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opinion

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Ah, it’s five minutes to ten on a Friday night, and I’m getting a bit of relative peace in which to write. Fifteen minutes ago I had anything but. Some young jerk came by in his car to pick up his airhead girlfriend, and apparently to impress her he didn’t do the usual uncouth thing and honk his horn --- no, this guy set off his car alarm. Which set off the baby next door who had just gotten to sleep into a shrieking fit. But now things have calmed down.

Now I’m not freezing my buns and starving in Valley Forge with a ragtag army that’s being pursued by the soldiers of the world’s most powerful empire, so the comparison does not square on all four points, but I can relate to what Tom Paine wrote so long ago: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

The noise? Naaaah --- that’s just gravy, par for the course in a society whose leaders worship Mickey Mouse as the pinnacle of American culture, which they consider vastly superior to their own.

The infernal racket’s just sauce for the computer crash that has left me without a web design program, teaching myself to do html documents without such a convenience in order to get this issue out.

It’s an extra dash of flavor --- somewhat bitter --- for a day when I discovered that someone had hacked into The Panama News website to add links for a California advertising outfit. If you noticed these green bars near the travel link at the top of the pages and near the word "hotel" at the bottom of the pages, that's what I'm talking about. I am not sure who did it, nor is my web server, and it is not the most catastrophic thing, but rather an annoying taunt. I wonder if there is any relationship to the more than 5,000 identical spam mails, sent from different, apparently machine-generated, Hotmail addresses, which vowed revenge for allegedly irresponsible (though unspecified) behavior that flooded my Yahoo email box on the last weekend of February.

It’s just gravy for a day in which I received a non-negotiable check (the account is not in the name of The Panama News, but in my personal name) and wasted too much time pandering to a would-be advertiser’s foolish attempt to send payment from Costa Rica through the BAC bank.

I could come up with a beat something like da DA da DUM dum dum and render this day into a blues progression. I could go berserk, running naked in the streets with a blunt instrument, smashing the windshield of any car that emits an electronic squawk. I could, but I won’t do those things.

I will, however, reflect on why today’s adventures say ultra-nasty things about the possibilities of a so-called “free trade agreement” between the United States and Panama.

These deals are about far more than trade, you know.

They are, for example, about the United States forcing us to accept monopolistic practices by multinational corporations holding title to intellectual property.

For me to go out and buy replacement software would cost me more than a new computer would. But then I use an ancient Mac, and they don’t even sell the software I’ve been using here anymore, and if you try to order it directly from the States the sellers will say that they are not licensed to deal with Panama.

Basically what Bill Gates et al are telling Panama and the rest of the developing world is that we have to pay them for intellectual property that in some cases they themselves stole --- like Microsoft pirated the Apple drag and drop technology that made personal computers easy to use --- and if they make marketing decisions with profit maximization in mind, Panamanians will just have to throw away their old computers and buy new ones, plus expensive new software to make them work. And if all that is ruinous to our economy, tough.

(It could be worse. The US Congress is holding up approval of the Central America Free Trade Agreement because the representatives of the pharmaceutical industry --- duly bought by the institutionalized bribery that is euphemistically known as the US campaign finance system --- insist that Guatemala ditch its generic drug law. The Republican caucus, with backing from some of the more sordid Democrats, has become “pro-choice.” Guatemalans can choose to pay sky-high US prices for their medicines, or can choose to die. That most Guatemalans are precluded by economic circumstances from making any real choice in such matters is of no consequence to the senators and representatives from the drug industry.)

By the way, will The Panama News get any protection against US-based Internet pirates through a US-Panama free trade agreement? I think not. Through the FCC the Bush administration is trying to stamp out small independent Internet media, and the Bush administration's alleged war on terrorism has never bagged any of the creators of the major viruses that have swept around the world, clogging email boxes and jamming servers at great expense to businesses and individuals.

And will Panamanians get US-style banking services out of a free trade agreement? Fat chance. We’ll still have to wait for 21 business days for a foreign check that can be verified in an electronic split second to clear. We’ll still have to put up with the wretched banking that puts Panama in the absurd position of pretending to be an international banking center when fewer than 10 percent of our people have any sort of bank account. But if the US representatives and senators from the banking industry and their buddies who set the editorial policy at El Panama America get their way, the multinational banks will get to participate, along with big insurance companies, in the appropriation of Panama’s Social Security Fund for their investment portfolios.

(And if Martín is dumb enough to fall for that one, or slimy enough to go along with it in order to get along with people richer and more powerful than himself, he’ll deserve the rioting that will inevitably follow --- even though the Panamanian people won’t. A dose of vile tasting medicine to deal with a serious problem is one thing, but privatization is not a cure --- it’s more along the line of stealing the shoes of a patient who’s under sedation in a hospital ward.)

Me? I’ll get by, on a combination of my own forced improvisations and plenty of help from friends. If I do really well I’ll maintain a sense of humor through these little tribulations, something that I have not always done.

I’m less confident about Panama getting by. Yes, the nation will survive, but if the president and his free trade negotiators cave in to the most obnoxious of the American demands, the rest of us may end up surviving on something like the current standard of living in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca.

However, the nation, The Panama News and I won’t flunk this soul test all that easily. That you are reading these words is one small proof of humanity’s resilience.

The real question is not whether Panama survives, but whether the country and its people prosper. I expect that the leaders of Panama’s government --- all three branches, and down to the local level --- will fail this test in miserable fashion. Yet I’m willing to wait and see, and give them the benefit of the doubt, in the hope that they will prove me wrong. Especially so, because if the rioting spreads to this block, “soul brother” doesn’t translate very well into Spanish.