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Martinelli’s SPI: practicing marksmanship and racism with Israeli advisers. But was the SPI also selling guns on the side? Photo by the Presidencia.
Former SPI chief and gun importer jailed in weapons case
by Eric Jackson
Jaime Trujillo, whose path to command the Institutional Protection Service (SPI, by its Spanish initials) went through heading the security guards for Ricardo Martinelli’s Super 99 grocery store chain, is behind bars. On June 28 he and arms importer Ricaurte “Pochi” Grajales were ordered held in preventive detention and at last report were being held at the DIJ lockup in Ancon.
It’s part of a long-running investigation that had both of them brought in for questioning several times earlier, along with several dozen current or former law enforcment personnel. It has been reported in La Estrella that an undisclosed number of other people have been charged. The gist of at least part of the case is an allegation that notwithstanding a ban since 2010 on the importation of weapons for anyone but police agencies, Grajales, the owner of Armas y Municiones Nacional (Armunal), the exclusive importer of Glock pistols, had been privately selling weapons to individual law enforcement officers.
From the time that Juan Carlos Varela assumed the presidency in mid-2014 it has been noticed that many arms imported for the SPI were not in that agency’s possession. Earlier this year it was reported in Ricardo Martinelli’s media that 23 Glock pistols that were supposedly imported for the SPI had been confiscated from criminal gangs. The insinuation, not outright alleged, was that those weapons went missing on Varela’s watch. But now it seems that arms privately sold to law enforcement officers were resold to gangsters.
The SPI includes the Presidential Guards but also includes an espionage outfit. Under the Martinelli administration it was trained by veterans of Israel’s Shin Bet. One of Martinelli’s national security directors, Gustavo Pérez, is serving a six-year term for possession of a machine gun and several other illegal or unregistered weapons.
While the arrests have been the occasion for complaints by a few gun enthusiasts, Panama has nothing comparable to the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, nor does it have political organizations like the National Rifle Association that are largely financed by gun manufacturers and sellers. We do get some of the North American gun culture through movies and television shows and there are Panamanians who believe that a firearm in the household makes its members safer. By and large, however, Panamanian law and popular culture favor fewer rather than more weapons in circulation.
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The Our Revolution Board of Directors is excited to announce the appointment of a new president. Our Revolution is dedicated to the mission and founding principles of the political revolution started by Senator Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. Nina Turner, the former Ohio State Senator and Our Revolution Board Member, is set to take the helm and lead the organization to the next phase of success and growth. Since 2016, Our Revolution has expanded to hundreds of local groups that are building a national progressive movement through grassroots organizing, electing progressive candidates and passing ballot initiatives.
Outgoing President Jeff Weaver provided leadership during the infancy stages immediately following the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential bid in an effort to capture and expand the momentum nationwide.
“We appreciate Jeff’s hard work, vision and leadership both on the campaign and as we launched Our Revolution,” said Larry Cohen, Our Revolution Board Chair. “We are thankful for the work Jeff has done and look forward to his next project. We’re thrilled that our Board Member and progressive champion Nina Turner will be our new president. Nina is a well known and inspiring voice in the progressive movement and we look forward to her bringing that energy into her new role.”
“It has been extremely satisfying to see Our Revolution grow into the effective progressive grassroots organization it has become,” said former President Jeff Weaver. “From chapters springing up nationwide to incredible successes moving the nation forward — particularly in helping to elect local and state legislative candidates, reforming the Democratic Party and in resisting the disastrous Trump agenda, I’m proud of the work we have accomplished together. I know that under Senator Turner’s leadership, Our Revolution will have even more success in the future. And I look forward to working with her and the Our Revolution team to create an America that’s great for everyone.”
“I am grateful to Jeff Weaver for his leadership and I look forward to continuing to work with him, the Board, staff and affiliates in order to move our country forward by advancing a progressive agenda that lifts all Americans,” added Our Revolution President and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner.
Offering a powerful narrative of overcoming adversity, Senator Turner is a captivating orator who puts political and social trends into an unparalleled perspective. Most recently a progressive leader and minority whip in the Ohio Senate, she is a college professor, motivational speaker, frequent media commentator, and author.
