... is
something that’s done in plural terms, not singular.
It’s one medium, several media.
But of course,
there are some people who don’t like it that way.
For example, a
very few companies --- you can count them on one hand and still
not use all your fingers --- publish the great majority of
children’s books that get into schools around the world.
These companies, mostly based in the United States, tend to run
scared of far right religious groups who have taken it upon
themselves to exorcise anything other than their dogma.
And then there
are the small publishers, like Pat Alvarado’s Panama-based
Piggy Press. Pat, you may know, edits the writings of Sparky the Wonder Dog, which appear in our Fun section.
She also used to teach at Balboa High and is past president of
Panama’s chapter of the National Leage of American Pen
Women. What you see above is the cover of Pat’s thoughtful
new children’s book, Recess Revolution, which is featured in the review
section of this issue. This book shouldn’t be
controversial, but it encourages elementary school kids and
their teachers to ponder the many issues implicit in bullying
and that’s bound to offend the Social Darwinists.
Let us move
from the medium of children’s books to the news media. The
conventional wisdom is that reporters and the organizations for
which they work should report the news, not be the news.
However, we’re going through some unconventional times, on
both the local and global scenes.
Some of you may
have noticed that for a day or so, a hacker defaced the News
Briefs in the last issue of The Panama News. Part of the page
was rendered into gibberish, in the middle of which was the
phrase “Comrade Eric.” The page was taken down and
then repaired as soon as possible. It also seems, we can't
readily determine whether it was error on our part or not, that
the links to the editorial in the last issue were systmatically
broken,
Part of the
hysteria associated with the Iraq War has been an urge on the
part of some people to silence those whose ideas they
don’t share. While it seems that the pro-war faction is
the worst offender, people who apparently take the opposite
point of view vandalized CNN and US government web pages as
well.
It all becomes
newsworthy when so much of the Iraq War has been a competition
to control the news. Both the Iraqi and US-UK propaganda
efforts were patronizing, insulting and downright corny at
points. These efforts also got vicious --- The American and
British war effort began with attempts to assassinate Iraqi
political leaders, but the US Army was much more successful in
its efforts to assassinate independent journalists. In our
Opinion section, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists weigh in on the
killings of journalists and the Jewish leftist group Tikkun
addresses the issue of war propaganda in the corporate mainstream news media
more generally.
Leave it to
Panama’s ruling Arnulfista Party to make its pathetic bid
to get in on the action. Legislator and taxi syndicate leader
Marco González, a big fan of journalist licensing, is
proposing to create a “patronato” to run
Panama’s educational TV and radio networks, and in the
Spanish Opinion section, the University of Panama’s
Academic Council takes exception. Basically Channel 11 and
Radio Nacional have already been turned into shameless
propaganda organs, but his party is headed for a severe
thrashing in next year’s elections and González is
trying to give them control over public broadcasting after
their expected defeat.
(Usually The
Panama News translates the Spanish word “sindicato”
as “union.” However, with regard to the Panamanian
taxi business the word “syndicate” --- as in
“Hey Lepke, we have a contract for you” rather than
“Brothers and sisters, this new contract will put more
bread on your table” --- is more appropriate.)
Anyway, a lot
has been happening in Panama and is covered in this issue. Some
of it is in the form of long public documents.
In our Spanish
News section, we publish the three decrees by which the Moscoso
administration regulates and complicates the new Sales and Services Tax, Income Tax and Luxury Tax laws. There may at some point be an
official English translation, and knowing both the quality of
government translations and the big differences that little
discrepancies can make in legislation of this type, it seems
better to just publish the official Spanish at this time.
The lead
article in our English-language Opinion section is the US State
Department’s report on human rights in Panama. As expected, and as in years
past, the usual Panamanian suspects protest by way of trying to
deny the undeniable. I think that there are certain aspects of
the report that might well be criticized. There is also the
standard but lame argument that since the United States has its
own human rights problems, it shouldn’t comment about
other countries. However, for people who live or do business
here, or who are thinking of doing so, this report ought to be
required reading.
Our Science
section also includes the World Health Organization’s
sobering abstract of its book-length global cancer report.
Most of
Panama’s other media don’t pay much attention to
science, so our other Science feature, though brief, is an exclusive. Tests
performed on a wood sample taken from that old ship off of a
beach near Nombre de Dios tend to support, though they don't
conclusively prove, the claim that said vessel is what remains
of Christopher Columbus’s caravel the Vizcaina.
Ah, but many of
you are most interested in floating vessels of another sort ---
the cayucos of the 50th Ocean-to-Ocean Cayuco Race. As that event was happening as this
edition of The Panama News was being produced, we covered the
start but tthe complete results won't be uploaded until a day
or two after the rest of the paper.
I hope that
this issue informs and entertains.
PS: Although we haven’t raised as
much as we had hoped, the checks and in-kind contributions that
have come to The Panama News in the past few weeks have been
and will be most helpful. You know who you are, and thanks so
much for your generous assistance. Our next appeal for reader
support will be in September, but if you care to contribute in
the meantime, our mailing address is listed below.
