Hillary is tough. Hillary is courageous. She will fight to make our families safer. In the White House, she will stand up to the gun lobby.
Former Representative Gabby Gifords
I’m from a small town in South Texas and if you know your history, Texas used to be part of Mexico. Now, I’m ninth generation American. My family never crossed a border, the border crossed us.
actress Eva Longoria
Truth be told, the richest thing about Donald Trump is his hypocrisy.
former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
The youth has been on the right side of history on every issue.
actress Rosario Dawson
Bernie really had a movement out there, and it wasn’t right to treat him that way.
Senator Harry Reid
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Slaves that worked there were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.
Fox television show host Bill O’Reilly about the slaves who built the White House
Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead.
NRA board member Charles Cotton blaming The Reverend and State Senator Clementa Pinckney and the AME Church’s beliefs about guns in their sanctuaries for the murders of Pinckney and eight others by a racist
You know, you’re not allowed to use hairspray anymore because if affects the ozone. You know that, right?… You know hairspray’s not like it used to be, it used to be real good.
Donald Trump
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Dr. Arnulfo Arias, three-time president of Panama who was thrice overthrown by military coups, and once or twice denied the presidency by electoral fraud. The symbolism of him being larger, calmer and above everyone else is, sadly, more than just a sculptor’s impression.
Lest we forget — as the monument would have us do
photos and captions by Eric Jackson
Located in Balboa on the site where the feared DENI secret police had headquarters that were destroyed in the 1989 invasion, the Arnulfo Arias monument was erected during the administration of his widow, Mireya Moscoso. That courtship began when Arias was 53 and Moscoso was 15, and when she was elected president in 1999 there were people who thought that they would be getting the talented if controversial Dr. Arias, or someone like him. The nation was disappointed.Racism glossed over. Arias traced his political roots to the 1920s Accion Comunal movement, whose members used to dress up in KKK robes and advocated the expulsion of all Panamanians of Afro-Antillean, Asian or Middle Eastern ancestry. On his way to the presidency he served as public health director and in that role advocated the mass sterilization of these populations. Later he was an ambassador to Mussolini’s Italy, struck up a friendship with Adolf Hitler, and soon after becoming president promulgated the 1941 constitution that stripped all Panamanians of non-Hispanic West Indian, Asian, Arabic and Sephardic Jewish ancestry of their citizenship, no matter if they, their parents and their grandparents were born here. The plaque calls it a defense of the Spanish language and the promotion of “our culture and traditions.” In October of 1941, with US aid to the British coming from West Coast ports through the canal and German U-boats waiting just outside the Colon breakwall, Franklin D. Roosevelt instigated a coup that deposed Arias because at that point the United States was not ready to tolerate one of Hitler’s friends running Panama.The demagogue is so charming, so witty, so funny when he’s crude. And after memories of hard truths fade come the heroic monuments. So it is in Panama, so it is with sites that extol the virtues of the Confederate rebellion against the United States. Do you wonder why African-Americans tend to be annoyed by those? And does it strike you as a sad infringement of freedom of expression that many countries that suffered under Nazi tyranny make it a crime to deny that the Holocaust ever happened? The battle over history is a battle over the present and future, here and everywhere.
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por el Movimiento de Adecentamiento de la Universidad de Panamá (MOVADUP)
En cualquiera de sus modalidades, el terrorismo implica la muerte o avasallamiento de inocentes que nada tienen que ver con los motivos de los conflictos que dan origen a este crimen. Pero el análisis no se limita a la clasificación de los “actos terroristas” según una visión convencional que distingue, por ejemplo, el asesinato, el atentado, el secuestro o el asalto. También se refiere a enfoques retorcidos que aparentemente se repelen con respecto a los que son a su vez construidos por los rivales, pero que confluyen en brutal complicidad.
En el mundo occidental, se entiende mucho de las bajas acciones que perpetran los llamados “grupos terroristas”. A ellos corresponde la clasificación convencional de los crímenes que realizan. Suelen reivindicarlos con sus nombres, sustentarlos en posiciones calculadamente fanatizadas de tipo ideológico o religioso y perpetrarlos a través de personas dispuestas a inmolarse. Es un terrorismo de la impotencia y la desesperación que es propagandeado como justicia y martirio por quienes lo llevan a efecto. Valores retorcidos, humanidad perdida…
En cambio, para la opinión pública de las naciones donde suelen estar afincados estos grupos, quienes practican el terrorismo son las potencias occidentales. Estas no solo perpetran las actuaciones de la clasificación clásica, sino que, al contar con ingentes recursos militares, económicos y políticos, van desde el chantaje y asedio económico contra países y pueblos que no comulgan con ellas a la amenaza de guerra y a acciones militares directas. Estas últimas son las más detestables, pues las bombas que lanzan desde barcos o aviones no distinguen entre quien sea “terrorista” y quien no lo sea. A los perjuicios así ocasionados los llaman “daños colaterales” y son maestros del eufemismo para dar nombres digeribles a las mismas acciones perversas: la tortura es “interrogatorio”; los asesinados, “bajas”; al chantaje económico le llaman “sanciones” y al secuestro, “captura”.
