Standing guard

photo by Eric Jackson

On guard

Here we have the top part of one of a pair of wooden statues standing guard in front of Weil Art, this country's most prestigious gallery and auction house. It's next to the Eurasia restaurant, not far from Parque Urraca.

So many of the English-speaking world's newspapers are named the "guardian" or the "sentinel" because that's one of the main things that a news medium whose owners have any sense of public duty does --- it stands guard, alerting its readers of things that they should know. The media have other functions, too, but I do take the sentinel role seriously.

* * *

This issue's production is late in large part because The Panama News is always late. Guess I not only have never assimilated this odd gringo concept about how time is money, I have to the contrary acquired this very typically Panamanian attitude about time. That, and I'm also chronically late because I take on more work than I can do in a timely fashion, and because I am not a cut and paste copyright thief like the wannabe competition.

But this issue has also been delayed because of a sudden death in my family. Actually, it was the death of another kind of sentinel.

* * *

Life goes on.

Yes, I am working when a lot of other folks wouldn't, having immediately taken the time to alert George's Masonic brothers and get the news out of his passing to certain Internet groups. I am part of one of these extended families more or less run by the women, so have spent a fair amount of time that I would otherwise have spent working on this issue to care of an elderly and infirm stepfather so that my mother could meet my sister at the airport and not have to be concerned about holding down the fort back at home, and answering many phone calls of concern and condolence. It has meant the cancellation of some things I had planned to do in the city, but in those spaces I have been able to find between this and that I have continued work on this issue from here in San Carlos as best I can. Bear with me as the stories and sections get put up and the broken links are repaired.

I thank everybody who has sent their condolences to the family.

We will survive. We always do. But individually all of us meet the end of life's cycle.

And as George Klein so suddenly and unexpectedly left us, his widow Cheryl (my sister) came flying back from the States, where she was present when her daughter (my niece) Kim gave birth to a healthy granddaughter.

Just because one may be a bit of a sickie does not rule out an appreciation for good literature --- in fact the two often go hand in hand. And one of my very favorite writers, almost universally considered a "difficult person" with a somewhat depraved imagination, the great Harlan Ellison, wrote this to put times like these into perspective:

"Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment."

So let us turn away from my plans and role and work as a journalist for a moment and remember George.

He was a New Yorker, a dyslexic before the schools knew much about how to deal with that but anything but a dummy.

He spent most of his working life in the US Army, starting out as a 19-year-old infantryman on the frozen front lines in some of the Korean War's darkest moments and serving two tours in Vietnam. He retired as a first sergeant.

Panama's community of veterans of the US Armed Forces, at least that part of it which gathers at the American cemetery every Memorial Day and Veterans Day, may recall George by his 7th Cavalry hat. Yes, that outfit had a life after Custer, and George Klein was a part of it.

After his retirement from the Army George worked for the Panama Canal's Industrial Division.

He was a many-time Worshipful Master of the Sojourners Lodge in Cristobal and active in many branches of freemasonry. He was in fact on his way to a meeting of the Jesters, a Masonic organization, when he died. He was active with the Abou Saad Shrine, which helps kids from Panama and surrounding countries who need specialized orthopedic surgery or burn rehabilitation care that they can't get locally to receive such treatment at the Shrine hospital in Houston.

George was nearly 75 years old and had been dealing with various health issues that brought their shares of misery into his life. He had his good days and bad days, but he wasn't dying and his sudden passing is a shock to everyone.

* * *

Now back to my own guard duty. Let me first of all alert all of you readers who are expatriated US citizens living in Panama that the president's new immigration law decree is out. I have posted the original Spanish version here, and Sam Taliaferro has posted an English translation here.

There are some administrative implementing regulations to be published sometime in the next few months, and the importance of these details will be huge. But understand that every foreigner living here will have to go to Migracion and sign in with a central registry, which will issue an ID card. Whenever one changes things affecting one's visa status --- and depending on what the regulations eventually say it could include such things as getting divorced or widowed if being married to a Panamanian is your basis for living here, putting your money somewhere else if you are here as an investor or so on --- you will have to notify the registry.

There is an apparently expanded category of temporary residents, who can get visas for up to six years, one of the bases for which is "family unification." That may or may not help some Zonian families that are partly here and partly there, with some members who are citizens or permanent residents here, to sponsor their non-citizen relatives to make the move. Those details will be in the administrative regulations yet to be issued.

* * *

In addition to the immigration decree, I have posted several other long documents in Spanish that may be of interest to some of you. There is the new banking decree. There are new National Environmental Authority rules for the environmental impact studies that support hydroelectric projects. There is a Harvard Human Rights Project study on Panamanian prison conditions. These will be the subjects of some stories in this issue, not all of which are written as these words are typed on to this front page.

* * *

There are special risks if one stands guard as a journalist, especially in this country with its much-abused criminal defamation laws. I have received notice of an August 20 trial date in the case that former far-right radio shill and current offshore financial hustler Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman has brought against me. I have posted the Spanish-language complaint in the case here. Mr. Boswell alias Freeman, when all is boiled down, accuses me of defaming him in this story because I reported that he had been arrested. As you can tell from the rap sheet, not only arrested but convicted and sentenced to a year and one-half in jail. See also the note from the Colorado Supreme Court rejecting his appeal.

