letters

Many letters, mostly friendly, about different topics

To connect Colon's Costa Abajo with the rest of Panama

Here is a new proposal for Gatun east-west bank:

The bridge (or should it be called tunnel?) goes under water to allow movement of ships. In order for ships to pass, this bridge is half under the water. You drive down in the water and then come out on the other side.

Truly a marvelous piece of engineering! This bridge shown above is between Sweden and Denmark. The picture is taken from the Swedish side.

Jill and Skip Berger

Gold Coast Travels and Expeditions Panama

Latin America and Bush administration policy

I have to disagree with you on the Bush administration lack of involvement in Latin America. We have been very involved with Plan Colombia, and it has been a very successful as it progressing. Bogota is a safer city then it was six years ago. Being there with my Colombian wife, I felt more safe than many of our cities in the US. Bush and Uribe have worked together for progress, but there is a lot of work to be done still. My point is George W. Bush has done things for the countries in the region.

Here is a link from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15559502/from/ET/

Being a Zonian living in the US, we do have our fair share of problems, but voting Democratic will be a huge cost not only to the US, but in the Latin American region.

Michael D. Hanson

Denver, Co

Sad Day in Gorgona

the author of this letter next to one of the threatened corotu trees

The Playa Serena project recently had a ground-breaking ceremony to inaugurate their condo tower-resort project. Monday [November 6] they are scheduled to begin cutting down all the trees on that 10,000 sq. meter plot. Two avenues of stately royal palms, several mahoganies, large mango trees and two giant corotu are to be destroyed. The non-native trees are at least 65 years old, and the corotu are much older.

The irony of development: many people buying condos in the Playa Serena Resort chose this Gorgona project because they liked all the big trees in the area. The developers actually charged more dollars per square meter for each apartment than for those in the Coronado Country Club project, where tower #3 is under construction.

This is a sad day for Gorgona.

Ruth King de Leves

Neighbor of the Playa Serena property

Thanks from Spay Panama

You posted Osin in your volume 12, No. 17.

He was adopted today with his little sister Mausi.

Pat Chan

http://www.spaypanama.org

A charming email from Arturo de la Guardia

Re: Response: Las Costillitas (Cucarracha-infested restuarant)

From: adlg@cdpdigital.com.pa

Date: Mon, November 13, 2006 11:04 am

To: "Glenn Tucker" <glenntucker2003@yahoo.com>

Cc: e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com (more)

hmm no wonder he is such a loser, he is fat and sad, i should've known he is fat and disgusting, i mean its losers like this one that try to get attention on the internet by inventing news, i mean hes just happy with making controversy and having us sending this e-mails about him, at least hes getting some attantion, well lets keep him like this because you know what happens to losers like this that dont get ANY attention.. UNABOMBER or SUICIDE!!

Editor's note: This was the most obnoxious of an avalanche of emails among Donald K. Winner, Glenn Tucker and Arturo de la Guardia discussing their unprofessional diagnosis of the form of bipolar depression with which I am afflicted that were sent to me over the past couple of weeks. I guess that since Winner is a born-again Norieguista, he and his accomplices are making a lame attempt at imitating the former strongman's most notable talent, messing with people's heads.

However, this does serve as a good opportunity to remind the many people who suffer from chronic depressions of all sorts, and those around them, that these disorders need not ruin a person's life. A lot remains unknown about affective disorders, but their association with chemical imbalances in the body is known and, in addition to lifestyles that control or work around the problem, there are drugs that are effective at controlling severe or  prolonged cases. On the other hand, "self-medication" by use of alcohol or various legal or illegal drugs is usually a matter of self-deception and quite frequently leads to substance abuse that can be an even worse problem than the underlying depression.

If you are chronically depressed, get any help you need and most of all get to know yourself and learn the objective signs of the malady so that you --- not some doctor, and certainly not some guttersnipe who thinks it would be fun to drive you to self-destruction ---  can take control of your life.

