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Hoping that they shower some drops on my garden

At the beginning of this dry season, the meteorologists for the Panama Canal Authority told us of a rainier than usual dry season. In parts of Panama that prediction held true and in others it didn't. It appears, however, that even if the capital got more showers than usual in the first months of the year, dry season has been prolonged. I'm ready, and have been, to plant my saril and melons and vegetables and things, but the grass is still brown and the ground is still hard. It all brings an old Motown song to mind --- I wish that it would rain.

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I have spent a couple of days on the Atlantic Side lately, one in Colon and one in Bocas, and there you get more rain than on the Pacific Side, particularly more than in the dry arc along the western littoral of the Gulf of Panama. We got rain both of those days. The afternoon I was in Colon this unusual golf course seemed to be sprouting a little bit of green as I watched.

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The thing that took me to Bocas was a press trip put on by Six Diamond Resorts International, which has big plans for tourist development in the area and has been involved in various controversies. (I know what some folks have been saying about these but I'm not inclined to rush to judgment.) They were nice to me and were forthright in our discussions, but I don't see that all of their problems are solved. However, they at least recognize the big obstacles they face and that's a big step in itself. The company and the mayor were putting on a show of inaugurating a facelift for Bocas Town's Parque Bolivar. The place does need some renovation and the plan does look nice on paper.

Also while in Bocas, I was treated to lunch, and what a treat! Lili's has the best fish sandwich I have yet encountered in Panama.

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The Colon trip was to cover US Ambassador Bill Eaton. On that same day the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the nomination of his proposed successor, Barbara Stephenson, who served in the embassy here during Noriega times. If you go to the news section, I have a hyperlink to that story, which actually takes you to the US Senate website and her prepared testimony. Now I could find a bunch of political differences that I have with what she said, and I may have some different estimates than she does about certain social and economic phenomena. She is, after all, a Bush administration appointee and I am, after all, a Democrat. However, Stephenson's a career diplomat and as annoyed as I am with Dubya, he has given us a couple of good ambassadors in a row so maybe she'll extend the streak. She'll be confirmed and will take office next July, and I expect that this time next year she'll be serving under a Democratic president.

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While working on this issue of The Panama News, I took time out to pay attention to returns from two very different elections. However, I draw some connections.

In Paraguay, the former Catholic bishop and exponent of the Liberation Theology, Fernando Lugo, put an end to more than 61 years of right-wing rule by the Colorado Party. The "Pink Tide" has swept over all of the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries of South America except for Colombia, Peru and Panama, and the latter two places try to play these fence straddling games on the international stage even as they carry out rightist domestic policies.

Such a massive and historic shift to the left --- with different shades and peculiarities in each country --- surely has to contain a message for Washington. Paraguay, like almost all of the other countries in the region, followed the advice of "The Washington Consensus." It ended up with uncompetitive agriculture, industry mostly based on exporting hydroelectric power at unfavorable prices to neighboring countries and commerce mostly based on cigarette smuggling. Yes, I know. In the American community here, as in Washington, what happened in Paraguay is being attributed by some to Cuban or Venezuelan plots. No matter that there is no evidence for this --- just connect the dots drawn in Miami and the conspiracy becomes obvious to those who want to believe in it.

In Pennsylvania, the candidate who gets her advice on Latin America from the Miami Cuban exiles and who defends her policy on trade with this region of the world by misrepresenting the history of the positions she has taken on the subject won the Democratic primary. She's still behind in delegates, the nationwide popular vote and states won, but she probably got what she needed to continue --- until May 6, when North Carolina and Indiana vote, most likely for Obama by a large and a small margin respectively.

In order to win Pennsylvania, the Clintons pulled out every corny trick in the old politics book. They saw the huge lead they had after the last primaries cut in half, but they still stirred up enough fear and loathing to carry the day.

Let us look at the last-minute Clinton ploy, the announcement that if Iran nukes Israel, she'll nuke Iran. So does that make her tougher than Obama? Was that an act of political courage?

Actually, it was a play to the ignorant. Well informed people have known ever since the jailing of Israeli scientist Mordechai Vanunu in 1986 that Israel has nuclear weapons, plus the delivery systems to use them. If Iran launches a nuke at Israel, the Israelis won't have to depend on the Americans to turn Iran into a glowing parking lot.

