Of course, when I plunge into offscreen life, all kinds of things can and do happen during my absence from this Internet.

For example, I just learned, reading my email, that sometime between yesterday and today, while I was not near any computer screen, I "refused to publish" a writer's critique of my words, above, about the Panamanian president's inauguration speech!

Okke Ornstein, a Dutch journalist living in Panama, writes on his webpage:

Domino Day in Panama?
Dreaming in the Narcosphere

October 2 , 2004

I am a regular reader of the Narco News Bulletin, which I think is one of the more important publications in the hemisphere. I wrote for them. I think its publisher, Alberto Giordano, and his team have built an important and powerful publication and they're doing it well. But even the Narco Newsroom has it wrong sometimes. A recent story by Giordano about the inaugural speech by Panamanian president Martin Torrijos starts with the wrong premises and then, as in a film noir, stumbles along towards the inevitable unhappy ending of all the wrong conclusions.

Because Giordano won't publish my response over there at the Narco News, we're faced with the impracticality of you, dear reader, having to go there first to read Giordano's story and then return here to continue reading the explanation of what went wrong and why with Giordano's analysis...

I urge everyone who wants to read Ornstein's critique of my words to, by all means, do so, via the link above. Contrary to the implication that I somehow "won't publish" his response here at Narco News, I love a good disagreement, especially one that spells my vowel-enhanced name correctly (like, uh, wasn't that already obvious?)

Ornstein did, indeed, publish a few articles here some years ago (I will leave it to him whether he wishes to discuss publicly my private appeals to him, later on, to disclose his potential conflicts of interest involving the DEA and others, which, as I clearly stated to him various times over the past year, did lead me to refrain from publishing a different article of his sometime last year: Here on Narco News, authors disclose potential conflicts and appearance of conflicts because that's part of our bond of trust with the reader: full disclosure... So while, on a completely different story, in 2003, I did decline to publish a work of his, that's just not true of his essay, today, responding to my Panama comments.)

I think he makes some good points and some not-so-good points in his current essay. But where did he get the idea, in just 24 hours, that I "won't" publish his response, when in fact I wasn't even online to read the email he sent me at 6:24 p.m. last night?

I'll publish his email (one of 848 of the past two weeks, at just one of my email addresses, that I've started to read upon my return!), in full, here. It makes interesting points on the merits of the policy and political questions regarding Panama's new president, but his claim that I refused to publish his response - sent to me just 19 hours ago! - does distract me from the merits of his case. Ornstein's critique of my commentary regarding Panama is fair game. But to claim, in public, that I "won't" publish it is ludicrous: an invented cheap shot, totally fabricated.

But, what the hell, I'm a big bad lion in the cyber-jungle (apparently even when I'm not in it!) and these kinds of silly hits and disses always just make us seem to be bigger than life anyway, and, after all, he spelled Narco News correctly, so I appreciate the free publicity.

Here: I'll even publish the full text of his email of last night, which contains no request that I publish it, and no submission of the text he published today on his website, linked above, which he claims I refused to publish.

Greetings to all Narco News readers, co-publishers and journalists. Shady's back! Tanned, rested, and ready for battle again!

Here is the full, unabridged, text of Ornstein's email from last night...

Subject: Your article on Panama
From: "Okke Ornstein" <okke@ornstein.org>
Date: Fri, October 1, 2004 6:24 pm
To: publisher@narconews.com

Al,

Re your story at
(this link).

I just finished reading your article about Martin Torrijos' inaugural speech and the olive branch he handed out to Cuba. In my opinion, you miss several important points and your conclusion as if a "domino has fallen" and Panama has now a sort of joined the Bolivarian revolution is all wrong.

First, we have to deal with the common misconception that General Omar Torrijos, his son and now president Martin Torrijos and their political party the PRD have anything to do with leftist policy. Declassified documents obtained by the Panamanian Truth Commission prove us how enthusiast the US government was when Omar Torrijos was rounding up, torturing and killing leftist rebels with the help of then chief of intelligence Manuel Antonio Noriega. I wrote about this at
http://www.ornstein.org/2004panamaleft.html

Basically, Torrijos successfully maintained an image of an anti-oligarchy popular leftist dictator, but in reality he was only serving US political and corporate interests in Panama, notably the financial sector headed by Rockefeller.

