Gold from the Bananama Republic mining concession

Look at the picture that your author took. See that? Those little sparks in that piece of rock? That’s how gold is found. Little bits inside big pieces of stone. So if you have a gold mine, you dig up and cut out these rocks, crush them in a giant machine, and then you need chemicals like cyanide to get the gold out of the crushed mass.

You can also find it in rivers, because the water erodes the rocks and takes the gold with it, and it sinks quickly because gold is heavy. So all you need is a dredge to suck up the sediment from the bottom of your river or stream of choice, and then it goes through a filter system and then you have gold dust. Or, if you’re lucky, you dredge up nuggets. They build these dredges in Colón.

Mining companies are generally not interested in river dredging. They go for the big prize; take down a whole mountain or dig a big hole and crush them rocks to get the gold out. What’s left is wasteland, large areas with holes and no topsoil where nothing will grow any more. Desert, but worse.

This rock-with-gold in the picture is everywhere in Panama. From Chiriqui to the Darién there is gold to be had. Plus copper. So it’s no surprise that we read in La Prensa that if all applications are granted, no less than 44% of Panama’s territory will be turned into strip mines. Almost half!

As you can imagine, environmentalists freaked out upon hearing this news (for some mysterious reason, groups like CIAM didn’t know this already). There goes the rain forest, the biodiversity, the clean air and the clean rivers (cyanide spills!). But we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the environmentalists because they couldn’t stop Richard Fifer’s trainwreck of a mine called Petaquilla, so they for sure won’t be able to stop all the others. Maybe they’ll burn some candles during a protest gathering and that’s about all we can expect from them. Just like with the “sausage law”, the real work will be done by the workers and the indigenous people, with the environmentalists yammering on the sidelines.

La Prensa also offers a great map (PDF) of where all these mines will be located. Lots of concessions are in the indigenous comarcas, and if you were dumb enough to buy into the Red Frog Beach project, well, what’s left of Isla Bastimentos is gonna be an open pit mine as well. Poetic justice…

However, key areas like Punta Barco, Coronado, Punta Pacifica, El Valle, Boquete and other such places where the members of our government and their friends live or own their vacation homes are unaffected. So there’s nothing to worry about, really.

And the rest of the country? Well, Panama is un hueco anyway so we might as well show it!

This is supposedly Lawrence B. Heath (left) with Tatiana Nazarova of Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A.

The Working Group on Combating Corruption in Higher Echelons of Power of the Russian State Duma (parliament) issued a report last year in which Monte Friesner (Монте Морис Фризнер), Lawrence B. Heath (Лоренс Хиз) and their company Carlyle-Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. are accused of laundering massive amounts of stolen funds from the former Soviet Union.

The report, in Russian (bad translation here), was published on April 20, 2009, and describes massive theft of Russian gold, silver, funds, helicopters, trucks and all sorts of other goods and illegal activities, totaling billions of dollars, perpetrated on behalf of members of the Yeltsin family, Russian oligarchs, and their associates:

Former and present senior government officials and corrupt high-ranking law enforcement officials in the country have accumulated, both domestically and abroad, huge amounts of “shadow” assets, many times exceeding the budget of Russia, which is the main cause of the current financial and economic crisis in the country and enables them to at any time commit economic sabotage, to provoke a social explosion and the seizure of power, which threatens national security.

Over the past two decades, senior government officials including the so called Yeltsin “family”, under the guise of law enforcement officials, have stolen vast sums of money, gold, oil, steel, diamonds and other wealth, much of which was illegally exported from our country abroad and accumulated in various foreign banks in the accounts of front men. As a result of inaction of authorities and law enforcement, export of assets continues on a daily basis at a rate of 50 – 70 billion dollars a month. Only in December 2008, this criminal group attempted to take 4 trillion rubles out of the country.

All the following materials are soundly confirmed by the content of hundreds of criminal cases that are frozen in the SU(investigation dept), CS(investigation committee) of MIA, SC at the RF Prosecutor General’s Office, and the FSB of Russia, none of which have found a legal resolution, but objective information about them was deliberately hidden from senior management of the country and the public.

