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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People do fear and despise cell phone robbers. But when you look at the Attorney General’s website, the most wanted are all alleged drug dealers or rapists, the noteworthy crimes are things like robberies and homicides by obnoxious driving, the communiques tend to be about things within the bureaucracy — but former public officials who stole millions don’t get much mention, and Ricardo Martinelli’s fugitive family members don’t get on the most wanted list. The emphasis appears to be intentional, a message to ordinary people that the law can get them and not to be concerned with those who stole millions from us. From the Ministerio Publico website.
21-fold increase in corrruption cases, but…
by Eric Jackson
At the end of May, after weeks of stories about high-profile public corruption suspects getting out on bail mostly on condition of not leaving Panama, the Public Ministry let the press and public know of a spectacular increase in the number of criminal cases about embezzlement, graft and other such raids on the public treasury. There were 35 open cases at the beginning of the year, and the between then and the end of April 734 new ones were added.
So is Panama getting tough on crime in high places? Not really. A few high-profile private sector defendants who were involved in government contracting made plea bargains that not only keep them out of prison but preserve their ability to bid on government contracts. Part of their deals is usually to tell all, which means that secretaries and bag men and women are named along with an ultimate beneficiary or two. The people who actually got the big kickbacks for overpriced contracts of course say it’s all a pack of lies, except for a very few who make their own plea bargains, in the course of which they tend to name mostly underlings. The huge increase coincides with the Blue Apple scandal, which involves most of the larger construction companies doing business in Panama, some financial institutions and a relatively few former public officials. The people at the top appear to have made out like bandits. (This genre of banditry is not much for the firearms displays, but do not be fooled.) The new cases are generally not people at the top.
Meanwhile, the Comptroller General has suspended payments to those on 11 legislators’ payrolls, claiming various irregularities. There may be some botellas there — phantom employees who may not even know they were such, whose alleged salaries go into the pocket of their claimed employer legislators. However, it seems that in at least some of the cases there may have been sloppy records but there was no dishonesty. Reports and records have been forwarded to prosecutors. And indeed, criminal complaints have been filed — against the comptroller for having the audacity to audit the legislature’s expenditures. Those have been quickly dismissed, but it seems that more are coming.
Meanwhile, hundreds of residency visas and work permits have been revoked for fraud. But no immigration official, nor any attorney, is facing prosecution for being a party to any of these frauds.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say that at least $1.9 million was laundered through the Financial Pacific brokerage firm and ended up in the “New Business” account linked to Ricardo Martinelli’s purchase of newspapers and broadcast stations with funds siphoned out of the public treasury. There is no move yet to strip the former president of his media empire.
Meanwhile, the cases of hundreds of millions of dollars of national government funds laundered through juntas comunales — community councils — for vote buying purposes in the 2014 Ricardo Martinelli proxy re-election campaign is stalled. Whether Martinelli himself ever faces justice over this remains to be seen — the Supreme Court rather than the ordinary prosecutors have jurisdiction — but this stall is in the cases of Martinelli’s men and women.
So there is little public appreciation of or enthusiasm for this year’s numerical crackdown on public corruption that Attorney General Kenia Porcell claims.
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The cepo — here, the Embera version of the stocks — an indigenous form of justice that was in place long before the current elites and their recent ancestors invented impunity for themselves. Photo by Eric Jackson.
A slow smash and grab season?
In April, the Varela administration and legislature jammed through a law loosening the telecommunications concessions contracts to allow wireless telephone and Internet companies to buy one another. We were told that our neighbors have fewer companies, so we should join the trend. Thus, following the lead of Honduras to have less competition and more monopolistic practices sailed right through.
In May, we were told that a new electric rate structure would go into effect, so as to essentially ban home and business solar electric generation. Just because. However, there was a brief outcry and the president and his utilities authority backed down.
About the same time, construction starts for the fourth bridge over the canal and other big projects were postponed. Could it be that between the Odebrecht and Blue Apple scandals, all the would-be bidders are skittish about getting caught again playing the same old games at the same time that they are negotiating their plea bargains?
Normally the last year of a presidency is peak corruption season, as people at all levels of the government grab what they can before losing their public jobs. But maybe this time it’s different.