The reality is that you can control depression and live a full and productive life. Abraham Lincoln did it, and the medical science that can help you do it has come a long way since his time.

Critics

Hi Eric, as far as your critics, there is very little worse in life than yahoos who have a tool like the Internet but nothing between the ears --- they can get to one. Don't waste to much of your time on them --- you have bigger things to fry.

Your friend Juan from Gorgona y Volcan

Now you need permission to exit or enter the USA

This came to my attention the other day and I feel that this subject requires the immediate attention of all citizens around the country. This has been ignored by the mainstream TV and radio media. I have not seen any mention of this in the local papers here in Maine, a border state with Canada.

One prime example is my neighbor, who has family relatives in New Brunswick. Why should he have to get permission from the DHS to leave the country to visit them and possibly run the risk of being barred from entry upon his return?

Nothing here makes any sense. The USA/Mexico border is still wide open. Nothing is being done about stemming the flow of illegal immigrants or the employers who illegally hire them --- at least at the federal level.

Arizona and Texas are taking matters into their hands to control the border.

If illegals have the freedom to break the border, why must legal citizens face such draconian measures?

Please get the word out. Please encourage your readers to contact the state delegations to Washington and protest this now.

January 14, 2007 is just a little less than ten weeks away.

Peter Carminati

Stonington, Maine

To the victor belongs impunity

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Henry Kissinger, New York Times, October 28, 1973

Baghdad’s kangaroo court has issued a verdict that virtually guarantees that Saddam Hussein will launch his journey into the hereafter from the platform of a gallows. Convicted of “revenge killings of 148 people, deportation of 400, and razing of orchards,” and still facing a charge of genocide that resulted in the deaths of 180,000 Kurds, Hussein is undoubtedly a malevolent individual.

Yet to ensure public furor against Hussein (and to distract the hoi polloi from focusing upon those guilty of similar crimes), the corporate media have conveniently jettisoned several important aspects of history down the Memory Hole:

1. Hussein committed his crimes with the tacit approval and complicity of the United States government because he was waging a war against their enemy, Iran.

2. Numerous members of our own power elite (Democrat and Republican alike) share responsibility for an ongoing United States genocide against the Iraqi people that began with the Gulf War.

3. The Iraqi administration prosecuting Hussein conducts its purportedly “sovereign” governance in a nation occupied by 140,000 US troops.

4. And perhaps most disturbingly, the United States is rife with government officials of varying capacities, both active and retired, who have committed crimes as egregious as those of Saddam. Acting with impunity and actually deriving prosperity from their transgressions, these individuals have historically ridden off into the golden hue of the setting sun, pausing just long enough to turn and flash a sneer at their would-be jailers or executioners.

If the US criminal class did actually face the Hammurabic style of justice they have imposed upon their former ally, Bush, Kissinger, and a number of other revolting miscreants would find that simply surrendering their sight and capacity to chew would fall well short of satisfying the Babylonian arbiter.

And what punishment could an international tribunal impose upon the American Empire’s ruling elites to balance the scales of justice by retribution?

Nothing short of shattering their cervical vertebrae with 1000 pounds of force, reducing them to asphyxiated corpses devoid of the capacity to cause more suffering. After days of twisting in the wind, unable to fend off persistent molestation by an array of avian scavengers, their decayed corporeal shells would be hastily laid to rest in rickety pine boxes buried in a potter’s field.

Now that would restore the gleam in Hammurabi’s eyes and probably inspire him to dance a frenetic jig of mirth.

But despite obvious signs of decay, the world still belongs to the American Empire. And it is doubtful that the ancient law-giver will be enraptured any time soon.

Representing the victors in the struggle for global supremacy, reprehensible individuals like Donald Rumsfeld can engineer the liquidation of horrifying numbers of human beings while blithely dismissing their victims as “collateral damage” in “just wars.”