The document then continues to name a list of persons involved in the theft of billions worth of assets, including members of the Yeltsin family and members of the Russian oligarchy.

The robber barons used a myriad of techniques to get gold, silver and other assets as well as cash out of the country, some of it in conjunction with Chechen and Uzbek groups that would produce falsified documentation for that purpose.

The criminal activity was of such a big scale that it led to huge price rises in Russia in the nineties and the creation of massive debt with the IMF, according to the report, as IMF funds to prop up the economy were stolen as well.

Monte Friesner

One of the Russian front men, Zagrebelny, was in charge of stashing the loot in foreign bank accounts all over Europe, Asia and the Americas. And that’s where Monte Friesner, Lawrence B. Heath and their Carlyle-Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. ṕop up in the report:

As ordered by his masters, Zagrebelny transferred the right to disperse the assets to other persons, in particular Ryazanov, Ephraim, Khairulin, Morozova E., Kozlov, Zakharov YF, Shakirov, Kuznetsova VM, Tokarev E. Gurkin V V, Kuzmin, Orloff, foreign nationals of Canada Monte Morris Friesner, Lawrence Heath, managers of Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation SA, etc. All these activities of Zagrebelny and persons to whom he gave the right to receive credit, took place under the cover of the special services of Russia.

Ryazanov, after receiving documents from Zagrebelny, was cashing large sums of money – 300, 150 thousand U.S. dollars in European banks, and received money from Friesner – 845 thousand USD.

(In Russian: По указанию “хозяев” Загребельный, права на часть активов передал другим лицам, в частности Рязанову, Ефремову, Хайрулину, Морозову Е., Козлову, Захарову Ю.Ф., Шакирову Г., Кузнецову В.М., Токареву Е. Гуркину В.В., Кузьмину, Орлову, гражданам иностранных государств Канады Монте Морис Фризнеру, Лоренсу Хизу, руководителям Carlyle Coutts Capital Corpartion S.A. и др. Вся эта деятельность Загребельного и лиц, кому он передавал права на получение кредитов, постоянно находилась под прикрытием спецслужб РФ.

Рязанов после получение документов от Загребельного в банках Европы получал крупные денежные суммы по 300, 150 тыс. дол. США, а также получал деньги от Фризера 845 тыс. дол. США.”)

Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. is a Panamanian company incorporated in October 2005. Its president is Lawrence B. Heath. Company treasurer and secretary is Tatiana Viktorovna Nazarova, who was, according to the biography on one of Friesner’s websites, born in “Tashkent, Uzbekistan on March 08, 1965 into a very reputable and established noble Russian Family, who are able to trace their roots to the noble families of ancient Russia”.

She is also Monte Friesner’s wife.

Vice-president of the company is one Curtis Harrell Taylor.

On the web, a myriad of websites is maintained, and on one of those the principals of Carlyle Coutts claim:

* In 1990 Colonel J. Douglas Crashely CD., and his partner of over 40 years Mr. Lawrence B. Heath QC., opened their offices in Geneva, Switzerland managed by Dr. Monte Friesner – Lawyer and working with them both since March of 1984.

* On January 4th, 2001, J. Douglas Crashley CD., and Lawrence B. Heath Q.C. undertook an innovative and major business venture and formed Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. specializes in various credit facilities, asset management, venture capital, joint ventures, and an assortment of creative financial procedures. Dr. Monte Friesner appointed as Senior Corporate Counsel

* In May of 2004 Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A., and many of the subsidiaries opened up the Head Office in the Republic of Panama and managed by Dr. Monte Friesner and Ms. Tatiana Viktorovna Nazarova – Treasurer & Secretary of Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. and Financiera Pronto Cash S.A.

* For the past years Colonel J. Douglas Crashley, Mr. Lawrence B. Heath QC and Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation SA have been appointed, as Special Financial Advisors to numerous countries around the world and including major corporations, in which several Secured Capital Asset Portfolios and Creative Financing Portfolios have been structured.

