The ACP board of directors. They are short-handed due to a resignation — which was NOT one of the four members who have been named in criminal investigations or unflattering audit reports. ACP Photo.

The qualifications for ACP board members

by Marco A. Gandásegui, hijo

The Panama Canal continues to be the centerpiece of any analysis of Panamanian reality. As a result of a negotiation – really an imposition — made at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States built the waterway that connects the two largest oceans on the planet. From 1914 to 1999, the canal was administered by the United States, based on the global geopolitical interests of that northern country. In 1999 the waterway, and all of the infrastructure that accompanied it, was transferred to the Panamanian government once the Torrijos-Carter Canal Treaty signed in 1977 was fulfilled.

Since 2000, the canal has been managed by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), a public company whose sole shareholder is the Panamanian people. Canal revenues are almost entirely the product of tolls paid by more than 14,000 ships — of all sizes — that pass through their locks annually. In 2018 it had revenues that exceeded $3 billion. Nearly half went directly to the coffers of the Panamanian Treasury to be incorporated into the national budget.

Despite this enormous wealth that the treasury gets every year, little is known about how the canal is managed. The ACP is about to get its third administrator. It has a board of directors made up of 11 members. The board appoints the administrator. Of the members of the board, nine are appointed by the President of the Republic for a period of 10 years. Another is the Minister of Canal Affairs. There is also a deputy elected by the National Assembly. The board of directors should be accountable to the sole shareholder of the sanal: the Panamanian people. Every year in the National Assembly – which according to the Constitution represents the people — the president of the board of directors of the ACP delivers a check that leaves everyone astonished by the huge sum that it represents.

But who are the members of the board of directors? Are they prepared to fulfill their obligations? Are they at the service of the country or do they have other agendas?

It is up to the current president — Juan Carlos Varela — to appoint three new board members before he hands over his office to his successor on July 1, 2019. Like the last four presidents, everything indicates that he will select them under pressure from powerful economic interests. The members of the board of directors handle billions of dollars from canal revenues and related activities. Most do not have much knowledge about the waterway. Some do not know it at all. Many come to the ACP with another agenda.

What are the qualification that the members of the board of directors should have?

Let’s make a list of six basic areas with which the chosen one should be familiar. If she or he meets the six qualities mentioned below, that makes an excellent candidate for the position of director. If five traits are found, that’s very good. Those who can handle four are good or acceptable. Those who only have three or less they are unacceptable.

• The first quality is that to know the details of world maritime trade. This incudes the projections of world production and maritime technologies. It includes knowing the importance of commercial routes.
• The second quality is to have knowledge the security of the 9,000 ACP employees. Not just workplace safety, but their levels of education, health, pay scales and prospects for the future
• Third, a director should know the details of how that complex structure that is the canal is maintained.
• Fourth is a good knowledge of the watersheds that feed the canal the water that ships need to travel from one ocean to the other. In addition, urban growth and its impact on the waterway.
• Fifth, knowledge of how to guarantee expeditious access to financial resources so as to be ever more autonomous.
• Finally, the director should have a working knowledge of geopolitics and of the interests of the great powers, in order to maintain the neutrality of the canal and the country in a conflictive world.

Obviously, the board of directors should have naval engineers, environmentalists, economists and financiers, labor lawyers, international relations specialists and sociologists to be in a position to supervise the entire operation of the canal. At present, these are conspicuous by their absence. President Varela can fill that void. He can choose new directors from among his school friends or his fellow party members, as Panamanian presidents usually do. Provided that they master at least four or more of the qualities mentioned above.

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Found in Panama City’s Parque Natural Metropolitano. For a higher resolution photo click here.
Se encuentra en el Parque Natural Metropolitano de la ciudad de Panamá. Para una foto de mayor resolución toque aquí.

The White Shouldered Tanager ~ Tangara Hombriblanca ~ Tachyphonus luctuosus

photo / foto © Kermit Nourse

My friend Eric Jackson from The Panama News says tanagers don’t like to be photographed and that is especially true about this species. which never seems to stay put for long. This tanager is far ranging from Guatemala deep into South America, in central Brazil and northern Bolivia. Another common Spanish name for it is Tangara Luctuosa.

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Mi amigo Eric Jackson de The Panama News dice que a las tangaras no les gusta que los fotografíen, y eso es especialmente cierto sobre esta especie. Lo que nunca parece quedarse por mucho tiempo. Este tangara está muy lejos de Guatemala en el sur de América, en el centro de Brasil y el norte de Bolivia. Otro nombre común en español es Tangara Luctuosa.

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La Niña Guna 5″ x 7″

Paintings, a lesson and upcoming workshops with George Scribner

Shanghai Disneyland

I wrote an article for a painting magazine about the experience I had painting the construction of Shanghai Disneyland between 2013 and 2016. It was an amazing journey. Here’s the article:

https://www.outdoorpainter.com/plein-air-painting-shanghai-disneyland/

“Big Man on Campus” – Chickens in Panama! 9” X 12” — SOLD

Antillana con bandana roja.