Senator Turner has worked in leadership at the Ohio Democratic Party and as an elected member of the Cleveland City Council — both opportunities that demonstrated her ability to unify opposing ideologies in critical circumstances. Turner is also a highly sought after public speaker who has traveled across North America to inspire action and instill hope in crowds of more than 20,000 for bold causes like labor, women’s reproductive health, voting rights, and income inequality. Her gifted speech-making and commitment to progressive ideals led her to be the Democratic candidate for Ohio’s Secretary of State in 2014 and more recently a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders during the tumultuous 2016 Democratic presidential primary.
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Alguién envenenó a los pelicanos pardos de Panamá. Foto por Audubon.
Ayude a los Pelícanos Pardos de Panamá
tomado de la página de Facebook de Audubon Panamá
Los Pelícanos Pardos en ciudad de Panamá NECESITAN URGENTE su ayuda. En este mes la Asociación Panamericana para la Conservación (APPC) ha estado recibiendo y rescatando Pelícanos Pardos intoxicados o heridos en áreas residenciales de Coco del Mar, Ave. Balboa, Panamá Viejo, Calle 50 y Punta Paitilla. En la última semana la situación se ha agravado. Los pelícanos están letárgicos, algunos medio paralizados, con diarreas y vómitos. Como no comen, no eliminan las toxinas, se debilitan y mueren si no se les atiende rápida y oportunamente. APPC necesita los siguientes insumos para seguir atendendiendo este caso:
– Gasas para limpiar heridas (algunos pelícanos vienen heridos por perros) – Sanitor (en Melo) / Clorexidina (en farmacias, sirve para desinfectar heridas) – Sucravet (en Melo) / Sucrasulfato (en farmacias, sirve para proteger las paredes del estómago) – Neosep (en Melo) / Neobol (en farmacias, jabón antiséptico) – Caja de guantes de látex (en farmacias) – Tilapia en filete, congelada (Riba Smith, etc., por su precaria condición, no se les puede dar pescado completo a los pelícanos)
Por favor, comparta esta solicitud entre sus amigos y familiares.
Para la entrega de donaciones de insumos favor escribirnos o llamarnos a la oficina de Audubon Panamá al 232-5977.
Ayudemos a estos pelícanos para que puedan seguir deleitándonos con sus vuelos y ‘clavados’ en la Bahía de Panamá.
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Perhaps the most important part of President Juan Carlos Varela’s trip to Washington was his meeting with International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde. The Presidencia did not play this up and the IMF was also cryptic and brief about what happened. But Panama has a rapidly expanding public debt and the IMF and other international financial institutions have been urging a politically toxic brew of tax increases and austerity measures to deal with the debt situation. The IMF tweeted that the two met “met … to discuss Panama’s economy and its efforts to enhance financial integrity [and] tax transparency.” The Presidencia’s website said that on the first full day in Washington Varela and Vice President and Foreign Minister Isabel de Saint Malo, Minister of Economy and Finance Dulcidio de la Guardia and Panama’s ambassador in Washington Emmanuel González Revilla met with Lagarde and then with Inter-American Development Bank president Luis Alberto Moreno “to review the state of affairs in Panama.” Photo by the IMF.
A deadpan reply about canal construction, sundry bland and vague assurances
by Eric Jackson
As President Juan Carlos Varela, First Lady Lorena Castillo de Varela and their entourage took off for five days of meetings in Washington the headlines here involved speculation over whether US President Donald Trump would ask for or demand US military bases in Panama. The American Embassy assured that this topic would not be broached, a range of various Panamanian nationalists insisted that it better not be, but the actual US forces who are here and have been for years — mercenaries attached to the US Southern Command flying out of Albrook, several drone bases around the country that may be at Panamanian installations but are run by Americans, US military advisers with diplomatic immunity attached to police units — were studiously ignored and left out of the conversation.
So is the United States going to get militarily aggressive against, say, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela or Cuba and use Panama as a base to do this? We don’t know. We are told that Panama’s relationship with the United States has been “completely renovated.” We are told that the two countries will “look for an exit from regional conflicts and fight the climate of insecurity in which certain regions of Central America live.” We are told that Varela shared with Trump his views about Venezuela and Cuba.
The meetings dedicated to economic subjects were also only sketchily reported. A few days after the trip, however, the OECD upgraded Panama’s status by way of one of its subcommittees finding progress toward transparency and an end to money laundering. Is this about real changes that have happened, or a reward for undisclosed undertakings about these or other economic matters?