As we pointed out here previously, the indefatigable Colonel Crashley has for those past years, notwithstanding what Friesner continues to claim, been soundly dead. He died in 2003. In none of the Canadian corporate registries we could find a trace of a Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. In other words, if Friesner and Heath were involved in the laundering of stolen Russian assets before 2005, it was not through Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. but using some other corporate structure.

Friesner appears indeed to have spent time in Geneva, Switzerland. There are records of him getting in legal trouble for assault of an Iranian born Canadian woman while in Geneva, one Mrs. Hancock.

Meanwhile, the gang of Russian criminals even stole a billion dollars that were meant to dismantle the old Soviet arsenal of chemical weapons and laundered the funds through its Western accomplices. The report contains a vast number of sordid tales about criminal investigations mysteriously being stalled, witnesses silenced, murders and assassinations – and even the death of American businessman Paul Tatum.

So, what did Monte Friesner, Tatiana Nazarova and Lawrence Heath do with the money?

In the course of our investigations, we stumbled upon another investigative report, which outlines the dealings and connections in Toronto, Panama and Colombia of various (former) Russian individuals with whom Friesner has done or intended to do business. The finance network as sketched in the two pictures below (click for bigger) is still subject to further analysis.

PROTECTION IN PANAMA AND FAKE DIPLOMATS

Don Winner on Friesner's sailing yacht

Monte Friesner, his wife Tatiana Nazarova and the elusive Mr. Lawrence Heath appear to enjoy political and other protection in Panama. There is of course the ever-present Don Winner, in his habitual role of promoting Friesner’s endeavors on his scam promotion website. But more importantly, there is the law firm Young & Blandón, of lawyer Herbert Young and well-known legislator José Blandón of the ruling Panameñista party.

Herbert Young

Herbert Young is the registered agent of Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A., as well as of Financiera Pronto Cash S.A., One World Financial Solutions S.A. and the Swiss Hannover Real Estate corporations – all of which are managed by the same cast of characters. Moreover, Young’s wife is president of Swiss Hannover, while working at the Banco Nacional de Panamá. And to top it off, according to president Tatiana Nazarova, Herbert Young is also a shareholder of Financiera Pronto Cash S.A. (which, by the way, has filed a civil suit against this journalist for $1 million for revealing that MasterCard was investigating Pronto Cash). As per its own literature on the web quoted above, Financiera Pronto Cash is closely linked to Carlyle Coutts Capital Corporation S.A. that is accused in the report of the anti-corruption group of the Russian Duma as a conduit for stolen funds.

In short: all the aforementioned companies share the same office address, the same staff, the same board of directors, the same registered agent, the same phone numbers.

Herbert Young is also involved as the founder and registered agent in something called the Societé Core Diplomatique Foundation, which is some sort of wacky fake diplomatic club started in 2008 and which Friesner uses to pass himself off as a diplomat. The public registry lists the same characters mentioned above as its principals, plus a number of individuals from Slovenia, part of former Yugoslavia.

Legislator José Blandón meanwhile, on his Facebook page, denied any knowledge of the shady business ventures of his partner Herbert Young. If that were true, Blandón would know more about the garbage in the municipality of Panama City than about what goes on in his own law firm – something we find a bit hard to believe.  Yet his staunch denial is hardly surprising after reading about the massive corruption and vast amounts of money involved in this case.

The report of the Russian Duma urges president Dmitry Medvedev to finally have the wholesale looting and corruption investigated. Maybe in Panama, president Martinelli can offer a helping hand.

Runoff of the Petaquilla mine is already destroying streams in the area and affecting local communities

The authorities as well as environmental group ANCON are doing tests in the rivers around the Petaquilla gold mine to determine if indeed cyanide has leaked from the separation tank. Workers and area residents had claimed that the walls of the tank had ruptured after massive rainfall, due to poor quality construction.