Is the public corruption sector of our economy slowing down along with construction and a sluggishly recovering import/export sector? Time will tell.
China’s claim, which overlaps several countries’ exclusive economic zones as codified in the UN Law of the Sea Convention.
Chinese take out?
China’s assertion of maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea is problematic because it is a vague assertion of the way things supposedly were back in the days of ancient dynasties. China claimed Vietnam and the Straits of Malacca at various points, too. But subsequent dynasties turned inward, going so far as to order the destruction of all documents about the world outside of a lesser China. Then foreign powers carved concessions out of that China, which occupations lasted until the middle of the 20th century.
So should Italy get to claim the old Roman Empire, too, notwithstanding the existence of later legitimate states? Mussolini was into that sort of thinking but even his fellow fascists never bought it.
The construction and militarization of artificial islands is also a problem, but this is of far more recent vintage and a more complicated set of questions. With climate change and rising sea levels the construction or enhancement of islands in the sea may be the only hope for survival of some small Pacific states. It’s an area of international law that cries out for the negotiation and adoption of an amendment to the Law of the Sea Convention.
Panama is a maritime nation and should also look askance at China’s actions in the South China Sea, even if we are now economically dependent on Beijing.
But neither Panama, the American people nor anybody else should accept the Trump administration’s rhetoric about China’s fortified islands in the South China Sea. From the Pentagon’s Joint Staff director Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie we hear that the United States can “take down” China’s fortified islands.
Well, yes. And China can take out Washington, and the United States can take out Beijing, and at least seven or eight countries could take out the Panama Canal. But the threat of radioactive death is unacceptable in the world.
Bear in mind…
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
Annie Besant
A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism.
Simón Bolívar
All judgment is relative. It may be right today and wrong tomorrow. The only thing that makes it truly right is the desire to have it constantly moving in the right direction.
Frances Perkins
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In a year when construction was off and the future looked iffy, the industry’s master contract came up for renewal and SUNTRACS shut down work for a month until they got a dignified if modest settlement. Photo by Pedro Silva / Radio Temblor.
SUNTRACS: its art of negotiation
by Marco A. Gandásegui, Hijo
The construction workers’ union has unique characteristics. Its history goes back to the construction of the trans-isthmian railway and the French Canal in the 19th century. The struggles of the builders of the Panama Canal 100 years ago (1904-1914) were epic. In the middle of the last century, the military bases that surrounded the Canal were built into the US war strategies against Japan, Korea and then Vietnam (1935-1975). Despite persecution and repression, the workers preserved their fighting spirit and organization.
After the US military invasion of 1989 they reorganized at the United Construction and Similar Workers National Union – the Sindicato Único Nacional de Trabajadores de la Construcción y Similares (SUNTRACS). In a little more than 25 years it has turned into one of the country’s most powerful labor organizations. Unlike other unions, which have been battered by neoliberal policies, SUNTRACS has managed to unite workers in the construction sector and present a solid front to negotiate with employers.
In this country’s history there are examples of workers’ organizations that have contributed to the development of society with their sacrifices and labor conquests. These are the cases, for example, of the battles waged by the Panama Canal workers during the first half of the 20th century, as well as the workers of the banana plantations and cane fields in the middle of the last century.
Despite this history, there is a systematic policy of distorting workers’ struggles. The employer interests control the media, the education system and even many religious institutions. These are put at the service of those who believe that workers are not human beings.
Construction workers have been consistently winning spaces for themselves. On the one hand, SUNTRACS has achieved salary increases for its members. On the other, it enforces the labor and human rights of workers. This is due, above all, to two reasons: first, the tenacity of those in the group to maintain discipline and increase membership. Second, its capable negotiating with employers.
The recent 28-day SUNTRACS strike was misrepresented in the media. The demands of the workers had no place in the newspapers or on the television or radio airwaves. When a story appeared it was to say how many thousands of dollars the workers supposedly had hidden under their mattresses. Or it could be about the meetings that workers had with their peers in this country or abroad. The corporate media took advantage to associate workers with figures they considered dangerous to their interests.
No medium sent a journalist to interview the family of a striking construction worker to know their standard of living, their lifestyle or what aspirations they had for their children. For the mainstream media, the education system and many religions, the worker must be (and behave like) a machine. He must not have human feelings or thoughts of his own. He must place his family and the welfare of his children in a secondary place.