Terrorismo hay tanto de grupos irregulares como de gobiernos e incluso, si se practica continuamente por varios de estos en una misma jurisdicción nacional, sin que sus leyes y pueblos logren impedirlo, “de Estado”. Este es el caso de Israel, Francia, Gran Bretaña, Rusia y Estados Unidos y en ello no se diferencian esencialmente de Boko Haram, Al Qaeda o el ISIS. Esta coincidencia no es casual. A ambos enfoques retorcidos les conviene la zozobra internacional en donde la competencia geo-estratégica y económica de las potencias y sus Estados espoliques promueve a los grupos terroristas como instrumentos de su ambición financiados generosamente por ellos, o en elementos cuyos deleznables atentados sirven para infundir el miedo en los países occidentales que justifique acciones como derrocamientos e invasiones por petróleo (Libia, Irak), burdas venganzas con mal disimulada intención imperialista, (bombardeos franceses en Siria) o para tomar a países en conflicto como escaparates de sus armas sofisticadas (como han hecho EU y Rusia).
Se trata de una simbiosis brutal e inhumana. Ante el público proclaman hipócritamente repelerse, pero se necesitan mutuamente. Coinciden en un hecho importante: la manipulación de las mentes deseducadas, propensas a fanatizarse o a convencerse de que son enemigos los que en realidad resultan ser los mejores aliados. Duro es el trabajo para ello, pero la rebelión contra esta inhumanidad debe provenir de los pueblos del mundo entero. Estos no deben dejarse envolver, asustar ni manipular más ni por el fanatismo ni por la propaganda. El sentido crítico de una educación para la libertad debe ser el más formidable instrumento contra quienes manipulan las conciencias de los pueblos. ¡No al terrorismo! ¡Ya no más fanáticos estultos ni Estados rapaces! ¡Recordemos a las víctimas y luchemos por la paz!
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June 26, opening day for the new locks. A month later, the Panama Canal Authority said that this is “normal.” For a larger version of this photo click here.
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It’s back. This time, the rabiblancos, politicians and crooks want the “right to be forgotten.” As inProposed Law 11, which would be a new press gag law. Any natural or juridical person, public officials and political parties not excepted, could complain. There would be no right to a day in court, only a summary finding based on a complaint to the National Public Services Authority (ASEP). No need to claim that the item sought to be erased is false — “imprecise” or “not updated” would suffice, and no proofs would be required. The authority could summarily fine a small website $10,000, that is, shut it down in most cases.
Does The Panama News publish an analysis or opinion piece that states that the Panameñista Party’s founder was a friend of Adolf Hitler’s who stripped Panamanians of Asian, non-Hispanic West Indian and Middle Eastern ancestry of their citizenship? It’s absolutely true but the president’s political party could say that because such an utterance did not contain the party line denying all of that, a website that publishes such a thing could be forced out of business. Does The Panama News publish an article that notes that the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) was founded by a dictatorship that killed or disappeared dozens of its opponents? That’s also true, but the party could shut down this website over it. Does the La Prensa investigative team uncover a bribery and kickback scheme? An anonymously owned company that was absolutely involved in such a thing could move to get the story summarily erased from the Internet.
The law proposes extraterritorial effect, which would be enforced by blocking access from Panama to certain search engines, databases or websites. Like, for example, that bastion of online history andbane of fraud artists, TheWayback MachineInternet Archive .
Introduced nearly four years to the day after Ricardo Martinelli went before an international audience and pleaded for global legislation to erase the criminal record that he was then compiling from the Internet, Panameñista legislator Melitón Arrocha is up to the same thing. The legislators might pass it, but probably won’t. The president might sign it, but his wife is a journalist by trade and he probably won’t. If it is passed and signed, it might be upheld by Panamanian courts — in the past those sorts of questions have sometimes been decided on the basis of bribery, partisan passions or political influence rather than on law — but by treaty any decision would be subject to an appeal to the Inter-American Human Rights Court, which would be unlikely to uphold such a law.
