Risk of a collision between Panama and the USA

by Marco A. Gandásegui, hijo

The interests of the North American financial center, whose seat is in Manhattan, with all of their global ramifications as well as Washington’s political interests, are not alien to that which is regularly published in The New York Times. Panama and the rest of the world’s countries are systematically caricaturized by an establishment that seeks to mystify and cover up their blacked out financial transactions that ever more serve to underdevelop people around the world.

A little while ago USAID (a US government agency) and others pointed out the papers of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, with its headquarters in Panama. Later the US Department of the Treasury put the spotlight on the Waked Group of companies, which was put on its “Clinton List.” More recently the Times washed all of the Panama Canal Authority’s dirty laundry with respect to the canal expansion (and in passing that of the country).

That last coverage was full of half-truths. It’s the same institution that published the Times reports attacking Noriega between 1987 and 1989, that opposed the Omar Torrijos foreign policy, that put its spin on the January 1964 student insurrection — and we can go back accumulating examples into the 19th century.

The reporting about the contradictions that characterized the canal modernization attempts to belittle the Panama Canal’s expansion and take advantage of the weaknesses that surrounded the megaproject. It started with the group that won the contract to build the new locks. It ended with the composition and dubious reputation of the ACP board of directors. On the way it visited the doubts about the new locks’ engineering. All of the rumors circulating among the workers gave the Times take a spicy flavor.

The Wall Street bankers, who still feel like they are the owners of the interoceanic waterway, face major competitors both on the global scale and on the isthmus. They are very weak here, almost out of the contest. In the first place, the international community wants to see a canal that’s capable of satisfying the trade demands of the countries on the shores of the world’s two biggest oceans. At the forefront of this sentiment is the waterway’s second largest user, the People’s Republic of China. One quarter of their exports — especially to the USA — depend on the Panama Canal.

Also out of it is the Panamanian government, absent and incapable of confronting any US intelligence and information offensive. Panama was militarily invaded in 1989 and since then has has no autonomy from Washington’s policies.

If the Panamanian elite don’t react intelligently to the American attacks in the short term, they will have to face a crisis similar to many others that are well known over the last 160 years of ur history. This crisis represents dangers, but also opportunies. But what are the opportunities of which Panama might take advantage?

There are several ways out of the trap that the United States has set for Panama’s dysfunctional oligarchy — and in passing, for all Panamanians. The first is that some sector can unite the different social sectors of the country around a clear and precise objective that identifies a national project. The elite seem to have that ability.

The second is to gather the countries of the region in a conference or alliance that undertakes a careful analysis of the relations between Panama and the United States. Something like the “Torrijista Way,” or the 1826 proposal of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, who convened the Anfictionic Congress in Panama City, with plenipotentiaries from all of the recently independent republics.

Third would be to take the problem (with all of the intelligence information about it) to the United Nations, where countries like China and others would have a voice that would allow Panama to face the United States with more opportunities than it presently has.

The Americans and their mouthpiece, The New York Times, know that the Panamanian oligarchy is divided and at this point are fighting among themselves over the lucrative business of the proposed port at Corozal on the canal’s southern entrance. Their myopia only lets them see the glitter of gold that the land along the canal represents.They do not realize that there is a whole country that’s eager to work and build a nation that will benefit its future generations. The oligarchy has to give up the helm before it’s too late.

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La salud no debe depender de rifas,
colectas, bingos o tamaladas

por la Comisión Médica Negociadora Nacional (COMENENAL)

COMENENAL informa a sus bases Médicos, Odontólogos, Veterinarios y a todo el país.

Hoy vemos en las noticias como sigue adelante la camita que recorre el país “Unidos de Corazón”.

1. Esta vez era para recolectar donaciones por más de 350,000 $ para poder mandar a operar a Colombia a 13 niños panameños que necesitan urgentemente cirugías cardíacas.

2. Vemos como la solidaridad impregna a la mayoría del país que dona, como en otras tantas ocasiones para salvar vidas de compatriotas.

3. Pero hoy la noticia es dolorosa. Uno de los niños ha muerto y su padre con lágrimas habla de que sigan adelante aunque su hijo ya no esté.

4. ¿A que punto hemos llegado? Que, como decía un colega nuestro “la salud de nuestro pueblo depende de rifas, colectas, bingos o tamaladas.”

