Might you be able to identify my Baby Boomer culture if I identified a couple of tunes that have come to mind as I have faced the Sobig.F worm attack on my email boxes, and indeed on the entire world economy?
NO, I DIDN’T OPEN ANY OF THOSE ATTACHMENTS. I haven’t let any Trojan Horses into the computer that’s used for most of the production work on The Panama News, and which is fairly well protected. Given, however, that over the years we have had a few bouts with hackers, a few viruses of mysterious origin and our share of hate mail, I really don’t want to talk too much about the precautions that we take. But suffice to say that several dozen emails with a 100 kilobyte worm attached will jam up my six megabyte Yahoo mailbox, and slow though not close my somewhat larger Datarealm box. The attack has mostly cost me my labor, plus a little bit of unplanned spending at Internet cafes, plus the annoyance and lost opportunities inherent in disrupted business communications.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to cry for me. If you are not personally suffering from the same problem, know that many of your fellow readers are. This attack, which was traced back through Canadian computers commandeered through a server in the United States (before the trail went cold), has even jammed up some US military email boxes. The cost to world commerce was, according to one computer magazine’s late August estimate, in the billions of dollars.
There has been no comment about it from the White House, just as there was no comment about the earlier devastating Blaster virus. (The FBI's pathetic grandstanding when they caught an even more pathetic 18-year-old who copied the Blaster virus and spread his plagiarism about doesn't count for anything more than a failing grade at spin doctor school.) When the lights went out over much of the northeastern United States and adjacent parts of Canada, also due to a computer problem of obscure origin, George W. Bush told the American people that it wasn’t terrorism even though he lacked the basic information to justify such a statement.
Now it happens that I’m a Neil Young fan, but don’t particularly like everything he has done. One of his tunes that I find kind of annoying has this whining chorus that goes “he-elpless helpless helpless....” That tune, with slightly different lyrics, played in my head as I was writing this issue’s Editorial: “clu-ueless clueless clueless....” (Guess who my audio hallucination’s about.) Then, as I periodically opened my email to gauge the damage and exercise my mouse hand through mass deletions and mailbox emptyings, Pink Floyd’s “Waiting for the Worms” also came to mind.
As far as it affects this newspaper, Sobig.F is a “denial of service attack,” which isn’t necessarily as devastating as a virus that destroys our hard drives. We also coincidentally finally received the written confirmation of what Citibank had told us orally months ago: they don’t care to do business with enterprises as small as ours anymore. I suppose you could call that a “denial of service attack” on small business, but for me it’s just a matter of making alternative arrangements in the context of a user-unfriendly Panamanian banking industry. The banking system here is a large collection of institutions with which fewer than 10 percent of this country’s residents maintain accounts. It works under monopolistic agreements to give horrible service. Such as, for example, the 21 business days it’s taking to clear money that’s been transferred to our account by wire from the United States.
One of these days people at Panama’s banks will figure out that international money laundering is in decline and that there aren’t enough millionaires in Panama to support all those financial institutions, and someone will respond to the dilemma by breaking ranks and competing with reasonable services for the business of ordinary Panamanians. That will be the beginning of a stampede or a rout, but by the time it happens I expect that there will be many fewer banks here than there are now.
Meanwhile, in addition to fending off denial of service attacks, I have taken the opportunity of the extra week between issues to clean the office in places where it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time.
I have also attended some interesting science lectures, sporting events and concerts, and have had opportunities to speak informally with folks from the US Embassy at an ambassador’s residence reception and with a representative of one of the important international financial institutions at a private dinner party.
Those conversations, plus some official announcements from the United States and what the news wires are reporting about some regional developments, are enough set off the “clueless” chorus in my head the moment I consider the Moscoso administration. People who have the power to hurt Panama and to make life downright miserable for disgraced Latin American politicians are maintaining their smiles and refraining from suggestions about what their institutions may do, but they know rather precisely what’s going on and they’re not amused. A year from now, look for Mireya Moscoso et al to encounter the sorts of problems that former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán and his entourage are facing.
Questions remain. Which of the four presidential candidates would do better? (Any of them would be an improvement on the present piece of work at the Palacio de las Garzas, I suspect.) Which of them would lead Panama past the present unacceptable political and economic paradigm to prosperity and good government? When I consider THAT one I have to look into the mirror and start humming that “clueless” ditty again.
I’m in a quandary. Even by process of elimination, and even though I voted for Martín Torrijos last time, I don’t know for whom I’ll vote in next May’s election. I don’t intend to use The Panama News to tell Panamanians how to vote for president. I will, however, try to publish facts that will help voters make their choices, whether or not they turn out to be the same as mine.