There were meetings with congressional leaders of each party. A Panamanian cultural night was put on by the Panama Tourism Authority. There were declarations that Panama has maintaining a warlike stance on the matter of drugs, and bizarre claims that most of the drugs that come through Panama get intercepted. Varela gave his assurance that Panama will be part of an unspecified solution, rather than presenting an unspecified problem.
What made the US news? Trump could not resist congratulating himself and the USA for building the Panama Canal, and Varela responded “Yes, 100 years ago.” Neither acknowledged that the great majority of the canal builders back then were black men from the West Indies, which prompted some comments from academic and activist circles, and in turn elicited vitriolic responses from various alt-right and white supremacist circles.
It was announced that US Vice President Mike Pence will visit here sometime in August.
All in all, it seems that Panama will grin and bear whatever comes out of Washington into these latitudes, or at least almost anything. In a structural sense, that would mean little change in the relationship. In a substantive sense it would appear to be more volatile, given Trump’s unpredictability. It depends on what Donald Trump might decide to do next, which in turn is likely to be driven by US domestic politics.
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These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
When a Briton or American speaks about a “four-letter word,” he means a vulgar sexual term, a word not to be mentioned in polite society.
In Israel we also have such a word, a word of four letters. A word not to mention.
This word is “Shalom,” peace.
(In Hebrew, “sh” is one letter, and the “a” is not written.)
For years now this word has disappeared from intercourse (except as a greeting). Every politician knows that it is deadly. Every citizen knows that it is unmentionable.
There are many words to replace it. “Political agreement.” “Separation.” “We are here and they are there.” “Regional arrangement.” To name a few.
And here comes Donald Trump and brings the word up again. Trump, a complete ignoramus, does not know that in this country it is taboo.
He wants to make peace here. SH-A-L-O-M. So he says. True, there is not the slightest chance that he really will make peace. But he has brought the word back into the language. Now people speak again about peace. Shalom.
Peace? What is peace?
There are all kind of peaces. Starting from a little peace, a baby-peace, to a large, even mighty peace.
Therefore, before opening a serious debate about peace, we must define what we mean. An intermission between two wars? Non-belligerence? Existence on different sides of walls and fences? A prolonged armistice? A Hudna (in Arabic culture, an armistice with a fixed expiry date)?
Something like the peace between India and Pakistan? The peace between Germany and France — and if so, the peace before World War I or the peace prevailing now? The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, or the Hot Peace between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?
There are all kinds of peace situations. What kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace are we talking about? The peace between a horse and its rider? The peace between a people of masters and a people of slaves? Something like the peace between the South African Apartheid regime and the Bantustans it had created for the Blacks? Or a quite different kind of peace, a peace between equals?
It’s about this peace I would like to speak. Not “real” peace. Not “perfect” peace. Not “complete” peace.
About peace. Peace pure and simple. Without qualifications, please.
When did it all start? The conflict that now dominates the lives of the two peoples, when did it begin?
Hard to say.
It is easy to say: it started when the first Jewish immigrant reached these shores.
Sounds simple. But it is not altogether true.
It seems that the pre-Zionist Bilu immigrants, who came here in the early 1800s, did not arouse hostility.
I have a theory about that: some time before the Bilu (short for “House of Jacob, Go!”) came here, a religious German sect, the Templers, settled in this country. They had no political aims, just a religious vision. They set up model villages and townships, and the locals were grateful. When the first Jews arrived, the locals assumed that this was more of the same.
Then came the Zionist movement, which definitely had political aims. They spoke only about a “national home,” but the founder, Theodor Herzl, had previously written a book called “The Jewish State” (or, more accurately, “The Jewstate”). The aim was hidden for a time, because the country belonged to the Ottoman Empire.
Only very few of the local population realized right from the beginning that this was a mortal danger for them. A large majority of the Muslims saw the Jews only as an inferior religious community, which the Prophet had commanded them to protect.
So when did the conflict start? There are various theories about that. I adhere to the theory of the almost-forgotten historian Aharon Cohen, who pointed to a particular event. In 1908, the revolution of the “Young Turks” broke out. The Islamic Ottoman Empire turned into a nationalist state. As a reaction, there arose in Palestine and the neighboring countries an Arab national movement, which called for the “decentralization” of the empire, giving autonomy to its many peoples.
A local Arab leader approached the Zionist representative in Jerusalem with a tempting offer: if the Jews support the Arab movement, the Arabs will support Zionist immigration.
In great excitement, the Zionist representative rushed to the then leader of the Zionist world movement, Max Nordau, a German Jew, and urged him to accept the offer. But Nordau treated the offer with contempt. After all, it was the Turks who were in possession of the country. What did the Arabs have to offer?
