News

Trump sent us a credentials fraud guy to sow suspicion about Chinese people

May 24, 2019

Do the statements look bona fide? They fooled the editor of The Panama News before a tipoff. Copied, with ad extracted, from https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/mauricio-claver-carone

What else might you expect from
an administration of grifters?

by Eric Jackson

Any journalist with a conscience does not like to be wrong, but will run a correction when she or he is. In the ultra-paid corporate mainstream news organizations, which these days tend get the basic story from the piranha school of small publications and they use the managements’ connections to get the high and mighty to talk with them, admission of error usually mean loss of job. It’s one of the reasons why ever more people are alienated from Jeff Bezos’s rag, Carlos Slim’s rag, the interlocking television network / war industries directorates and so on.

Anyway, Trump sent a guy here to stoke up suspicion of the Chinese — in a land with a sordid history of anti-Chinese racism — and this reporter objected in an editorial. But some of this reporter’s research included bogus claims about the envoy’s credentials, and those claims were repeated. See the email exchange that follows.

Will Trump have to send someone else to enlist Panama in his administration’s foreign policy feuds?

Mauricio Claver-Carone/Catholic University

<lozoya@cua.edu>
Fri, May 24, 2019 at 10:50 AM
To: fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com

Dear Editor,

I am writing to ask you to make a small correction to this editorial that I found online here:

https://www.thepanamanews.com/2019/05/editorial-trumps-envoy-incites-anti-chinese-racism-here/

In the editorial it states that Mauricio Claver-Carone is a professor of Law at The Catholic University of America. He is an alum of our law school, and early in his career he taught classes here, but he has never had tenure here as a professor of law here. He has not taught any classes here recently.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Karna Lozoya

Karna Lozoya
Executive Director of Strategic Communications
Office of the President
202 319-6748
catholic.edu

<fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com>
Fri, May 24, 2019 at 11:48 AM
To: <lozoya@cua.edu>

Got it. My source was a brief biography in Americas Quarterly, at
https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/mauricio-claver-carone

But to me the first principle of journalism is truth, not what you can
get past the legal system without spending a lot of money defending
against those who invoke Panama’s benighted criminal defamation laws.
Same as when I was writing for the alternative press in Michigan and
on the staff of the Detroit College of Law Review, way back when. So
the correction will be run.

Eric Jackson
The Panama News

<lozoya@cua.edu>
Fri, May 24, 2019 at 1:27 PM
To: <fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com>

Hello Eric,

Interesting. I am going to check further to see if it’s true that he was a full-time professor. I don’t think so. I do know he doesn’t teach here now.

Thank you for the correction.

Best to you,
Karna

<fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com>
Fri, May 24, 2019 at 1:43 PM
To: <lozoya@cua.edu>

You know, in Panama academic and credentials fraud are national
sports. I once became persona non grata with the Presidencia for
pointing out that the president who called himself “Dr.” had no
doctorate, and at the University of Panama for pointing out that the
rector had purchased his doctorate from the Complutense when that
Spanish university used to sell diplomas to foreigners during the
Franco dictatorship.

Am I just being a snob because even though I am a poor man I have TWO
JDs — the law degree and the juvenile delinquent record?

As a Panagringo dual citizen looking on from afar, what I see in US
society at all levels, and among the American community here, too, is
a descent into banana republic standards. A presidential envoy with
inflated credentials? It would not surprise me.

If you go back to the story you may notice the correction.

Eric

<lozoya@cua.edu>
Fri, May 24, 2019 at 1:49 PM

To: <fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com>

Thanks Eric, I confirmed that he was only a clinical assistant. That’s what our records show.

He is an alum. That part was true.

Again, thanks for the help.

Karna