Petaquilla itself maintains that nothing happened, but has suspended its operations to avoid the tank filling up any further. Authorities said already that the tank is “at its maximum”.

Petaquilla, whose president Richard Fifer is a corrupt former governor of the Coclé province, is hastily constructing an emergency overflow tank to deal with the spills.

However, according to its own environmental impact study, that tank should already have been there in January, before they started operations. Why Petaquilla was allowed to start operating without having complied with that condition in an area that gets vast amounts of rain year-round is anyone’s guess.

Initially Petaquilla claimed that the emergency tank would be ready on Sunday, but now the date is set as “next week”. Meanwhile. it continues to rain.

The government of President Martinelli has recently passed the so-called “sausage law”, which eliminates environmental impact studies altogether if the government approves of a project. Martinelli is also preparing to allow South Korean mining companies to set up shop in Panama, including inside autonomous indigenous areas.

Giselle Burillo has perverted dreams

Our government is completely isolated locally and internationally, but some of its members still don’t get it. Minister Giselle Burillo, for example, is quoted in El Panama America saying that there is a “perverse conspiracy” against the government by civil society groups that want to “undermine democracy” in Panama.

She then goes on about how human rights groups claimed that Valentín Palacios was missing (which indeed he was) and how they blamed the government (he was in their custody) and how the activist groups are to blame for the massacre in Bocas.

Where does Martinelli find these wackos for his government, one wonders?

The cheap attempt to use Palacios’s suspicious reappearance as some sort of “evidence” that the government did nothing wrong and is being falsely accused is a dumb and transparent ploy to distract from the indisputable fact that Martinelli’s gang of thugs did kill at least 4 people in Bocas, and likely more. Including small children.

Panama has been widely condemned internationally for the excessive use of force in Bocas, but the douchebags in charge haven’t gotten the news yet, it seems.

Meanwhile, La Prensa reports that no less than 17 union leaders will be charged with “attacking the security of the Canal”. The Panamanian Inquisition public ministry’s Tomás de Torquemada Angél Calderon maintains that, during a public meeting to coordinate protests, these leaders have said they would make the Canal a target. Laborers working on the Canal expansion project went on strike for days to renegotiate their contract after the government had unilaterally canceled some clauses.

Canadian fraud artist Monte Friesner

This morning, your editor was served with legal paperwork from the juzgado tercero de circuito de lo civil del primer circuito judicial de Panama – paperwork to the effect that Financiera Pronto Cash, S.A. has sued us for a million dollars. Why, you ask? Well, Pronto Cash sells MasterCard debit cards issued by the Banco Nacional, and we wondered if one of the presidents of Pronto Cash, one Lawrence Heath, was in fact for real, or if there had been a case of identity theft again. Pronto Cash is one of the companies serial convicted fraud artist Monte Friesner owns in Panama, and we had already caught him using the identity of a dead person as the founder of his schemes.

So, we inquired with MasterCard’s fraud department about Pronto Cash. And they replied that “We will forward this information to the appropriate department for further investigation”. And thus your Bananama Republic duly reported that MasterCard was now investigating Pronto Cash. That report, in turn, has caused Pronto Cash to file a lawsuit, because they claim it is damaging them.

In the lawsuit, they ask the court to hear Monte Friesner and his wife Tatiana Nazarova as witnesses. Nazarova is the other president (she really seems to exist) and treasurer of Pronto Cash. Friesner owns (part of) the company, and signs his Pronto Cash emails with “Consules Missi, SOCIETE CORE [sic!] DIPLOMATIQUE – DIPLOMATIC SOCIETY, Senior Advocate & Consulaire”, thus falsely pretending to be some sort of diplomat.

The law suit comes on top of a wacky criminal complaint for crimes against the honor, filed by Friesner personally against yours truly, Friesner’s ex-wife, his son and his former webmaster. In it, Friesner alleges a conspiracy to blackmail him, and he later added allegations to the effect that your editor and the webmaster ordered his poodle to be killed. Seriously.

