letters

A lively letters page this time

Bocas turtles in hot soup

There has been recent activity at Bluff beach in Bocas, as a group from the Colombian version of Survivor has started building sets right on top of turtle nests. I am not there at the moment but a large number of friends and acquaintances have taken up a fight against this.

As you have been reporting in Panama for years, just thought you would be interested. I may be a bit slow on this and you have already got the bit in your teeth.

Editor's note: I am generally far away from Bocas, but not so far that I have not heard the protests. See, for example, http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-432402. We really do have a profoundly reactionary, anti-environmental president these days and this is one more example. It also seems that local officials in Bocas have once again reached way beyond their powers to grant a permit that they have no jurisdiction to grant. This will have to be fought on several fronts, one of which needs to be in the courts.

 
Unfair, unbalanced

Because I get impatient with your cynical biases and stop reading and start to simply scan the article, I missed the part where you state that a group can demonstrate if it gets a permit.  

I also missed the disclaimer --- the one where you state you don't drive so really have no understanding what a pain in the whatsis your good friends, the demonstrators, are.  

I also missed the editorial comment that the demonstration only makes the affected angry and does not gain supporters for the demonstrators.  

Fair and balanced you are not.

Editor's note: Article 38 of the Panamanian Constitution provides that one need not have a permit to hold a march or demonstration, but there is a 24-hour notice to local authorities requirement so that police protection and traffic arrangements can be made. There is no mention at all about permits in the new law.

Do you think that the many people who get around town in buses and taxis never get inconvenienced by people blocking the streets? My experience is not as you seem to imagine.

And do you think that I'm a big fan of the street blockade as the fundamental protest and social change tactic? I have written about the subject before, and the some of the kids at FER-29 haven't taken it so well.

Another vintage rock night on the Wappin Radio Show

HELL NO!

LOL!

Great sounds, Eric. Keep it up.

Can't wait for next week.

Here it is, 2:30 in the morning, and the wife is yelling bloody murder for me to get to bed, while dancing to David's Rebel Rebel!

You're doing wonders for the Internet, brother.

BTW, love the Fugs' Kill for Peace; but I am partial to CIA Man! Man!; Tremendous job you doing!

Muchos saludos, and keep it up!

You made my day today!

Editor's note: People who read The Panama News website but are not on our email list and never see our Facebook page may not understand. I don't have my broadcast radio show anymore --- maybe some day again --- but there is the Wappin Radio Show in exile, an eclectic free-form institution informed by --- but way beyond --- what hippies were doing on the air in the late 60s.

 
Hola Eric

I have enjoyed over the years the various Panama web news stories even if light on Chiriqui.

Without contributing dollars, I offer you that you could add some links to your web news to increase your readership without doing all the very accurate translation your self (manual translation is best, but Google and Yahoo do a pretty fair job).

For an example note http://www.cotdazr.org --- several translators there.

Thank you for The  Panama News --- Please try to raise your coverage of Chiriqui.

Editor's note: Nearly every day on the Facebook page that goes with this website, I post a lot of clippings from the Spanish-language dailies, often with comments in English, sometimes with comments in Spanish. It seems that some folks are machine translating these, which can be useful but isn't as good as learning Spanish. I also hear from time to time of people machine translating things from this website's Spanish sections, and would not be surprised if people with limited English use programs such as you suggest to help them read the English articles. I often use machine translations as one would use a dictionary or thesaurus when I am doing translation work.

The Panama News really does need to get to the western end of the country more, and folks in Chiriqui and Bocas can help us do that with their contributions of stories, tips and photos.

The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal

In 1917, Jacinta Marto, one of three seers of Fatima saw in a vision "the Holy Father in a very big house, kneeling by a table, with his head buried in his hands, and he was weeping. Outside the house, there were many people. Some of them were throwing stones, others were cursing him and using bad language." "Poor Holy Father" she said, "we must pray very much for him."

There can be no doubt that these words apply today to the Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI, as he is being held up to unprecedented ridicule and scorn by a hateful press, unfaithful shepherds and flock, and a world so out of touch with its spiritual nature and moral being.

One can almost hear Jesus saying to the peaceful and benevolent pope: "If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first". (John 15:18). Contrary to his critics the Pope, like Jesus, is completely innocent and is doing everything in his power to weed out those priests guilty of sexual abuse and to justly compensate victims for their suffering.

In fact he is the one above all else in society who has tackled these things head on. Remember that even Jesus had his Judas. But the world wants to see the death of the Church because it knows She is the mother of all saints.

It knows that the Catholic Church is the last bastion of hope against a materialistic world that craves immorality at ever step including homosexuality, same-sex marriage, easy divorce, abortion, radical feminism, contraception, in-vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research and cloning.

Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered not for the scandals of a few priests but for his intense suffering in protecting the faith from wolves in sheep’s clothing.  He will be known as one of the greatest of Catholic saints and martyrs.

But we must pray very much for the Pope and for the church! Let us unite our prayers with the Children of Fatima who may have been praying for this very pope in their vision. With God there is no time and all prayers are present to him.

 
For veterans who fought at Dak To and Ben Het, Vietnam

You're invited.

We're going back on the 41st anniversary of Battle of Dak To and Ben Het, Central Highlands, Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Leaving LAX on May 4th 2010. Will be in Seoul, Korea for 24 hours, then flying on to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and while there take some time to visit the Anghor temples and tour the city of Phnom Penh before heading overland to Vietnam.

We will be traveling to Ho Chi Minh City and spending three days there, then heading to Pleiku, Kontum (where I shall be visiting an orphanage), before making it to Dak To and Ben Het to mark the 41st anniversary of these two battles in which I fought (May and June 1969).

While at Dak To, a memorial service will be conducted to remember all of those who fought and died during the siege of this former US Special Forces base in May and June 1969.

The trip will be for six weeks in duration. Anyone wishing further info contact me at: thomasbleming@yahoo.com.

 
Garbage woes

I know garbage pollution is a major concern of tourism, but I think the government should put the blame where it should be --- on LEGISLATION, penalties, and law enforcement.

I am not a politician, but I do know that in some cities of the United States the health and sanitation departments work together, simultaneously even, on communicable diseases --- and some even have police powers for enforcing the law, and making arrests for violations. This is a large source of revenue for the municipal districts.

However, maybe Panama needs a new system because sanitation and public health should work together --- as they do in many counties in the USA --- with the collection of garbage and refuse.

I know that Panama's politicians underestimate the power of concerned citizens --- like the "Tea Partiers" in the USA, but can you imagine a similar movement starting in Panama if the garbage pollution leads to an epidemic of communicable disease?

It only takes one gifted leader to start the assault on government.

One thing for sure, knowledge and assurance encourages perseverance --- and the buck stops on the president's desk...

Thanks for your support.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

Editor's note: A lot of people have little interest in an assault on the government but a great concern about the garbage getting picked up. But really, the discussion needs to become more sophisticated than that because the notion that you throw it away and it's gone is an expensive and unhealthy delusion in this day and age. A few simple reforms could, by volume, eliminate most of the solid waste with which we must deal long before we get into arguments about burning or burying, or whether collection should be by private or public entities.

Global warming a Soros and Gore fraud

While you reported that the Koch Brothers donated $50 million to support research into proving that the man-made climate change debate is a farce ("the dirty money behind fake climate science"), you forgot to mention that George Soros, personally has donated $100 million to push through the opposing view. In addition, his fund has donated $1 billion (or about 20 times more than the Koch Brothers) to continue the perpetration of this phony science upon all of us.

In addition, if you should do some investigation into the massive amount of money and propaganda (i.e. Al Gore's "convenient truth") that has continued to push this wealth redistribution scheme onto all of us, please also study the amount of CO2 and other supposed global warming particles that have been spewed into the air via the 7+ volcanic eruptions that have occurred since 2007 around the world. It is now estimated that the amount of greenhouse gases produced by just those volcanoes (natural events) is more than all of that produced by man since the beginning of the industrial revolution (approximately 1880) to present day (2010). Should we cork all the volcanoes, or just tax them?

Lastly, now that the Northern Hemisphere has experienced the coldest winter in the past 50 years, the alarmists are so concerned about their junk science being found out to be fraudulent they are claiming this "cold" is the result of global warming. When is enough, enough? You are too intelligent to just continue pushing this foolish agenda.

 
Wants Greenpeace retraction

Hmmm, seems that Greenpeace missed out on the fiasco at University of East Anglia and their falsification of data.  You may want to do a little research and possibly ask them to print a retraction of their obviously biased opinions, since they have benefited monetarily in a great way from the Global Warming scam.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/17201/Gerald-Warner-Finally-the-great.5926323.jp

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/editorials/6538-blowing-wind-up-your-skirt

There are many more links if you search or want me to send a few more.

I really enjoy most of your posts but cannot let this one pass uncommented :-)

Editor's note: Yes, a lot of money has been and is being spent by those with particular pecuniary interests in maintaining the fossil fuel economy as if there were no problem. But there have been several major governmental, academic and scientific community investigations of the so-called East Anglia "Climategate," and none of them have found any fraud. They have raised questions about transparency and if these result in a change in accepted practices wherein the underlying data are published with every scientific study it would be an improvement. But it still wouldn't help the case of those who argue that human carbon emissions are dramatically affecting the world's climate.