The best and the worst

Danilo Pérez covers Stevie Wonder. The Panama Jazz Festival is coming!

A cultural scene in full bloom, possibly fertilized by the fully rotted compost that is Panama's political scene

The best and the worst

The layout and most of the writing of this front page was started as Iowa Republicans were gathering for their caucuses, and by the time this page is ready to upload the results ought to be known. I am both a Panamanian and US citizen --- born here to American parents --- but I am not a Republican and I won't be casting my absentee ballot for the GOP. There are, however, Republicans or people who might be swayed to vote for the Republicans who read The Panama News, and for you who fit that description time is of the essence. The overseas voting rules have changed this year, and particularly if you are a Republican wanting a say about your party's presidential nominee you urgently need to get re-registered to vote and order your ballot. Regardless or your party or independent status, if you are a US voter living abroad (including if you are in the US Armed Forces serving abroad), the Overseas Vote Foundation exists to help you exercise your franchise as a citizen.

So, the best or the worst? I think that's for Republicans to decide. To my eyes, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman Jr. are both genuine and rational, and people with whom I deeply disagree on many things. I like Ron Paul's blunt statement of what ought to be an obvious truth: the United States can't solve its budget crisis while fighting wars all over the world and meddling in foreign countries' affairs. But then, as a student of history I also know that in the mid-20s struggle for control of the Soviet Communist Party between Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin, Stalin was the peace candidate. Then I look at Paul's 18th century outlook on the economic issues and can't much relate. Huntsman is a moderate Washington Consensus guy who is bright and well experienced as a governor and diplomat, but I can't relate to the Washington Consensus and that's a problem I have with President Obama as well. After those two guys, you get into a crowd of empty suits, fanatics (religious and otherwise) and the most shameless of hypocrites, all pandering to the forces of organized greed and militant ignorance. At least, that's this Democrat's view of it.

* * *

As grim as this election year is in the United States, here in Panama the political scene is infinitely worse. However, we have these blossoming cultural scenes, three world champion boxers and a lot of people determined to do some good things for the country despite all of the bad things.

One of these people is Danilo Pérez, the main force behind the Panama Jazz Festival. You might look at him as this brilliant pianist and composer who plays in the astoundingly good Wayne Shorter Quartet, and that he is. Maybe you like his stuff with the Danilo Pérez Trio better. But understand him as an educator, a father of young children and somebody who went to Panama's public schools --- Artes y Oficios, in fact, where he concentrated on electronics. The Panama Jazz Festival is this wonderful series of concerts that bring in all sorts of tourists, but above all it is an educational event, put on by one of Panama's leading intellectuals and probably our most energetic concerned parent. Panama came in second-worst in Latin America and fourth-worst in the world in the most recent international PISA tests that 15-year-olds take. Our government's response was to cancel Panama's participation in future PISA tests. Fulbright scholar Danilo's approach is the Danilo Perez Foundation, which has its headquarters in the old Conservatorio on the corner of the Casco Viejo's Plaza Herrera and which makes up for the education that is missing from the public schools and unaffordable to most Panamanian families. His foundation can't rescue and develop more than a small fraction of the neglected talent, but it can set an example for others to lend a hand in their own ways. We hear Danilo above and will be hearing some of the stars of this year's festival below, but let's hear from some of the kids he and his foundation have taught, at young bass player Noineth Branch's graduation performance:

* * *

If Danilo represents the best efforts of Panamanians, there is the great danger that what he does could be eclipsed by the efforts of the worst.

January 2 was the beginning of the legislative session, at which the president gives a functional equivalent of the US president's state of the union address.

It was a hardcore attack, with the propaganda technique of insinuating that those who report on the scandals swirling around the presidency are liars, but not identifying a single specific report that is allegedly untrue. He accused the unspecified press of blackmail, with no specific claim. He made non-specific accusations of "extortion." He called his critics "cowards." He called the owners of the media which he doesn't control "thieves."

The Nazis did that sort of thing, generally accusing the "Jewish press" of anti-German and anti-Hitler lies, but never specifically identifying anything that they claimed was untrue. Of course, it was Hitler's gang, in particular Josef Goebbels and Julius Streicher, who were the actual liars, and they repeated their scurrilous accusations again and again and again, until people started to believe them. (Actually, the Nazis did not invent that tactic, but they perfected it and its use did not die out when they hanged Streicher for incitement to genocide.)

If you read Spanish, this is the president's rant, from his own website.

It is taken as a declaration of war against all the press that Martinelli doesn't control, plus some of this country's wealthiest families -- the Mottas, the Eisenmanns, the Kardonskys, the Varelas, the Tribaldoses, the Humberts and so on. He attacked the banking sector. He attacked the Colon Free Zone. In a previous Twitter message he attacked the Museum of Biodiversity project.

In his speech Martinelli also made some extraordinary claims --- like taking credit for Panama's under-20 soccer team qualifying for the world championships.

The president's address has been blasted by the Chamber of Commerce, all of the opposition parties, all of the Panamanian media that are not one way or another under his control. It is a major news story throughout the Spanish-speaking world, but the English-language corporate mainstream media have absolutely ignored it. The Knight Center at the University of Texas is the honorable exception.

Serious political analysts are now wondering whether Martinelli will be able to finish his term in office. He now has a tighter grip on the Supreme Court, but the legal proceedings most likely to bring him to his knees are not under his control, they are under the direction of prosecutors in Rome and Naples.

As scary as the guy is getting, in Panama there is effectively no constitutional way to remove a president. The standard procedure is by a coup d'etat, of which we have had several in our history. That "alternative" prospect is scarier than Martinelli.