In no normal country a foreign fraud artist, with a string of convictions for anything from arson and assault to embezzlement, theft and money laundering, would be taken seriously by the public ministry or the judiciary if he filed complaints that more than anything else prove his own insanity. But here in Panama, Friesner appears to enjoy political protection.

On the Pronto Cash about us page, the principals of the company are listed together with Blandon & Young as its corporate law firm (“Bufete Corporativo”). In the public registry, lawyer Herbert Young appears as the registered agent of Pronto Cash. That in itself doesn’t prove much, but the ties are a bit stronger than just that of the registered agent and go in fact far beyond just that of a client and his attorney: Young’s wife,  Mrs. Rita Moreno Pretto de Young, is also president of yet another Friesner enterprise, Swiss-Hannover. Then, Mrs. de Young’s daytime job is with……. Banco Nacional, where she works for the gerencia ejecutiva, banca de consumo. And to top it off, Herbert Young is also a shareholder of Pronto Cash, thus having a direct stake in the outcome of frivolous lawsuits against us.

We asked Mrs. Rita Moreno by email if she played any sort of role in getting Banco Nacional to issue MasterCards through Friesner’s Pronto Cash, but have not received a reply. As you can imagine, Panama’s national bank, through a politically connected law firm, in cahoots with an international money launderer and swindler facilitating a debit card scheme founded by a dead person would not be such great news in the current constellation of warnings by rating agencies about Panama’s investment grade.

CLEANING UP THE MUNICIPALITY BUT NOT HIS OWN LAW FIRM

Herbert Young has served in public functions, notably on the Gambling Board under Moscoso’s presidency, but it is his partner who has a real claim to political fame: legislator José Isabel Blandón Figueroa of the governing Panameñista party.

Blandón belongs to the influential crowd in the Panameñistas, and is currently in charge of governmental efforts to rescue his fellow party member, the generally loathed mayor of Panama City Bosco Vallarino, from falling into the abyss and dragging Panama City with him. All these ties are further cemented by the fact that Blandón’s partner-in-law, aforementioned Herbert Young, is not just Ftriesner’s corporate lawyer but also represents Bosco Vallarino.

One would of course expect that, with international vigilance and pressure mounting on Panama for its lack of an independent judiciary and public ministry, politicians and their associates would be wiser or at least more careful than to jump in bed with a multinational scammer who files imbecile criminal complaints and lawsuits. In these days of Panama’s reputation and investment grade being in peril, high-profile members of the government should probably not be seen protecting criminal outcast that seeks a safe haven in Panama and harasses journalists.

But maybe Blandón and associates think it is good for them and for their country to shield a money launderer who has a journalist followed and distributes pictures of his house on the web? Mr. Friesner is from Canada, and wasn’t Panama trying to get a free trade deal with that country these days?

Meanwhile, the public ministry is violating every rule in the book in prosecuting the criminal case. When showing up there to give a “declaración indagatoria”, it turned out that they had “forgotten” to arrange for an interpreter, which is a constitutional right. Then they called this journalist a couple of days ago on his cellphone, to summon him again to show up two days later, without formally notifying because, as they said, “we didn’t have time to notificar“. Such blatant disrespect for the rules of due process, plus the fact that they are so abundantly unprofessional as to even admit the bizarre complaint – not to mention allegations about dead poodles – which deals with a website way outside their jurisdiction to boot, is obviously reason to suspect that this legal terrorism enjoys some sort of political impunity.

To refresh the memories of our distinguished politicians, prosecutors and lawyers, here’s a news clipping from Canada – one of the many – that outlines some of Friesner’s past crimes.

Our crazy dictator has few friends left internationally

While the marches of the so-called “civil society” are getting smaller and smaller and the protests are deflating, Panama’s fearless mafia-leader Ricardo Martinelli and his government are facing increasing isolation and pressure from the international front. The most silent condemnation comes from the White House: Every Panamanian president since the invasion in 1989 has been received by the US president within the first year of taking office. Except Martinelli. Instead, Washington sends envoys and senators down here to warn Martinelli against continuing his disastrous policies.

