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He flies through the air...
But as in the case of the daring young man on the flying trapeze, it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that he does so with “the greatest of ease.” It takes a lot of practice to perfect skateboarding moves, practice that generally takes place on streets and sidewalks due to inadequate local park facilities and a school system that has no vacation recreation programs like the old Canal Zone schools used to have.
We are now well into March, and kids will be back in school before the next issue of The Panama News appears.
We are also into the second half of our semi-annual fundraising drive. The Panama News is a ragtag little business that survives mostly on ad sales, but also a free public service that can’t get by without contributions from its many readers.
And of course, in these dark days of systematic legal harassment of the Panamanian press, there are those who don’t want us to get by. See, for example, the charming little extortion note that the editor received from Bocas real estate fraudster Tom McMurrain.
This bit of gangsterism is being aided and abetted by our Attorney General, who is proceeding full speed ahead with my prosecution for a couple of stories about Mr. McMurrain’s operation that were published last year, on a curious criminal defamation charge in which the complaint fails to specify any part of either story which is alleged to be false. (Yes, I know that San Cristobal’s attorney vehemently denies that he represents a gangster organization. But if you read Spanish, see what the National Police have to say about McMurrain’s Bocas vigilantes, get past the raving to understand the essence of McMurrain’s “offer” and add it up for yourself.)
Donations are just beginning to trickle in from our appeal, and it’s touch and go whether we will put our debt situation with Seguro Social in order before the special early deadline that Sossa has imposed on us. The legal battle against McMurrain’s calumnia e injuria charges is not as pressing in the temporal sense, but because it will involve paying for certified legal translations of dozens of the erstwhile Atlanta dot-com hustler’s fraudulent Internet misrepresentations and then legal battles to get them included in the court file, it’s going to be an expensive protracted fight.
And maybe if some of you out there are really generous, our March fundraiser will allow us to expand and improve The Panama News. If you think that the publication you are reading is a worthy cause, send your check, made out to Eric Jackson with a notation that it’s for The Panama News, to:
The Panama News
Apartado 55-0927 Estafeta Paitilla
Panama, Republic of Panama
And I thank those of you who have already contributed, or who will.
Panama is the Crossroads of the World and therefore any newspaper that tries to cover what’s going on here, even if it can’t afford to pay overseas correspondents, has to take a regional and global view. The terrorist attacks in Madrid and subsequent political developments thus figure not only in our Editorial and English and Spanish Opinion sections, but also in the Business news, as the International Maritime Organization has called for a speedup in implementation of the new ISPS anti-terrorism ship and port regulations and that is a matter of some importance for Panama’s principal industry.
We also have Willy Gutman starting a series of reports from Honduras and the first of a two-part look at the ugliest part of the international tourism market, child prostitution. The new secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States, Rubén Silié, writes about the historical roots of Haiti’s crisis. We also have an analysis from Venezuela about conflicting notions of human rights, the tale of dog handler Sandra Anderson’s conviction on US evidence tampering charges and its fallout here, and a note about a Greenpeace action against a shipload of what the group alleges is illegally cut Indonesian teak.
As these front page notes are written, I have just read an international story that may have little to do with Panama and which has received only a bit of coverage from the multinational corporate media, but bears mentioning. Holland and freedom-loving people everywhere have lost Queen Juliana, who passed away at the age of 94. She abdicated in favor of her daughter, Queen Beatrix, back in 1980 but her contributions should not be forgotten. Forced to flee by Nazi invaders in World War II, she came back to oversee the restoration of democracy in her country, and also dispensed with many of the titles and privileges that she had enjoyed as part of her constitutional monarchy. The world would be a much better place if more government leaders were to embrace the sense of humility and decency that Queen Juliana embodied.
(Let me not move entirely away from the subject of queens without mentioning that the new queen of all cruise ships, the Queen Mary 2, recently called at Cristobal. It's also worth mentioning that many of you who can't make a financial donation can nevertheless help improve The Panama News by contributing newsworthy photos and articles, as was done in this instance.)
Meanwhile, there’s a lot happening in Panama, given that there’s a little more than a month to go before our national elections. Quite frankly, the greater part of the politicians’ promises, and most of the charges they are making against each other, are unworthy of your attention or mine. But we did have another televised presidential debate, there are some egregious campaign abuses worthy of notice in our News and Travel sections, and presidential secret funds are emerging as a hot topic in this election season.
The Panamanian Business Executives Association’s (APEDE’s) annual CADE gathering, where management types pondered the problems of democracy and development in this country. I attended part of the event and report on it in the Business section, and Eloy Fisher expresses his irreverent perspective on APEDE leader John Bennett in his Opinion column. I don’t particularly share Fisher’s view, nor do I think that La Prensa’s coverage of Bennett’s presentation, which made the man come across as something of an anarchist, was very enlightening. As somebody whose basic social allegiance is to labor rather than management, I still think that when the nation’s business executives are saying that in the fields of government corruption, public bureaucracy and the school system the country can no longer afford the status quo, people from all walks of life would do well to listen.
Finally, this issue takes you --- albeit vicariously --- out to lunch.
Enjoy.
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