A civil rights leader for our times

The days when African-American and Jewish leaders marched together for civil rights came and went. One of the oldest civil rights groups in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League, was founded in 1913 after the Ku Klux Klan lynching of a Jewish businessman in Atlanta. It’s now an international organization, with a small presence in Panama. The ADL mainly defends Jews against defamation, discrimination and violence but also speaks out against all sorts of bigotry and racism.

Both Jews and Gentiles can and do argue about the ADL’s stands with respect to the human rights policies of Israel. However, we should recall that back in 1985 when Palstinian-American activists Alex Odeh was killed in a bombing of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in Los Angeles, the ADL was one of the first non-Arab organizations in the United States to call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice — something that has yet to happen.

Now, to the cheers of racists and bigots, including some who are Jewish, Donald Trump calls for a registry of all Muslims in the USA. But Jonathan Greenblatt, who heads the Anti-Defamation League, stood up before a meeting called to fight anti-Semitism and said: “I pledge to you right here and now, because I care about the fight against anti-Semitism, that if one day in these United States, if one day Muslim-Americans will be forced to register their identities, then that is the day that this proud Jew will register as a Muslim.”

A USA that is in dark times that will get darker needs civil rights leaders to avoid such a registry and many other threatened affronts to human dignity and equality. Greenblatt advises well on which way Americans of good will, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, ought to go in the face of injustice. Let us hope that if such a registry is created by the Trump administration, there will be a long line of Americans at the US Embassy here, demanding inclusion on that list.

Panama’s own constitutional gun issues

Did President Varela get rid of a minister who repeated US gun sellers’ false advertising and tried to make it Panamanian government policy? Good for him. Here the constitution says that weapons of war may not be privately possessed and that citizens’ and foreign residents’ rights to keep other sorts of firearms are subject to regulation by law. The US Second Amendment does not apply here.

But Panama’s constitution also, but a 1994 amendment, says that we have no army and that our national defense is to call civilians up to a militia commanded by the National Police in times of emergency. The constitution provides that Panamanians must take up arms in case of war, and allows no exceptions for religious or other sorts of pacifists.

The reality is that our National Frontier Service (SENAFRONT), our National Aeronaval Service (SENAN) and parts of our National Police have become de facto military forces under the tutelage of US forces whose presence here is protected under secret agreements and rarely acknowledged. Whether we want to openly have a military again is a proper subject to debate when drafting a new constitution. With Donald Trump coming to power in the USA, whether we want to continue this military relationship with the United States or look instead to our Latin American neighbors for training and expertise is something to look into regardless of any constitutional considerations.

But what if we keep the presently prescribed scheme, and try to make it something more than a dead letter? That will, as a practical matter, require every citizen to acquire military skills. Pacifists who will not make war ought to have the other skills needed to be called up as paramedics, firefighters or so on in the event of a national emergency. The ordinary Panamanian adult would need to have undergone basic military training and know how to fire, clean, disassemble and assemble an assault rifle. Warfare would have to be studied in the schools.

There are good reasons for a nation that’s not very warlike to reject the requirements of a working militia system and instead rely on a small military caste. There are also good reasons not to have a military force, and even better ones not to be subject to a foreign army. Panama has suffered too much under men in uniform, both foreign and domestic. Surely there is no perfect answer, but there can be no acceptable one without addressing some realities that are omitted in the present constitution’s passages about arms.

Bear in mind…

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Panama and Donald Trump

by Marco A. Gandásegui, hijo

Panama and the United States have had a difficult relationship for more than a century and a half. To an increasing extent the Isthmus of Panama was turned into a fundamental piece in the expansion plans of North American capitalists. The construction of the trans-isthmian railroad (1850-1855) and the Panama Canal (1904-1914) were strategic in the consolidation of an empire that extended over a continent and into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Later Panama was turned into an enormous military base for the US wars against Japan (1941-1945) and later, Korea and Vietnam (1951-1975). The bases of the old Canal Zone also served to intervene in and invade all of the countries of Latin America, turning it into the US “back yard.”

Over the course of more than 175 years Panama has done battle with dozens of governments and their executives. The cousins Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, the Bushes (father and son), Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan are some of the best remembered, for good and bad. Presidents of the United States have masterminded invasions, coups d’etat, assassination conspiracies and mockeries of the Panamanian people.

