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World Bank sounds the alarm over lost schooling

February 19, 2023

A working day in Anton as the COVID epidemic winds down. In the left-center background, partly concealed, we see someone with a formal job, a “lince” motorcycle cop, part of the rapid response to robberies and other violent crimes unit. The two men at the left are secretarios on local buses – they collect the money, direct riders toward their buses, help those carrying unwieldy bags stow their belongings so as not to take up seating space and in an emergency might be called upon to drive. These might be formal or informal jobs. Some of the secretarios – and the relatively few secretarias – are relatives of the drivers. The drivers are small business operators who generally own their buses, get their routes via politicians and organize themselves into cooperatives. There are two women selling lottery tickets. The economic crisis has brought on a large increase in informal work, which includes selling lottery tickets. Getting a lottery ticket vendor job tends also to depend on political ties, but with more of them around each plum becomes that less juicy. The young woman with a toddler? Raising a kid is work even it many people don’t count it as such and it’s not a paying job. The kid is too young to have missed school from the pandemic, but prenatal care and pregnancy and infant nutrition programs may have been affected in a way that can cause educational effects. (It’s a scandal that governments are loathe to admit – let alone quantify – but one of Panama’s big educational problems is children with learning disabilities that began with malnutrition of their pregnant mothers or during early childhood.) Then there are three dogs standing guard – conveniently around the corner from a fond, from which some generous person may bring them a morsel of food. There is also the hope that if some maleante tries to rob one of the vendors, one or more of the dogs will take umbrage and a bite out of the offender. The education and employment of dogs is and long has been neglected here – there are hardly any leader dogs for the blind in Panama, for one example. Photo and caption by Eric Jackson.

World Bank warns of lasting economic effects from COVID-disrupted education

by Eric Jackson, in part from other media

The World Bank? A quasi-public international institution that’s owned and controlled by government shareholders and since its inception around the end of World War II has been dominated by North American and European governments. The institution tends to follow the current fads of the capitalist world, usually with a little lag time. But it also informs governments, public and private institutions and individuals about economic trends it studies, so plays a role if forming public policy orthodoxies.

Since the 1980s the prevailing capitalist ideal has been neoliberal – free trade, privatization, subsidies and tax breaks for businesses and wealthy individuals, economic globalization more or less on terms set by multinational corporations.

Whether or not that paradigm ultimately comes crashing down, in the 21st century it hasn’t done so well. The power of the fossil fuel industries as climate change and its resulting calamities get ever worse. Persistent inequalities in turn cause labor strife and political consequences. Establishment as they may be, for years some of the sharpest and most insightful critiques of the neoliberal order come from within the World Bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund. These people are, after all, bankers who want to be fully informed about the odds of loans being repaid. Plus, the big international financial institutions are creatures of governments, whose leaders would prefer not to be run out of office when times get tough and constituencies get judgmental about it.

In the case of the COVID pandemic, the World Bank Group has issued an alarming report. They say that school closures during the lockdowns, and the exclusion of many students from online learning for reasons of no useful computer or no Internet signal in their homes, and their inability to acquire textbooks during these times, add up to an estimated 34 days of learning lost for each 30 days of lockdown. In Panama the bank points to job losses throughout the economy during these times and since, and a dramatic shift for those of working age from formal to informal employment.

Along with this there has been a spike in school dropout rates that has left us with some 267,515 “ninis” – ni estudiando ni trabajando, neither studying nor working – between ages 15 and 29. In that age group some 444,538 have found work, mostly at low-paying informal jobs with little opportunity for advancement. In the aggregate, in August of 2019, before the epidemic, unemployment for this age group was at 15% but by April it had climbed to 19.9%. In 2020 the gross income for this age group shrank 15%, and in 2021 another 12%. The bank warns that this has meant a drain on the entire work force’s skills that impedes a rapid and full economic recovery, and that for the individuals whose educations were disrupted there will be an estimated average 13% reduction of income over the coming few years and of perhaps 10% to 25% over their working lifetimes.

It’s not Panama alone in this jam, but we started out with poor national education achievement, as measured by the United Nations international student testing program, before COVID hit us. Worldwide, the bank reports, economic development has been set back decades by the pandemic.