There is no serious debate within American politics about continuing the US guarantee for Israel's existence. It's neither an issue between Clinton and Obama, nor between Democrats and Republicans. There are plenty of Americans in both major parties, including Jewish Americans, who stop short of drawing the further conclusion that the United States should support everything that Israel does, but that's another story.

The basic problem with Hillary's campaign ploy is that she's making a show of alleged toughness on the basis of two false premises: first, that Iran is capable of annihilating Israel; and second, that Iran's leaders would seriously contemplate national suicide in an attempt to do so. These false premises are easier to sell when there's a loud-mouthed extremist in Iran's presidency. That problem exixts because Iran's reactionary religious authorities kept the several more reasonable candidates who would have beaten him off of the ballot, and because once elected Ahmadinejad found that he can't deliver the economic and social progress that the people of his country want so he constantly changes the subject by playing tough guy.

Might I suggest that it's neither tough nor wise to join Mr. Ahmadinejad in playing make believe? Might I suggest that it would be self-destructive for the United States to pick a war with Iran over its obnoxious president's big mouth? That such suggestions are taken to be scandalous by so many of the dominant political and media elites in the USA ought to be a warning about a dangerous "emperor with no clothes" situation going on up there.

Here in Latin America, the Clintons and their crowd have also based many a policy upon mythology. NAFTA, the Helms-Burton Act tightening economic sanctions against Cuba by applying them against third countries, the War on Drugs, Plan Colombia, these bizarre fantasies about the nature of Martín Torrijos and the administration he runs (which echo the illusions that the Clintons once held about the nature of one Ernesto Pérez Balladares) --- all of these are failed Clinton policies based on false premises.

With the fiasco in Iraq and the economy in shambles, the American people really can't afford another four years of delusional government.

Obama surely doesn't have all the answers. He does challenge the standard dishonest Washington ways of doing things and despite the setback in Pennsylvania he's likely to be the next president of the United States for that very reason. And God help him if and when he does get to the White House because he'll inherit a lot of very difficult problems.

Anyway, despite all the mainstream media that contrive scandals where none exist and at the same time play down situations of great national danger and disgrace, there's a real debate taking place among Americans this year, in the USA and abroad. This time it will be neither shouted down nor trivialized nor misdirected. America has been led to military disaster and economic ruin, and there will be hell to pay in November. The only question now is whether after all the political casualties the nation will move in a new direction or whether it will replay the same old games.

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And what tired old games does this reporter play? I'm playing defendant again, in a bogus criminal defamation case, and I'm pretty tired of this.

According to Mark Boswell alias "Rex Freeman" and his supporters, I belong in prison because I lied about Boswell alias Freeman by accusing him of being arrested for fraud in Colorado and then coming down to this region to run scams, first in Costa Rica and now here.

Well, I stand by my story and intend to prove it at my trial on August 20. If you check out the things that come up in the links in the above paragraph, you will see some of my proofs. However, it's mighty expensive to obtain all of these documents with the right notarizations and seals and official translations that will allow them to be introduced into the court record. Then there are some expenses in getting the testimony of important witnesses in Costa Rica and the USA. That's why I am asking for donations toward the defense effort. Even though I have a great deal from my lawyer, I don't have the money I need to fend off this criminal, whose case has been adopted as their own by government prosecutors.

I thank everyone who has contributed to the defense fund so far, from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to lend a helping hand by contributing money, there are two basic ways to contribute:

1. Send a check, made out to my lawyers "Bernal y Asociados," to my mailbox at:

Eric Jackson
Apartado 0831-00927 Estafeta Paitilla
Panamá, República de Panamá

or, 2. Make a credit card contribution by PayPal, following the instructions that come up when you click on the black button in the column on the right-hand side of this page. Make sure to make a notation that the contribution is for The Panama News defense fund. (I have an arrangement with Henry Smith and his business that helps people retire down here, which means that you will be sending money through his account but it will get through to The Panama News.)

Again, thanks for all your help.

And yes, defending against bogus criminal defamation charges really does get old. This is the third time for me, and at the moment there are about 40 other Panamanian journalists facing charges under the same benighted calumnia e injuria laws --- actually two criminal laws, in the latter of which the truth is not a defense. My won-lost record is 2-0 and I want to keep the streak going. But I do need some help on this one.

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Finally, there are lessons learned early in life, and time and again confirmed.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I studied law or served on a building code appeals board, but there is one construction principle that I first heard about as a little kid in Sunday school at the Margarita Union Church. And yet, despite what the law, the Bible and common sense all say, there will always be fools.

Enjoy.