And speaking of painting from photographs…

MINI LESSON TIME:

A few tips on painting from photos …

1. Try to paint from a computer screen vs a printed image. The problem with most printed images is the darks go very dark and the lights flare out eliminating all detail and washing out the color. Another advantage of working from a computer screen (or tablet or cell phone) is you can tweak the image, adding more light and color particularly in the shadow areas. The colors in a printed image tend to disappear.

2. These are the three steps I take in a computer before I paint from a photo.

A. CROP

We generally try and paint too much. Make the painting about something – crop in on a center of interest. If you have to work from a printed image use inexpensive mats to crop. These are from Michael’s.

Don’t forget, the photo is just for reference. not to be taken literally. Edit out what isn’t important.

B. LIGHTEN

Lightening your image will reveal more color in the shadow areas and more closely reflect what your eye sees. Shadows have a lot more light and color in them because other objects and colors are being reflected into them. It’s easier to see this using a computer.

You also don’t need a humongo desk top system to prep your photo. The editing software on both the iPhone and Android phones (or tablets) make this pretty easy.

C. SATURATE

Use your editing program to add more color to your image (don’t overdo it, a little bit goes a long way). I try to create emotion in my work and color is probably your most powerful tool. I always warm my photographs in my computer (yellows and orange) before I paint them, it always adds more appeal to your work – my personal preference.

I cropped in on the shot below to what I thought was important, eliminating detail in the background and adding more color and emotion. Note how much warmer the overall painting is.

“Dead Slow II” – A ship in the Panama Canal during rainy season. A very rainy season… 9” X 12” — My thanks to Mark Goodrich for the title.

“The Miraflores Approach” 12” x 16” Painted on Commission

A southbound ship prepares to enter the last set of locks before entering the Pacific. The Panama Canal is roughly 50 miles long with locks on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The locks raise ships 85 feet above sea level to a man made lake in the middle of the isthmus. I go to Panama at least once a year and try and paint on location. I’m still blown away by this extraordinary engineering feat built over 100 years ago.

WORKSHOPS

SONOMA

I’ll be doing a two day Beginner to Intermediate Oil Painting workshop at the Sonoma Community Center, April 27th and 28th. If you’d like to enroll, please contact Liz Treacy at liz@sonomacommunitycenter.org. Look forward to seeing you!

I’ll be doing another oil painting workshop in Montrose in June. If you have any interest let me know.

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The Banco Nacional de Panamá — a strange hybrid from the start.

Abdul Waked’s claim isn’t the only scandal, but it’s for double the amount of the National Bank of Panama’s cash on deposit

Supreme Court to hear potentially bankrupting suit against the BNP

by Eric Jackson

The Supreme Court’s Civil Bench has agreed to hear a lawsuit against the National Bank of Panama (BNP, by its Spanish initials) in which the Lebanese-Panamanian businessman seeks $1.268 in damages. The BNP has paid-in capital of only $650 million.

The claim is that when the US Treasury Department denounced the existence of a “Waked Money Laundering Organization” the BNP determined that Abdul Waked’s businesses were “commercially dead” and allowed creditors to freeze or seize those companies’ deposits in the bank. But the US conspiracy theory never held up in court. In fact, as to Abdul Waked there were never any civil or criminal charges brought. US courts ruled that he had no recourse, nor any right to see any evidence against him. As to his Lebanese-Colombian nephew Nidal Waked, criminal charges for drug money laundering were summarily thrown out by the US courts and in the end Nidal pleaded guilty to accepting a loan from a US bank for one purpose but spending it for another. As that loan had been repaid, the sentencing judge rejected federal prosecutors’ demand for a long prison term.

Meanwhile Abdul Waked was forced by US sanctions that included threats against those who did business with him, combined with the BNP’s denial of access to his assets to sell of much of his business empire at a loss. The big prize for Uncle Sam was the forced sale of a majority stake in the La Estrella and El Siglo newspapers, in favor of an expected to be pro-US new ownership that was vetted by the American Embassy. Abdul Waked’s lawsuit is about the business losses forced upon him by the bank’s actions.

The bank’s lawyers and fellow bankers are arguing that the suit is invalid first because the BNP had a greater duty to claimed creditors than to its depositor, second because the bank is the government’s, and third because bank employees are immune from liability for things that they do in furtherance of government policies.

Why such short reserves, and just what the BNP is and is supposed to be are relevant side questions.

Especially so, when there are multiple concurrent scandals and a long history at the bank. Top of the news lately is how some 318 checks in favor of about 35 persons, coming from at least 29 legislators, were drawn against a National Assembly payroll account at the BNP in the aggregate amount of some $808,000. All of these checks went through a single cashier and the supposed beneficiaries are denying any knowledge and even more adamantly having received any money. Prosecutors are leaning on the cashier but the ordinary prosecutors and courts have no jurisdiction over legislators. The Supreme Court investigates, tries and sentences legislators, while the National Assembly investigates, tries and sentences high court magistrates. There has for many years, with only a few exceptions, been a non-agression pact between the two institutions. Thus it may be that one corrupt bank cashier will take the fall for dozens of corrupt politicians — but for the latter the equation may change dramatically starting on July 1 if the voters oust many or all incumbent deputies in the May elections. 

