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The Panama News blog links, May 16, 2017

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A co-author of this hit song is Panamanian musician and composer Erika Ender

The Panama News blog links

a Panama-centric selection of other people’s work
una selección Panamá-céntrica de las obras de otras personas

Canal, Maritime & Transportation / Canal, Marítima & Transporte

La Estrella, Prácticos del Canal de Panamá presentan habeas data contra la ACP

Berger, The Chinpo shipping case implodes

MarineLink, Maersk: shipping recovery coming

Maritime Professional, New generation of carrier alliances

Costa Rica News, Nicaragua Canal is paralyzed or about to die

EFE, Posibilidades para comercio marítimo boliviano

Post-Gazette, Copa talks with airport authority about Pittsburgh-Panama flights

Sports / Deportes

Telemetro, Boxeo en decadencia

Once a Metro, Michael Amir Murillo wears #62 for the New York Red Bulls

TVN, Panamá gana seis medallas de Jiu Jitsu en República Dominicana

Economy / Economía

TVN, Panamá Bilingüe se convierte en ley de la República

E&N: Panama prohibe Uber en hoteles, aeropuertos y centros comerciales

South Centre, The financial crisis and the Global South

Expansión, El bitcoin pulveriza sus récords

Reuters, Warren Buffett comments on healthcare, trade, buyback

Science & Technology / Ciencia & Tecnología

EurekAlert!, Tectonic changes may have shaped Panama Canal rocks

Science Recorder, New crack in Antarctica ice shelf could signal coming break

La Vanguardia, Analizan el aumento de contaminación acústica en océanos

STRI, The Earth sank twice, flooding the Western Amazon

Mongabay, Howler monkeys booming 25 years after translocation

WHO, Noncommunicable diseases: the slow motion disaster

NPR: Microsoft’s president reflects on cyberattack, pirates and the NSA

News / Noticias

Radio Panamá, Ministro culpa venezolanos sobre incidente en la U de P

Colombia Reports, Panama-Colombia spat over peace process and crime

Telemetro, Porcell: al menos de 10 delaciones sobre Odebrecht en Panamá

La Estrella, Rescinde contrato a consorcio español investigado por pago de coimas

The Costa Rica Star, SPI agent charged for shooting US tourist

Telemetro, Conceden prórroga por caso de pérdida de armas del SPI

The New York Times, Hillary Clinton’s new political organization

E&N, Trump propone nuevas trabas para visas

The Hill, Kushner family touts US visas for wealthy Chinese

Huffington Post, GOP lawmaker would hand non-English-speaking kids to ICE

Opinion / Opiniones

Varoufakis, Congratulations, President Macron – now we oppose you

James, Twelve reasons to oppose rules on digital commerce in the WTO

Baker, Trump family and friends in your pockets

Navarro & Bessi, The US Southern Command in Costa Rica

Beltrán, What’s in the Fiscal Year 2017 spending package for Central America?

Bosquet, Venezuela’s friends hoping for the best but fearing the worst

Gandásegui, “Al calor de un pretexto, como una chispa estallará”

Simpson Aguilera, “Formación Política e Ideológica”

Beluche, ¿Por qué luchó Victoriano Lorenzo?

Sagel, Comunicación desde el Gobierno

Culture / Cultura

The Plantain, Miami Lakes to build wall and vows to make Hialeah pay for it

BBC, Remote island has ‘world’s worst’ plastic rubbish density

Frank Zappa, Plastic People

 

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Bernal, The Bribe Route

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Odebrecht fleet

The Bribe Route

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

Bribes come and go, but nobody and nothing stops those who take bribes. It’s like that because we are dealing with a bribery state and not the constitutional state that should prevail.

“Government business” has enabled the greed power brokers’ greed to hijack the mechanisms of citizens’ power and overall control, to the detriment of the functions inherent in state institutions and their dependencies.