5. La salud de nuestra gente no puede depender de rifas, colectas, bingos o tamaladas.

6. La salud según nuestra Constitución, es responsabilidad del Estado garantizarla.

7. Entonces, como es posible que hemos llegado al punto de tener que recurrir a colectar 350,000 para 13 niños, y uno ya no está; mientras las autoridades de Panamá permiten el despilfarro de los recursos de la CSS.

   1. Han permitido sobre costos en compras directas y no toman medidas radicales para solucionar el problema.

   2. Han permitido excesos de compras de cantidades de medicamentos e insumos que se pierden simplemente porque no habría forma humana de gastarlos antes de que se venzan.

   3. Siguen permitiendo el alquiler de ambulancias con sobrecostos.

   4. Siguen permitiendo Primas de productividad que agotan los escasos recursos y son solo un Show para decir que hacen algo, mientras que las moras de citas, cirugías y procedimientos siguen exactamente iguales.

   5. Permiten que liciten más obras de cemento que no podrán servir mientras no haya el personal de salud adecuado, como sucede en el “Chicho” Fábrega de Veraguas. ¿de qué sirve hace más construcciones?!!!! Solo lucrar.

   6. Permiten que quieran destruir hospitales que están en pie para favorecer a alguien con construir otro nuevo, mientras no contruyen el bendito puente para conectar los viejos hospitales con los nuevos.

   7. Permiten “errores de equipamiento de ascensores” para tener que hacer adendas para comprar más. ¿para qué? ¿Por qué no exigir a la empresa que corrija el supuesto “error”?

   8. Contratan suministros de compañías brujas que compran a maquilas de países asiáticos, donde sus insumos no tienen registro sanitarios siquiera para usarlos en los países de origen.

   9. Contratan compañías formadas espuriamente para una licitación de equipos e insumos que luego no tienen buen desempeño y dicha compañías desaparecen del mapa, incluso sus hojas y catálogos de internet.

   10. Permiten que se liciten cocinas supuestamente de línea fría, que no lo son, y con sobrecostos exorbitantes.

   11. Pretenden contratar para ello una compañía de ventas de “repuestos de autos y de insumos hospitalarios” ¡¡¡!!!!!!!.

   12. Primero fue cambiar el contrato de los pasajes de avión a COPA, con lo cual los pacientes llegan a Tocumen muy distante a los centros de destino: ION, Complejo Hospitalario, etc.

   13. Persisten en financiar las Hemodiálisis externalizadas (privatizadas) con lo cual se acaban los recursos.

   14. Persisten en financiar las OEs (organizaciones externalizadas) que atienden planes de salud de miseria en las comarcas. Y que luego de 20 años no han impactado en los resultados de salud de esas regiones. Al contrario ahora la mortalidad infantil y la materna son peores en esas áreas.

   15. Ahora quiere alquilar aviones (como alquilar ambulancias) para chárter para trasportar pacientes a la capital. Y SIGA SUMANDO GASTOS INNECESARIOS DE LA CSS. Y de seguro harán cálculos matemáticos y financieros que demostrarán que es ventajoso hacerlo. Al fin y al cabo son economistas.

   16. Y luego no saben de donde les cayó el espantoso desabastecimiento que aun persiste.

   17. PERO NO TENEMOS 350,000 PARA 13 NIÑOS (ANGELITOS) PANAMEÑOS. ¿??!!!!

   18. Solo los 2 primeros ítems representaron sobrecostos por casi 180 millones de $.

Si gastamos tanto en despilfarro, por ello luego no tenemos para nuestra gente lo que necesita. COMENENAL denuncia que esto es inmoral.

1. Inmoral de los regentes del país.

2. Inmoral de los regentes de la salud.

3. Inmoral de los diputados que recortan todos los años el presupuesto de la nación, sobre todo en salud. Y luego se dan golpes de pecho, pidiendo ¿porque no hay médicos en Cuidados Intensivos permanentemente?

4. Y es inmoral que haya que mandarlos a otro país, no creemos las condiciones aquí.

5. Esta cantidad tan irrisoria debió salir en última instancia de la partida discrecional de la Presidencia. Sino debió salir de la partida de la primera dama que tanto se preocupa por el cáncer, pero no por 13 angelitos de nuestro pueblo. Esta irrisoria cantidad debió salir de la CSS y del MINSA. Pero dicen no hay porque siguen guardando para sus contratos dirigidos.

COMENENAL llama a todo el pueblo, a la Sociedad Civil organizada, a todas las organizaciones decentes y honestas del país, a levantarse en lucha en contra del despilfarro y corrupción en la CSS, en el sector salud en general, y contra la inmoralidad que prefiere ver morir a los hijos de otros sin hacer nada. Ya es suficiente y no hay pueblo que lo resista 100 años.

