Now, I don’t pretend to be familiar enough with the Mexican activist scene to really have an opinion on the question if there is indeed a controversy between what Giordano calls “The Annihilating Language of the Left” and the “Language of Humanity of Drug War Victims”, or if Giordano is just creating divisiveness, but I am all too familiar with Giordano’s tactics of smear and mudslinging.

One can always count on Giordano to deliver those who lost their livelihoods or their lives, or family members, another kick in the balls. Smearing a filmmaker who was shot to death, chastising a man who lost his wife for not being emotional enough when he gave a speech – there’s really no depth to which he won’t sink:

During the twelve-minute speech, in contrast with so many talks given by so many family members of Mexicans assassinated or disappeared along the caravan routes, Esparza said nothing about his late wife, who she was, what she did, how they lived, how he felt about her loss, choosing instead to offer a boilerplate political speech of the sort that gets made at so many other political meetings and protests.

How dare Esparza not keep in line with those many others and Giordano’s noble savage fantasies where the locals – those with the humane voices of approved victims, that is – are supposed to burst into tears and publicly talk about their assassinated wives in front of an audience that includes, after all, none less than the Supreme Organizer himself!

It gets even worse when he starts blaming foreign activists coming down to Mexico, including a filmmaker who got shot and thus can’t defend himself any more:

The truth is that one of the main causes of the downfall of the APPO movement in 2006 was the virtual invasion by foreign “anti globalization” activists – the summit-hopping types with enough money for travel fare to anyplace on earth where they can revel in being “at the barricades” – who seemed to think that the Popular Assembly movement was more about street battles with cops than, say, governing in a popular way, by, say, assembly. They came with money, and some local organizations literally fought with each other over which would house and host them, as these visitors also became a source of income in a poverty-stricken state. The October 2006 murder of Indymedia filmmaker Brad Will in Oaxaca became the pretext for the Mexican national government to send in federal police and crush the movement by force.

Someone about whom he initially wrote “Goodbye, old friend. Your sacrifice will not be in vain”, is now swept on the heap of what Giordano calls “summit-hopping types” who have money – the same money he wants them and you to donate to his project.

The irony of he himself being just another gringo with no skin in the game being down there telling others not just how to act, but also ordering the natives how to express their feelings of grief and loss, of course fully escapes him, busy as he is with his subsidized export business of questionable non-violent protest theory and being an overall North American insensitive pompous arse.  For all his talk about “authentic”, his only visible interest when he writes pieces like these is not if he’s right, but if he can get away with it. He doesn’t make an argument; he spins prosecutor courtroom theories – also evidenced by the fact that he never ever will readdress a subject when time, or others, have proven him wrong. In other words, he, much like televised Wall Street analysts, will take the upside of his writings – donations, subsidies, travel, the occasional speaking gig – but never accept any downside when it turns out that for all the mud slinging and admonishing, what he said was simply nonsense.

Like when he defended tooth and nail each and every decision and appointment by the new Obama administration and would simply vilify anyone who questioned such figures as Eric Holder being appointed, while ridiculing those who would even think that Hillary Clinton stood any chance of being appointed Secretary of State. Today, drug policy hasn’t changed a bit, we have secret assassination lists, more secrecy than ever, unlimited detention, and we’re in the middle of the biggest show trial of the decade against a whistleblower in old-fashioned Soviet style – but about the last we heard from Giordano about Holder was that he is “the best friend of the Bill of Rights at Justice since Ramsey Clark”. And let no one contradict him!