And what IS the BNP? In many respects it’s considered a sister institution to all of Latin America’s central banks. But unlike those, and unlike the Federal Reserve in the USA, the BNP doesn’t issue currency. Coins, and sometimes corrupt games that get played with issuing those, yes. But the Panamanian balboa is the US dollar. In that sense the Fed is Panama’s central bank and has been since 1904. Shorn of major responsibilities of their regional counterparts, the political patronage appointees who head the BNP have over the years been less committed to considerations like prudence, due diligence and ethical standards.

Deeper yet, the scant resources on hand at the BNP are a function of Panama’s serious public debt. Yes, you can read all this purchased “journalism” about the Panamanian economic miracle, none of which will mention that Ramón Fonseca Mora of Panama Papers infamy was President Varela’s chief of staff at the start of the current administration. Nor does this genre of story mention the money laundering house of cards that much of Panama’s business scene actually is. And is US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatening retaliation against Panamanians who do business with the Chinese? Look at how precarious Panama’s main public bank is, and then figure how that plays into US fears of China coming in dangling attractive lines of credit.

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Kafu Banton, from his Facebook page. Photo by Josue Arosemena.

Weekend wanderings
Paseos de fin de semana

Enrique Guzmán y Los Teen Tops – Pensaba En Ti
https://youtu.be/oBNzSu8MOeE

Frank Zappa – Cheap Thrills
https://youtu.be/U4D0vmVdrOg

Rocky Sharpe & The Replays – Rama Lama Dong
https://youtu.be/0HhA0Cghr4k

The Devotions – Rip Van Winkle
https://youtu.be/ryPksnix2yw

Santana – Do You Remember Me
https://youtu.be/WvA9d6n7Jzg

Atom – Great Gig in the Sky
https://youtu.be/kK0rpKOEAt0

Sia – Bird Set Free
https://youtu.be/eVaAnOCKT20

Beyoncé – Broken-hearted Girl
https://youtu.be/V2DE23erSts

Amy Winehouse – Back to Black
https://youtu.be/e7biK-o0MN0

Café Tacvba – Eres
https://youtu.be/0AtsoFxe96M

Alicia Keys – No One
https:/youtu.be/vBqXwVM_qRw

Marina – Handmade Heaven
https://youtu.be/GiOGlYjKgX8

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
https://youtu.be/hlI49yRnkvQ

Kafu Banton – Cuando se viene de abajo
https://youtu.be/o6VGdIU8FfI

Aswad – The BBC Sessions
https://youtu.be/RjZL592mh0I

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Enough of this corruption

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The Panamanian government, given present-day power brokers’ lack of will, does nothing – in reality – to diminish or eradicate the corruption that has become entrenched in each and every sphere of this country.

Within this degenerative process, the scourge of corruption ever more the consumes highest public officials and the top managers of private enterprise. Uncontrolled, it permeates all social sectors, creating explosive situations of exclusion and injustice.

The lack of means for citizen participation, on the other hand, contributes to the absence and ineffectiveness of control mechanisms needed to contain the local Odebrechts and their accessories within the machinery, such as the Comptroller’s and the Attorney General’s offices.

Electoral populism is fully and busily engaged. It’s a fraudulent tournament of corny tricks promoted by the three electoral magistrates and co-sponsored by their buddies in the courts and the legislature. Any desire to empower the citizenry to participate in national events through the full exercise of our rights is totally repudiated by misnamed “political class.”

Whatever civic preventive action through inspections, observers or demands for accountability in the face of multiple cases of corruption is not contemplated by any of the candidates. This warns us that “change so that nothing changes” has hijacked the process.

Day by day, we live in a “democracy” that has been hijacked by a few, for a few, and to the detriment of the great majority that’s reduced to being spectators rather than actors.

The participation of citizens in different spaces is urgent. To do this, organizing ourselves around a constituent process will allow us to better defend the public interest and strengthen civic action. “No to reelection,” for example, goes hand in hand with no more corruption.

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US Air Force building the air base in Meteti, Darien in 2010.

Is SENAFRONT there to defend Panama’s sovereignty?

It’s a story told often enough, in many different versions. The DEA agent, a US civil servant with a middle class standard of living that would seem fabulous to the Latin America cop, sits down to meet with one of the latter and notices the Rolex watch and expensive jewelry. The agent quickly realizes that she’s in the presence of the enemy.

Who knows what happened, how it happened or why? The Pentagon has insisted that the commander of SENAFRONT, the National Frontier Service that is both Panama’s border patrol and our de facto army, Commissioner Erick Estrada, be removed. President Varela is apparently going along with it. La Estrella reports that it’s about Estrada’s opposition to a string of US military electronic sensors in the Meteti area. All very classified, in a country where the US military bases were supposed to have been gone nearly 20 years ago.

Does a top Panamanian law enforcement officer have to be a crook to resist this country becoming, like back in 1904, a US military protectorate? Will there be more purges in the National Police when it is discovered that there are cops who don’t like Panama being used as a staging point for US military operations against Venezuela?

And what about a Panamanian diplomat or law enforcement official who has the occasion to sit down to meet with Donald Trump. Will SHE quickly realize that she’s in the presence of the enemy?

Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss. ‘Mr. Trump, you’re no Pittsburgh Phil.’

Dr. Warren, The Donald and Pittsburgh Phil

Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss (1909-1941) was Murder Incorporated’s most prolific and gifted hit man. He was never tried for the great majority of his crimes – he is said to have killed more than 100 people – but finally the State of New York got him on just enough, and executed him in the electric chair at Sing Sing.

When the cops nabbed him and pulled him before the court, he didn’t get all weepy and repentant and rediscover the Jewish faith of his ancestors. He didn’t deny that he had ever killed anyone. He pleaded insanity and acted up for the reporters and all others assembled. He probably was mentally ill, but he knew what his profession was and he knew that society considered it wrong. The jury didn’t buy it but Pittsburgh Phil kept up the act right up to the switch being thrown.

Donald Trump has surely heard that story. A New Yorker, The Donald has done business with mobsters all through his business career, starting with New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia notables from La Cosa Nostra, to money laundering for Russian gangsters starting in the 1980s, to a collection of former Soviet, Colombian, Brazilian and Panamanian underworld figures with his ill-fated project here.

Does he know that money laundering for mobsters is wrong? Does he know that calling foreign powers in to meddle in American elections is wrong? Perhaps The Donald is so self-centered that other people’s opinions mean nothing to him – but he has lied, and he has instructed others to lie, so there is at least an intellectual understanding about society’s official view. Even if, deep down inside, he believes that the universe revolves around himself so any other standard is beside the point.

Trump has been in rare, raving, threatening form of late. Revelations that he told off to US intelligence people who gave him bad news with an “I don’t care — I believe Putin” rejoinder is just gravy. People he once appointed are now dirty rats, treasonous and so on. He threatens the folks at Saturday Night Live with retribution. He threatens to overturn the constitutional arrangement in which the US House of Representatives holds the purse strings, seeking to declare a “state of emergency” in which he misappropriates these powers.

Dr. Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, presidential hopeful and noteworthy economist, suggests that in light of the president’s erratic behavior, the cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment and declare him medically incapacitated. That would be the end of Trump’s presidency and the start of Pence’s reign of religious fanaticism. It might be a quick and elegant solution, a wise and prudent idea from she who would be president.

But do we really want to let The Donald beat the rap on insanity?

Bear in mind…

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You’ll never want to leave. Graphic by Tom Blanton.

A new despotism in the era
of surveillance capitalism

by Sam Ben-Meir

There is a fascinating chapter toward the end of Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America titled “What Kind of Despotism Do Democratic Nations Have to Fear?” in which the author attempted something truly extraordinary – to describe a social condition which humankind had never before encountered. We find him trying to put his finger on something which does not yet exist, but which – in his extraordinary political imagination – he was able to foresee with startling clarity.

I maintain that we have good reason to fear that the business model of commercial surveillance – pioneered by Google and adopted by Facebook, among others – is serving to undermine the foundations of our democracy. Shoshana Zuboff explains in her new book, The Age of Surveillance Capital (Public Affairs, 2019), that the system works by treating human experience as “free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvements, the rest are declared as proprietary behavioral surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence,’ and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioral futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behavior.”

In effect, we are becoming the subject of a new insidious, subtle, and almost invisible form of subjugation that was foreseen with uncanny ability by Tocqueville in 1849. Over a hundred and seventy-five years ago, Tocqueville wrote: “The kind of oppression with which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that has proceeded it in the world.” He goes on to describe the elevation of “an immense tutelary power … which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power, if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves, provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that.”

In Time magazine’s January seventeenth article “I Mentored Mark Zuckerberg, But I Can’t Stay Silent” author Roger McNamee observes, “One of the best ways to manipulate attention is to appeal to outrage and fear, emotions that increase engagement. Facebook’s algorithms give users what they want, so each person’s News Feed becomes a unique and personal reality, a filter bubble that creates the illusion that most people the user knows believe the same things.”

The notion of a bubble here is a useful one: central to the work of Jakob von Uexküll, an Estonian-born biologist and one of the fathers of biosemiotics, is the concept of the umwelt – or ‘surrounding-world’ – the ‘soap-bubble’ that each creature creates for itself and which constitutes their experiential world. The umwelt is composed of signs as bearers of meaning, and for each organism the umwelt is the whole of their reality. What distinguishes us as human beings is that our umwelt is not fixed, immobile, rigid, or static. One of the ways we can understand the effect of Facebook’s algorithms on its users is that the umwelt each user inhabits runs the danger of effectively shrinking: growing smaller and ever more calcified. In “How Facebook’s Algorithm Suppresses Content Diversity and How the Newsfeed Rules Your Clicks,” the author Zeynep Tufekci asserts that researchers were able to definitively conclude that, by a measurable amount, Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm reduces a user’s exposure to “…ideologically diverse, cross-cutting content…” By assuring that we are exposed only to that which we are likely to approve of and assent to, our umwelt – or social reality – is that much more diminished and homogenized.