Thus, both the Comptroller’s Office and the Office of the Attorney General are no more than cover-up instruments — not investigators of the multiple crimes that occur along the Breibe Route. This has increased and accelerated the decomposition of our societyl leaving the citizens defenseless in all areas of daily life.

Those involved who, by action or omission, have participated in the orgy of corruption are strutting from their luxurious offices and residences, so confident that nothing will happen here.

The unpunished mega-scandal swirling around the Odebrecht criminal enterprise has jammed up and immobilized all of the obligatory avenues of investigation by all of the entities called upon to comply with and enforce compliance of the international treaties against corruption, as well as the constitution and laws that their agents have sworn to uphold.

Odebrecht’s Bribe Route, we found, in our country is more than a Royal Highway — it’s an expanded canal for illicit acts committed with impunity by encysted crooks from the four corners of the Earth.

Neither “rewarded cooperation” nor “formal oral agreements” will serve to properly sanction all of those who, since 2006, took shelter in Marcelo’s Dolce Vita. Only the determined civic will to demand and advance institutional changes will allow us to prevent these people from ending the our burning hopes of better days, for a higher standard of living.

The time has come to shut down the Bribe Route. If we don’t act, if we give in to the executioners of our liberties, we are condemning our nation to be just a place where some people live.

 

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¿Wappin? The down side of humanity / El lado negativo de la humanidad

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Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye Jr.’s funeral. The musician was shot and killed by his father, with a pistol that the son had given the father “to protect the house.” ~ Los ritos funerarios de Marvin Gaye hijo. El músico fue baleado por su padre, con una pistola que el hijo había dado al padre “para proteger la casa”.

Ain’t glorious what feeds the blues
No es glorioso lo que alimenta el blues

Curtis Mayfield – Freddie’s Dead
https://youtu.be/Z9nwcpGZE6A

Gary B.B. Coleman – The Sky is Crying
https://youtu.be/71Gt46aX9Z4

The Specials – Gangsters
https://youtu.be/lgCZN1rU5co

Hello Seahorse! – Criminal
https://youtu.be/3isv2xskFEw

Mississippi John Hurt – Stagolee
https://youtu.be/4scedJs6hC8

Janis Joplin – Ball and Chain
https://youtu.be/Bld_-7gzJ-o

Bobby Fuller Four – I Fought The Law
https://youtu.be/OgtQj8O92eI

Neil Young – Down By The River
https://youtu.be/j6PsBm4VeJQ

Séptima Raíz- Deja Vu
https://youtu.be/zIZFGbbnPDU

Desmond Dekker – Shanty Town
https://youtu.be/cFIqxnSo-gQ

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Hey Joe
https://youtu.be/rXwMrBb2x1Q

Pearl Bailey – Frankie And Johnny
https://youtu.be/oLzo4R4TMOs

Cream – Spoonful
https://youtu.be/5ym7Lsqj90c

The Slickers – Johnny Too Bad
https://youtu.be/lRm7j2UL3YY

Kafu Banton & G Money – No A La Violencia
https://youtu.be/-HkA8MKlngY

 

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Heading into 2019, all these parties, their owners and the wannabes

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the mating call of the eletronic pendejo
He still has his Miami penthouse and Twitter feed, and a dwindling band of acolytes. With the protection of US President Donald Trump and high court magistrate José Ayú Prado, the ex-president might never have to  appear in a defendant’s dock. However, he’s political history. The big split in his Cambio Democratico party is between those engaged in mutiny and those getting ready to abandon ship.