It is difficult to know how history would have evolved if such a Zionist-Arab cooperation had come into being. But a European Jew could not even imagine such a turn of events. Therefore the Zionists cooperated with the Turkish — and later with the British — colonial regime against the local Arab population.
Since then, the conflict between the two peoples has intensified from generation to generation. Now peace is further away than ever.
But what is peace?
The past cannot be obliterated. Anyone who suggests that the past should be ignored and that we “start again from the beginning” is dreaming.
Each of the two peoples lives in a past of its own. The past shapes their character and their behavior every day and every hour. But the past of one side is totally different from the past of the other.
This is not just a war between two peoples. It is also a war between two histories. Two histories which contradict each other in almost every particular, though they concern the very same events.
For example: Every Zionist knows that until the 1948 war, the Jews acquired land with good money, money contributed by Jews around the world. Every Arab knows that the Zionists bought the land from absentee landlords who lived in Haifa, Beirut or Monte Carlo, and then demanded that the Turkish (and later the British) police evict the fellahin who had tilled the land for many generations. (All the land had originally belonged to the Sultan, but when the empire was bankrupt the Sultan sold it to Arab speculators.)
Another example: Every Jew is proud of the Kibbutzim, a unique achievement of human progress and social justice, which were frequently attacked by their Arab neighbors. For the Arabs, the Kibbutzim were just sectarian instruments of displacement and deportation.
Another example: Every Jew knows that the Arabs started the 1948 war in order to exterminate the Jewish community. Every Arab knows that in that war, the Jews evicted half the Palestinian people from their homeland.
And so forth: nowadays the Israelis believe that the Palestinian Authority, which pays a monthly salary to the families of “murderers,” supports terrorism. The Palestinians believe that the Authority is duty-bound to support the families whose sons and daughters have sacrificed their lives for their people.
And so forth, without end.
(By the way, I am very proud of having invented the only scientifically sound definition of “terrorist,” which both sides can accept: “Freedom fighters are on my side, terrorists are on the other side.”)
There will never be peace if the two peoples do not know the historical narrative of the other side. There is no need to accept the narrative of the opponent. One can deny it totally. But one has to know it, in order to understand the other people and respect it.
Peace does not have to be based on mutual love. But it must be based on mutual respect. Mutual respect can arise only when each people knows the historical narrative of the other side. When it understands that, it will also understand why the other people acts the way it does, and what is needed for peaceful co-existence.
That would be much easier if every Israeli Jew learned Arabic, and every Palestinian Arab learned Hebrew. That would not solve the problem, of course, but it would bring the solution much closer.
When each of the two peoples understands that the other side is not a bloodthirsty monster, but acts from natural motives, it will discover many positive points in the culture of the other side. Personal contacts will be established, perhaps even friendships.
This is already happening in Israel, though on a small scale. In the academic world, for example. And in the hospitals. Jewish patients are often surprised to discover that their nice and competent doctor is an Arab and that Arab male nurses are frequently more gentle than the Jewish ones.
That cannot replace dealing with the real problems. Our two peoples are divided by real, weighty controversies. There is a problem about land, about borders, about refugees. There are problems of security and innumerable other issues. A war of more than a hundred years will not end without painful compromises.
When there is a basis for negotiations between equals, a basis of mutual respect, insoluble problems will suddenly become soluble problems.
But the precondition for this process is the return of the four-letter-word to the language.
It is impossible to do something big, something historic, if there is no belief that it is possible.
A person will not plug an electric cord into a wall if they do not believe that they will be connected to electricity. They must believe that the lights will go on.
Nobody will start peace negotiations if they believe that peace is impossible.
The belief in peace will not make peace certain. But at least it will make peace possible.
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Ana Matilde Gómez, from her Facebook page. Does she want to be president? Does she just want to set the record straight?
Ana Matilde’s bombshell
by Eric Jackson
Of all the many scandals swirling around the former president, Ricardo Martinelli, it’s the one about illegal electronic surveillance that has landed him behind bars. For how long, we know not.
On June 21, the day after Martinelli’s bail hearing in Miami, independent legislator and former attorney general Ana Matilde Gómez went on channel 2 (TVN) and talked in public for the first time about Ricardo Martinelli’s wiretapping. The gist of her statement in a long interview was the it was an ill-kept secret that Martinelli was engaged in massive illegal wiretapping. Morover, that from her personal dealings with the matter, one of the people who knew about it and was assigned a task related to it was now President Juan Carlos Varela, then vice president and in an alliance with Martinelli.