Regular readers may have noticed that I have opened our Opinion and Letters sections to the candidates and their supporters so that they can make their respective cases. I will continue to do so. Plus I’m attending various events where candidates and party leaders speak, reporting at length on what they have to say, and doing my best to keep my opinions out of the stories. This time I caught Arnulfista candidate José Miguel Alemán’s presentation to the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE). Given that I have long believed that the most important story to cover down here is the country’s economic development, I think that the candidates’ presentations to this particular group tend to be more newsworthy than the usual mix of promises, insults and accusations that one typically hears on the campaign trail.
That one session at APEDE was actually good for two-point-something stories. Before Alemán spoke, economist José N. Abbo gave a presentation on one of the Social Security Fund’s problems, a legal restriction on investments that limit the fund’s income. Before the meeting got underway, I spoke briefly with APEDE president John Bennett about the controversy over the Multicentro project on Avenida Balboa near Punta Paitilla and that conversation figures into the story on that issue.
Returning for a moment to the reception at the US ambassador’s residence, at that event I was introduced to a young man who conducted a State Department study on the Chinese community here. He speaks and reads no Chinese, is unfamiliar with the history of Panama’s Chinese community, and doesn’t know about its institutions. He hasn’t even heard of Szechuan cuisine.
I think he was basically here to look around and see if there’s a Fifth Column lurking about.
Fifth Column? You know, The Yellow Peril incarnate, sneaking in by way of containers smuggled into the ports of Cristobal and Balboa, then standing by in the shadows to await the coded signal from Beijing (“The snow on the ground is white! The East is Red!”) to retrieve their hidden weapons and move into action.
I think that such suspicions sell China short. Surely they have cooler secret action plans than that.
Maybe they’ve developed a way to teleport people and equipment electronically, over the phone lines. As in an odd call to the Gatun Locks: “We call from China. You accept?” Whereupon the puzzled canal switchboard operator says “Hold on, let me get my supervisor.” At which point a button is pushed on the modified fax machine in Beijing, such that the operator and supervisor return to find a regiment of the Peoples Liberation Army, with bayonets affixed to their assault rifles and chanting “Diligently apply the thoughts of Comrade Deng Xiaoping!”
What can Panama do in the face of such a potential menace? President Moscoso should take immediate preventive action. She should gather all of her supporters and their extended families, flee with them to Monaco, and declare a government in exile there. Panama would be much better off if she did that.
Of course, Monaco may not want her. Rejection can lead to hurt feelings, but fear of rejection can be a paralyzer in public life. Have no fear --- go for it, Mireya!
The general theme of acceptance versus rejection plays a big role in this issue and in the news from Panama in general. On August 21, Panama signed a free trade pact with Taiwan, which must now be accepted or rejected by the legislature. It is likely to pass. Meanwhile, China is again urging this country to drop our diplomatic ties with Taipei and establish formal relations with Beijing. For many years Panama has upheld the principle that it won’t let China dictate the state of our relations with our old friend Taiwan. However, there is substantial support among Panama’s politicians and Chinese community to change this policy. After the election one lobby or the other will be find its position rejected.
Then, although it seems not to be a matter to which the politicians here have dedicated much thought, economic integration in the Americas and in general is a regional and global hot-button issue. In our Opinion section, there are columns noting labor as a trade issue from the Caribbean perspective and globalization in light of US workers’s economic interests. Our Spanish News section includes an article from the US State Department about the Bush administration’s initiatives with respect to the World Trade Organization, and another piece from the Latin American ADITAL news service (which is based in Brazil and espouses a liberation theology point of view) about Nicaraguan grass roots opposition to free trade with the United States.
This issue also features a lead News story and Opinion columns by Raúl Leis and Miguel Antonio Bernal about the movement for a constituent assembly, which when viewed from a certain angle amounts to a stern rejection of our governmental status quo. Our Spanish News section leads off on an even more negative note, with the text of ANCON's lawsuit to stop the construction of a road through Volcan Baru National Park. And how can you write anything at all when the subject is the recall phenomena in California and Venezuela as my column is, without rejecting someone or something?
Doesn’t anybody down here accept anything or anybody else? Actually, though Panama is into the nastiness of an early election campaign, I did take time to go to a fun little Diversity Parade through the Casco Viejo the other day. I do note that the CBS Survivor show will be bringing an attractive aspect of Panama into North American living rooms shortly. There are many fun things to do as this country’s centennial celebrations build up to their November climax. It’s getting harder to find hotel rooms for the holidays, but there’s still room at the inn and despite the rains this is a wonderful season to visit Panama.
Those of you who can’t visit this year may want to at least sample the local flavors. Do so by using the new buttons on our Dining page, which will link you to Panamanian and West Indian recipe sites, and to culinary links in general.
¡Buen provecho!