Heading toward electoral fragmentation

by Eric Jackson

Yeah, the PRD has eaten itself alive to the point when the party founded by the son of a Colombian father seems ready to be taken over by demonstrably hypocritical foreigner-bashers, while the Panameñistas are most unlikely to break the cycle of a ruling party getting thrown out in the next elections. So is this the big chance for a Martinelista comeback? Not when partners in crime from the corporate underworld are testifying that Odebrecht put $21 million into the 2014 campaign to make José Domingo Arias the proxy president for Ricardo Martinelli. Not when the Swiss have traced the money trail of millions in ill-gotten gains by the former president’s pompous sons. That Panamanian justice has been unable to get the ex-president extradited for his electronic surveillance of opposition politicians and journalists he didn’t control, and the Public Ministry won’t ask any questions about the systematic electronic sabotage of critical websites, does not mean that these things will be forgotten. Apparently in large part to protect President Varela and his party, who were allied with Martinelli for more than two years, a lot of pertinent questions are officially unasked. But the voters have not forgotten and the best bellwethers of that are the collection of opportunists that were assembled to let Martinelli take control of the legislature — they are packing their bags and changing their coats, again.

That may, however, give one of the discredited major parties a chance. The PRD won the first post-Noriega election, after all, with a little more than one-third of the vote in a seven-way race. The 2019 race appears to be shaping up as one that’s more fragmented than anything since then. Actually, the divide may be even more scattered, because back in 1994 they didn’t allow independent candidates and now that ban is over.

We have the three large — as of 2014 — political parties and two smaller ones that got through to the win something in the legislature. By order of membership, there are the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Cambio Democratico (CD), the Panameñista Party, the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA) and the Partido Popular. We will see them all again. The latter two, and perhaps CC, may struggle to survive.

The hard leftist Broad Front for Democracy (FAD) ran the last time around and didn’t get enough votes to retain ballot status, but they have already collected enough signatures to get on the ballot. Figure that if they hold onto their concept of vanguard and front they won’t be willing or able to make any electoral alliances and will remain at the margins but might elect someone to office in a large field of contenders. One big question that could hurt or help them is the Odebrecht scandals. That thuggish Brazilian company would not only buy politicians across the spectrum, but they would also typically pay off labor leaders. Did they pay large sums to the leaders of the SUNTRACS construction workers’ union, who are among the leaders of FAD? It would be deadly for both the party and the union. Did they reject such offers, or give Odebrecht a measure of peace in exchange for more pay or benefits for rank-and-file construction workers? In those cases FAD and the labor leaders in its front ranks would be enhanced.

Hoping to get on the ballot are an Evangelical party that now denies that characterization, the Independenden Social Alternataive Party (PAIS), headed by former bar association leader José Alberto Álvarez, whose brother is the main reverend at the Templo Hosanna. These people were allied with Martinelli in 2014 and received allegedly improper government support back then. The flock that’s being led into the PAIS of milk and honey is in part running out of the ranks of CD. Will campaigning on a platform of hating queers and opposing sex education swell their ranks? Perhaps. But we are still a mostly Catholic country that’s a bit more tolerant than that.

Diametrically opposed, there is the Creemos (We Believe) party in formation. Prompted by gay rights activists, they say that they are centrist on some of the political and economic issues of our times and progressive on others, but they most emphatically want a secular state, with legalized same-sex marriages, sex education in the schools and anti-discrimination laws and policies that protect Panama’s various minority groups. There have been gay politicians and activists for years in Panama, who have tended to live in fear of exposure and who have been routinely betrayed by those whom they supported whenever it’s convenient. More than a response to the religious right, Creemos is the expression of a civil rights movement grown tired of depending on fickle mainstream parties and politicians.

A current CD deputy, José Muñoz, is collecting signatures to put a new party, the Alianza Por el Pueblo y Para el Pueblo (Alliance of the People and for the People) on the ballot. This new APPPP may have a populist moniker and a techie acronym, but the question is how many other CD deputies will jump on that bandwagon. The most ludicrous of the CD’s chronic turncoats, the self-proclaimed Sexual Buffalo Sergio Gáñvez, is making noises about joining the new Evangelical party instead.

Almost perennial candidate Iván Blasser is working to get the Union Nacional de Independientes (UNI, the National Union of Independents) certified as a party. If a lot of the civil society activists decide to take the plunge into electoral politics and that they need a party, this might be the vehicle that suits them. Or else they might just think that it’s another Blasser project that isn’t going anywhere. We will see if there are sufficient high-profile adhesions and endorsements to make UNI viable.

