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Rash of deaths in Ngobe-Bugle Comarca prompts criticism of Torrijos information controls
An epidemic as photo op

Panama rejoining the Andean Community

Sucking up to Pedro Miguel González

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman is Winner's new columnist
Panama News Briefs

Don Winner's new columnist

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman's greatest hits

by Eric Jackson, except as noted

Donald K. Winner is raving again. His illness has taken a turn for the worse.

Ever since he embarked on the monopolistic practice of trying to compete with The Panama News by using the stolen labor of others --- he copies copyrighted things by other journalists working in other media from the Google wire and pastes them on his commercial website, even though many of the media from which he steals have repeatedly demanded that he stop, and then boasts that he has "thousand of articles" (of stolen property) and then goes into junior shrink mode about how it's some sort of mental illness to point out this illegal business practice. But he and his backers always were deluded to think that they'd get away without a fight.

Now Winner, confident --- should he be? --- that this reporter won't use Panama's obnoxious criminal defamation laws, continues with his (and his proxies') nondescript slur about how "Eric Jackson has been slandering people with impunity for years." (Just which people, when, where and in which circumstances, he never does specify.)

Well, yes, I have been accused of criminal defamation. The first guy who accused me, a presidential aide in the Moscoso administration, was forced to back down because the story published in The Panama News was accurate and I wouldn't be intimidated. The second guy, one Tom McMurrain, not only didn't win his case against me, he's doing hard time in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for the sorts of swindles that The Panama News brought to the public's attention. Now there's a third guy charging me, about whom there is more below, and a fourth making threats that are published in the letters section of this issue.

Does Winner smell blood? Maybe it's his own. Reputable publications in the USA, some of them from which Winner habitually steals, call on me, not him, for stories, photos and analyses. They don't call on him. When they do call on me and the stuff I write or the photos I take appear in them, then Winner tends to go totally nuts, as he recently has.

Ah, but now Don Winner has a not-so-secret weapon, a so-called "nice guy" and purportedly reputable businessman whom he has picked up as a columnist: Mark Boswell, alias Rex Freeman. Boswell alias Freeman has charged me with criminal defamation and Winner thinks he's backed a winner by adding his commentaries to his website.

Winner's published strategy is "if a guy like Eric Jackson has five or six or seven criminal complaints against him, then he will most likely be seen by the same criminal prosecutor and judges who have been specially trained to deal with these kinds of criminal complaints."

Libel? Try this ditty by Boswell alias Freeman from Winner's website:

"Eric Jackson has never done any business with me. He has never met me nor has he ever had any interaction with me...."

The truth of the matter is that I did exchange emails with Boswell alias Freeman before writing about him, but the conversation was cut short. It went like this:

My questions:

1)  Is Venture Resources Group registered with Panama's Comision Nacional de Valores or its Superintendencia de Bancos?

2) Is InterGlobal Finance registered with Panama's Comision Nacional de Valores or its Superintendencia de Bancos?

3) In your Escape Artist article you said that you were headed to Panama but stopped in Costa Rica along the way and decided to stay. Have you decided to move to Panama?

4) At www.privacyclub.org/short_tour/benefits_main.htm you promote a book, "How to Become an Honorary Consul," and allege a 100 percent success rate. How many honorary consuls in Panama have become such due to information you have provided?

5) Why should people not presume, on the face of it from your own promotions, that Venture Resources Group is a pyramid scheme?

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman's answer:

Re: Your Questions

From: "Strategic Management" <businessfinance@hushmail.com >

Date: Wed, August 2, 2006 6:01 pm

To: editor@thepanamanews.com

Hi Eric,

I'm in receipt of your email and your questions.

By the slant of your questioning, it appears to me that you are not looking to write an objective article based on the facts.

Rather than ask about our legal registration with regulatory authorities, why don't you ask about the nature of our activities to understand us enough in order to know if that is even appropriate? Maybe you don't care about that.

Rather than ask if we are an (illegal) pyramid 'scheme' why don't you define that for us first with specificity as the law defines it and then compare the actual characteristics of our program to such a scheme? Maybe you don't care about those facts.

Rather than create an adversarial environment with pointed questions coming from 'left field' and without introduction or establishing any premise for a dialog, why don't you ask for an interview with full disclosure of your purposes and intentions from the beginning? Maybe that's not important to your 'objective'.

It is clear to me that with your clumsy and unprofessional approach that you are not interested in the facts, but rather are looking for justification to go on a witch hunt.