So, what to do? The bank makes establishment-limited recommendations that the generations most severely affected may not accept. For education-deprived workers aged 19 to 24, subsidies to private businesses for a sort of apprenticeship program to make up for formal education, for those 15 to 18, some direct subsidies aimed at getting them back into school.

But WHO, in Panamanian society, are the people who have quit school and then made up for the deficits in their education? Labor leaders Saúl Méndez and Genaro López quit school to take construction jobs, but went on to study at night and get university degrees. It’s common enough in the militant SUNTRACS construction workers’ union that they have led. Less pronounced in Panama is an equivalent of the programs for the continuing education of women after they have left school to bear children, but in the United States and other industrialized countries those programs were promoted by the late 19th and early 20th century women’s suffrage movements.

Working class intellectuals? Labor at the forefront of an education movement to rebuild societies after a big disaster? That sort of stuff one would not expect on a bankers’ road map to recovery and it’s not there in the World Bank’s recommendations.

Nor does labor strife like what Panama saw in the middle of 2022 play much of a role in the bank’s calculations of the damage nor recommendations for repair. Even though one nearly worldwide reaction to the pandemic has been an upsurge in labor militancy. “Experts agree – you’re screwed” is something that younger working people may by and large refuse to accept.

The politics of such a rejection are also things about which bankers may not want to speak so loudly. From left and right, there are people who will blame the bankers for the bad economy.

It’s one of the key planks of neofascism in Panama, as embodied in the appeals of independent presidential candidate / PRD legislator Zulay Rodríguez Lu. Variants of the pitch will blame the Jews, or American expats for driving up the cost of housing, or migrants from other countries in Latin America for coming here and taking jobs away from Panamanians. Or the pitch might be to strip Panamanian citizenship and the right to live and work here from those who were born in Panama to foreign parents. This latter move would be something akin to what was attempted with respect to Zulay’s ethnic Chinese maternal grandparents under the short-lived 1941 Arnulfo Arias constitution.

Panama was one of the first Latin American countries to achieve near-universal literacy. There hasn’t been a need for anything like a students and teachers go out in the countryside to conduct a national literacy campaign movement as left-wing regimes conducted in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. But might we hear a variant of that from Panama’s communists, especially given that online teaching during the lockdowns was such a dud in rural areas with poor to nonexistant Internet service?

There are various segments of “the private sector.” Some rejoice at the failures of public education because it favors their kids against others of the same age. Others think about running a competent business and worry about finding skilled worker in order to be able to do this.

Color the World Bank serious, and pay attention to their warning. But that will not be the end of the discussion to which their report has added.

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¿¿¿ ??? Political mud / Lodo político

February 17, 2023
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Who and what is this?

questions by Eric Jackson

On the face of it there is the appearance that it’s one of Martinelli’s trolls. Attacks all the same people Don Ricky does. But this persona ATTACKS, rather than promotes. And from Panama City, FLORIDA?

There is the appearance of a pseudonymous persona puffed up on social media by bots, or by a legion of some party’s or candidate’s followers.

Doubt arises if one figures the Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal may become a convicted criminal who is ineligible to run for office next year. But in that case PRD deputy running as an independent Zulay Rodríguez, former National Assembly president Yanibel Ábrego and perhaps others may be angling to capture the presidency on the strength of Martinelli’s base.

AND, somebody might be flying a false flag, perhaps in search of drawing on a mistaken identification and ensuing criminal defamation case.

¿Quién y qué es esto?

preguntas por Eric Jackson

A primera vista parece que es uno de los trolls de Martinelli. Ataca a la misma gente que Don Ricky. Pero este personaje ATACA, en vez de promover. ¿Y de la ciudad de Panamá, FLORIDA?

Aparece un seudónimo inflado en las redes sociales por bots, o por una legión de seguidores de algún partido o candidato.

La duda surge si uno se imagina que el Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal puede convertirse en un delincuente condenado, inelegible para postularse el próximo año. Pero en ese caso, la diputada del PRD Zulay Rodríguez, que se presenta como independiente, la ex presidenta de la Asamblea Nacional Yanibel Ábrego y quizás otros u otras podrían estar intentando hacerse con la presidencia gracias a la fuerza de la base de Martinelli.