More vocally, Washington think tank the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) published a report titled “A Message to Martinelli: The International Community is Watching”, and that phrase appears to hit the nail on the head.

To start: The NGO Human Rights Everywhere updated its report on the brutal repression in Bocas del Toro against striking protesters, concluding that the police actions, which left at least 4 dead, were a “grave violation of human rights on the part of the Panamanian state.”

Then, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR or CIDH in Spanish), part of the OAS, warned Martinelli that “the actions of the security forces should protect, rather than discourage, the right to assembly.”

Yet, these scathing condemnations have not been met with any repĺy by the government. That is because these human rights organizations, while doing undeniably important work, use the tactic of trying to shame Martinelli and his gang. Shaming as a means of coercion doesn’t work with this government however. They have no shame. There is no developed set of ethics or morality in them that we can appeal to, or pressure, to make them change their behavior. Simply put, there are no buttons to push there no matter how hard you look.

To force them into changing their ways, they need to be hit where it hurts. That’s why it has been a big mistake of the various activist groups to focus on practically useless marches and petitions instead of making a real effort to get consumer boycotts off the ground against the myriad of businesses that members of the government own.

What will really have an impact on Martinelli et al is a report today in La Prensa, about rating agency Standard & Poor’s warning the government that it could lose its coveted “investment grade” if they don’t change their ways.

The agency’s Sifón Arévalo, during a conference, warned that the government is sending discouraging messages to investors, condemned the repression in Bocas del Toro and added that “we’re seeing situations where contracts are not being respected, like with the corredores“, referring to the planned take-over of the tollroads by the government with pension fund money.

Arévalo added that transparency in contracting and bidding processes as well as a good administration of the legal system are necessary to keep the investment grade, “because when a country grows we want to see growth there as well”.

Ex-president of the business executives association APEDE, Enrique De Obarrio, commented that losing the investment grade rating would be far worse than having not obtained it in the first place, and said that this could occur if the legal system and state institutions further deteriorate.

You see, without this investment grade, it would become more expensive and difficult for Martinelli to borrow money and meet the state’s obligations. And then he would have really serious trouble. Together with the humiliation of having the rating reduced within a year of making a big fanfare of obtaining it, that is what would hurt.

Wilson "Chuck" Lucom

Avid readers of Bananama Republic know of course that Panama is an international financial center with many banks and finance houses built on money laundering and shady dealings. That’s why we have financial fraud artists like Monte Friesner here, and people like Gilbert Straub. The brochures tell you that we have banking privacy, rock-solid financial laws, first world service – and guess what? It’s just plain bullshit. What we have here are thieves. Upper-class predators who will rob you of everything you have.

We had of course already the case of HSBC Panama which sequestered millions of dollars of Canadian retiree Peter Gordon, who had the audacity to criticize HSBC’s service after moving his money to another Panamanian bank. HSBC’s lawyer: one Hector Infante. Aides to HSBC’s then-chief Joe Salterio: Such upstanding members of the expat community like dentist Charly Garcia (headed the American Society) and insurance man Kevin Bradley (sells insurance with an HSBC owned company).

And now we read in The Panama News that Hector Infante strikes again, this time on behalf of one of the worst inbred predatory rabiblanco families in Panama:

On August 6 the Civil Bench of the Panamanian Supreme Court — Torrijos appointees Oyden Ortega and Harley Mitchell, and Moscoso appointee Alberto Cigarruista — voted unanimously to void the will of US citizen and Panama resident Wilson Lucom.

Lucom, who had died childless in 2006, left his third wife, Hilda Piza (Arias), a condo and a quarter-million-dollar annual pension, with the residue of his estate, estimated to value around $50 million, as a charitable donation to poor children in Panama. Specifically mentioned in the testament were upgrades to public schools in poor communities and support for school lunch programs.