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I never stopped learning from Tom Hayden

by Mark Rudd — from his Facebook page

Last week, reading in the NY Times about Bob Dylan’s having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, one quote struck me, “We’re terrifically lucky to be alive at the same time when he is.” I always felt the same way about Tom Hayden. His death is devastating in the same measure as the enormity of his contribution.

I first came across Tom Hayden when I read The Port Huron Statement (PHS) in 1965, a freshman at Columbia just learning about SDS. Though SDS’s founding document had been a collective product, Tom, the first president of SDS, was the principal author. His prose and his clear logic knocked me out: Port Huron was a critique of the Cold War and anti-communism, a call for party realignment into true left and right, most of all, for me, a blueprint for a role that students could play in creating social change. It even included a vision of something called “participatory democracy” to replace the sclerotic passivity and hopelessness of our political system. I decided to join the Columbia chapter because these SDS people were so damned smart. Over the years 1962-1969 hundreds of thousands of students read Port Huron and responded in the same way.

I think I first met Tom in the summer of 1967, right after the Newark, NJ, riots, at SDS’s community organizing project house there. Tom patiently explained to me, a kid from the all-white Newark suburbs, about the misery that had caused the riots, and also why he was organizing there: to help bring into existence “an interracial movement of the poor.” His quiet idealism was downright infectious.

Less than a year later, in April, 1968, Tom responded to Columbia SDS’s call for organizers to come to the building occupations against the university’s institutional racism toward the Harlem community and its participation in research in support of the war in Vietnam. Tom had already been to Czechoslovakia to meet with Vietnamese from the National Liberation Front and in a short few months had been instrumental in teaching so many of us in SDS about the nature of the American aggression against Vietnam and the Vietnamese resistance. He immediately joined “the Math Commune” (located in Mathematics Hall) and offered his expertise in chairing endless meetings discussing tactics to hold the building as well as strike strategy. His leadership style embodied the ideal of participatory democracy, insisting that all sides of every question be heard. Paul Cronin, the documentary filmmaker who has been laboring for the last 10 years on a comprehensive film record of the 1968 Columbia Strike, called A Time to Stir, is in possession of remarkable footage of Tom leading meetings in Math. I hope he can get these broadcast or up on the internet. Paul also has footage of members of the Math Commune commenting on how important and inspiring Tom’s democratic style was to them.

After the police bust, Tom wrote an article about Columbia for New Left Notes, the SDS weekly out of the Chicago National Office, the title of which was “Create two, three, many Columbias.” (Always thinking strategically, Tom appropriated Che’s famous rallying cry, “Create two, three, many Vietnams”). And that is precisely what SDS and students all over the country did for the next two years.

The early summer of 1968, Tom began visiting Columbia SDS to recruit for the Democratic National Convention demonstrations in August. Again, his vision of masses of people protesting the war and racism outside the convention proved infectious, as hundreds of us went out there, often serving as leaders in the streets for the many thousands of unorganized kids who joined. Those demonstrations raised awareness of the mass desire for peace, challenging the party that had given us the war. When Tom and seven others were eventually charged with conspiracy to riot, SDS jumped to their defense.

I only learned years later that Tom had been a friend and supporter of Robert Kennedy at the same time as he was organizing the mass demonstrations. Clearly, his pragmatic side had coexisted with his militant radical side. Anyone else might have seen this as a contradiction–indeed, most of Columbia SDS had rejected what we called “McKennedy” (Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy being the anti-war candidates) reformism for “voting in the streets”–but Tom had no problem in exploring both strategies. In retrospect I honor him for it.

A few days before the opening of the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 8, in September, 1969, I went to hear Tom speak on the case at the University of Chicago. I distinctly remember being struck by his quiet, almost anti-charismatic style. The opposite of a rabble-rouser, his clear explanations embodied a democratic humility and trust in his listeners. His was a leadership style that built other people’s leadership. I suspect he was first exposed to that democratic vision back in 1960-1962 while working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, in the South. Miss Ella Jo Baker, the brilliant mentor of SNCC, a lifetime organizer against segregation and for black freedom, had always insisted on participatory democracy as both a goal and a method.

Tom was close with most of us in Weatherman and the subsequent Weather Underground, but he always insisted on his right to differ with our strategy while at the same time lending support. This is a complicated subject, one I don’t wish to rehash at the moment, but if you’re interested, take a look at the heartfelt essay on his relationship to us which he included in The Long Sixties, published in 2009, in which he summarized 50 years of movement experience. In a nutshell, he understood and was sympathetic to those of us who were driven crazy by our country’s mass slaughter in Vietnam.

