Well, we're back on the air after our database was hacked and destroyed. Slowly we're reconstructing this site, a lot of work for which the bill will eventually be presented to those responsible. We know who you are!

Meanwhile, our avid readers will need to have some patience as we get our stories back on line. Unfortunately, all your valued comments have been erased as well by Martin Lamb that coke-snorting scam artist who hangs out every night on Calle Uruguay with transvestite prostitutes. So thank you for your patience and your support.

Because we are not like La Critica or El Periodico here at Bananama Republic, we always respect the so-called derecho a replica, the right to reply even though we don't have to. Our comments are open. We didn't really expect that Omar Wong needed 300 inebriated voice mail messages or 700 emails (we'll spare you those) to make his point, if indeed there was a point, but the tensions of the last few days perhaps became too much or maybe the evildoer Herman Bern sequestered his brain too, so who are we to complain or care anyway.

He doesn't care either, because nobody reads this site he says, that's why he calls all night and sends hundreds of emails with threats and stuff (he's gonna find us without however spending any more time on this unimportant affair so that we can face the consequences of our journalistic terrorism or whatever AND he doesn't know Cabal BUT has conversations with him AND we shouldn't forget that he is a real journalist because he has traveled abroad to Lala-land AND soon he'll move to a bigger office because of all the Pulitzers except that he didn't say that). Trainwreck is the word. Sorry to see such a talent wasted in a country without any psychiatric care to speak of.

He can't even read - we never said that he worked for La Cronica and we never said his story on Bern was wrong (but of course it is, so there) which is what he seems to have understood somehow in outer space from aliens. Anyway, you can listen to this raving lunatic as soon as we've cleaned up the audio. And then we don't want to hear anything more about or from this jerk, ever, the end.

Oh, and you know how he signs his insane emails?

LA FELICIDAD ESTÁ EN LA FAMILIA

If this doesn't make the case for stem cell research we don't know what does.

All they found in the office of "El Periodico": Unsold papers.

Omar Wong Wood is a corrupt publicity hitman masquerading as a journalist. When he still worked for La Critica, he used to publish smear pieces for which he was paid by Tomas Cabal, who in his turn worked for such honorable clients as Marc M. Harris, Tom McMurrain and the Jumet/Torrijos PECC tandem. In other words, Omar Wong happily served those interests and those people who have tried time and time again to silence honest, real journalists, by filing criminal libel complaints, threats and harassment and what have you.

Wong expanded his business and started El Periodico, a sort of La Cronica, a publication masquerading as a newspaper. Someone paid him to publish Herman Bern's tax returns, and now Bern is frying his ass and has shut him down.

But guess what? What passes for civil society in this country is now up in arms because they see this as an attack on press freedom. If, say, a CIA agent poses as a journalist and starts a publication to further his sinister goals, they would out him and applaud it when the fake paper was shut down. If one of these Uribe soldiers posing as Telesur reporters would have been found out and shot during the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, only a madman would try to spin it as an attack on press freedom. But if a corrupt impostor like Omar Wong impersonates a journalist and is eventually silenced, it is suddenly an attack on the press and civilization itself and the sleazeball gets to use civil society as his own human shield. They probably want corruption to be a constitutional right as well?

UPDATE 8 SEPT.: Now Reporters Without Borders, Eric Jackson of The Panama News and the Bernal for Mayor campaign have both come out in support of Wong. Plop!