Or when he, not even that long ago, went through great lengths ridiculing those who would even suggest that maybe the Egyptian army was not really the friend of the people as he was proclaiming:

A couple of North American participants in that gathering raised what they thought was the “most important issue” for Egyptians: “What about the Army? It helped the CIA imprison and torture people after 9/11.” I stepped in and replied in a voice heavily laced with sarcasm, “That’s right Noha! It’s not enough that you have taken on the entire national police! The sacrifices you have made are insufficient! You’re not politically correct unless you also take on the entire Armed Forces too!” Noha, as I’ve learned is her nature, responded soft-spokenly to the question about the Egyptian Army. She said, “In Egypt the police are our repressors, but the Army is of the people and is the people’s friend.” That was in February of 2010, and her statement left a number of our participants from the Western Hemisphere – where Armed Forces have historically been the worst repressors against popular movements – scratching their heads, unable to comprehend such a statement. (…)

The tactic worked for the most part. While peoples of other lands might have jumped immediately to the presumption that this would mean a futile street battle with heavily armed soldiers, the young Egyptian resistance strategists’ decision to respond in the most optimistic way possible made their hopes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that is classic, old school, text book nonviolent resistance strategy that carried the day.

Well, look at Egypt now, and how friendly the army treats the citizens. What was basically a military coup masquerading as support for the resistance turned violently against those people anyway, just a bit later, and without as much as a whisper from its Mexico based gringo apologist whose “sarcasm-laden voice” had still come booming down from his ivory pyramid only little over a year earlier to bully those people who actually had it right.

I used to contribute to Narco News, but abandoned it when yet another time Giordano found it necessary to call me a “DEA snitch” when he lost an argument about the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” which he tried to spin as somehow being a “great victory” for progressives, admonishing them for not being more grateful to Obama about it. It’s the kind of mudslinging he resorts to even without there being a factual basis for it (I’ve never done anything for the DEA, and less so snitching) and that seems to be an integral part of his brand of journalism. It’s sickeningly dishonest, really.

First of all, I got myself a digital audio recorder. I used to have a minidisc recorder, but it died (mechanism broke, plus the wear and tear of the tropics) and I don’t think anyone still uses them anyway. Nowadays, we record on chips. There are many different types on the market, but my favorites are the ones made by Zoom, and the one I use is the H2. It runs on standard batteries or rechargeable ones, uses standard memory cards – even in remote third world hellholes you’ll be able to get what you need. It has four built in microphones and various options for recording mono, stereo or 4 channel, in a variety of formats and audio qualities. The only thing I do not like about it is that the buttons aren’t lit, which is a nuisance when working outdoors on location at night. Other than that, it’s perfect. It comes with a windscreen and some other accessories. You’ll have to buy good headphones as well.

Then, editing. This you can do on any computer or laptop using the Ardour software. This is not just great, it’s fantastic. Comparable with ProTools, but open source and free. There’s a number of third-party plugins available as well – tons, actually – for all kinds of signal processing. Various manuals are available online too. My favorite was this one. If you’re new to audio editing I recommend it highly, because there is a somewhat steep learning curve involved.

I did most of the editing on an old netbook, but highly recommend using a computer with a bigger screen, not in the least because the Ardour windows don’t re-size to the small netbook format. Yet if you need to be mobile, you can edit on a netbook. Mine, a HP Compaq Mini, has just 1GB of RAM and runs Ubuntu Studio (forget video editing though).

Last but not least, you need a fast and reliable internet connection to get the voluminous result to the station. This was – Panama being Panama – actually the biggest technical challenge in the whole production process!

Je zou denken, die lui verdwijnen gewoon. Duiken onder. Of proberen op z’n minst muisstil de schade beperkt te houden. Zo niet Patrick Visser en zijn handlangers, Maurice Sjerps (ook Hollander) and Keren Katz. Eerst dienden ze een smaadklacht in in Panama. Die werd in eerste instantie geseponeerd, en toen weer niet, en toen wie weet wat – met natuurlijk de nodige publiciteit. Ook kondigde dit talent aan dat ‘ie een aanklacht in ging dienen bij de Nederlandse ambassade in Tel Aviv (Visser woont onder andere in Israel). Daar hebben we weinig meer over gehoord, net als van zijn advocaten in de VS die een dreigbrief naar mijn web host stuurden. Tegelijkertijd kwamen er allemaal bizarre dreigementen en beschuldigingen (chantage!) die dan weer nergens hard gemaakt werden, en deed Visser zelfs een poging tot afpersing door te eisen dat alles over hem van het web verwijderd zou worden of anders zou ik vervolgd worden voor “illegale immigratie” en “illegale activiteiten” en dan zou dat mij nog duur komen te staan! Nou, niet dus, er verscheen alleen maar méér op het web door al die capriolen. Vervolgens kwamen ze erachter dat de “Silva Tree” brand een niet meer zo gunstige reputatie genoot – heel gek – en werd de naam van het Panamese dochterbedrijf veranderd in “Sustainable Capital Group”.

