It was the dictatorship goons who had the guns. And who’s left standing?
Notes from our history
* The armed citizen? Meh.
Yes, Jack Oliver whipped out his pistol in a petty argument about gringo pricing. And the Americans holed up in the train station were heavily armed. However, if you go by comparative body counts, the Americans lost badly in the Watermelon Slice Incident.
On The Day of The Martyrs a gun store was looted and the arms distributed, but the untrained mob was ineffective at protecting Panamanian citizens from the US Army and Canal Zone Police.
* It took just a traitor from within the ranks of his own party to negate the brilliant battlefield victories of the Liberal guerrilla general, Victoriano Lorenzo.
* By provoking a coup attempt and then betraying those who answered the call, then by General Noriega’s foolish and brutal response, George HW Bush ensured that with few exceptions the Panama Defense Forces would not fight and by its internal weaknesses that force didn’t even try to help uninvolved Panamanian civilians in harm’s way.
* Is Trump threatening war? Let’s have the National Police, SENAN and SENAFRONT more ready to protect Panamanians than to shoot it out with the Americans, and an entire population educated to give sullen resistance and non-cooperation with any invaders or turncoats they may offer to Panama.
A nation sacrificed for generations. On that day in 1964, teenager Ascanio Arosemena, the boy on the right side of this photo in the shirt with a diagonal stripe, was helping the wounded when he was shot dead to become the first of that year’s martyrs.
It’s Panama’s canal, but…
It can be better run than it is. That’s a matter for Panamanians, not outsiders, to address.
Let’s bring the canal employees and retirees into greater roles in management decisions. Let’s ditch the gringo-style trappings and expectations of what a corporate CEO is supposed to be as our model for canal administrators.
There is not a single MAGA politician in the United States who ever moved a wheelbarrow full of dirt and rocks to build the Panama Canal in any of its construction phases. Panamanians will do the heavy lifting to add to the canal with a new reservoir to the west. Any foreign resident who supports the canal ownership claim of the United States or any other foreign power really ought to leave the isthmus forthwith.
Bear in mind…
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
Dorothy Day
Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Jerry Garcia
To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
Katherine Patterson
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