Recall that Gómez herself was convicted of illegal wiretapping and removed from office on that pretext. It was a maneuver orchestrated by Ricardo Martinelli and his appointees on the high court. A prosecutor had been shaking down an incarcerated woman’s family, threatening a transfer to more hellish conditions if payments were not made. The target of this extortion scheme appealed to Gómez and requested a tap on his own phone in order to catch the corrupt prosecutor. She did that, caught, arrested and fired the guy, and was in turn charged with a crime for wiretapping without a court order. (But of course, had she gone to court the odds were great that the extortionist would have been tipped off — such are the ways of the criminality ingrained in Panama’s judicial system.) At the time of her prosecution, she did not raise the “but THEY do it” defense. It would not have helped. Martinelli wanted his people — first the embarrassing Giuseppe Bonissi, then after another scandal, José Ayú Prado, the latter who now presides over the Supreme Court.
Martinelli, Gómez recounted, wanted someone from the Public Ministry to be part of the National Security Council’s wiretap team. Would that be to get a prosecutor’s permission for such things as recording domestic arguments of his political foes? In any case Gómez took the position that any prosecutor who took such a job would have to resign from the Public Ministry and take a job with the National Security Council. She said that “Martinelli used the Security Council system and all of the apparatus, mechanisms and technological tools to be able — according to him — to know everything.”
While at the United Nations calling for more electronic surveillance to fight crime and terrorism, and for more governmental powers to censor the Internet, Martinelli briefly called Gómez and said that Varela would speak to her about the subject of wiretaps. That he did — “timidly” according to the legislator. Varela, she said, relayed Martinelli’s request for the assignment of a certain person in the Public Ministry to duties with the president’s security team. Gómez says that she told him that could only happen if the person resigned from her ministry.
Wouldn’t you know that Gómez’s PRD demagogue colleague and high-profile victim of Martinelli’s eavesdropping, legislator Zulay Rodríguez, would say that this justifies the start of impeachment proceedings against Varela? With Varela’s popularity slipping it may have been an obvious thing to say, but it seems not to have caught on with the public imagination. The deputies of Martinelli’s existentially threatened Cambio Democratico party asked for a clarification. There have been more calls, from reasonable and unreasonable voices, for further explanations from Gómez.
It’s Ana Matilde’s record in public life, however, to be sparing and disciplined in her public statements. Most likely she said what she wanted to say and nothing more. That what Martinelli was doing was pretty well known has been documented that much more by the former attorney general, whom pollsters say is the most popular possible independent candidate for president in 2019. President Varela has reason to be annoyed. But Gómez did not directly accuse him of a crime, and probably won’t.
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‘I don’t see Martinelli’s name in there!’ In a money laundering scheme the names of the principals are not supposed to show, and Panama’s corporate secrecy laws make this easier to accomplish. This chart is about how EPASA, the parent company for El Panama America, La Critica and some other media holdings was bought, then to become Martinelli political props and the recipients of huge inflows of government advertising revenue. On the left side of the chart, most of these men and companies have been named in shady transactions that were either contracts with the government or illegal things that were protected by the government. A bribery and kickback scheme? So it would seem. But in any case the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office is looking at it as a money laundering scheme. On the chart you see the Ochy family and Trans Caribbean Trading listed, and while this money laundering probe is going on, so is a prosecution of that family business, some of its principals and some public officials for overpriced road construction contracts with kickbacks.
Leader of the laundromat?
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The Panama News uses the editor’s Facebook page as a vast extension of its content, mostly other people’s stuff but also original things, and all of the back and forth banter on this issue or that. It’s also a backup in times of crisis, when our website is shut down or made dangerous by various sorts of hackers. We could spend way more money than we have to armor our website and try to make it impregnable, or we can be resilient, retreating to our backup position while we figure out and counter an attack. We retreated, found and fixed the vulnerability, and are back. It took in-kind donations of expertise and a relatively small donation of money to deal with this particular attack. The loss in readership while the website was crippled also implied a reduction in donations, and although we don’t believe that we can build a defense that will fend off all attacks we are looking at some new defenses that will cost a bit of money.
In any case, if you didn’t visit us when we were on Facebook, here are some of the things you missed:
