Letters to the editor

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Once more I respectfully address you to inform you that today I learned of an appeal filed by the Fifth Prosecutor of the First Judicial Circuit of Panama, Giovanni Olmos, against the not guilty verdict handed down this past May 23 by the Tenth Judge of the First Circuit Penal Bench’s First Alternate in the criminal defamation case that the Public Ministry was pursuing against me.

In effect, Prosecutor Olmos, following instructions from Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, filed on this past June 26 an appeal that consists of eight pages in which he asks the magistrates of the Second Superior Tribunal of Jistice of the First Judicial District of Panama "hold revoked the verdict of absolution and in its place declare Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal guilty of the charges that have been lodged against him, for the crime against the honor of the National Police."

While I am working on sending via this medium, as soon as possible, a copy of the the appeal, I submit to you that the prosecutor is once again guided by the same purposes that have guided the Public Ministry from the start of this case four years ago, which is a desire to frame me for criminal conduct, to attribute to me the commission of a crime.

I will also promptly provide you, for your information, with the document that we are preparing with my defense attorney. It’s a notorious public fact that the Second Superior Tribunal of Justice of the First Judicial District of Panama has the habit of accepting these types of appeals, revoking the not guilty verdicts and convicting the accused, and we fear that’s the imminent danger that threatens.

If the tribunal rules in favor of the Fifth Prosecutor’s appeal, I can be sent to jail or sentenced to a fine and/or banned from the exercise of public functions, which would prevent me from working at my job as a professor at the National University.

This tribunal is the court of last resort at the national level, and no further appeals or reversals would be allowed.

For this reason we appeal to all of you for your solidarity by way of this denunciation, and alert you to the vortex of persecution in which Panama’s human rights activists and defenders of free expression are engulfed.

I thank you in advance for spreading this information that I send you today as widely as you can, and for making your protests against this persecution aimed at inflicting irreparable moral harm.

In the responses to my letter that were brought to my attention, I found them to be very misinformed about the Panama News. The editors constant reference to Robby Blanco should be enough to make it clear. One of Panama News past articles about the nations leadership being all Robby Blanco's. Another about how chumbo is a racial slur. Can we say "double standard?" As far as China and Taiwan giving Panama more than the US, you need to get a lawyer and press charges against the school you attended. They stole your money. Who gave you the canal and all of the bases worth Billions upon Billions. Just the use of my countries dollar, not the balboa, Panama does not have the ability to have their own currency, more than makes up for what ever welfare the chino gives you. Does Panama think they will keep giving Panama money after they purchase everything they want. Have they given Panamanians the amount of jobs with the same pay as the US ? No, they bring over their own indentured servants which Panama allows. And to think you complain about Panama letting Europeans and Americans (whites) into Panama instead of Asians while you support a form of slavery. By the way, how did all of the west Indies people get to Panama? What legal immigration process did they take? None, you just showed up and took jobs from Panamanians. Who pays for all of this? The hard working Panamian (Spanish -Indian mix) who looses his job to a chino. You once had a fine paper, but now you are more political than the politicians that you say are persecuting you. Go back to topics that were discussed in the nineties. The promotion of the people of Panama and there struggle to survive. When reading your paper I don't even want to come back because you say it is so bad all the time, but when I think of all my friends I decided to buy a ticket. As far as Panamanian joining the Taiwanese army, that is not true. During the international folk dance fest here in Germany a Taiwanese representative informed me that it is not true and they have more volunteers from Hong Kong,Chinese, and Vietnamese refugees that they can outfit, not to mention the trouble it would cause. He thought it was a joke and wanted to know if I was from Russia.

It never ceases to amaze me how little our present education system manages to teach our young people about the real state of affairs in our world. A friend of mine many years ago told me of how he tried a basic experiment on the newcomers arriving for the first day of his university course on what would today be called "Social Studies" in the United States.

He explained how he had given them a political outline map of the world printed on a clean white legal sheet of paper. There were all the continents with the nations borders outlined on it --- but no words to identify which country was which! Then he named six countries and asked the young people he was going to teach for the year to write on the map the relevant numbers for each country.

He told me that not one of his students had got all the countries in the right place on the map! Several thought Argentina was South Africa, most thought that Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was some place other than where it has been since man first lived there, and several of the answers he got were just plain hilarious. The number for Russia appeared in Poland or China more often than not, and not a few of his bright eyed hopefuls thought Iran had moved to become India. I remember sitting with him in the Northgate Tavern in Oxford when he told me all of this, and to be absolutely honest I found his statements very hard to believe. So he pulled out a similar map and started offering one pound bets to other customers to point to Burma, Romania or Chile, etc., etc. and when after about half a dozen tries no-one had taken a pound note from him I had to admit that he was probably right.

This bothered me for many years, for how can a free and democratic people cast their vote sensibly for people they are electing to pursue foreign policy upon their behalf or, God Forbid, even send them or their children off to war, when they have little or no comprehension of the real state of the world?

For example: many of our newspapers have been talking lately about the expulsion of "mainland" Chinese from Hong Kong, but how can you understand the "reasoning" (even if you disagree with it), if you do not know that there are 6,782,000 people in Hong Kong living on a land area of only 1,092 square kilometers. That is 6,564 people per square kilometer, compared to the United States where we have a population density of only 30 people per square kilometer? Even China, despite common folklore, has only 133 people per square kilometer.

Then when news stories, in the print media or on cable news channels talk about illegal immigration, why do most people not know that the GDP (per capita income) in Mexico is only $5,036 (and even that is double that of many Central American countries) compared with an average of $32,778 in the United States; the Afghanis trying to get into Australia are leaving a GDP of $178 attempting to get into a country with a GDP of $21,319 and a rule of law that makes violence far less than they can expect at home.

Well, talking about it is all very well, but over the last few months my partners and I decided to do something about it. We have therefore created a page on our web site, which brings together basic facts to help anyone who wishes to understand things a little better. The web address is: http://www.bizforum.org/world.htm .

What has been a pleasant surprise however, is how many of the fourteen-year-old friends of my son have thanked me for it, and after a little questioning they have convinced me that they actually find it fun to learn these things when someone gives them the opportunity. Not bad for a page designed to help decision makers operating in the Global Business Place.

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