Okke Ornstein | Journalist in Panama

Martinelli has turned the gorillas loose and now they’re everywhere, demanding bribes and harassing people. Portobelo, meanwhile, is harder to visit than the US embassy in Bagdad.

So I’m working on the website of the long awaited magazine “The Isthmian”, and this is the newest story I’ve put up there. It’s about Rachel Divine, my yoga therapist, who has helped me get rid of shoulder trouble and the horrible pains as a result of my scooter accident. I interviewed her months ago and took the yoga for a test drive.

I just knew that even though I stayed out of the Panaporn scandal, my loyal fan Don Winner would find a way to drag me in.

De Kavel Company blokkeert toegang tot haar website vanuit Panama, Martinelli regering kondigt maatregelen aan, Kavel Company gelieerd aan dubieuze Costa Ricaanse teak en vanille rommelaar EN het kavelproject ligt middenin een toekomstige olieraffinaderij!

In het altijd gezellige Habanos ontmoetten we Dennis Bode, Henri Kerkhof en Pim Nolen van de Kavel Company, een gezelschap dat ergens het midden houdt tussen Peppi en Kokki en de Josti Band.

Weer een nieuw project: We gaan zaken doen in Panama. Dat wil zeggen, er komt een Netherlands-Panamanian Business Council, een soort kamer van koophandel, die Nederlandse bedrijven die in Panama zaken willen gaan doen helpt.

Imagine a gang of child rapists, crooks on the run and coke snorting bankrupts getting together in Panama to start an “investment scheme.” Can’t believe it? It really happened, and it became one of the more spectacular collapses of any scam over the last five years or so. I’m talking about the Noni Tubbies.

While most of the perpetrators are either in jail, on the run or keeping a low profile, one of the more intellectually depraved members of the board is trying to clear his name these days: The great entrepreneurial thinker Tom Lennon.

Eric Jackson writes today on Panama Forum that The Panama Star, the English language paper/supplement of La Estrella, has ceased to exist.

Well, it was about time.

My recent story about the Kunas invading land and committing environmental crimes AND taking me hostage has caused Kuna nitwit lawyer Atencio Lopez to offer us a fascinating insight in the mind of the mentally disturbed.

Ornstein appears in a CNBC documentary about his former friend and now convicted money launderer Marc M. Harris.

Wacky Honduran oligarch wants peacekeeping forces from Panama, but, ummm, we have no army!

In 2006 I traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan, to report for the US magazine Newsmax. I still want to go back, even more so now that Obama has announced a change of policy towards the war torn country. Meanwhile, here are the links to the stories that were published on the Newsmax website.

When you’re a journalist, you always get these complaints that you never write anything positive. Of course the people who make these complaints are wrong and ignorant and they will never actually pay you to write something upbeat, but it never hurts to pacify them every once and a while.

I had big plans with the new Celimo Typhoon scooter I bought just months ago. For example, I immediately registered diariosdescooter.com, a website that would document my journeys all over the country, and beyond. Like a modern Che I would voyage Central America and report on whatever I would encounter, from social issues to geographics, from the beauty of its nature to the ugly circumstances of the many people that live in it. Even my Afghan shawl, bought in Kabul in 2006, entered the plans as it would protect me on the many dust roads I surely would have to navigate. Other than that, the scooter would serve me well to commute from where I live to Panama City, where I work.

That was the plan. Then came reality….