Was het toen dan eindelijk gedaan? Nee hoor. In een artikel over the EG rapport “The Vultures of Land Grabbing” gebruikte ik ter illustratie een thumbnail pica van Patrick Visser himself die aan een cocktail zat te lurken. Dit plaatje. Dat vond ‘ie niet leuk. En wat doet nou die dwaas, hij dient een klacht in onder de “Digital Millennium Copyright Act”, omdat de foto gestolen zou zijn van zijn website. Dat was niet zo, die website was namelijk onder constructie op het moment dat ik dat stuk schreef – de foto kwam van FaceBook. Maar goed, doen we verder niet moeilijk over, boevenkop weggehaald en door het hele gedoe waren mijn websites ongeveer 8 uur offline.

Onmiddellijk doken de gieren daar bovenop. Eerst Don Winner, een aan lager wal geraakte Amerikaanse ex-militair die hier in Panama duistere zwendel pimpt, en die een volledig verzonnen verhaal publiceerde over gerechtelijke dwangbevelen en wat niet al – en dat verhaal een paar uur later maar weer van zijn website verwijderde omdat het zelfs voor zijn doen te erg was.

En dan onze Patrick Visser zelf, die onder de kop “DMCA Victory” aankondigde dat mijn sites “out of the air” zijn. Ze waren alweer “in of the air” toen hij zijn stukje afgebakken had, maar wat maakt het uit, toch? “If the sites from Okke Ornstein remains out of the air” – zelfs zijn Engels is zwendel – dan gaat hij zijn artikelen over míj ook weghalen. Die man is niet goed. Dit is niet gewoon dom, dit is een structurele bakfout.

Patrick, jongen, je doet je best maar. Gooi d’r anders nog een smaadklacht tegenaan ofzo. Ondertussen ga ik me maar eens verdiepen in wat jij en die andere zielige types nou weer aan het uitspoken zijn met het kappen van regenwoud in Suriname (dat noemen dit soort vultures “Sustainable Timber Extraction”) en Mozambique.

Ingeklemd tussen Colombia en Costa Rica ligt Panama. In Nederland is het land bekend vanwege het Panama Kanaal dat de Atlantische Oceaan verbindt met de Pacific, maar in de regio kent men de republiek vooral als witwasparadijs en als doorvoerhaven voor drugs vanuit Colombia. De cocainesmokkel van Colombia naar Panama wordt, zeggen de autoriteiten, gecontroleerd door de FARC guerrilla groep, en leidt tot grote onveiligheid in het grensgebied en snelle groei van gewelddadige straatbendes in de hoofdstad Panama City. Journalist Okke Ornstein woont al tien jaar in Panama en maakte een documentaire over de oorlog tegen de drugs die in het land wordt gevoerd.

Okke Ornstein appeared this morning before the 15th Criminal Circuit Court at 9:00 am, in a criminal trial held at the Gil Ponce Palace of Justice in Ancon, Panama City, in the Republic of Panama.

Which is patently false, because I was not in court today, not in Panama nor anywhere else. But, Winner continues:

Well, it would be more accurate to say Okke Ornstein himself did not appear in court – he was afraid the authorities would arrest him on the spot. He was, however, legally represented in the trial by his defense lawyer and the trial went forward even though Ornstein himself was not present.

Which is also false. I am not at all afraid to be “arrested on the spot”. The simple reason I did not appear in any courtroom today is that I have not been notified of any trial being held against me. Also false is the statement that I was “legally represented” by my “defense lawyer”, simply because I don’t have a defense lawyer and didn’t authorize anyone to legally represent me.