Facebook’s business model has far-reaching implications, especially in terms of our ability to empathize with others – others who may not be like, or think like, ourselves. This had devastating results in Myanmar where Facebook became a tool for ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. While it certainly may not have been its intention, Facebook has become a “forum for tribalism” promoting a “simplistic version of ‘community'” while arguably “harming democracy, science and public health” – as Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests in Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Much of my research has shown that there is a close relationship between empathy and our ability to creatively reconstruct the umwelt of the other. While one cannot share his or her umwelt – each of us remains in our own soap-bubble, as it were – we can participate in a common umwelt, which in many ways is purportedly the stated goal of social media. It is ironic that Facebook, which claims to prize connectivity above all, has in fact, contributed to producing the opposite result – where each of us fixed in a vapid and hardened bubble of isolation.

In the face of an American government that is increasingly retreating from its responsibilities, we must recognize that Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the new leviathans. In serving users only those posts with which they will agree, Facebook is like Tocqueville’s ‘tutelary’s power’ which “everyday … renders the employment of free will less useful, and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space, and little by little steals the very use of free will from each citizen.” These companies do not simply want to automate information: as Zuboff observes, “the goal now is to automate us… to produce ignorance by circumventing individual awareness and thus eliminate any possibility of self-determination.”

Facebook’s business model represents a new insidious form of subjugation that does not tyrannize, but as Vaidhyanathan observes, “it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

Facebook has contributed its share to the deterioration of epistemic norms and has helped to usher in the era of so-called post-truth. The motivation behind this disdain for truth as such, has always been the same – namely, it serves the bottom line. As McNamee puts it: “on Facebook, information and disinformation look the same; the only difference is that disinformation generates more revenue, so it gets better treatment.”

Over a two-year period preceding the 2016 election, one hundred and twenty-six million Americans saw Russian-backed content. Facebook was at best reckless in the rampant and deliberate spread of disinformation through fake Russian accounts; which is to say that by allowing the proliferation of fake news, Facebook incontrovertibly helped Donald Trump to become the President of the United States. Facebook has provided fertile ground for the spread of grossly irresponsible conspiracy theories and “hopelessly inaccurate viral posts.”

Like many others, McNamee suggests that users should have control over their own data and metadata – as if data ownership is the solution to the scourge of surveillance capitalism. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it fails to ask the more elementary question of whether such data should exist at all. As Zuboff observes “It’s like negotiating how many hours a day a seven-year-old should be allowed to work, rather than contesting the fundamental legitimacy of child labor.” Surveillance capitalism represents a new form of despotism, one that is harming our capacity for individual autonomy in order that behavioral data can continue to be generated unimpeded, supplying markets and the advertisers that are Google’s and Facebook’s real customers.

We are becoming the kind of solipsistic and atomistic society that Tocqueville foresaw, “an enumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose … each of them, withdrawn, and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others… As for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he does not see them; he touches them and does not feel them.” Alexis de Tocqueville warned us that oppression may take forms which are gentle, quiet, calm, but nonetheless, inimical to genuine freedom. To adequately respond to the problem will require more than demanding greater privacy or data ownership – it will involve a radical questioning of our basic assumptions, and a new understanding of what democracy means and entails in the age of capitalistic surveillance.

Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

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Toque aquí para ver la presentación de forma PDF

(Espere un momento para que se descargue el PDF. Es un documento de 13 páginas.)

Tasseled Tease Burlesque estará trayendo a Panamá en el mes de mayo. Específicamente, el viernes 3 y sábado 4.

Se trata del Panamá Burlesque Festival.

Un festival diferente, en el cual resaltaremos el arte del burlesque. El mismo, es una industria reconocida y seguida internacionalmente, pero con muy poca presencia en el país.

Desde 2013, nuestro grupo se ha dedicado a crear presentaciones alrededor de la ciudad. Y habiendo creado conexiones internacionales fuertes, nos hemos atrevido a traer más de 20 artistas de burlesque de Estados Unidos, Canadá, Australia y Panamá bajo un mismo techo, el Teatro Guild de Ancón.

Estxs artistas estarán compitiendo en dos grupos los dos días del festival por llevarse a casa la corona del primer Panamá Burlesque Festival.

Vea nuestras redes sociales y nuestro sitio web:

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What were they thinking? What are they EVER thinking when they rename things?

by Eric Jackson

Panama City, where it seems that half the streets have two numbers and three names. Municipal governments are starved of funds and powers. one of the main functions left to them is to rename things. So the mayor — or in this case vice mayor standing in while the mayor is running for president — renames things in her last months of office.

Why a major traffic artery? Why Via Israel? 

We hear tales of a study, one that recognizes that from Avenida Balboa a driver can continue on an overpass and without making a turn continue on what was Via Israel, past the two high schools (a third, Colegio Las Esclavas, moved to Clayton a few years ago) and toward Multiplaza and beyond to ATLAPA, before it turns left and becomes the Cincuentenario.