Then there are the actual independents. One of them sits in the legislature, former Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez, who got more votes than any other candidate for the legislature in 2014. Entertainer and former Tourism Minister Rubén Blades may come back to Panama to run for president, but his biggest hurdle will be convincing those who would disqualify him because he has mostly not been here. Economist and former Seguro Social director Juan Jované and his Independent Movement for National Refoundation (MIREN) may run again, but he’d have to convince people that this time it was to win the presidency or a caucus in the legislature rather than just bragging rights for who speaks for most of Panama’s left.

The situation is volatile, with nobody and no proposal having yet caught on in the popular imagination. So two years out it looks like a very big field in 2019, which ought to give the pollsters and pundits their share of headaches.

 

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The SoulFire Project

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The SoulFire Project — Musicians for Humanity

by Geordie Seed

They’ve been called gypsies, vagabonds and nomads. Personally, I don’t like the generalized undertone given to such terms. Simply put, these are wonderful people. The SoulFire Project’s energy is so infectious that fans follow them from town-to-town and venue-to-venue like groupies. I have become one of those people. Their music is fun, uplifting, diverse and well orchestrated – you can’t help but dance and sing along. The audience ranges from teenagers to seniors, each appreciating something in what they are seeing and hearing. Every performance is like a natural high and I, like many others, simply can’t get enough!

After seeing The SoulFire Project perform in Boquete, Panama for the second time, I felt compelled to know more about this unique collection of people, and approached lead singer and founder, Cooper Morgan. I was immediately struck by his graciousness towards me — a stranger. I could feel then that these people were special. I told him that I’d done some research on their band after their first performance and was quite taken by the power of their message. They are a selfless group who not only want what’s best for planet earth, but also those less fortunate. Since they’re about educating the world, I felt compelled to tell their story to create more awareness. Cooper agreed to give me all the time I needed and invited me to their bus community for a chat.

Parked on the outskirts of town, tucked away in a farmer’s field is where I found Cooper, his band mates (who include his mother) and their bus. This isn’t your ordinary bus — it’s one that has been re-engineered by Cooper and friends to run on recycled vegetable oil and solar power. When possible the crew captures rainwater for drinking and washing and wherever they camp they set up a composting toilet. All kitchen scraps are composted so they can be used as fertilizer. Basically, they walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk.

Cooper Morgan
Cooper Morgan.

Our discussion wasn’t about regurgitating the information currently in circulation about The SoulFire Project — I was more interested in communicating to the public about what these people are doing to enrich the lives of others. Rather than bombard Cooper with generic questions, I asked him to simply share what is most near and dear to their hearts. This is what he had to say. “What is most dear to our hearts is living and traveling in a way that conveys the message about thriving in community. That we live in a way that is as sustainable as possible.

That we help people when we can. Sometimes that’s in small ways, sometimes that’s in big ways. That we can live outside of the system as much as possible, using our impact and influence to create alternative ways and solutions. That there is a different way to live and every little thing we do has an impact.

While it may appear that this lifestyle is fun and carefree, it really is constant work to keep the project sustaining itself/moving forward. It’s always a balancing act between setting up and promoting shows, doing maintenance on the bus, collecting and filtering used vegetable oil, rehearsing, etc., and doing the kinds of projects that make our hearts pound.

The kinds of things we would like to do as projects are things that have a lasting impact. Being able to engage a community and show how doing something as simple as “bottle-bricking” can have immediate impact in two ways — cleaning up the garbage in their community, and building something they need built with “bottle bricks” filled with their “garbage”! Building a bicycle-powered water pump in a community where they currently use a gas-powered pump.

Playing shows for communities who don’t have the luxury of coming to a bar/restaurant to hear us play. Having the resources to do these projects more regularly is the dream that keeps us going.” These aren’t words spoken by a man merely trying to promote a band. I could feel the sincerity of his words from deep within, and these words are reinforced through completed projects.