Winner then continues with the usual 10,000 words of hogwash and codswallop about how this “defense lawyer” said this and that and what the judge thought and blah blah, as if any of that really happened.

What he doesn’t even mention though is who the complainants are, what the case was about, he doesn’t give us any specifics whatsoever. He doesn’t even quote the name of my supposed defense lawyer.

Then again, this is the same guy who wrote about me being in Costa Rica and Ecuador while the website you’re reading now had supposedly been closed down by the United States Federal Communications Commission – all total fabrications as you, dear reader, can see with your very own eyes.

So what’s true about this “case” and this “trial” and what have you? I have no idea, but it’s not what some serial promoter of fraud schemes says on his website. On the other hand, I think any serious journalist in Panama should have been tried at least once in one of the isthmian kangaroo courts on behalf of some scammer.

“The company has been under constant attack by Okke Ornstein of Bananamarepublic.com as well as an online attack by Sara Llana Miller of the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) and an ex employee of my company in Spain who is accusing me of horrible activities in Spain via ripoffreport.com since November 2009. The accusations are total rubbish and although we are still going through a court case in Panama against the aforementioned, the online damage the articles are doing to Silva Tree is tremendous. Most of the negativity is actually aimed at me and not at the company and by resigning I am hoping that these articles will disappear and the integrity of Silva Tree as a Project Developer will be restored.”

Patrick Visser on his blog.

Visser again proves what a total wackjob he is. The original stories were about Silva Tree and its fraudulent misrepresentations about ROI, carbon credits and the state of its plantations. Visser then did everything possible to put himself in the picture as a man out of touch with reality. Just like he now seems to believe that articles about him will simply disappear because he is no longer on the board of this trainwreck of a forestry outfit. Patrick, do you have these dreams often?

UPDATE: This is now rapidly turning into a Panamanian comedy. I sent a short blurb out to my Silva Tree mailing list, which includes some of the principals and their lawyer, one Juan David Barcenas Del Cid, junior partner at a firm called Pinzon Hidalgo & Co. And this genius then replied to his clients, but cc-ed me on that email. Here it is:

From: Juan David Bárcenas <juandavid@pinzonhidalgo.com>
To: Okke Ornstein <oornstein@gmail.com>, patrick@silvatree.com
Cc: ‘Silva Tree’ <maurice@silvatree.com>, keren@silvatree.com, ‘Edwin Guardia’ <edroguardia@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Patrick Visser ³resigns² from Silva Tree scam
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:20:49 -0500

Dear Edwin:

For me is obvious this guy wants Patrick to loose control or ruin his day. As you may see he is sending us his post in the web, so he makes sure we know what he is doing. As I see it, the message behind this mail is that he does not care about what we are doing to proceed against him. Notice that he is cc you and me, so he makes clear he wants us to know about it.

Edwin, this is an evidence of his attitude towards Patrick, which must be explained and made clear to the judge as his intention to attack Patrick is more than clear. He is still using terms such as “scam” and “wackjob”…

Again, this is further evidence that must be presented to the Judge.

Regards,

Juan David

Is it now a crime in Panama to “ruin someone’s day”? Anyway, here’s my response to him:

Dear Juan David,

How extremely entertaining it is indeed that you cc me on what is supposedly a note from a lawyer to his client! Is this common practice in your firm, or is this just another example of you having no idea what you’re doing – just like the complaint you filed is so flawed that it’s just too easy to shoot holes in it?

Or maybe this is some sort of ridiculous attempt to let it be known to me that you intend to pursue this matter – whatever matter that is exactly – to the fullest, so that you can continue to bill your client for a case that everybody in Panama knows won’t go anywhere and that has people in the legal community rolling over the floor laughing? Just askin’ you know.

Anyway, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not impressed. Why would I be? Patrick Visser writes something about me on his blog, so I respond to that on my blog. Maybe you find that strange, or maybe you don’t know what a blog is, but that’s how these things go. And then you send me this email, which of course is the start of the next blog post. Kind of weird to read Visser at the same time saying that he hopes the bad publicity will go away, but I’ve long given up trying to make sense of his rantings.