The US president-elect, Donald Trump, appears on the horizon as a novel and unpredictable political phenomenon. For the financial world the businessman is a question mark — his rhetoric against the misnamed “free trade” has shaken stock markets on all continents. President Juan Carlos Varela, answering a question about Trump’s election, failed to come up with a coherent answer. The Panamanian government still has no policy to deal with the next White House tenant.

Washington has had a very clear policy about Panama since the 1989 invasion. How to collate this US position on Panama with Trump’s ideas? It is a question whose answer we will come to know, as they begin to square (if they fit) the foreign policy objectives of the new administration.

US foreign policy has had three objectives in Panama since the 1989 invasion. First, to assure that traffic through the canal is not interrupted. Second, for Panama to serve as a launching pad for its militaristic policy on the regional level. At the same time this is useful in its “War on Drugs” policy. Finally, for Panama to develop along the neo-liberal guidelines of “the Washington Consensus” that were specified in the free trade treaty that was signed by both countries. Politically, the United States has delegated the responsibility to govern the country to a small Panamanian elite. That elite has done very poorly, speculating with the extraordinary income that running the Panama Canal generates, running up a growing debt and destabilizing the political regime with a growing corruption that’s a product of militarization. In 20 years they have ruined agriculture and industry, destroyed the health and education systems and allowed the system of representative government to fall into the hands of an insatiable mafia.

President-elect Donald Trump has no personal interests in Panama, only his name on one of the hotel towers that adorn’s the capital’s skyline. Five years ago Trump did opine about the Panama Canal and the way that the 1977 negotiations that allowed its turnover to the Panamanian government turned out.

In a 2011 business visit to Panama City, Trump said that “Panama is doing very well with the canal, there are so many workers, there is so much employment — to think that the United States stupidly gave up the canal in exchange for nothing.” Trump does no more than to insistently repeat what President Reagan said after the Torrijos-Carter treaties were signed in 1977 until the day he died. A Panamanian government minister predicted (with great skill) in 2011 that what Trump intended with his statements was to launch his candidacy for the presidency of his country. Incidentally, the city council declared him persona non grata for those remarks.

Following the logic of his campaign, Trump could ask Panama to contribute part of its income, based on canal tolls, to the “War on Drugs” (increasing arms purchases from the United States, building more air and naval bases with US materials and training more repressive forces at the still-existing School of the Americas. He could also demand that Panama eliminate its few remaining tariffs so as to inundate its market with imported farm products, definitively destroying Panamanian agriculture.

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Don’t be an idiot

So, you are distraught about what has happened to your country, and you’re thinking about moving to Panama?

If it’s about Brexit or Trump, probably those ads showing Panama as this country of blondes is not what would impress you. Neither should all that ridiculous real estate hype disguised as news in International Living or publications like that. Don’t be an idiot.

Do you want to be a mirror image of the influx of the Rick Wiles zombies, not sharing their weird right politics but thinking about coming to a country that doesn’t have immigration or labor laws that apply to you, just picking up and moving as if from another state to Oregon or another neighborhood in London? Don’t be an idiot.

Do you think that it’s viable to live in an English-only bubble here, eating only the foods you know from back there, expecting services to be the same, learning nothing other than possibly contempt about other cultures and going about your life as if nothing is different? Don’t be an idiot.

Panama is an independent country, maybe not as independent as it ought to be but a distinct place nevertheless. It takes getting used to. It takes some acclimation. You need to understand that if where you are now there are ugly people who are vicious to foreigners, there is a small element here that would take similar stuff out on you, and one of them just became the leader of the women’s branch of Panama’s biggest political party.

So you have enough money to surmount all of that in Panama? It ought to be enough to insulate yourself where you are.

We are a tropical paradise and a Third World hellhole. We are what the people here, citizens and foreigners, make of us. If you are a disheartened citizen of where you are who is thinking about fleeing to Panama, do so with your eyes wide open and your nonsense alarms turned on. If you are a criminal thinking about fleeing to Panama, just don’t because you are not wanted by the people here and you won’t be able to keep it secret for very long.

Welcome to Panama. Don’t be an idiot.

A list of lame duck chores for Barack Obama

1. Clean up the political prisoner messes. Free Leonard Peltier. Commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence. Drop all charges against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Don’t just close down the prison at Guantanamo, abandon that military base to Cuba to which it really belongs.

2. Put the TPP, TTIP and TiSA “free trade” negotiations out of their misery.

3. Oversee a dignified transition, and prepare to be a dignified senior statesman as you get on with the rest of your life

4. Relax. You have earned it, Mr. President.

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