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Volume 14,
Number 24 |
Also in this
section: Another
Colombian incursion,
no good and easy answers We have had different versions of the story coming from the Panamanian and Colombian governments, which should not be considered so unusual on either side of the border. By all accounts, on December 11 in or around the Darien village of Manene, Panama's National Border Service opened fire on some armed Colombians who disobeyed their order to stop and identify themselves, killing two men and wounding another. These men were identified as members of the leftist FARC guerrilla army's 58th Front, which has long operated in Colombia's Choco province that's adjacent to Panama and have from time to time crossed into this country. On the Panamanian government side, information about the event was sparse and delayed. From the Colombian side, the Minister of Defense said that FARC had attacked the Panamanian patrol from Colombia, that the Colombian Army had been chasing FARC in the area and had been in constant radio contact with Panamanian forces, and that after the shooting incident Colombian forces crossed into Panama to assist their Panamanian counterparts. None of these Colombian claims were confirmed. From a variety of sources there have been tales of a Colombian Army offensive against FARC in the border area. FARC is a bunch of thugs that makes its money off of kidnapping and from its intimate links to the illegal drug trade. However, the Colombian Army is also a bunch of thugs with a long history of human rights violations and ties to drug-funded right-wing paramilitaries. Since 1903 Panama has officially taken the position that we do not participate in Colombia's endless civil conflicts. This country has historically frowned upon any Colombian force from any side crossing our borders. However, we have never had the means to defend the border with Colombia from a determined invading force, and we don't have it now. We shouldn't be conducting joint border operations with or otherwise taking sides with the Colombian Army, even if FARC are bad guys. We especially should not welcome Colombian troops into our territory. It's not our war, nor should it be. That still leaves Panama with a problem that it can't readily solve. There are many things that could be done to improve communications, transportation and living standards in the Darien and Kuna Yala that would speed Panamanian law enforcement's response to problems on and near the border, but we won't be able to defend the border against all incursions anytime soon. The increased militarization of Panama, which has a much smaller population than Colombia, would not appreciably change the equation. The creation of a militia system as called for in the constitution might make remote villages more capable of defending themselves, but it still wouldn't prevent Colombia's civil wars from spilling over into Panama. Even if there is no perfect solution, and even if there are good reasons for the government to avoid saying things that might aggravate a delicate situation, Panama should avoid using these realities as an excuse to accept strategies imposed from abroad, whether from Bogota or Washington. Whatever their intentions are or will be --- and these do shift and probably will do so shortly as far as the United States is concerned --- Panama's interests are not and will not be their priority. Our 14th birthday The Panama News is 14 years old. Are the early teens notoriously an awkward age? Our thirteenth year was certainly a rough one. At considerable expense for a micro-enterprise, we survived a legal assault from an ultra-rightist US "patriot" militia guy who despite being a convicted felon has been allowed by the corrupt Torrijos regime to join its crowd of sponsored hoodlums and come here to use this country as a base for international frauds, in flagrant violation of Panamanian banking and securities laws. Along the way we read published calls for further frivolous criminal prosecutions, and published threats that an allegedly well connected former US military special operations guy is going to plant drugs on us and have us jailed for that. We got word of many of the denigrating whispers from people who can't stand a news medium that they don't control. We were the target of repeated electronic attacks, one of which erased a lot of data that we had unwisely stored in an email box without a backup. We weathered all that because in many different ways people stood up for us, and for that we are grateful. We have held our own against increasing competition, some of it worthy, some of it lame, a small part of it downright vicious. We gave all the major candidates plenty of space to express their opinions on the issues, but just as Sandra Snyder's radio show, Don Winner's hate propaganda and Fox News are identified with the defeated GOP, The Panama News played its role in support of the victorious Obama coalition. We did and will continue to maintain our independence, however. The Panama News will remain free from the controls of both Panamanian and US political parties, and those of any government anywhere. We go into our fifteenth year with an election that has mostly unfortunate choices looming ahead and in the light of economic uncertainty despite numbers that look good for Panama on the surface. We move ahead with the US economy hurting and much of the American community here also affected by the crisis. We ring out an old year that will be storied in the annals of Panamanian boxing legend, looking forward to a 2009 Panama Jazz Festival that's adding to this country's growing cultural fame. We have done this, and will continue to do this, with a lot of help from our friends and readers. Thank you.
Bear
in mind...
It
seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of
paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will
collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the
world’s
total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric
nurses.
Barbara
Ehrenreich
You
have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something,
sometime in your life.
Winston
Churchill
Those
who can serve best, those who help most, those who sacrifice most,
those are the people who will be loved in life and honored in death,
when all questions of color are swept away and when in a free country
free citizens shall meet on equal grounds.
Annie
Besant
Also in this
section:
Make
the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
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©
2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or phone: (507) 6-632-6343 Mailing
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