Panamanian baseball needs
to be rid of Franz Wever

Fresh off of his performance in Taiwan, where Panama's national team made it to the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Championships and then was expelled from the tournament and booted out of their hotel because he neglected to make a $6,000 insurance premium payment, FEDEBEIS president Franz Wever is back in action. Also one of the sleazier members of a discredited National Assembly, Wever blew off calls for his ouster as baseball czar and a prosecutor's request to lift his immunity from criminal prosecution for things he did as a member of the Panamanian Olympic Committee, and got down to organizing the 2008 national baseball tournaments.

He's also trying to switch legislative circuits and get elected from Chame and San Carlos rather than his current Panama City circuit in 2009, and has used his position at the head of FEDEBEIS to turn the junior tournament into a PRD campaign event. Notice the 'look at the new stadium lights I got you' political patronage play, and the appeal for his slate in the internal PRD elections, in the poster shown above, copies of which were taped up in the area's bus stops.

Before this latest gaffe, before the disaster in Taiwan, the use of racist epithets in the firing of coach Roberto Kelly on the eve of the first World Baseball Classic and Wever's public defense of such racism had many in Major League Baseball vowing that Panama won't be invited to the next version of that tournament if Wever is still in charge of FEDEBEIS.

If Martín Torrijos wants his political party to stand for the racial slur "mierda negra" as he and it have, that bit of ugliness is the president's and the PRD's public disgrace. They do own their political machine.

The Bhutto assassination
and Musharraf's cover-up

Are Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Barack Obama and the many other US politicians who have spoken out against the Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan just ghoulish conspiracy theorists? Or should we confide in Mitt Romney, who after the assassination vouched for Musharraf's character, and George W. Bush, whose immediate response was to pressure Bhutto's grieving familiy and her Pakistan Peoples Party into participating in Musharraf's elections?

We already knew Musharraf to be a self-aggrandizing dictator. However, in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's murder we saw clear obstruction of justice by his government, and a belated plea of "inefficiency" just isn't very credible.

The forensic sciences, when employed, can tell us a lot of things about a terrorist attack. Part of the Bhutto assassination was the detonation of an explosive device, and every bomb bears a "signature" of its maker. The tiniest shreds of evidence left behind at the blast scene can often reveal it.

Was it a device with an electrical trigger? Then how were the connections made? Were they soldered, and if so, with which kind of solder? Were wires twisted together? Then clockwise or counter-clockwise, and was the connection insulated with a cap, electrical tape or something else, and if it was electrical tape, what width? Was is a mechanical striker rather than an electrical detonator that set off the bomb? Then improvised or obtained? And if obtained from some arms manufacturer, which one? Which armies would use one of those? That little grain of unburned explosive --- what was it? Was it home made, commercial or military? Ditto for that remnant of a blasting cap. So it was a suicide bomber belt? What kind of material? Home made or improvised from some commercial product? And on and on and on....

That's why a competent bomb scene investigation takes days of painstaking fine-tooth combing through the rubble for clues.

And yet, within the hour of Bhutto's murder --- before BBC television cameras, no less --- the Musharraf regime destroyed the crime scene with high-pressure water hoses. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QXvK7NvJEQ .

Was this just an ignorant move by a government not used to dealing with bomb scenes? PAKISTAN? That miserably poor and incredibly backward Third World country, which nevertheless developed its own nuclear weapons and has all the modern luxuries for its ruling elites? The country that Osama bin Laden most probably calls home at the moment, with its long history of political assassinations and terrorism along religious, ethnic and political lines? No way. The Pakistani police know about bomb investigations. And yet they destroyed this crime scene.

The very public and flagrant destruction of the crime scene led to an international outcry, and only after days of internal rioting and external snubs would Musharraf reverse course and invite Scotland Yard to participate in the investigation.

So who killed Benazir Bhutto? Maybe the physical and intellectual authors of the crime will be identified, but that's a matter of speculation.

It IS known, however, that evidence was destroyed and in the law there is a rebuttable presumption that when a person destroys evidence it's because that evidence is against the interest of the person destroying it.

Those who would elevate Benazir Bhutto to some sort of sainthood are as far from the mark as Mitt Romney is when he vouches for Pervez Musharraf's good character. She was an oligarchic politician in a Third World country who along with her husband amassed incredible unexplained wealth while in public office. But she was the leader of the party that the people elected. We don't have to invent any Camelot stories to know that her murder was a terrible blow to the prospect of democracy being restored in Pakistan.

"Your leader has been slain and now we, the overbearing world cop, are demanding that you participate in this show put on by the guy who has blocked any meaningful investigation into your leader's assassination." Not in so many words, but that's the gist of the message that the United States government is sending to Pakistan --- not to Al Qaeda, but to one of the moderate democratic factions in that Muslim land.

So is former US diplomat and dark horse Democratic primary candidate Bill Richardson being an extremist when he calls for the US government to cut off the money supply to Musharraf? On the contrary. He's as prudent as can be about this. Several of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are saying things approaching Richardson's blunt assessment. Good for them.

Don't believe in this "clash of civilizations" routine. Don't believe that there is any good reason for a new dark age of Crusades and Jihads. Don't believe that the United States ought to be enemies with the world's Muslims. DO believe that America ought to be friends with the great majority of Pakistanis.

But being friends with the people of Pakistan and being friends with the dictator of Pakistan are two very different things. It's bad enough that there's this doofus in the White House who can't see the distinction. The time is upon us when American voters have an opportunity to ensure that the next president isn't similarly idiotic.

Bear in mind...