Y, alguien podría estar volando una bandera falsa, tal vez en busca de sacar provecho de una identificación errónea y el consiguiente caso de calumnia e injuria.

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Lula and the chance for a new trade system

February 17, 2023
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This is a moment that calls for renewed policies based on scaling up democracy in a profoundly participatory way. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva greeting supporters in Brazil. Photo by Ricardo Stuckert.

Brazil’s new Lula government is an opportunity for a new trade model

by Lucia Ortiz, Viviana Barreto & Natalia Carrau — Common Dreams

Change is afoot in Latin America. The region—battered by COVID, inequality and environmental crisis—is seeing a second wave of progressive governments elected, most significantly with the recent victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil. This is a unique opportunity for us to build a new trade model that puts people and the planet first. Stopping the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal is a good place to start.

Now Brazil is back, the priority is people over profit

In his election victory speech Lula outlined some of the government’s priorities. The focus was on fighting hunger and poverty, while also repositioning Brazil as a major player in regional and international affairs. Lula committed to re-negotiating the EU-Mercosur trade deal. He stated, “Brazil is back. We are back to help build a peaceful world order based on dialogue and multilateralism.” This will give a much needed boost to global human rights, climate action and diplomacy that have been under threat from the rising far right.

Initiatives from Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia indicate that the region as a whole is keen to discuss regional integration as well as the strategic economic and political foundations on which to base our relationship with the world.

Timing is everything. The world’s vulnerabilities have been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and further heightened by the impact of the war in Europe. A war which is now taking place in key countries for the supply of energy and raw materials for the agro-industry. This alone should inspire an interrogation of international economic relations and the dominance of transnational corporations in determining trade and investment flows and national production patterns.

While some politicians are trying to use Lula’s election as a reason to accelerate the ratification of the deal, now is the time to prioritize social needs, such as access to medicines, healthy food and the environment. It is time to confront the obsolete, neo-colonial and neo-liberal trade model, driven by the supply and market demands of European companies.

The winners and losers in the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal

The EU-Mercosur deal is a powerful symbol of the failed old trade model. In negotiation for over 20 years between Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay—known collectively as Mercosur—and the European Union, the trade agreement is beset by disagreements from both regions. It contradicts many progressive governments’ policies and election mandates. It would restrict reindustrialisation policies, undermine public procurement and open up the free trade in harmful products, thereby accelerating deforestation, climate change and human rights violations.

The treaty liberalizes trade tariffs, which will affect over 90% of the Mercosur goods portfolio. The London Schools of Economics sustainability impact assessment sees the beef, soya, derivatives, paper and beverages sectors as Mercosur’s economic winners and the vehicle, chemical, pharmaceutical and industrial sectors as the losers. Mercosur exports of ethanol from sugarcane production will also increase considerably. In Brazil the ethanol sector relies on huge concentrations of land, intensive agrochemicals and poor working conditions. This colonial legacy severely impacts the biomes and Indigenous Peoples of Mata Atlantica, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes. The trade deal also looks set to impact negatively on Uruguay’s dairy and beverage sectors.

It would also scupper the chance for Mercosur countries to develop public policies to value-added manufacturing and increase economic diversity, a particular problem for the newly elected Brazilian government. The EU has ruled out protection clauses for developing industrial sectors and the transfer of technology in investments. The agreement would open up state procurement, depriving countries of an important social and industrial promotion policy, thereby providing highly competitive EU companies with an extremely attractive market.

Far from resolving environmental concerns, this agreement will herald further expansion of the agricultural and extractive sectors, such as the energy mining sector, with inevitable impacts on deforestation, land grabbing, biodiversity, water, and food quality. This in turn results in increased violence against and displacement of the collective rights of communities. According to the report prepared by the Left in the European Parliament (GUE), trade with the European Union is directly linked to 120,000 hectares of deforestation in Mercosur countries. That is one soccer field of deforestation every three minutes.

The EU-Mercosur deal expands the private protection of intellectual property—increasing the protection provided for by WTO obligations. This will likely push up the cost of medicines while undermining technology transfer. The corporate-friendly text on the patenting of seeds and plant varieties reduces farmers’ rights to seeds and undermines food sovereignty.