When the Empire’s architects of conquest set their sites on sorely over-matched nations like Vietnam or Iraq, infants are butchered and obliterated. Women are raped and eviscerated. Men are decapitated and mutilated. Children are mangled and dismembered. Innocent human beings are imprisoned and tortured. Millions of people are displaced. Infrastructures are decimated. Resources are plundered. Environments are severely contaminated --- Hell is unleashed.

Yet will the contrivers of these decidedly evil US intrigues, campaigns, and invasions endure an iota of Earthly castigation?

No. While men like Saddam pay the ultimate price for their crimes, equally maleficent US American leaders reap significant rewards.

Consider just three examples of such US perpetrators (an analysis which does not even smudge the surface, let alone scratch it):

Henry Kissinger is responsible for the deaths of over a million human beings as a result of his machinations in Cambodia, Greece, East Timor, and Chile. He received the Nobel Peace Prize.

As Ambassador to Honduras (under Reagan) during US interventions to remove a leftist government in Nicaragua, dedicated imperialist John Negroponte was “directly complicit in the murder of at least 184 Honduran civilians officially found to have been killed by the death squad by a 1994 Honduran truth commission.” George W. Bush subsequently appointed him as Ambassador to the UN, then as Ambassador to Iraq, and finally to his current position as National Intelligence Director.

And what of George W. Bush? His well-documented lies, defiance of the UN, and violations of the US Constitution have caused considerable carnage in Iraq. By October of 2004, between 10,000 and 100,000 thousand Iraqis were dead [depending on which estimate one believes]. That November, Bush was granted another four years to continue wreaking havoc and annihilating innocents.

Naturally, a rational mind demands to know how such insanity and iniquity can persist.

It is quite simple, really. Corporate-controlled media in the United States put Orwell’s Ministry of Truth to shame. Slicing, dicing, and liquefying with an efficiency exceeding that of a commercial grade Cuisine art, they deftly reduce information to intellectual pablum for the multitude of minds they have systematically stunted.

Sustained from birth on this adulterated concoction, psyches inculcated with the notions of US entitlement and superiority clamor desperately for more of their perpetual delusion’s lifeblood. Starved for nutritive doses of truth and depth, minds gorged on sound bites and pornographic images blended with select cuts of the finest propaganda billions of dollars can buy suffer the malaise and sloth of an obese individual addicted to fast food. Intellectually submissive, they reflexively embrace the asinine mythology perpetuated by the MSM.

Hence, many US Americans recently perceived a “seismic shift” in the political landscape and breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Democrats “rode to our rescue” by wresting control of Congress from the evil GOP.

So despite the stark reality that the Democratic Party is simply another vehicle of corporate interests which has spawned as many malefactors as the Republicans:

1. A Democratic Congress is going to right the wrongs of the Bush Regime and make the world “safe for democracy” once again?

2. Nancy Pelosi is going to oversee the restoration of a semblance of ethical conduct by the US government without even attempting to impeach men guilty of virtually innumerable crimes against our Constitution and against humanity?

3. Our “savior Dems” are going to bring the troops home from Iraq when they insist on framing the mistakes of the Bush Regime in strategic rather than moral terms?

After reflecting on those questions, contemplate the fact that with the proliferation of democratically elected indigenous Latin American leaders who are implementing policies which defy the US brand of rapacious Capitalism, the bellicose fascists in the Bush Regime are preparing to tighten the screws.

From the USA Today on 11/9:

"Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries."

Translation: After a brief respite from years of misery, torture, and death inflicted by the United States and its proxy dictators, the people of Central and South America are poised to suffer renewed collective punishment for daring to establish governments that reject the exploitation and economic manipulation of the US Corporatocracy.

No wonder the Decider brought Negroponte back into the fold.

While many US Americans of conscience may be pacified with the Democratic revival, Chávez, Morales, Ortega, and their people aren’t counting on Pelosi to save them. They know the Dems will be too busy applauding the execution of genocidal tyrants like Saddam Hussein and fulfilling Ms. Pelosi’s pledge to “work together to find a new solution” with benevolent humanitarians like George Bush.

Jason Miller