On the occasion of the construction workers strike there was a noteworthy case. Panama’s Catholic university, USMA, has an agreement with SUNTRACS to know their form of organization and share this knowledge with the students. In the middle of the strike, and once it was over, USMA was the target of attacks that branded it as a traitor to the employers’ class. USMA defended itself by pointing out that university thinking should be diverse and rich in nuances.
The attacks against SUNTRACS are not only aimed at a particular group of this country’s workers. They embrace all Panamanians who work to meet their basic needs. They attack workers and other social sectors for critical thinking, for the ability to conceive of changes that improve their living conditions, that allow them to live in a country with social justice. The employers’ mouthpieces hate the workers for their struggles.
The elite believe that making a concession to a union is a sign of weakness. But through its negotiating capacity – without violence — SUNTRACS managed to assert itself again. Their victory was a step in the right direction, even though the salary gain was a modest increase of cents per hour. It was still a triumph of the union over the bosses.
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OOOPS! Edit this one OUT of Ricardo Martinelli’s plea for Donald Trump’s political mercy! Photo by the Presidencia.
Martinelli’s last bid to stay in the USA
by Eric Jackson
I swear to God and the Fatherland to faithfully fulfill the Constitution and the laws of the Republic.
Panama’s presidential oath
ARTICLE 191. The President … of the Republic is only responsible in the following cases: … 3. For crimes against the international personality of the State….
Panama’s Constitution
Crimes against the International Personality of the State Article 421. Whoever executes an act to submit the Republic, in whole or in part, to a foreign State [or] to diminish its independence… shall be punished with imprisonment… when the described behavior was performed by a public servant… the penalty shall be twenty to thirty years.
Panama’s Penal Code
‘Look at all I did for you….’ That was the gist of Manuel Antonio Noriega’s complaint to the United States as well.
But the classic retort to such pleas, of which there have been many over the years, is that ‘The United States has no friends it only has interests.’
Ricardo Martinelli’s jailhouse letter to the American people has caused a storm of patriotic indignation here, and the promise of Cambio Democratico primary candidate José Raúl Mulino that he, too, would do everything that the CIA tells him to do.
The former president’s letter includes an interesting set of particulars.
As it is, he stands to be extradited and tried for illegal electronic surveillance. He pleads that his electronic spying was to monitor CIA targets “through legal and ‘other means.'” But he tells the American people that “the courts are not allowed to consider all the facts.” And indeed, among the communications Martinelli intercepted were those of US citizens. For that to come out in open court would not compromise the security and integrity of the United States of America, but it might embarrass some of its former or current public officials. Thus it would be a reasonable bet that some national security claim might be made and such tales would be kept out of court and off the record.
Martinelli tells the tale of an intercepted North Korean freighter with jet fighter parts and other war materiel — some prohibited by an international embargo — hidden under a load of Cuban sugar. He alleges threats by Raúl Castro and insinuates some sort of improper relationship between current Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela and the Cubans. (The alleged “full story” that this reporter heard way back when but could never verify is not in Martinelli’s account.)
The former president pleads that in the United Nations he voted with Israel “100% of the time,” which may be the Trump policy but was not exactly the Obama policy when Martinelli was in charge of Panama.
Martinelli tells of a Panamanian special operation to rescue a CIA operative running from an INTERPOL warrant stemming from an Italian torture case. He tells of Panama siding against FARC in Colombia’s late civil conflict.
“My political career is far from over,” Martinelli pleads, noting that only four of 23 criminal cases against him are still pending.
Quixotic stuff, but what if the admissions in the ex-president’s letter are taken at face value by this or the next Panamanian government, and deemed to have been the submission of Panama to a foreign power, or at least the diminishment of Panamanian independence? That could be some serious legal trouble here. Might a next round of litigation in the USA ensue to assert that it gives Martinelli the right to refugee status because he has a real fear of political persecution?
Stay tuned. We are dealing with someone who always was kind of flaky, now apparently going nuts in a Miami jail cell. He can maintain whatever delusions he likes, but his life as a viable politician is over. Very likely the party that he created is en route to either extinction or the minor party fringes.
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