Ciao for now,

I haven’t heard back from him since.

A much more interesting and important conversation is meanwhile taking place elsewhere. I was approached by the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information of the Universidad de Palermo in Argentina (CELE), where they are conducting research about the problem of jurisdiction in defamation lawsuits that arise out of speech that takes place through the Internet. This will result in a publication which, if I remember correctly, is due in August. The head of CELE, Eduardo Bertoni, previously worked as the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States (OAS).

CELE has taken an interest in a criminal defamation complaint that is currently being processed against me, Sara Miller Llana and the Christian Science Monitor. The complaint was filed by Patrick Visser and several others who founded and run a rogue forestry investment outfit called Silva Tree in the United Kingdom. See here for more details about the case.

What makes this case interesting is that none of the complainants are citizens or residents of Panama, and that none of the accused are citizens or residents of Panama either. The Christian Science Monitor is a US-based publication, Mrs. Miller LLana does not live in Panama, and I myself am not a resident of that country either. My site bananamarepublic.com is registered and hosted in the US as well.

Despite the fact that this raises obvious questions about if the “crime” of defamation was actually committed in Panama and the fact that there are no Panamanian victims, no Panamanian publications and no Panamanian suspects, the Public Ministry in the tiny canal nation has decided to ignore these issues and move forward with the case anyway.

One obstacle they have encountered so far is that US journalists as well as hosting companies and Google have not dignified the Panamanian requests for information and action with any reply. I myself have so far only been notified about the existence of the case, but not been called to give any kind of declaration.

From the people at CELE I learned that similar cases exist throughout Latin America, largely based on lack of awareness about jurisdictional issues as well as the absence of international agreements on how to treat accusations of “cyberlibel”.

Internet journalism makes the Panamanian “dialog” about “freedom of expression” something of the past. No matter what the outcome, online publicists can just write whatever they want without Panama being able to enforce anything. In the Patrick Visser/Silva Tree case, a judge can rule whatever he wants, but he has no power to enforce any ruling over articles published in the US, written by foreign journalists about a foreign company and its principals.

The real dialog about freedom of expression in Panama took place over the last couple of weeks between Holland – from where I’m writing this piece – and Buenos Aires. A kind of sad, actually.

Waarom, dan, heeft nog niemand Obersturmbannführer Geert Wilders een paar opstoppers verkocht en hem de deur uitgeschopt?

De vergelijking schijnt niet meer te mogen qua politiek correct debat, maar dat neemt niet weg dat Wilders gewoon de leider is van de NSB 2.0 – ze hangen zelfs de vlag achter de ramen van hun fractiekantoren. Die fractie bestaat op haar beurt uit een zooitje corrupt geteisem wier expertise varieert van het rommelen met porno in Hongarije, bedreigingen en geweld, tot het afrossen van geboeide arrestanten en vergelijkbaar crimineel gedrag in de beste traditie van de Weerbaarheidsafdeling.

Wie financiert dit tuig? Wie zal het zeggen? Zelf houden ze er angstvallig hun mond over, dus we mogen vermoeden dat het wel zoiets zal zijn als bij Rita Verdonk destijds, met schimmige brievenbusfirma’s in belastingparadijzen, de vastgoedmafia en collega neo-nazi groepen.

En natuurlijk houden ze niet van vrijheden voor anderen bij de NSB 2.0. Vijandige cartoons, lezingen waarbij de term PVV in de mond genomen wordt en sowieso kritiek op de grote leider ist verboten. In Canada keken ze er nogal van op, toen ene Mw. de Graaff van de Bund Deutscher Mädel PVV de aantekeningen van journalisten in beslag nam, qua persvrijheid.

Je zou dus zeggen, bommen erop. Of op zijn minst honkbalknuppels. Niet dezelfde vergissing maken als bijna een eeuw geleden, niet pas wachten tot het helemaal mis is gegaan met het kaalscheren, de pek en de veren, maar hier en nu het schorriemorrie uitschakelen, RaRa erop af. Maar het gebeurt niet. Waarom niet?