I watched Tom’s career as an representative to the California State Assembly, realizing over the years that he had adopted an electoral strategy toward building the mass movement. This was at a time when most of us ex-New Leftists were stuck either in single issue organizing or, much worse, the complete waste that was Marxist-Leninist party-building in the Seventies and Eighties. Through his example Tom was showing us how important it was to have leftists in elected office. I often wonder whether, had more New Leftists bit the bullet and followed Tom’s lead into the party, we would have been stuck with the neo-liberal center-right Clintons and the Democratic Leadership Council which have dominated for over 25 years. At least it would have been a fight for the soul of the party–which, in fact, is only coming into the open now with Bernie’s candidacy. The key thing, though, is that Tom was always thinking about strategy toward power, real power, unlike so many of us who preferred the purity of being on the outside.

Tom helped found Progressive Democrats of America, an organization which was instrumental in convincing Bernie Sanders to run. In a famous piece in the Nation, however, Tom explained why he was supporting Hillary Clinton against Bernie in the primary. His reasoning is worth looking at: we had no real socialist movement to take power behind Bernie — that movement is still to be built. Also, most of his African-American friends were pragmatists voting for Hillary because they knew her, and knew nothing of Bernie on race matters. Lastly, he advocated a mass movement to push Hillary to the left after the election. All ideas worth considering.

I last encountered Tom in May, 2015, at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam anti-war movement in DC, “The Power of Protest,” an event that he had helped organize. There he presented a brilliant analysis of how we built a mass movement that helped win the end of the war. I just read in the LA Times obit that Tom has a book on the subject to be published in 2017. Always teaching strategy.

If you want to get a good view of Tom’s life in the movement, and of his thinking on movement building, take a look at The Long Sixties. He spends the first five pages of the introduction outlining a theory of how mass movements grow, win, and then decline. Then the rest of the book is an explication based on his fifty years experience. A theory of mass movements is an incalculable contribution to our work of developing strategy. I have no doubt that we’ll be learning from Tom Hayden long after he’s gone.

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Video por El Kolectivo.

Sobre la persecución y acoso contra ambientalistas

por el Movimiento Independiente de Refundación Nacional (MIREN)

Considerando

1- Que en los últimos tiempos se ha estado acrecentando el acoso y la persecución política y judicial de las compañeras dirigentes ambientalistas Ligia Arreaga en la provincia del Darién y Larissa Duarte en la provincia de Chiriquí, respectivamente.

2- Que las compañeras mencionadas son representantes genuinas de las luchas populares de resistencia en defensa de las tierras y aguas que son objeto del despojo y la rapiña de los poderes político y económico, que hoy tratan de arrinconar y condenar a nuestro pueblo a la pobreza y la desesperación, por la falta de oportunidades para gozar de una vida digna.

3- Que lo sucedido con las compañeras Arreaga y Duarte forma parte de un intento de criminalizar la protesta y la lucha por la defensa de los recursos naturales. Autoridades y terratenientes se unen para que las comunidades que luchan por sus derechos se sientan atemorizadas y amenazadas de sufrir represalias.

Resuelve

1- Alzar nuestra voz de protesta y estar vigilantes en contra de la persecución y acoso de que son objeto, las compañera Ligia Arreaga , coordinadora de la Alianza por un Mejor Darién, quien fue obligada a abandonar el país después de recibir amenazas contra su vida por parte de terratenientes que atentan contra la integridad del humedal de Matusagaratí. Igualmente, brindarle todo nuestro apoyo y solidaridad a la compañera Larissa Duarte, dirigente del Movimiento Campesino en Defensa del Río Cobre (MOCAMDERCO).

2-Movilizar todos nuestros recursos y contactos con otras organizaciones fraternales y solidarias, nacionales e internacionales, para garantizar la defensa, tanto legal como física, con el fin de que se respeten los derechos de luchar y resistir que tienen las compañeras, como genuinas dirigentes del movimiento popular.

3- Denunciar e informar en cada evento en que participan miembros del MIREN, ya sea por medios radiales, conferencias, reuniones u otra forma, sobre los atropellos y abusos de los cuales son víctimas los defensores del ambiente, en especial quienes luchan por la sobrevivencia del humedal de Matusagaratí.

Juan Jované
Secretario general

Raúl González
Secretario de Organización

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