Wilson “Chuck” Lucom was a politician who served under the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s and Harry S. Truman’s administrations and retired to Panama a wealthy man. However, his idea of leaving large part of his fortune to help children who live in poverty did not go well with the Arias family:

The octogenarian widow, who in court appearances was not all that lucid, and the real parties in interest, her five children from her previous marriage to Gilberto Arias, challenged the will.

Gilberto Arias, the founder of the gory sensationalist tabloid La Critica, who served as minister of finance and once ran for vice president of Panama, was a son of the late President Harmodio Arias and nephew of the late President Arnulfo Arias. Harmodio and Arnulfo arose to prominence in the 1920s with the group Accion Communal, which used to dress up in Ku Klux Klan robes and campaiged to deport all Panamanians of Afro-Caribbean, Asian or Middle Eastern descent. Having briefly come to power in a coup that the US Embassy disapproved, Harmodio was later elected president. He appointed his brother Arnulfo as ambassador to Mussolini’s Italy and later to Nazi Germany. Later, Arnulfo was elected president but on the eve of US entry into World War II the United States instigated a coup so as not to go to war with a Nazi sympathizer in charge of the Panamanian government. The political movement that the Arias brothers founded lives on in the Panameñista Party, which is a coalition partner in the Martinelli government.

Ironically, these elderly Arias bitches ladies often feature in positions of some prominence in charities and Union Club “hat and tea parties” to collect money for the needy.

The verdict comes after years of intrigue with fake murder accusations and false interpol warrants. Again, read the whole story in The Panama News.

We are just left wondering, who in his right mind would even consider moving any substantial amount of money to Panama or invest in this robbers den? Wouldn’t this case alone be enough reason to review this “investment grade” our government is so proud of?

On guards against indigenous attacks on the Canal

The fun with the (former) military types here in Panama is that they never learn. So they have this Canal, and most experts have throughout history agreed that you can’t really defend the Canal against military or terror attacks. So these clowns here practice how to defend the Canal against attacks every year even though it’s indefensible. It’s also very difficult to attack it anyway, there isn’t much any terror group could do to close down the Panama Canal for any considerable amount of time.

This year, inspired by events in Bocas where the state lost control completely over its territory between the border with Costa Rica and Almirante, they have created a new doom scenario to practice: an indigenous uprising and subsequent coup d’etat. This would of course be a clear danger to the Canal, because everybody knows that money laundering mafiosi are to be fully trusted running the waterway and indigenous banana planters are not.

This choice of scenario tells us a couple of things:

A) The Americans – who dominate the Panamax circus – apparently see the Battle of Bocas as the Panamanian version of Wounded Knee;

B) They haven’t learned anything from Iraq and Afghanistan.

INDIGENOUS UPRISING

The military types may think in terms of indigenous hordes storming the presidential palace and ACP headquarters with stones and machetes for a violent coup (and we admit the image has some appeal), but a successful uprising would look very differently.

Panama is home to a variety of indigenous peoples who live in different corners of the isthmus, and organizing them to storm the gates of the state in an orchestrated fashion would be a nightmare, if not completely impossible.

However, if Martinelli & Co continue their repression, what could happen is the emerging of an indigenous insurgency. To be successful, it would have to be a movement of networked tribes, horizontally and loosely organized instead of having a hierarchic structure, and its goal would be not to overthrow the government but undermine its legitimacy and leave it in a perpetual state of failure.

They wouldn’t be so dumb as to attack the Canal and invite US troops here to protect it. They would only use violence when provoked, like in Bocas, and only then would they attack vital infrastructure systempunkts, to cause disruption.

A successful indigenous movement would be organized as an open source insurgency. They wouldn’t waste their time on organizing endless marches, filing petitions, holding press conferences and picket lines. They wouldn’t play on feelings of guilt or shame which is useless in today’s environment; instead, they’d deploy the tactic of coercion (attack careers and business interests, see here and here) and isolating the government. Such affairs as the Naso people being thrown off their land because of some rogue cattle rancher would be virtually impossible if such a movement were in place because instead of useless protest marches it would be met with attacks on those business interests that caused the displacement to begin with.