Wilders loopt nog gewoon rond, niet omdat hij zoveel mannen met oordopjes om zich heen heeft maar omdat hij zo grenzeloos dom is. Zijn politieke verhaal hangt van halve waarheden en hele verzinsels aan elkaar en is eenvoudig onderuit te halen – de reden dat hij niet populair is onder diegenen die gezegend zijn met de gift van een werkend brein. De Blonde Führer stapelt stompzinnigheid op stompzinnigheid, met debiele tweets over de PVDArabieren, een YouTube prutsfilmpje waar ‘ie jaren over deed en dat toen nóg vol fouten zat, bizarre voorstellen om niet Griekenland (teveel knoflook) maar wel de één of andere spoorlijn in Israel (anonieme geldschieters!) financieel te steunen, en zo gaat het maar door. Recent hoogtepunt was een column op nu.nl waarin hij in een Iraanse echtscheiding zijn eigen creeping invoering van het nazisme herkende.

Wilders is een neo-nazi die nog half in de kast zit, geen twijfel mogelijk, maar hij is daarenboven een zwatelende aandachtstrekker, een toestandenverkoper, iemand die zijn giftige gedachtengoed uitvent door constant beroerinkjes te creëren via huisorgaan de Telegraaf en natuurlijk de online aksiekrant van Marck Burema.

En dit nu is zijn redding. Het is simpelweg de moeite niet waard om zelfs maar te denken aan het gebruik van geweld tegen Wilders en zijn PVV. Een hofnar maak je ook niet dood, die prik je hooguit een beetje met een stok of je slingert hem wat in het rond – net zoals een debat met Wilders het best kan worden omschreven als politiek dwergwerpen.

Het heet niet voor niets “domrechts”. Zolang de éénmotorige mug Wilders nou maar groteske voorstellen over het belasten van hoofddoekjes blijft lanceren hoeft hij over het vege lijf niet ongerust te zijn en is er geen enkele noodzaak om het debat over het gebruik van geweld tegen de geblondeerde Führer en zijn stoottroepen nu al te voeren. Pas als hij serieus wordt moet hij – en wij – zich zorgen gaan maken.

The file was distributed by José Isabel Blandón, a lawyer/legislator for the Arnulfistas (now Panameñistas). I obtained my copy from another journalist who was unhappy about his employer sweeping the case under the carpet.

Even though the contents were obviously explosive or at least damaging to Torrijos’ election bid, none of the Panamanian media covered the story. Even Eric Jackson of The Panama News inexplicably considered it “not newsworthy”. Others had darker, yet unknown motives. Soon after the elections, which Torrijos won, some of that became clear: Principals of La Prensa for example had been rewarded for their loyalty with cushy government jobs – director Federico Humbert got to be ambassador to the US, for starters.

Net result of all the media corruption: Yours truly was the ONLY one to publish the files, right here on this site.

Seven years later, it turns out that at least the US embassy was paying attention. In a cable titled, “PANAMA: TORRIJOS TEAM STIFLES ELECTION EVE  ”BOMBSHELL” — SO FAR”, they recount the whole story with references to your reporter:

4/19/2004
ID DOC: 16126
FECHA: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
FUENTE: Embassy Panama
PRIVACIDAD: CONFIDENTIAL
REFERENCIA: This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PANAMA 000896
SIPDIS
DEPT. FOR WHA/CEN/BRIGHAM
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/19/2014
TAGS: PGOV, PINR, PM, POLITICS & FOREIGN POLICY

SUBJECT: PANAMA: TORRIJOS TEAM STIFLES ELECTION EVE
“BOMBSHELL” — SO FAR

REF: A. PANAMA 0791
B. PANAMA 0802
Classified By: Ambassador Linda E. Watt for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d)