The problem is that while I have the documents and witnesses to blow this guy out of the water, those documents have to be translated into Spanish by certified court translators, and witnesses in Costa Rica and the United States must be deposed and there must be translations of much of their testimony, and there are also the expenses of expert witnesses. The far right of the American community is making this case an expression of their Karl Rove instincts, and the government prosecutors have glommed onto "Rex Freeman" as their instrument to attack a news medium that the PRD does not control.

That Panamanian politicians attempt to select criminals as spokespeople and leaders of the American community here is nothing new. Nor is the both tacit and explicit alliance of gringo offshore hustlers and the communications media through which they operate unprecedented. But times are changing, and those who are so very impressed with whoever flashes wealth in front of them and for so long have purported to speak for the American community, or the "expat community," are increasingly seen for what they are. (And let us see how quickly the pages linked to in this paragraph are erased, how quickly that it will be denied that the documents ever existed, and how successful our local wannabe Karl Roves will be at attempting to discredit the copies I have saved.)

I will be creating The Panama News Defense Fund and seeking contributions toward this cause, but I am not yet ready to start the fundraising activities as yet. Usually March is one of the two months when I ask readers for donations to keep this publication going, but I am going to delay that an issue or two.

And yes, I stand by my story.

* * *

Politics in Panama are always entertaining, even if the genre is often horror rather than comedy.

The PRD's internal struggles have been, of course, a prelude to their primaries for 2009 election nominations to take place later this year and that itself a prelude to next year's general election. But now the monolithic facade has come down. Not even promises of tax cuts and an early start to election year spending will fix the problems. However, some smart choices of candidates in the PRD primaries and some dumb moves by the various opposition parties could very well maintain the Torrijistas in office next year.

* * *

In the USA, the Hillary vs. Obama struggle continues. It appears ever more likely that there will be some Michigan and Florida primaries or caucuses that count and that even if Clinton wins these plus Pennsylvania she's not going to catch Obama in the popular vote or in pledged delegates. (And I would expect that Obama would win anything but a totally rigged constest in Michigan, which is one reason why Senator Carl Levin is engaged in pathetic and unbecoming pleading to count the results of a "contest" in which Obama wasn't even listed on the ballot.)

Truly sad are the self-destructive, socially destructive and damaging to the Democratic Party things that Hillary Clinton and her followers are doing and saying in their desperate slinging of "the kitchen sink" as it becomes ever clearer that they won't overtake Obama in the race for pledged delegates.

Bill Clinton came to power with strong African-American support and writer Toni Morrison even called him "the first black president." But when his wife's expectations of carrying the black vote turned out to be illusory, the easy dismissal of black voters by Bill in South Carolina and subsequent primary battles and the more overt race card being played by Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro have to raise a question in the mind in every other constituency within the Democratic Party.

Upon whom else would the Clintons turn when it becomes opportune for them to do so?

Yes, it's time for the party elders and the remaining unpledged superdelegates to step in. They should step in and tell Hillary that it's over, that they are backing Obama and that if she cares to have a future with the party she should set aside her ego and close ranks with all other Democrats. The times are too serious to play petty games. The challenge for all Democrats is to go united into November, take the White House back and win the necessary large working majorities in both houses of Congress that can open the way for a great nation to restore its industrial might, economic prosperity and reputation as a shining beacon for freedom-loving people everywhere. It's time to set aside all the old games and rise to the defense of the United States of America at its best.

Step aside, Hillary.

* * *

We see that the personal pathologies that can affect Republicans can also bring down Democrats.

That former New York Governor Spitzer patronized high-priced call girls is to me not in itself such a huge scandal. That he apparently brought some of them across state lines would be a federal offense --- if a federal prosecutor decides to abuse the purpose of the Mann Act, which was passed to suppress pimps involved in the enslavement and interstate traffic in women. Spitzer wasn't one of those.

How did the feds find out about this prostitution ring? Well, they were searching his bank records to look for tax offenses, and then when they found some strange phenomena they couldn't quite identify, they tapped his phone. In other words, the Bush administration was continuing its unethical prosecutorial fishing expeditions designed to cause legal troubles for prominent Democrats. That's what the fuss about the firings of those federal prosecutors is all about --- a bunch of those Republican appointees had some ethical standards and refused to be partisan attack dogs, and for this they were sacked. Whether this was just an abuse of White House discretion or there were specifics that ought to give rise to obstruction of justice charges remains to be seen.

So would I come to Spitzer's defense because he was the victim of dirty tricks?

Not me. Spitzer himself tried to unleash the New York State Police on his Republican adversaries in state government, in most unethical fashion.

One can be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist and it still doesn't matter. The Wheel of Karma works for people of all creeds and all other attributes. What goes around comes around.

* * *

So stand guard, my friends. Watch out for yourself, your family, your friends and your neighbors.

Stand guard because Big Brother is watching you.

Stand guard because if you shirk your duty as a human being, you may wake up and find out that your freedom and dignity have been stolen from you while you were sleeping.

Eric Jackson
the editor

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