So why not call it all Avenida Balboa? For one thing, because the name Via Israel was in a 1970s agreement between the government of General Omar Torrijos and the State of Israel. For another, Panama’s Jewish community likes the symbol of recognition that they, too, are part of Panama. And then there a so many others who just consider it silly and costly for the city to go on renaming streets.

¿Qué están pensando cuando cambian nombres de calles?

por Eric Jackson

Panamá, donde parece que la mitad de las calles tienen dos números y tres nombres. Los gobiernos municipales están privados de fondos y poderes. Una de las funciones principales que les queda es cambiar el nombre de las cosas. Entonces el alcalde, o en este caso la vicealcaldesa mientras el alcalde se postula para presidente, cambia el nombre de las cosas en sus últimos meses de mandato.

¿Por qué una arteria de tráfico importante? ¿Por qué Via Israel?

Hay cuentas de un estudio, uno que reconoce que desde la Avenida Balboa, un conductor puede continuar en un paso elevado y, sin hacer un giro, continuar en lo que fue Via Israel, más allá de las dos escuelas secundarias (una tercera, Colegio Las Esclavas, se mudó a Clayton hace unos pocos años) y hacia Multiplaza y más allá hacia ATLAPA, antes de girar a la izquierda y se convierte en el Cincuentenario.

Entonces, ¿por qué no llamarlo todo Avenida Balboa? Por un lado, porque el nombre Vía Israel estaba en un acuerdo de los años setenta entre el gobierno del General Omar Torrijos y el Estado de Israel. Por otro lado, a la comunidad judía de Panamá le gusta el símbolo de reconocimiento de que ellos también son parte de Panamá. También hay muchos otros que simplemente consideran tonto y costoso que la ciudad cambie el nombre de las calles.

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Immigrants from the heartland: Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, an immigrant from Somalia, takes the oath from Nancy Pelosi, surrounded by her family. From Congresswoman Omar’s official web page.

Communities like mine, in small-town Michigan, are told to blame immigrants when greedy corporations hurt us. We don’t buy it.

Immigrants aren’t the emergency – unchecked capitalism is

by Sarah Schulz — OtherWords

Midland, Michigan, where my husband and I are raising our two young children, is a small town surrounded by rural communities. Many of us living here have seen, generation-by-generation, that we’re falling behind.

Our anxiety is real, but we wholeheartedly reject attempts by those in power to blame immigrant families who have their own struggles, or to suggest that a made up “national emergency” is any kind of solution. We know better.

One of my friends and her husband both work full time and each have separate health insurance through their jobs — but their three children aren’t insured. Their income is too high for the kids to qualify for the MIChild insurance the state offers children of working families. But their income isn’t high enough to allow them buy coverage independently.

Their third child was born just a few months ago. She doesn’t have paid maternity leave, so even though she should’ve recovered at least six weeks after a necessary C-section, she went back to work after three weeks.

“We shouldn’t have to just get by each month,” she said to me. “We should be able to get ahead like our parents did. But we can’t, and now we are just kinda living here — where one unplanned $20 expense means you can’t buy groceries, and you’ve lost hope of ever paying your bills.”

Her family is falling through the cracks. Like so many Michigan small town and rural families, they’re working hard, doing all the right things, and just barely getting by. Forty percent of our households in Michigan struggle to afford the basic necessities, like housing, food, and health care.

In situations of growing desperation, it’s natural to want to blame someone or some group of people, especially when our loudest leaders are constantly presenting us with an enemy to focus on. We’ve been inundated with messages in the last three years inciting us to blame immigrants for all our troubles, whether it’s lack of jobs or the cost of health care.

Baloney. We all know that our system of unchecked capitalism is to blame.

Too many profitable companies don’t insure their employees or their families. Mega-corporations like Amazon pull in billions — and pay no federal income taxes — while their workers go on food stamps. Others, like General Motors, take tax huge tax breaks only to ship thousands of jobs overseas.

My small-town Michigan neighbors understand that other people, struggling just as we are, aren’t the ones to blame for these harms.

As parents, we share the impossible agony of the mom at the southern border forced to return to her country of origin without her five-year-old child. As neighbors, we recognize our immigrant friends attending church, school meetings, and soccer practices beside us.

These one-on-one interactions prove over and over that we all desire the same security, stability, and community. We all have the same love for our families, and hopes for a better future.

The mantra of “immigrants are taking our jobs” comes from people with virtually no first-hand knowledge of any immigrant taking the job of any citizen we know. The jobs held by immigrants are often either the low-skilled jobs that US citizens often don’t take, or high-education jobs in our science labs, hospitals, and engineering firms that similarly benefit us all.

Up here, we’re the first to see through the fallacy of walls as we look across our lakes and rivers to Canada. There’s no talk on this border of a permanent concrete wall to stand as a forever monument to xenophobia and the ego of our current leaders.

We know at heart there’s only one reason — sheer racism — that we’re asked to believe the need for a wall on one border is an emergency, while there’s no talk of one on the other border at all.