Cooper stated that they wanted to be involved in projects that have a lasting impact. One such example involves generating electricity for a farming family of ten. Three years ago, The SoulFire Project was in Boquete for a series of performances. They needed a place to park their bus, so they struck a deal with the farming family, who to this day allows them to park in the spot where we conducted our interview.

It was during this stay that the band was invited to the farm house. The first thing they noticed was that the eight children had to do their homework by candle light. For many of us, it’s hard to believe that in this day and age a family was living without electricity. The band surveyed the property and felt they could tap into a natural water source. With the aid of a $20 bike dynamo (a mechanism used to drive the water wheel), a wheel found in a recycle yard, $6 in various PVC fittings and nozzles, and the purchase of four LED lights, a natural power source was created. It’s important to note that all the funding for this initiative came from the band. They barely make enough money to sustain themselves, yet they’re selfless enough to spend money on families in need. When Cooper described the exuberant expressions on the faces of the children experiencing electricity in the house for the first time, it gave me chills.

welcome to the machine
The bike machine

Other SoulFire projects include: building recycling bins for a school using bottles filled with waste materials (known as Bottle Bricking), building a solar oven, teaching children to play music, and educating others on how to adapt their vehicles to run on vegetable oil. By using recycled vegetable oils, generally acquired from restaurants, they’re saving the owners of the restaurants time and money and preventing them from disposing of the oils in an environmentally unfriendly way.

The SoulFire Project creates awareness through their shows, events, fans, club owners, and social media. Three years ago, they created an event called “Somos Más” — English translation, “We Are More.” This event was intended to create awareness and interest and to inspire others to be more sustainable. It’s all about education and we all could be doing more.

veggie oil power
Filtering the vegetable oil.

SoulFire played at Big Daddy’s outdoor venue in Boquete, Panama several hours after our interview. It was a night I’ll never forget. The band performed songs in Spanish, Portuguese and English. The venue was packed, the dance floor was vibrating, the band members were smiling and I felt like a teenager once again. With the audience screaming for an encore, the band played the always popular “No Borders.” The title says it all, and it also reinforces the band’s beliefs to live as one.

I caught up with Cooper after the show and he informed me the band would be leaving in two days for Bocas Del Toro, Panama. Since Bocas was on my travel list while in Panama, I booked a trip with the hope we’d cross paths again. During my second night in Bocas, our group took a boat taxi to the popular restaurant “El Ultimo Refugio” (The Last Refuge). As fate would have it, SoulFire was booked as the band for the evening.

On this evening, Cooper wasn’t the lead man. He was playing the box drum to allow room for an aspiring young female vocalist to display her talents. As the night progressed, two more locals joined — one fellow on the saxophone and a female violinist who appeared to be no older than seventeen. They were awesome! There are no egos in this group. It’s always been about, and always will be about helping and supporting others. Cooper said “I want to help more than I am now. It’s a necessity for me to incorporate helping people with my love of music.” Most of the band’s time is spent raising funds simply to survive. Imagine the positive impact if we could create a movement by coming together as a collaborative. For The SoulFire Project, it’s all about spreading the word about community and sustainability. With increased exposure and more contributions, there will be additional funds to assist more families and communities. If this band can live their lives unselfishly, it’s not too much to ask of the fans who enjoy their performances to donate to the cause.

Mahatma Gandhi once said “Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love. The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.” Whether you’re a lover of music, dance, people, sustainability, or planet earth, The SoulFire Project is a movement worth getting behind. I hope to see you there.

 

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Editorials, To successfully resist Trump; and Let the chips fall

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resistance

Americans: when you are done laughing, screaming and crying…

It’s hard to think of a more stupid course of conduct than Donald Trump and his minions have taken with respect to “the Russians.” You would think that whatever happened in the campaign, a president-elect, and then president, would have the sense to establish an arm’s length or more distance from foreign powers, especially from traditional rivals, for the sake of protocol if nothing else.