One never knows what the politicians and courts might do here, though, and press organizations are not taking any chances. A joint communique by two corporate press organizations, the Forum de Periodistas and the Consejo Nacional de Periodismo, hits three main points. First, they note the proposal’s vague provision that allow a wide range of censorship without any judicial recourse. Next, point out the law’s purported extraterritorial reach which, among other things, would purport to erase certain infamous facts about Panama from the global record. Finally, they cite the internationally recognized right of a people to their history, their collective memory.
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The 2016 Central American Percussion Festival
August 19 – 20 in Panama City’s Casco Viejo
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Our campaign has always been about a grassroots movement of Americans standing up and saying: “Enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.”
I just finished speaking at the Democratic National Convention, where I addressed the historic nature of our grassroots movement and what’s next for our political revolution.
I hope that I made you proud. I know that Jane and I are very proud of you.
Our work will continue in the form of a new group called Our Revolution. The goal of this organization will be no different from the goal of our campaign: we must transform American politics to make our political and economic systems once again responsive to the needs of working families.
We cannot do this alone. All of us must be a part of Our Revolution.
When we started this campaign a little more than a year ago, the media and the political establishment considered us to be a “fringe” campaign. Well, we’re not fringe anymore.
Thanks to your tireless work and generous contributions, we won 23 primaries and caucuses with more than 13 million votes, all of which led to the 1900 delegates we have on the floor this week at the Democratic convention.
What we have done together is absolutely unprecedented, but there is so much more to do. It starts with defeating Donald Trump in November, and then continuing to fight for every single one of our issues in order to transform America.
We are going to fight to make sure that the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party becomes law. This means working for a $15 federal minimum wage, fighting for a national fracking ban, and so many more progressive priorities.
The political revolution needs you in order to make all this happen and more.
Hundreds of supporters of sex education in the schools march toward the legislature. Their crowd was not as big and the July 13 march against it, but then supporters of the proposed legislation did not shanghai church school students to march either. Photo by El Kolectivo.
The sex ed battle rages on
by Eric Jackson
A coalition of groups that support sex education in the schools gathered after work and marched up Via España to the legislature on July 25. First among equals were the professionals, including psychologist and secular government advocate Celia Moreno and pediatrician and La Prensa columnist Xavier Saenz Llorens. The march also included former First Lady Vivian Fernández de Torrijos, former legislator Teresita Yániz de Arias and Panama United Way president Marcela Eleta de Brenes.
The argument about sex education in the schools has been ongoing in legislative proposals since 1999, with church-led groups always managing to get any serious proposal killed in committee. (The occasional suggestion of religious-based sex education has always foundered amidst infighting among Catholics and Evangelicals against a backdrop of secular government advocates who outnumber each of those religious factions.) At the end of the last legislative session the proposed Law 61 mandating sex education in the schools was first shorn of its references to guidebooks created under the auspices of the United Nations Population Fund and then passed in committee. (The suggested literature is being separately discussed and developed in the Ministry of Education.) But since the committee approved the proposal and sent it to the plenum for consideration the legislature has been fragmented and barely functioning. Although the new session started on July 1, only on July 25 were 10 of the National Assembly’s 15 standing committees installed. During the weeks of dysfunction the Panameñista caucus announced that it would support the legislation being sent back to committee, but there has been no vote on that and it’s not certain whether that caucus or the legislature as a whole would vote to do that. If the Panameñista caucus sticks together on the issue there would probably be enough PRD and Cambio Democratico votes to send the proposal back down.
When a sex education proposal gets sent back to committee in order to reach a consensus it has tended to disappear at least for a few years, but this time the majority in favor of sex education in the schools is more pronounced, with a mid-July Dichter & Neira poll showing Panamanians supporting it by 56 to 43 percent. If it gets sent back to the committee from whence it came — the Labor, Health and Development Committee — in its new configuration that panel includes Law 61’s proponent, physician and PRD deputy Crispiano Adames, committee chair Jorge Iván Arrocha, Mario Lazarus, Fernando Carrillo, José Castillo, Iván Picota, Juan Carlos Arango and Ana Matilde Gómez. There is a reasonable chance that the committee will pass it again and send it for a showdown in the entire legislature.
While those in favor of sex education were preparing their late afternoon gathering and early evening march, the Catholic Archdiocese was hosting a press conference with the leader of the Red Vida y Familia Ecuador, Amparo Medina, a right-wing activist who has led her country’s movement against sex education, birth control, abortion, gay rights and recognition of the transgendered. She was giventime on TVNto promote her argument against sex education in Panama. There and at the press conference she was misidentified as a former aide for the United Nations Population Fund, which afterward issued a statement that she never worked for them. One of her claims is that sex education would do nothing to reduce the spread of the human papiloma virus or herpes because those maladies are spread by sweat rather than sexual contact — a claim that drew sharp rebukes from Dr. Sáez-Llorens.
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