Powerful people stoke this racism and fear to keep the poor at each other’s throats. That kind of thinking isn’t our way and shouldn’t be welcome in our communities, our state, or our nation.

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Que dicen:

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It’s not just kids who are getting their shots. Photo by the Ministry of Health.

Whooping cough breaks out of the comarca into the Metro Area, Cocle and Panama Este – two new deaths reported

by Eric Jackson

At the end of January the Ministry of Health announced that an outbreak of whooping cough – pertussis – in a mountainous area of the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca had infected 81 people and killed nine. All of those who died were small children. Plenty of people figured that it was just a problem in that remote region.

On February 20 the ministry issued an alarming update. In the comarca there were 14 new cases, without any new fatalities. But the disease outbreak has spread far away – seven new cases in the Metro Area, two in the part of Panama City between the Panama City / San Miguelito area and Darien, and two in Cocle province. Of these 11 people who were infected, two have died.

If you are a small child or in frail health, whooping cough can easily kill you. If you are a healthy adult, you may get very ill. It’s very dangerous to pregnant women and the babies they carry. It starts with cold-like symptoms and soon gets worse. For more information, visit the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s web page about the disease at https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/materials/everyone.html

It’s all quite preventable by vaccination, and if detected in time generally treatable with antibiotics. The problem with figuring that you are at low risk of death is that you can get the infection and then spread it to others. If you or members of your household have not been vaccinated – the inoculation lasts for about 10 years – get to a physician or outpatient clinic and get immunized.

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The Panama News blog links

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

Canal, Maritime & Transportation / Canal, Marítima & Transporte

Seatrade, PanCanal administrator Quijano passing the baton to Vásquez 

La Estrella, Duras críticas a designaciones para directivos de la ACP

Splash, Carnival study claims scrubber washwater is safe

Seatrade, Goldman Sachs warns shipowners with scrubbers about hedging high sulfur fuel

gCaptain, Why will all US Navy ships start flying The Union Jack?

Reuters, Iran says it made a successful submarine missile launch

Sports / Deportes

CP, Toronto FC loses ugly to Panama’s Independiente in CONCACAF play

El Siglo, ¡Prospectazo! de beisbol

Economy / Economía

Bloomberg, Copper miner’s $10 billion bet in Panama

La Estrella, Gerente del BNP busca intimidar a los magistrados en reclamo de Waked 

En Segundos, Comerciantes demandan a la alcaldía de Panamá por cierres

Baker, When politicians say “free trade” they mean upward redistribution

Roach, Misreading China’s strength

Science & Technology / Ciencia & Tecnología

STRI, Amphibian skin bacteria is more diverse in cold, variable environments

Mongabay, Cómo la vida de un tritón podría provocar una pandemia de salamandras

SCMP, UK cybersecurity watchdog says risks from Huawei 5G gear can be limited

The Verge, Memory cards are about to get much faster

News / Noticias

Newsroom Panama, Hantavirus watch for Carnival

TVN, Ana Matilde Gómez desmiente que se haya bajado de la carrera presidencial 

Periódico Cubano, Cubanos trasladados de Panamá a Costa Rica 

TVN, Ordenan impedimento de salida del país a Franz Wever

The Guardian, Cuba’s Evangelicals crusade against gay marriage

Al Jazeera, Nicaragua’s Ortega calls for negotiations

Metro.pr, Yulín: “Les molesta que no me meta en la titeretería”

Mueller, Manafort sentencing memo

Politico, Disinformation campaigns against Dems appear to have foreign involvement

Forward, Democrats face off over Israel in races for LA party posts

Página 12, Los claroscuros de la cumbre del Papa

Opinion / Opiniones

Fischer, Will Germany permit joint European security?

Cook, Venezuela coverage takes us back to the golden age of lying about Latin America

Bolton, As the coup attempt in Venezuela stumbles

Shifter, Trump conflates chaos in Venezuela with socialism in America

Blades & Rodríguez, La publicación de Silvio Rodríguez

López, Reflexión necesaria 

Yao, Los acuerdos secretos Salas – Becker

Bernal: Constituyente ¡sí!, parches ¡no!

Culture / Cultura

El Siglo, Mr. Saik: dominicano por nacimiento pero ama a Panamá como un hijo

¿Wappin? Them low down dirty blues

Sagel, Panamá en Tánger

Remezcla, 21 Savage on ICE detention

Varoufakis, Utopian science fictions legitimizing our current dystopia

La Prensa, Fallece Guillermo Sánchez Borbón

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It would be unwise to accept either Nicolás Maduro’s or Juan Guaidó’s narrative of this event at face value. But we do have this anonymous drone picture and others from above the Colombian side of the bridge (Colombia in the lower left corner) and there are many other photos and videos from different angles as well. The crowd is Venezuelan opposition, perhaps with some foreigners among them. In the upper right corner, in front of the Venezuelan border check point, there are security forces loyal to Maduro holding their line. Notice under the bridge the wreckage of  Venezuelan government barricades that the opposition tore town and threw over the side. It’s not entirely clear who set the trucks on fire. What we do know is that the opposition lost. There were only a few desertions from the Venezuelan police and military forces. Mr. Trump and his subordinates misled gullible media and dozens of nations into expecting either an easy opposition victory or a catastrophic Maduro blunder. Those things did not happen.

