which don’t account for differences in resilience among coral communities.
The new system will change that by combining technology with field survey data. The system will leverage Planet’s daily high resolution satellite imagery, running the data through cloud computing-based artificial intelligence (AI) that corrects for “distortions from the atmosphere, sun glint, materials in the water column and surface waves” and then applies algorithms from ocean researchers at the University of Queensland’s Remote Sensing Research Center to classify the reefs. Carnegie will then apply a change detection algorithm to the data, giving the system its the monitoring capability. Asner said the system will retain pixel history, eventually enabling researchers to potentially monitor changes over time, including coral recovery after bleaching events.
Four representations of Heron Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The upper left shows the 2010 dataset from the United Nations Environment Program’s World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC). The upper right shows the partnership’s benthic data overlaid on UNEP-WCMC’s map. The lower left shows shows the partnership’s benthic data overlaid on a satellite image from Planet. The lower right shows the Planet satellite image.
In the first year, the project will produce an initial mosaic of coral reef sites globally and do validation at five sites: Heron Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Moorea in French Polynesia, Belize’s Lighthouse Reef, Hawaii’s Kaneohe Bay, and Karimunjawa, off the Indonesian island of Java. The initiative chose these sites because they “represent a variety of reef types and status from across the globe and where field verification data are readily available,” according to a statement from Paul Allen Philanthropies. The project will also develop a community engagement plan to work with researchers, conservationists, policymakers, and others to implement and share findings from the initiative.
After that first phase, the initiative will scale the mapping from specific sites to entire regions and deploy the AI-based alert system. By the end of 2020, the project aims to scale the mapping from regions to the entire world, potentially enabling the first high resolution global reef monitoring system, rivaling what Global Forest Watch is doing for the planet’s forests and Global Fishing Watch endeavors to do for fishing on the high seas.
Planet satellite image of Heron Island. “We need to know what is occurring in this hidden world of shallow coral reefs if we have any hope to save them,” said Art Min, vice president of impact for Paul Allen Philanthropies, in a statement. “Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean surface and yet nearly 1 billion people and 25 percent of all marine life depend on them.”Planet satellite image of coral off Belize’s Lighthouse Reef. Taken March 28, 2018.
Andrew Zolli, vice president for global impact initiatives at Planet, said the initiative could usher in a new era for coral reef managers and conservationists.
“Seeing change is the first step in taking responsibility for it,” Zolli stated in a press release. “By putting the most complete, up-to-date picture of the world’s corals in the hands of scientists, conservationists, and communities, we hope to accelerate action on the coral crisis before it’s too late.”
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2. Google News hardly covers Panama, and so much of their “coverage” is actually sales hype. And the advertising that Google will sponsor? Fraudulent stuff there, especially when it comes to political libel coming from one country to affect another country’s elections, is an ongoing scandal and not just in the United States.
3. What is the point of this press release out of Montreal? Go down toward the bottom:
“Legal Disclaimer
Certain statements in this document, including those which express management’s expectations or estimations with regard to the Company’s future performance, constitute “forward-looking statements” as understood by applicable securities laws.
…
This news release does not constitute a solicitation to buy or sell any securities in the United States.”
Safe to say that this is an offer that would likely be considered illegal under US securities laws. But isn’t Canada more calm and civilized than the USA? Actually, Canadian securities markets are notoriously fraud-friendly, much more so than those of the United States.
4. This company claims a history back to 2005 (which is not to say that the same people have been running it all along). You would think that such a firm would have someone with at least an inkling of a journalistic background to write its press releases. The standard, often violated by folks writing longer, in-depth stuff that’s nevertheless valid, is an inverted pyramid style lead, answering the questions “Who? What? When? Where?”
Forget, for a moment, the “Who?” about the company. Who is the bank in Panama? They don’t say.
A proposal to invest money on the basis of a connection with an unidentified entity, person or family is one of the hallmarks of fraud in or connected to Panama.
5. So, since this offer is likely illegal in the United States and you are thus unlikely to find a US broker willing to touch this with a 10-foot pole, do you run right out to a Panamanian brokerage firm to make your stock purchase? In an infamous ruling to protect his patron at the time, the criminal who just got out of prison and is now working at a law firm again, then Supreme Court presiding magistrate Alejandro Moncada Luna, infamously ruled in 2012 that stock swindles are in effect legal in Panama if they do not involve shares traded on this country’s small Bolsa de Valores stock and bond exchange. Neither the courts nor the politicians have ever seen fit to disavow this. So you just might be able to find a Panamanian broker who can get you some of these shares. That doesn’t make it a wise move.
7. Remember all the buzz words and phrases of the Dot-Com Bubble? Perhaps, way back when, you listened to the gurus and to noted economic theorist Willow Bay, believed devoutly in “the new economy,” so put all of your life’s savings into Fog Dog. (The ephemeral online sporting goods company, not the unrelated brewery of a later time and similar name, nor the lewd dancing.) One of today’s overused buzz phrases is “big data.” Never mind that the European Union has moved to restrict some of the practices that go under that heading, and that it’s one of the nexes of controversy in the United States with respect to Russian propaganda campaigns in the 2016 US election season.
“Big data” is a bipartisan malady, which made huge money for a few Democratic consultants for one of the worst political campaigns ever, and which brought the alt-right into the mainstream of Republican politics at least until their star started to fade with the Roy Moore campaign in Alabama. It is a controversial private espionage / micro-targeted advertising technique, pioneered by secretive government agencies and some of their contractors, one of which is Google.
And there you have it in this company’s self-description: “The company captures value from big data to deliver seamless and personalized user experiences for the benefits of all parties in the ecosystem.” Whatever THAT means.
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Bottom line? Google should be ashamed for presenting this as news about Panama.
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My alarm clock, the Yellow Crowned Amazon (often called a parrot rather than an amazon), wakes me up at dawn outside my bedroom window. It’s about 12 inches or 30 centimeters tall.
Mi despertador, la Amazona Coroniamarillo, me despierta al amanecer fuera de la ventana de mi habitación. Tiene alrededor de 12 pulgadas o 30 centímetros de alto.
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