The police, so far, are following orders. Like the one he gave to break up the demonstration shown on the video below, wherein mayors and representantes from opposition parties were protesting on the Pan-American Highway in Divisa. Government funding for their cities and corregimientos was cut off to force them to join Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party, but these folks have not been convinced to jump on the president's bandwagon for a one-party dictatorial state.

* * *

Meanwhile, Panamanian theater history is about to be made, with a number of January shows of Red, the award-winning John Logan play about an egotistical renowned artist and his long-suffering assistant. The bilingual two-actor cast, directed by the bilingual Bruce Quinn, will start at the Ancon Theater with English-language performances on the 12th through the 14th, then move over to the Teatro La Quadra in El Cangrego for a series of shows from the 17th to the 29th, mostly in Spanish but with English performances on the 19th and the 26th.

* * *

The Supreme Court has selected Martinelista magistrate Alejandro Moncada Luna as its new president. "He who falls into the hands of corruption will leave the judiciary," he declared in his speech on the occasion.

I have crossed paths with Mr. Moncada Luna. He prosecuted me for criminal defamation, and lost. His law firm filed a complaint accusing me of libel for writing and publishing a story in which I called his client, one Mark Boswell alias "Rex Freeman," a hustler and accused him of being arrested for fraud.

Alejandro Moncada Luna and his law firm malpracticed. They filed papers accused me of publishing a lie about their client's criminal record. They didn't bother with checking the facts first. Had he and his associates done their homework, they would have discovered this document from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

When we got to court, there was Alejandro Moncada Luna, and this carefully staged ruse with this faux concerned couple pretending to be the wronged parties, whereas his client and his client's wife were not there at all. Mr. Moncada Luna got up in front of a judge and accused me of arranging a Costa Rican arrest warrant against his client. Mr. Moncada Luna presented no evidence that I had been to Costa Rica, communicated with Costa Rican authorities, had any representative in Costa Rica or had anything to do with the arrest warrant for his client. Of course not --- it was all a lie, cut from the whole cloth by Alejandro Moncada Luna. I had absolutely nothing to do with that warrant against the criminal whom he helped to try to put me in jail.

It is in that light that I take Mr. Moncada Luna's declarations about corruption. The man is not to be trusted. Our Supreme Court was already a racketeering organization anyway, but any semblance of justice is gravely imperiled now that it is under Moncada Luna's leadership.

* * *

Danilo Pérez will not be the only world-famous Latin American jazz pianist at the upcoming Jazz Festival. Chucho Valdés is coming in from Cuba for the occasion:

* * *

"Rex Freeman" is not only a criminal who has stolen a lot of money from a lot of people over many years, he's a far-right "sovereign citizen" who talks the basic Posse Comitatus "constitutional" rap --- that since the Civil War amendments to the US constitution were forced upon the old Confederate states in that it was required that they ratify the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments as a condition to be re-admitted to the Union, those were illegitimate and everything that happened in US constitutional history afterwards is illegitimate, especially the income tax. He was neither the first nor the last person to work the American community in Panama with this theory based on the premise that the amendments that freed the slaves, made everyone born in the United States a US citizen, guaranteed liberties that can't be taken away by the states without due process of law and mandated equal protection under the law are all null and void. Like most of the others who come here talking that stuff, he doesn't really seem to be interested in changing the world order. He's interested in gaining the confidence of and then fleecing others who buy into these politics. The FBI calls this "affinity fraud."

Boswell alias Freeman did find an affinity group here, and became a financial columnist for a right-wing, pro-hustler website. And wouldn't you know it? Those folks were, as usual, launching one of their mudslinging offensives over the holidays. Check out this charming email exchange, which began with a mass emailing that somebody forwarded to me:

From: robert.ratliff@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2012
09:54:36 -0500
Subject: Re: Press Announcement What to Watch out for In the Coming Year

It sounds like Eric found a publication to vent against Don Winner. He offers no proof of his accusations just like he accuses Don of doing. The writer does not sign his name and send emails to forums to make sure we read it. He is assuming we will believe an article over a forum. BS

~~

From: Eric Jackson
Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 9:57 PM
To: robert.ratliff@gmail.com

If you are accusing me of publishing stuff on Jerry Hall's website, that's not true. If you are accusing me of publishing anonymous lies about Winner, that is also untrue.

Jerry Hall might take some of my stuff and repost it without my participation or particular approval. I am not a participant in the Don vs Jerry fight, but if I saw Don drowning and could easily save him I wouldn't and I'm not going to denounce anyone for saying mean things about him.

If you want to make public accusations of me writing unsigned lies about Winner, you should identify what, where, and what is untrue. The unspecified allegation of wrongdoing, often repeated, is his little Nazi game, not mine. If you are glomming onto it you ought to be ashamed.

If the thing below is a false communication with Jerry playing "he said he said" games, you should know that this game is being played. It would be an old, old dirty political tactic, which despite its ancient vintage was quite effective at pitting the Black Panthers against other militant groups but did not work when J. Edgar Hoover tried to pull it on Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X because they talked about it and compared notes.

Eric Jackson

~~

From: Robert Ratliff
Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 10:07 PM
To: Eric Jackson

You wanna prove what you accuse?

~~

From: Eric Jackson
Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 10:16 PM
To: Robert Ratliff

What have I written that you think that I need to prove? Specifically WHAT?

~~

From: Robert Ratliff
Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 10:22 PM
To: Eric Jackson

Everything, forget it. If you can't prove anything then quit talking crap.

* * *

Let us close out this front page with some amazing kids for whom the Panama Jazz Festivals have opened doors:

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson
editor & publisher

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