You don’t have to — and shouldn’t — buy into the neoconservative and “humanitarian interventionist” arguments in favor of a Cold War II with Russia to understand the caution that is due in US dealings with not only Vladimir Putin and his government, but the whole crowd of oligarchs and mafiosi upon whose shoulders Putin rose to power. If we are to be told as complete and truthful a story as we are owed, that story has get into Donald Trump’s direct and indirect ties with the Russian and Eastern European underworld and its diaspora as well as his and his surrogates’ dealings with the Russian government. The point of all that would not be to negate Trump’s campaign call for better relations with Russia, let alone get onto a war footing with that vast and well armed but impoverished country. It’s to guard US interests and institutions.

We are not talking about treason here. We are talking about major conflicts of interest, gross disloyalty and a cover-up as serious as the one that got Richard Nixon run out of the White House. Whether there were impeachable offenses is ultimately a matter for Republicans to decide, even if Democrats unanimously say that there were. Moreover, whether the United States would be very well served by the religious rightist Mr. Pence taking over the presidency from Mr. Trump isn’t an easy question to answer.

Eyes on the prize, Americans! There is an immediate preliminary battle in which many lives hang in the balance. The Republicans plan to cancel health care for some 24 million Americans, make it more expensive for most of the rest of the nation, and give the ultra-rich a $300 billion tax cut. That move can be defeated in the Senate, but only by massive popular demand.

Eyes on the prize, Democrats! Once our primary battles are over, we need to unite in 2018 and drive the Republicans out of control of the House of Representatives. This year and next we need to replenish our roster of presidential possibilities by electing many new Democratic governors and senators.

Eyes on the prize, Panamanian and US dual citizens! You may consider events in the USA to be far away and irrelevant to your life, but what Donald Trump is doing risks the safety and economy of the whole world, including trade-dependent Panama. If you have a US passport you should also have and use a US voter registration.

Nobody gets America out of this mess except ourselves.

 

Let the chips fall

Our comptroller general and high court magistrates aren’t chopping away at the Odebrecht scandal and other sordid legacies that haunt our daily headlines. Attorney General Kenia Porcell may or may not be, but she has little to show so far.

Nothing happening here? It may happen that the pile of chips will end up including the public lives of those who refused to chop when it was their duty.

 

Bear in mind…

 

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

 

So, centralism, army and absolute authority have been correlative ideas, inseparable, sisters like the Furies, designed to produce people’s ruin and humiliation.
Justo Arosemena

 

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

 

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Panama given a huge Odebrecht information windfall

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M. Odebrecht
Marcelo Odebrecht, doing time in Brazil, is singing for his freedom. The former CEO is accompanied by a chorus of current and former executives of the Brazilian-based construction conglomerate.

Swiss hand copies of Odebrecht’s bribe records to Panama

by Eric Jackson, from other media

Swiss prosecutors have sent four copies of a six-terabyte file, said to be the entire contents of the central bribe archive for the Brazilian-based Odebrecht that was captured in a raid on the company’s offices in Switzerland, to their Latin American counterparts. Panama’s Public Ministry is one of the recipients.

The archive, kept on a server and encrypted in the MyWebDay program, details billions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks paid in more than a dozen countries. Odebrecht’s bribes department, the “Structured Operations Division,” used a system of heavily encrypted and off-the-books communications called Drousys to discuss illegal payoffs, then eventually accumulated the records of their activities in at least a couple of central computer archives, one in Angola and later another in Switzerland.

Perhaps there was one in Brazil as well — when the scandals began to break in Brazil, computers and servers were shipped from there to Panama and have yet to be recovered. In any case, Swiss police conducted a series of raids on Odebrecht, its subsidiaries, partners and agents and sometime in 2016 recovered a server that they say contained the bribe archive. There were further raids, asset seizures and criminal prosecutions as the Swiss made progress on decyphering, understanding and corroborating information they found on the confiscated server. Now, according to reports in the Peruvian press, copies of the huge file have been sent from Switzerland to Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Panama.