What next?

The Trump administration and its creation, self-proclaimed acting Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó, have been terribly embarrassed. They announced their confrontation well in advance, brought expensive military resources to bear, staged a big media spectacle — and lost. 

It was not remotely close. They will not force regime change on Venezuela without an invasion that would kill thousands of people.

Where does that leave the government of Panama, which by political statements and the use of Panamanian territory were full-fledged participants in the losing effort? Now this country is possibly vulnerable to irate militants who have reason to consider us an enemy nation and our canal a tempting target. So much for the neutrality defense. Varela squandered that to pander to the embattled blowhard US president.

None of them are likely to address the issue on the campaign trail, but it would be interesting to know what those with real chances to succeed Varela by winning the May elections would do to repair the damage. Trump’s reputation could hardly get much worse but Varela’s standing in the world has been seriously debased by this foolhardy adventure. With military escalation, it could get worse for both the United States and Panama.

Let’s not have a war in the region. Let’s not have a pathetic exiled pretender using Panama as a base of operations. Panama should step out of this Lima Group, expel Guaidó’s diplomats and conduct those sorts of proper if not so warm relations that Panama has had with many a flawed government that does, however, actually rule its country. In Washington the US House of Representatives, far from cheering for Guaidó, ought to cut funds for  pretenses and belligerent pressures in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt.

All of which is not to say that Maduro is the nicest guy. He’s a problem — but a problem for Venezuelans and not outside powers to address.

Bear in mind…

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Among the 18 Internet or social media sites “suspended” by the Electoral Tribunal, two, the above page and the Movimientos Sociales de Panamá Facebook page, are associated with the constellation of groups that revolve around the semi-underground November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29) and are associated with the Broad Front for Democracy (FAD) political party.

Electoral Tribunal gag order against 18 small media and candidates’ social media pages

by Eric Jackson

On March 25, without any prior hearings, citing “complaints,” the Electoral Tribunal issued edicts “suspending” 18 Internet sides, mostly on the social media. There are restrictions on political advertising and on political polling that have been issued and the tribunal says that these were violated. Some of the social media sites include those of presidential candidates José Isabel Blandón and Rómulo Roux. Some, like Frenadeso Noticias, are general news and commentary sites that have been around for years and whose content is mostly not about elections.

Not included were Ricardo Martinelli’s media empire, which includes major newspapers, a television station and radio stations. All of Martinelli’s media feature a notable political slant in favor the the jailed ex-president and candidate for Panama City mayor and legislator.

The Panama News, which is more than 24 years old, was never notified of anything by the Electoral Tribunal when it had it “consultations” about press rules. Nor was Frenadeso Noticias ever consulted in this process.

Notwithstanding the constitutional bar against discrimination according to social class, the tribunal only notified and heard the rabiblanco media, ignoring the small publications and especially those which operate predominantly via the social media. But now, in a break from past practices of pretending that the small media and social media do not exist, the magistrates are attempting to assert control. As these three functionaries represent the scandal-plagued major political political parties, it’s probably safe to presume that this is the latest move to suppress the #NoALaReelección movement to oust as many incumbent politicians as possible from their public offices. 

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San Antonio told Jeff Bezos to beat it over a year before New York sent him packing.  Shutterstock photo.

The city that refused to play Amazon’s game

by Jim Hightower — OtherWords

The richest man in the world, who heads one of the world’s largest and richest corporations, is also filthy rich in arrogance and pomposity.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon demanded that a city’s officials kowtow to him by handing billions of taxpayer dollars to his retail behemoth, essentially bribing him to locate an Amazon headquarters there. But — lo and behold — the city mustered its collective integrity and pride to say “no” to his devil’s bargain.

The city I’m bragging on isn’t New York City, which recently made national news by rejecting Amazon’s attempt to fleece its taxpayers. Rather, I’m saluting San Antonio, Texas, which in 2017 simply refused to play Bezos’s con game when he first rolled it out.

While 238 cities and states groveled in front of the diminutive potentate, San Antonio’s mayor and top county official sent a “Dear Jeff” letter kissing him off. They said their city has much to offer, but any development deal “has to be the right fit; not just for the company, but for the entire community,” adding that “blindly giving away the farm isn’t our style.”

The officials wrote that a key criterion for awarding any incentives was whether a company is “a good corporate citizen.” Noting that Amazon almost certainly had already chosen its preferred location, they called the national “search” a money-grubbing scam. “This public process is, intentionally or not, creating a bidding war amongst states and cities,” they charged.

Why should public officials anywhere be throwing billions of scarce public dollars at a pompous corporate prince who neither needs nor deserves such tribute?

City and state officials everywhere need to follow the example of New York and San Antonio, agreeing to stop bidding against each other in the corporate bribe racket.

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What Democrats are saying

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What Republicans are saying

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