A new trade model based on democracy and justice

Lula has repeatedly committed to reopening EU-Mercosur negotiations and is urging cohesion within the Mercosur block, in the face of threats by Uruguay to go their own way on trade policy. On the EU’s side some are racing to conclude the agreement as quickly as possible, while other governments want the deal stalled. Yet the new Brazilian government’s victory must set the scene for an in-depth evaluation of the treaty’s impacts, not just a whitewashing of some of its more delicate elements. The new balance of power within Mercosur underscores the need for profound changes, even in elements that form the backbone of the agreement, such as the space for industrial policy in the region. Lula is calling for renegotiation because the treaty does not respect Brazil’s development needs.

The EU’s proposal to improve the deal through a new protocol or environmental annex and other false solutions does not address the core unsustainability of the agreement. An example of a real solution would be to end the export of European pesticide agro-toxins (produced mainly by BASF and Bayer-Monsanto). Ironically these pesticides – a key part of the agribusiness global chain – are banned from use in Europe, but are exported for use in Mercosur countries’ agricultural sectors, the produce of which is then exported to the EU.

New progressive governments provide an opportunity for the Mercosur region to broadly discuss some of the treaty’s components that may have more harmful impacts on our development from a social and environmental justice perspective. It also provides us with the opportunity to discuss the trade models needed today for the region’s peoples and countries.

The challenges we face are enormous. This is a historical moment that calls for renewed policies based on scaling up democracy in a profoundly participatory way. This applies to the ways in which the countries of Latin America—which remain the most unequal in the world—integrate and build a common political space. Failed free trade agreements and corporate power have no place in the transformation of society. Justice and democracy must sit at the heart of politics.

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Rogers & Bendib, Don’t ban black history

February 15, 2023
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Politicians fire teachers and ban books, but more and more Americans are standing up against this effort to erase our history. Cartoon by Khalil Bendib — OtherWords.

Teach Black History — don’t ban it

by Tracey L. Rogers — OtherWords

When Republican President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976, he called on Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans.”

He also acknowledged that Black Americans had shown “courage and perseverance” when our country had failed to live up to its own ideals.

Today, even Ford’s simple words would be inadmissible in many American classrooms.

As of last year, at least 35 state legislatures had introduced bills to limit the discussion of racial history in their classrooms. At least 16 had passed them.

Over 300 books by predominantly Black authors are banned throughout the country. And educators are being fined, harassed, forced to resign, or fired for teaching about race.

Little acts like hanging a “Black Lives Matter Sign” in class can be grounds for termination. In Florida, keeping classroom books that haven’t been cleared by state censors can be grounds for felony prosecution.

As a result, teachers are finding it more and more difficult to teach about Black history without fear of repercussions.

As a Black woman, I am not at all surprised by these attempts to whitewash our history. If I were a politician obsessed with suppressing civil rights, voting rights, and racial justice, I too would probably want to make sure only my version of the story gets told.

These efforts aren’t new, either.

Despite progress made since the Civil Rights Movement to update the textbooks used in U.S. schools, “most mainstream social studies textbooks remain tethered to sanitized versions of history that mislead young minds,” writes fifth-grade teacher and Rethinking Schools founder Bob Peterson.

In a discussion with Color of Change president Rashad Robinson, journalist and Howard University Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones argued that this erasure is no accident.

Hannah-Jones, the 1619 Project founder, explained: “The same instinct that led powerful people to prohibit Black people from being able to read is the same instinct that’s leading powerful people to try to stop our children from learning histories that would lead them to question the unequal society that we have as well.”

It’s why politicians like Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are going to such lengths to ban Black studies in schools. The Florida Education Department and College Board recently rejected an AP African American History high school curriculum, claiming it “lacked educational value.”

DeSantis notoriously signed the so-called “Individual Freedom Act,” also known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” which states that “teachers are not allowed to make students feel ‘guilty about past discrimination by members of their race.’”

Much of Black history in this country isn’t easy to learn, teach, or digest — there is nothing comfortable about it. But the point isn’t to make students feel “guilty.” It’s to help them learn.