In Brazil there have been some detectives, prosecutors and judges who are unwilling to protect anyone in the massive public corruption scandal revolving around the state-owned Petrobras oil company and a joint partnership between Petrobras and Odebrecht, the Braskem chemical company. Dubbed Lava Jato by Brazil’s police — Car Wash in Brazilian Portuguese — the scandal has taken down politicians of all major Brazilian political parties and some of the minor ones and spread way beyond Braskem and far from Brazil’s borders.

The 2015 jailing of Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht and his subsequent 19-year prison sentence, and threats against the company’s continued existence, have prompted a certain amount of cooperation with investigators in Brazil. The videotaped testimony to judges and prosecutors of many company employees runs into hundreds of hours and has resulted in criminal cases in several other Latin American countries. Seven Latin American republics — but not Panama — have requested the information from those depositions. It’s Panama’s for the asking, but whether we have the Portuguese translators or the budget to hire such is another question. Then there is the matter of whether there is a will to know.

In the United States, where Odebrecht operates and is known to have made payoffs to foundations and political action committees of politicians who were or would be involved in decisions about the company’s contracts, there was a prosecution for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a dozen jurisdictions other than the United States. There were non-disclosure agreements in a plea bargain that ended that case, but in part because of the insolvency of Puerto Rico and the demand of bond holders to know whether their interests were compromised by Odebrecht bribes to officials in that US-controlled island, the US court files in the case have been opened to the public.

The Swiss apparently followed independent records of electronic international and domestic Swiss banking transfers to identify and corroborate many of the transactions described in the seized server. The US National Security Agency would have all of those data as well.

Panama would now, in addition to the product of its own investigations — the profundity or lack thereof which is as per Panamanian law not public information — have the Swiss archive and access to the Brazilian testimony and the US court records. There is a long and established pattern of Odebrecht’s operations, wherein they paid politicians in power to rig bids in their favor and opposition politicians, would-be competitors and labor leaders to go along with their schemes. There have already been allegations from several quarters about figures in the Martinelli administration and members of the Martinelli family taking large bribes. The pattern would suggest, however, that the previous Torrijos administration and the current Varela administration were also corrupted, that all three major parties in Panama’s National Assembly were on the take and that construction industry and construction union officials were also paid.

This pattern of conduct may be the reason for Comptroller General Federico Humbert’s promise to investigate all Odebrecht contracts in Panama — 17 so far — being pared down to a perfunctory probe of just one of these projects, the Cinta Costera III. It is alleged by Humbert that the one controversial public work, with its viaduct around the Casco Viejo, was seriously overvalued. But it now appears that Humbert won’t undertake any investigation into the conduct of the Varela or Torrijos administrations. That, in turn, would give Attorney General Kenia Porcell the excuse not to proceed with criminal investigations because she can’t without the comptroller’s audits.

Are there political forces in Panama that are not bought by Odebrecht? Of course. They are derided as hopeless losers, as pendejos, by the “smart money.”

Might there be an end run around the political blockade? Perhaps if the Swiss archive and evidence from Brazil and the United States were obtained, analyzed and published in their entirety by some non-governmental group. But Panama has criminal defamation laws that would typically be invoked against anyone who publishes such stuff here.

 

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Perez, Week 9 of The Resistance

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Tom Perez
“They will face the consequences for their assault on our health care on Election Day.”

Resistance is growing

a message to the DNC and Democrats from Tom Perez

This week I rallied with Democrats in front of the US Capitol just before House Republicans cast their shameful votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, our efforts to stop them fell short, but our fight is far from finished.

The 24 million who could lose access to health care is not just a number — it represents fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and even newborn babies with heart diseases or cancers that are too costly to treat without affordable insurance. Worse still, the GOP plan would also decimate women’s health care in particular and defund Planned Parenthood. As the bill heads to the Senate, the DNC is firing on all cylinders, organizing Democrats and our allied groups to fight back. Regardless of whether or not Trump and the GOP succeed in repealing the ACA, they will face the consequences for their assault on our health care on Election Day.