I have plenty of experience with editors like you and under those circumstances you will write what you like to suit your agenda, regardless of the facts.

Therefore, there is no need for any interaction with me.

If you wish to have a meaningful and honest dialog and operate in good faith with clean hands, I am happy to accommodate. That's the only way I operate.

However, that is not what I see from you so far and thus, I'm not interested in what The Panama News has to say. Our market is not in Panama.

Be careful to stand on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Your activities are very public and anything less than the truth always causes problems.

Best Wishes,

Rex

So who's the liar?

Donald K. Winner is, for publishing this scurrilous allegation that I never had any interaction before writing my story, and Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman is, for making it under his byline. It's defamatory, false and malicious --- as in libel. But then I hated being a lawyer and I wonder if I really ought to hassle this out in a US or Panamanian court.

Maybe it's just enough to point out whom and what Don Winner is backing now. He's backing a guy who fled here from Costa Rica, with a bunch of people hollering for their money, after running this scam. (You have to read to the bottom of the page to get to the $15,000 punchline.) He's backing a guru of greed who preaches this religion on the Internet. He's a former patriot militia shill from Colorado (read down to the bottom of the page, and then read on because it gets weirder), who used to run an outfit called the American Law Club.

Freeman assails me for describing him as a law school dropout:

The Fact: I taught myself what I know about the law and my education there was never hindered by attending any law school. The Jackson spin: “…law school dropout”. But since Jackson did graduate from school and passed the bar, this gives him ‘one up’ !? All Hail !

But in the hype for one of his "investment seminars," this was how the tale was presented, online at http://www.offshoreconferences.com/speakers.htm:

As a post graduate student of the law at Denver University and frequent paralegal working at the Colorado Supreme Court he founded and directed the American Law Club in the states, which was a grass roots citizens' legal self defense educational organization catering to everyday citizens in their fight against injustice and systemic abuses which then led to a nationally syndicated radio show which also went worldwide on shortwave.

Currently, Rex is founder and director of Interglobal Finance, S.A. and the Venture Resource Group Business Club among other active organizations....

But hey, Don Winner certifies Boswell alias Freeman as a "nice guy," and has brought him on as the new columnist, perhaps on the strength of journalistic triumphs like this one.

This reporter has to consider legal options --- but this matter is surely more urgent for some folks other than me because Winner and Boswell alias Freeman have gone so far off the deep end that they have put their associates' reputations at risk.

The local post of the VFW and the Elks Lodge 1414 in Balboa, whose logos and claimed sponsorship appear on the website where Don Winner and Boswell alias Freeman hold court, for example, may want to consider if this is really the sort of "Americanism" for which the members stand.

Surely the businesses who support Don Winner through the purchase of advertising on his website need to consider how it makes them look to be associated with all the lunacy and piracy. Which of these businesses care to have not only the taint of a Don Winner association, but now the added stench of a rotting Boswell alias Freeman albatross hanging around their necks?

But hey, maybe somebody does want to plunk down a $15 grand "one time payment" for a cut of Boswell alias Freeman's action. Maybe somebody does want to make use of his "banking" services that are not registered with Panama's Banking Superintendent.

After all, Don Winner calls him a nice guy and has taken him on as a columnist. After all, Boswell claims at http://web.archive.org/web/20050310032414/www.interglobalfinance.com/ourpartners.shtml that a Who's Who list of prestigious names are associated with his business ventures. (Call these "sponsors" and see for yourself.)

I stand by my story about Boswell alias Freeman, and point to Don Winner's endorsement of this man and his scams as another good example of the predatory role that Mr. Winner plays in the community.

By the way, if ever you pored over all those seminal Common Law cases from Merrie Olde England in the course of getting a legal education, you will have seen all these references to "Rex" and "Regina." Rex as in Latin for "king." Mark Boswell got the Freeman surname from the Montana Freemen, who all took that surname as an alias, practiced many of the jive scams that Mark Boswell promoted, and when the feds besieged their compound raved over the radio station on which Boswell spun his weird theories until the Montana Freemen phone lines were cut.

That, in turn, leads me to one parting thought: why would free men need a king?

Rash of deaths in Ngobe-Bugle Comarca prompts criticism of Torrijos information controls
An epidemic as photo op

Panama rejoining the Andean Community

Sucking up to Pedro Miguel González

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman is Winner's new columnist
Panama News Briefs