To be “woke,” or to “stay woke” — a term originated by African American communities in the 1940s — is to become “woken up or sensitized to issues of justice,” as linguist Tony Thorne told The Independent.

The state of Florida apparently agrees, defining “woke” in court as simply “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society.” But the state is manipulating the term, as if it were wrong or “progressive” to believe that systemic injustices exist.

Thankfully, many people aren’t fooled. Students all over the country, including in my home state of Pennsylvania, are protesting book bans on stories of color.

Overturning those bans would benefit kids of every color. “Having a diverse curriculum will benefit students in the long haul,” argues writer Nathalie Wilson, because it “helps them to better understand the complexities in the world.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Black history is complex. It is also American history. This Black History Month, don’t ban it — teach it.

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Dry season off in the distance

February 15, 2023
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From the pedestrian bridge between the Albrook Metro station and the national bus terminal, some salient natural and urban policy facts become noticeable. Here, in the treetops of Albrook, Clayton and the Metropolitan Nature Park, we see how some but not most of the trees in these forest fragments shed their leaves during the dry season.

The city’s sticks

photos by Eric Jackson

Panama’s capital city has a long and sometimes complicated history. How long? We’re just finding out. Spanish conqueror Pedrarias The Cruel gave it a name, but he set up the first European outpost on the Pacific Ocean on the site of an indigenous settlement that had been there perhaps a thousand years, maybe longer, and at the time of its conquest was locally known as a center for goldsmithing excellence.

That place got destroyed in one of the late reverberations of Europe’s Wars of the Reformation — Henry Morgan’s 1670-71 rampage — such that the new city center was moved to a more militarily tenable promontory that’s now the Casco Viejo. Eventually the city grew back from its new center to engulf the old, with roads, bridges, landfills, a railroad and a canal altering the cityscape.

The transforming set of events that set the city up for what it’s becoming today was the 1904 – 1999 existence of the Canal Zone, a US enclave that except for military bases that lingered for a couple of more decades, ceased its legal existence in 1979. Its formal incorporation into the capital district was the apple of many real estate developers, but at the time the ruling military strongman, General Omar Torrijos, was persuaded to leave most of the green areas off limits to the bulldozers and instead create a system of parks that’s the envy of many of the world’s capitals. Yes those battles still continue, but the crown jewel of it all, the commanding heights of Ancon Hill — visible looking the other way from the same footbridge from which these photos are taken — remains relatively natural in the face of proposals over the years to do foolish things like turn it into a theme park “just like Disney World.”

You can go to these parks and learn things about our tropical nature up close. You can also gaze from afar from the concrete, metal and glass “civilization” and learn some things about nature, history and urban planning.

Roads, parking lots, communication towers and city traffic — but further on, the green areas, and beyond that some of the skyscrapers. Your tastes, knowledge and economic interests might tell you which, in general, are the more valuable things.

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Toxicologists: Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned

February 15, 2023
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A toxicology report reveals a “great quantity” of the neurotoxin clostridium botulinum was found in the body of the leftist—who claimed he was injected while hospitalized just before his death in September 1973. Pablo Neruda photo by Jeso Carneiro.

Forensic probe confirms that Neruda
was poisoned after Pinochet coup

by Brett Wilkins — Common Dreams

Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel poet laureate, diplomat, and leftist politician who died days after Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power in a 1973 US-backed military coup, was poisoned to death, his nephew said Monday ahead of the expected publication of a new toxicology report later this week.

The revelation by the nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, confirms long-held suspicions that Neruda—an ardent communist—was murdered in the early days of Pinochet’s far-right dictatorship. Reyes told Spain’s EFE that laboratory testing showed a “great quantity” of clostridium botulinum—a neurotoxic bacteria that is one of the most poisonous known biological substances—in Neruda’s body when he died.

Reyes said that clostridium botulinum “would have no reason to have been in Neruda’s bones. What does this mean? That Neruda was murdered, there was an action in 1973 by agents of the state.”

“What does this mean? That Neruda was murdered, there was an action in 1973 by agents of the state.”

When the Pinochet coup occurred on September 11, 1973, 69-year-old Neruda was hospitalized with prostate cancer. While he was being treated, the poet made plans to go into exile in Mexico, where he had served as Chile’s consul-general in the 1940s.