On Democrats Live Wednesday night, DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison hosted Congressman Dan Kildee who represents Michigan’s 5th congressional district. They discussed the Flint water crisis, the Republican effort to roll back consumer protections and repeal the ACA, and how Democrats are fighting to help people who are still hurting in the aftermath of the financial crisis. You can watch their conversation here.

Folks from across the country have been submitting tens of thousands of questions and hundreds of thousands are viewing the DNC’s live broadcasts. Follow Democrats Live on Facebook, or at live.democrats.org.

Today we kicked off our inaugural meeting of our Unity Reform Commission. The Commission was established at our convention last summer to review our presidential nominating process, make recommendations to increase participation and inclusion in our primary and caucus process, and encourage more voters to participate. Veteran strategist Jen O’Malley Dillon and labor leader Larry Cohen have graciously agreed to serve as our chair and vice chair. You can find out more information about the commission and share your feedback here.

One of the most effective ways we can bring more people under the big tent of our party is to make sure we’re always telling the story of what it means to be a Democrat. We need to take our message into communities we’ve neglected for too long — whether they’re urban communities we’ve taken for granted or rural states we’ve written off. We can’t just talk about how Trump and Republicans are moving us backwards. We also have to share our vision for how Democrats will move us forward.

As our Party grows and changes to better serve the people we represent, our resistance against Trump and the GOP is growing too. From the Women’s March on January 21st to last weekend’s Climate March and the surging opposition against ACA repeal, millions of Americans are standing up and fighting back against an administration that is anathema to the values we hold dear. That energy shows no signs of waning, and we’re working every day at the DNC keep it growing.

We all succeed only if we all succeed.

Best,

Tom

 

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¿Wappin? Music for ruffled buzzard feathers

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PattiPatti Smith, performing a decade ago in Finland.

Music for ruffled buzzard feathers

Led Zeppelin – How Many More Times
https://youtu.be/pB8JXBTmHXY

Sin Bandera – Mientes Tan Bien
https://youtu.be/tg7QRlINFgQ

Eagles – Lyin’ Eyes
https://youtu.be/r5KtEToyWrI

Dido – White Flag
https://youtu.be/GvYarluqINA

Eric Clapton & Sheryl Crow – Little Wing
https://youtu.be/iEuVH_16vRg

P!nk – Just Like Fire
https://youtu.be/5Nrv5teMc9Y

Carlos Santana & Alicia Keys – Black Magic Woman
https://youtu.be/x7vuDgf_vMU

Marcia Griffiths – Steppin’ Out a Babylon
https://youtu.be/2b6WA-Bg64w

Orianthi & Lacey – Courage
https://youtu.be/fMw7YP4aPR0

The Beatles – A Day in the Life
https://youtu.be/usNsCeOV4GM

Zoé – Nada
https://youtu.be/eiUr2jNgHLA

Alanis Morissette – The Morning
https://youtu.be/ZIo9n_U2SMU

Patti Smith – When Doves Cry
https://youtu.be/5VfUZFPAC5k

Natalia Lafourcade – Mi Tierra Veracruzana
https://youtu.be/3ZIgdr0a07o

Bob Dylan – The Triplicate Tour concert in Amsterdam
https://youtu.be/hFrjJC70OGw

 

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Birds of Panama: the Cocoi Heron ~ Pájaros de Panamá: la Garza Cocoi

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the bird is the word
Foto por Kermit Nourse ~ Photo by Kermit Nourse

La Garza Cocoi ~ The Cocoi Heron

foto y nota por Kermit Nourse ~ photo and note by Kermit Nourse

Today’s bird from Panama is the Cocoi Heron, a species that can be found at the lakes, marshes and rivers throughout South America. Their average height is about 40 inches.

Pájaro de hoy de Panamá es la Garza Cocoi, una especie que puede encontrarse en los lagos, pantanos y ríos en América del Sur. Su altura media es de alrededor de 40 pulgadas.

 

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