So, the organizers of the Panamax 2010 exercise can practice all they want against some imaginary coup attempt by the indigenous people, but the reality is that today’s insurgencies are much smarter than that.

Palacios (left) with Gustavo Perez at a press conference.

We don’t know about you, dear reader, but we have tremendously enjoyed the great Palacios show over the last days. He was missing. The police said “we know nutting”. Then everybody got angry and demanded an investigation and, voilá! There was Palacios!

The good news: He does not have to be added to the list of people who were murdered by the police. The bad news: We STILL don’t know what happened. La Prensa added it all up and lists now no less than seven different versions of events. Palacios was protesting. He was not protesting. Mysterious black men beat him up and the police brought him to a hospital. There were no black men and he was seen being arrested by the police on Finca 66. He came out of the hospital and went looking for work. The hospital has no record of him being there, and denies anyone unconscious was brought in at the date the police claims.

And it doesn’t stop there. The police said they found him within 72 hours. But his family wasn’t informed. He remains in the police clinic, guarded, and nobody can explain why.

So, someone is lying. Given Mr. Gustavo Perez’s history, we have our own ideas about what really happened here. And in any case, can’t these people get at least their lies straight?

The Panamanian chapter of Human Rights Everywhere has sensibly demanded an impartial investigation into what really happened here.

Meanwhile, the uneducated bunch of thugs that passes for “government” in this country continues its bizarre tactics of repression. Magaly Castillo, head of the Pro-Justice Alliance, was summoned to the prosecutors office because she had accompanied the delegation that filed the habeas corpus with the judicial madhouse Supreme Court in favor of Valentín Palacios when he was still missing. She refused to make any statement there as she was denied the right to a lawyer. The public ministry is, as you know, headed by our pseudo-procurador Guiseppe Bonissi, who was caught in some good old-fashioned acts of nepotism giving jobs to family members of his ex-wife.

Okay, so it IS a bit old, but this one appears to be running

Who said that the government of our enlightened money laundering supermarket king, Ricardo Martinelli, doesn’t listen to the people? Tourists called for a Panama/Bocas del Toro boycott and just weeks later the authorities step in and make the dream come through!

Friday at about 4 PM, heavily armed police escorted officials from the Maritime Authority and closed down the two ferry services (actually the two water taxi services) that connect Isla Colón with Almirante on the mainland, Bananama Republic has learned. Official reason: security. The ferries are apparently unsafe. That in itself wouldn’t surprise us, because unsafe transport is the norm here in Panama and a couple of years ago the ferry to Taboga sank and the captain was drunk. Not to mention the buses.

However, now there is no ferry in Bocas only the la palanga ferry is running. People who work on the islands but live in Almirante or Changuinola can’t go home. Tourists are trapped. And it will be like that the whole weekend, because the authorities are only open on weekdays. So who needs to cross the water will have to do so in even unsafer launches and canoes.

Bystanders noted that the police behaved as if they were on to some big drug bust instead of rickety Panama boats, and one remarked that, “they weren’t up to the cholitos in Changuinola so now they’re trying to screw over the negritos from the islands…..”

Does all this trashing of Bocas del Toro look like a “pump and dump” scheme to you too? To us it does. Drive prices down again, make people leave, sell cheap to millionaire friends and make a quick buck. No wonder our tourism clown Shamah is so quiet.

UPDATE: And as if ferry trouble isn’t enough, an Aeroperlas plane coming from Bocas got in trouble because of faulty landing gear, tires exploded and all air traffic had to be diverted from Albrook. We’re telling you; Bocas is just CURSED!

UPDATE 2: We clarified some issues, what has been closed down are the two main water taxi services. The big ferry is running. Others have taken over the water taxi service and now charge more.

UPDATE 21/8: Well, this ain’t over yet. Friday there was apparently a protest, which didn’t help much. The two affected companies are Taxi 25 and Bocas Marine Tours, plus the ferry Mantarraya. Population stuck. Tourists miss international flights. El cambio esta en marcha!