A close friend of Salvador Allende—the democratically elected socialist president who was overthrown by Pinochet’s forces with the backing of US military, intelligence, and business organs—Neruda would undoubtedly have been a vocal critic of the right-wing dictator and a major thorn in the regime’s side.

Driver and bodyguard Manuel Araya has long said that a distressed Neruda called him from the hospital, claiming that someone injected him in the stomach while he was sleeping. Fearing the worst, Neruda left the hospital on September 23 and died hours later. His official cause of death was listed as the wasting effects of prostate cancer.

However, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, the Mexican ambassador to Chile at the time of the coup, said he saw Neruda two days before he died, and that although ill, he weighed 220 pounds, belying official claims of a “wasting” death.

A court-ordered exhumation and analysis of Neruda’s remains that began in 2013 and involved forensic scientists in four nations led the Chilean government to announce two years later it was “highly probable that a third party” was involved in the poet’s death. In 2017, an international team of scientists said they were “100% convinced” Neruda did not die of cancer.

During the early months of Pinochet’s rule, other prominent leftists were arrested, tortured, and murdered in a reign of terror whose victims ultimately numbered in the tens of thousands. The renowned folk singer and guitarist Victor Yara, for example, had his hands smashed by torturers who mockingly asked him to play them a song. Instead, he sang the protest song “Venceremos”—”We Shall Win”—before he was shot more than 40 times.

Neruda, who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature for “poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams,” was called “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language” by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, another Nobel laureate.

However, Neruda’s legacy has been reevaluated in the #MeToo era, as he described raping a Sri Lankan maid in his memoir. He also abandoned his first wife and only daughter when the child was born with a neurological disorder, and sexist themes in some of his work have been noted. Feminist pressure led Chile’s congress to cancel plans to rename the country’s main international airport after Neruda.

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Editorials: Sticky fingers; Tragedy; and Spooks and leaks

February 15, 2023
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Bomberos sent in to fight a massive toxic fire on Cerro Patacon without the needed equipment or the most basic protective clothing or breathing apparatus. Photo by the bomberos.

The health issues will be denied but the political rot won’t be forgotten

The morning that this photo appeared on social media, the lead story in La Prensa was about how the mayor, city council and a few top employees of Santiago, the provincial seat of Veraguas, passe an addendum to the city budget to divide a $260,000 tax-exempt pay raise among themselves.

The morning before that, La Prensa led with the tale of five no-bid contracts for Panama City’s Carnival celebrations being rejected by the comptroller general for crude disregard of the nation’s public contracting laws. Also above the fold in that issue was a story about how the National Assembly amended its own budget with a more than $86 million raise.

Yes, the most egregious members of the political caste will place the reports by media of various hues about what they are doing on a spectrum running from yellow journalism to organized crime. Then, if they act in accordance with traditions, they will pull some other self-interested fast ones during Carnival when few people are looking.

Will it degenerate to a faux-passionate set of arguments about who is better or who is worse? Probably it will. At the next elections, will we see a trend of distrust and disgust that sends most or many incumbent down in defeat? Panamanian history has precedents for that, too.

More than a year out from the next general elections, it’s smash-and-grab time, underway in earnest a bit earlier than usual. Public officials, both elected and appointed, are grabbing what they can when they can in anticipation of at least five years wandering in a political wilderness where the patronage streams run dry.

A crash between a bus loaded with some 60 migrants traveling from Darien to Gualaca and a minibus has, at most recent count, has left a death toll of 33. It’s awful. President Cortizo has led the nation with a proper and compassionate example of decency.

Awful tragedy in Chiriqui

Nito has said appropriate, compassionate things for the moment.

Already neofascist types are railing against those who were killed or injured. Discount or discredit what they say, perhaps, but we should NOT ignore the dangerous presence of such types in Panamanian society and electoral politics.

Then, from people who live in the area, come tales of how unsafe that road is. We need a dispassionate investigation of that, and whatever happens — let’s hope not a convenient and facile assignment of blame — Panama should get serious about road safety issues again for a change.

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The Martinelli regime orders a crime wave, back in 2011, notwithstanding court decisions that none of this ever happened. Part of a document released as part of #PegasusPapers international team journalism effort.

Is the editor this horrible spy?

The US intelligence agencies’ caution about protecting information sources and mean of gathering it is understandable but way overdone.

For starters, once information that had been secret is publicized at large and reasonably well confirmed, the pretense that it’s secret and only large corporations like The New York Times and The Washington Post may recount it or refer to it without being branded as traitors and subversives is grossly abusive. Over the years The Panama News has reported as best it can about things like the nature of Plan Colombia and its participants, the use of the former Howard and Albrook airfields for international military / political operations directed at other Latin American countries, the nature of the US-backed coup regimes in Honduras and Bolivia and so on. By loud proclamations and whispers, the American Embassy here has proclaimed that the editor is anathema because, as one diplomat said to leaders of Democrats Abroad, “We don’t represent the same interests.”

Earlier, a former US ambassador to here warned the editor about publishing diplomatic cables that were already in the public domain after being released via WikiLeaks.

But of course The Panama News is not the US Embassy’s press office. The press, when doing its job properly, is not a publicist under the control of any government.

However, a word of advice for Uncle Sam – use the intelligence agencies to actually promote democracy rather than overhrow it when Washington politicians deem it convenient to do so. Release the files that the NSA and others most likely have on Ricardo Martinelli’s electronic surveillance / hacking / sabotage of media operations. Publish things that authoritarian, totalitarian or merely thuggish governments or political operators have erased from the Internet onto the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. Help Panamanians make more informed decisions.

L.D. Barkely, second from right, among the inmate negotiators with the prisoncrats in the 1971 Attica prison rebellion. When Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the police to retake the prison, he was one of the men who were summarily slain.

We are men. We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed.

L.D. Barkley

Bear in mind…

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

Rebecca West

The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Arthur C. Clarke

I was beginning to learn that our poverty – the lack of the most basic human necessities – was not caused or altered by the will of any deity. The source of our misery was not in heaven but on earth.

Dolores Ibárruri

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¿Wappin? A buzzardly old man’s memories. May 17, 2024

A two-punch combination for Colon’s PRD mayor May 16, 2024

Mulino’s coming cabinet (part 1) May 16, 2024

Hightower, God bless the nurses May 15, 2024

Editorials: The coming government’s challenges; and When HE grows up… May 15, 2024

What’s in season in and around the public market in Penonome May 14, 2024

Egypt joins in accusing Israel of genocide at the World Court May 12, 2024

Storm damage – work to do but a small offset from wanted rains May 12, 2024

Polo Ciudadano, La izquierda panameña hoy May 11, 2024

STRI, Contabilización del carbono de los manglares May 11, 2024

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¿Wappin? A buzzardly old man’s memories.

May 17, 2024

A two-punch combination for Colon’s PRD mayor

May 16, 2024

Hightower, God bless the nurses

May 15, 2024

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If Norfolk Southern “can pay for lobbyists and politicians, they can pay to clean up the mess they made in our community,” said one local group. A derailed freight train is seen in East Palestine, Ohio. NTSB photo.

Investigation shows rail giant donated to Ohio governor a month before toxic crash

by Kenny Stancil — Common Dreams

¿Se conservan los bosques primarios en Darién, Panamá gracias a las comunidades indígenas Emberá?

por STRI

~ ~ ~

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World Bank warns of lasting economic effects from COVID-disrupted education

by Eric Jackson, in part from other media

Culecos de 2015. Foto por el Municipio de Los Santos.

Ya música típica

Jhonathan Chávez – Concierto del Aniversariohttps://youtu.be/VRPxNDs4sDo

Milagros Blades – Solo de Percusión Folklórica Panameñahttps://youtu.be/PhW1fpjU2Cg

Himno de Calle Arriba de Las Tablashttps://youtu.be/x-azMiC4-Vc

Margarita Henríquez – Mi Tierra Te Llorahttps://youtu.be/CSxNpzgPlsQ

Dayra Moreno – Soltera y Sin Compromisohttps://youtu.be/CrRPKV9MSns

Cumbia de los Pinzones – Cumbia del Norte de Cocléhttps://youtu.be/pXlLN0xBwwc

Murga La Explosiva – La HojitaHttps://Youtu.Be/Pa8kvqpxfhy

Meli Moreno – Ay, Mi Panamáhttps://youtu.be/DYpVZ3pyy0U

Prudencio Ramos – La Junta de Embarrahttps://youtu.be/gD4DVBciTuk

El Tambor de la Alegriahttps://youtu.be/KR_SJWLYN2g

Samy y Sandra Sandoval – Concierto Evoluciónhttps://youtu.be/Cb7uTIFTGok

~ ~ ~

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Who and what is this?

questions by Eric Jackson

¿Quién y qué es esto?

preguntas por Eric Jackson

~ ~ ~

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This is a moment that calls for renewed policies based on scaling up democracy in a profoundly participatory way. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva greeting supporters in Brazil.​ Photo by Ricardo Stuckert.

Brazil’s new Lula government is an opportunity for a new trade model

by Lucia Ortiz, Viviana Barreto & Natalia Carrau — Common Dreams

Now Brazil is back, the priority is people over profit

The winners and losers in the harmful EU-Mercosur trade deal

A new trade model based on democracy and justice

Politicians fire teachers and ban books, but more and more Americans are standing up against this effort to erase our history. Cartoon by Khalil Bendib — OtherWords.

Teach Black History — don’t ban it

by Tracey L. Rogers — OtherWords

The city’s sticks

photos by Eric Jackson

Roads, parking lots, communication towers and city traffic — but further on, the green areas, and beyond that some of the skyscrapers. Your tastes, knowledge and economic interests might tell you which, in general, are the more valuable things.

A toxicology report reveals a “great quantity” of the neurotoxin clostridium botulinum was found in the body of the leftist—who claimed he was injected while hospitalized just before his death in September 1973. Pablo Neruda photo by Jeso Carneiro.

Forensic probe confirms that Nerudawas poisoned after Pinochet coup

by Brett Wilkins — Common Dreams

Bomberos sent in to fight a massive toxic fire on Cerro Patacon without the needed equipment or the most basic protective clothing or breathing apparatus. Photo by the bomberos.

The health issues will be denied but the political rot won’t be forgotten

A crash between a bus loaded with some 60 migrants traveling from Darien to Gualaca and a minibus has, at most recent count, has left a death toll of 33. It’s awful. President Cortizo has led the nation with a proper and compassionate example of decency.

Awful tragedy in Chiriqui

The Martinelli regime orders a crime wave, back in 2011, notwithstanding court decisions that none of this ever happened. Part of a document released as part of #PegasusPapers international team journalism effort.

Is the editor this horrible spy?

L.D. Barkely, second from right, among the inmate negotiators with the prisoncrats in the 1971 Attica prison rebellion. When Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the police to retake the prison, he was one of the men who were summarily slain.

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Jhonathan Chávez – Concierto del Aniversario
https://youtu.be/VRPxNDs4sDo

Milagros Blades – Solo de Percusión Folklórica Panameña
https://youtu.be/PhW1fpjU2Cg

Himno de Calle Arriba de Las Tablas
https://youtu.be/x-azMiC4-Vc

Margarita Henríquez – Mi Tierra Te Llora
https://youtu.be/CSxNpzgPlsQ

Dayra Moreno – Soltera y Sin Compromiso
https://youtu.be/CrRPKV9MSns

Cumbia de los Pinzones – Cumbia del Norte de Coclé
https://youtu.be/pXlLN0xBwwc

Murga La Explosiva – La Hojita
Https://Youtu.Be/Pa8kvqpxfhy

Meli Moreno – Ay, Mi Panamá
https://youtu.be/DYpVZ3pyy0U

Prudencio Ramos – La Junta de Embarra
https://youtu.be/gD4DVBciTuk

El Tambor de la Alegria
https://youtu.be/KR_SJWLYN2g

Samy y Sandra Sandoval – Concierto Evolución
https://youtu.be/Cb7uTIFTGok

This is a moment that calls for renewed policies based on scaling up democracy in a profoundly participatory way. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva greeting supporters in Brazil. Photo by Ricardo Stuckert.

Forensic probe confirms that Neruda
was poisoned after Pinochet coup