It is common knowledge that Noriega was a CIA asset, it is however lesser known that General Omar Torrijos was on the payroll of another intelligence service, the 470 group. Seymour Hersh wrote a revealing article about the constant rows between these two services in Panama for Life Magazine in 1990, which is unfortunately not available on the web.

Another common misconception is that Omar Torrijos heroically managed to get the Canal into Panamanian hands. Negotiations about a hand-over of the Canal had already started before Torrijos took power however, and were sped up by events in 1964 in which students died during riots after they had entered the Canal Zone to plant the Panamanian flag. Just before the coup, one Arnulfo Arias Madrid won presidential elections, and he was a strong nationalist who insisted on a full hand-over of the Canal to Panama. Deemed uncontrollable by the US, a coup against Arias was sparked and supported by the US. General Torrijos did not take power during that coup, he was actually drunk. He only took full power when he managed to get rid of Boris Martinez. The coup, the expulsion of Boris Martinez, the failure of a counter coup and the ultimate rise to full power of Omar Torrijos were all fully and actively supported by the US. You can read this in well-documented form in the book "Golpes y Tratados" by Brittmarie Janson Perez, who published an underground newspaper during the military days. I'll send you a copy if you want.

In that same book, tons of evidence are offered for the statement that the only reason for the military to be in power and stay there was because the US needed a stable and manageable counterpart in Canal negotiations, and the US wanted to see a regime that could and would suppress popular uprisings against the US occupation of La Zona. In exchange for leniency in the negotiations and cooperation in keeping the population quiet, Torrijos was allowed to play his leftist games to a certain extent and even attract Cuban advisors to train his National Guard. But no opposition was allowed, and actively persecuted.

The result is a treaty that hands over management and ownership of the Canal to Panama, but also assures that the Canal remains perpetually under the umbrella of the Pentagon. Recent naval exercises and the regular cooked up reports about terror threats to the waterway illustrate that these days more than ever. It was with the Treaty that is supposedly such a big accomplishment of Torrijos in their hands that the Bush government legitimized the invasion of 1989. It is not for nothing that it is often argued by the real left-wingers in Panama that the Canal Treaty surpasses the constitution in importance.

Panama's current president, Martin Torrijos, constantly refers to the popular image of his father and his US imposed dictatorship, as you can also read in the inaugural speech you refer to. I wrote another story, to be found at http://www.ornstein.org/2004backfuture.html that describes the striking similarities between old and new Torrijos' policies and rhetoric, based on yet another declassified document and current PRD policies.

The big issue with the new government in Panama is again the Canal, this time the expansion of it. At the same time, the US wants a limited return of troops, these days under the spin of terror threats. Meanwhile, Martin Torrijos' government is holding secret negotiations for a free trade agreement with the US, and they're approaching the IMF for help in with the deteriorated state's finances. Torrijos goes along very well with Colombian president Uribe, and they have stated how much cooperation would be needed to fight narco terrorism.

In short, the political faction both Torrijoses belong to has a long standing tradition of playing both sides of the street. On one side they're loyal allies of the US, and, on the other side, orally they are friendly with leftist governments such as that of Castro and Chavez.

Meanwhile, Panama plays its historic role of a transit country under the US imposed and controlled bubble of sovereignty, not just for shipping, but also for (dirty) money, arms trafficking to mainly Colombia, and (dirty) people. In every single bigger corruption scandal in Latin America you'll see that investigators will visit Panama to follow the money trail - most recently Guatemalan and Nicaraguan prosecutors visited here to talk with the local authorities who are generally reluctant to investigate anything that has to do with the banking sector.

Similarly, Both the Colombian FARC and the AUC are present and tolerated within Panama's Dariën province.

The relationship with Cuba should be understood from this perspective as well; Panama historically serves as a hub for trade and travel to and from Cuba. Panamanian front companies in the Colon Free Zone have long served trade that would otherwise be prohibited under the US embargo. US citizens wanting to travel to Cuba can do so from Panama without having a visa showing up in their passports under a special arrangement. And last but not least, a good relationship with Cuba serves as a veil to pretend to the world that the PRD government is independent and socially oriented, and to hide the fact that it's just another Central American US lapdog.

Maybe dominos fall in Latin America, but unfortunately, it wasn't here.

Okke

Again, all interesting points, but where did he get the claim that I refused to publish his comments and, specifically, an essay that he never submitted to me?