Summary
——–
1. (C) Arnulfista and Solidarity Party opponents of presidential candidate Martin Torrijos have given documents to reporters that they hope will link him to a 1985 drug-related kidnapping. Apparently rattled by a potentially damaging story that could break just before the May 2 election, the Torrijos team has used Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) influence with the local media to prevent it from being published. Containing allegations of unproved veracity, the documents (available on a website) tell a tangled tale that attempts to connect Torrijos with sordid individuals from the worst days of Manuel Noriega’s dictatorship. The documents strongly suggest that Torrijos had questionable friends but they go further, purporting that he associated with and aided known criminals. The evidence against Torrijos is circumstantial, probably less than enough to convict him in a court of law, but more than enough, his opponents hope, to convince voters not to elect him. This story reads like a Panamanian soap opera and it is difficult to determine whether there is any real substance to this convoluted tale. A search of DEA and other Embassy files has turned up no evidence of Martin,s complicity in any crime. The PRD,s apparent power to control Panama,s weak-willed media — at least to this point — is a troubling portent, should Torrijos win the election. End Summary.

Was Martin Involved?
——————–
2. (C) On April 7, 2004, according to Embassy sources, Martin Torrijos, his lawyers, and his Chilean consultants scrambled to study allegations about Martin,s alleged complicity in a 1985 drug-related kidnapping that later were posted on a website (www.ornstein.org), the day after the documents on the website were distributed to reporters. Public records show that the then 22-year-old Torrijos signed a sworn statement acknowledging that he lent his car to an acquaintance, Raul Mata Zuniga, who was involved in the kidnapping. In his July 1985 statement to a judge, Torrijos swore that he was not aware of the kidnapping plan. The kidnappers apparently did not use Torrijos’ car to abduct the victims. The recent PRD strategy session was called after the kidnapping victim, Judy Hidalgo de Watson, apparently told the Torrijos campaign that Solidarity Party legislative candidate Abraham Martinez had offered her $50,000 to speak publicly about the case. Ms. Watson declined the offer, evidently to protect her children from a politically motivated media frenzy.

A Big Cocaine Heist Gone Wrong
——————————
3. (SBU) The complicated story, which reads like the script to Scarface, goes something like this. In May 1985 Noriega,s drug pilots Floyd Carlton Caceres and Teofilo Watson apparently stole more than half a ton (538 kg or 1184 lbs) of cocaine from the Medellin drug cartel. According to documents on the website, which Embassy has partially corroborated from September 1986 DEA reporting (86 DEA HQS WASHDC 029870), four Colombians came to Panama City to look for Carlton and Watson but, unable to find them, kidnapped Watson,s wife, her daughter, and two brothers, both minors, on June 30, 1985.

4. (SBU) According to Panamanian investigation records, a Panamanian accomplice, Raul Mata Zuniga, brought the kidnappers and their victims in several cars to a farm outside Colon owned by Eric Abrego. Torrijos was at the farm, where he was a weekend guest, according to his statement to police. When Mata’s car got stuck in mud near the farm, Mata walked to the farm, with gun in hand, to ask for help. Torrijos agreed to let him borrow his Nissan Patrol. When Mata failed to return, Abrego and Torrijos went looking for him in Abrego’s Jeep, whereupon they came upon Torrijos’ Nissan, which was also stuck. They also met Mata, the Colombians, Ms. Watson and her children, and several vehicles, including a BMW and a Mercedes. After getting a tractor to pull the cars out, everyone wound up back at the farm with Torrijos and Abrego. After some time, Torrijos and Abrego left but Mata and the other kidnappers stayed. After Torrijos and Abrego left, according to the documents, the kidnappers interrogated Ms. Watson about the whereabouts of her husband, and at one point staged a mock execution of Ms. Watson,s daughter.

5. (SBU) Mata Zuniga and another witness alleged in their 1985 sworn statements that Martin Torrijos later attempted several times to intervene with Panamanian authorities on behalf of the same group of Colombians when they were arrested in Chiriqui Province in western Panama on immigration charges. Allegedly, Torrijos called Romulo Abad, a good friend of Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) Major Luis “Papo” Cordoba, and PDF Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, a cousin of Omar Torrijos, Martin’s dictator father. Neither Cordoba nor Diaz Herrera would agree to release the Colombians. There is no evidence to corroborate Mata,s allegations, but they could hurt Torrijos if aired publicly on the eve of elections.

The Darkest Years of Noriega
—————————-
6. (SBU) Diaz Herrera, Cordoba, and Abad are bad apples who evoke images of the darkest years of the Noriega regime for those who lived through them, the last people the Torrijos team wants voters to associate with Martin while trying to convince Panamanians that Martin represents a “new PRD.” (See Reftel B.) Diaz Herrera was fingered as the number two in Noriega’s drug-running operation and also a accomplice in the 1985 torture and murder of dissident Hugo Spadafora. Luis Cordoba was a close Noriega associate that U.S. authorities arrested in January 1990 for his participation in the Spadafora murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. Among other things, Romulo Abad is a known alien smuggler. The Department revoked Abad’s nonimmigrant visa along with that of former President Ernesto Perez Balladares in 2000.

PRD Blocks Dissemination, Alleges Smear Campaign
——————————————— —
7. (C) A PRD source told POL Specialist April 7 that former PRD Foreign Minister Ricardo Alberto Arias had pushed TVN (Channel 2) board member Stanley Motta to discourage journalist Lucy Molinar from reporting the case on her morning program, as she was planning to do. Motta warned her (falsely as it turned out) that she might create “legal problems” for herself and the station if she went ahead. Molinar, reportedly upset at what she saw as censorship, evidently bought the legal argument. Torrijos supporter and salsa star Ruben Blades used the April 7 11 p.m. news on Channel 13 (Telemetro – owned by the PRD Gonzalez-Revilla family) to warn of an impending “dirty tricks campaign” against Torrijos as the election approaches. The Torrijos team is apparently resigned that the story probably will get out despite their intense efforts to spike it. The Arnulfistas, our sources say, at one point were trying to have the story published abroad to be later “copied” in local press.

Emergency Pow-Wow on Strategy
—————————–
8. (C) During the emergency April 7 meeting at Martin’s home (with his legal team, plus Hector Aleman and Hugo Torrijos), according to Embassy sources, the lawyers found no exercisable legal recourse against someone who publishes factual reports of the case. The file in question is a matter of public record in Panama’s National Archives. When consulted, Torrijos’ Chilean image consultants supposedly told him that if the case surfaces in the local press, Martin should stick to his 1985 statement to police that he was unaware of the ongoing kidnapping. Hugo and Hector reportedly agreed to dig for dirt on Aleman and his associates that they can hold in reserve in case things get nasty.

COMMENT: News behind the News
—————————–
9. (C) Most of the allegations linking Martin Torrijos and the kidnappers in the 1985 case are not substantiated. On June 30, 1985, Torrijos admitted he lent his car to Mata, one of the kidnappers. There is no proof that he was aware of or involved in any criminal activity. What is not clear is why Torrijos was at Abrego’s house when Mata arrived, gun in hand, as the documents state, with the kidnapping party close behind. The question of Martin’s guilt or innocence probably would not be as important in the court of Panama public opinion as his association with known criminals.

10. (C) Torrijos opponents, noting Martin’s substantial lead in the polls, are desperate to sully Martin’s personal reputation, but no one has been able to make any accusation of wrongdoing stick on Martin. Anti-Martin attacks tend to resonate most with voters who already are anti-PRD, who cannot believe Martin really has neutralized the PRD old guard, who were frequently involved in shenanigans like this during the Noriega years. Arnulfista candidate Jose Miguel Aleman has been Martin’s most aggressive assailant, although the Endara camp no doubt would like to discredit Torrijos, given Endara’s consistent message that the PRD has not changed and will never change. (See Reftel A.)

11. (C) The apparently craven attitude of Panama’s press in choosing, so far, not to publish the documents is disappointing, but whether it amounts to “omerta” (the Sicilian Mafia’s code of silence), as the website claims, probably is an exaggeration. If Torrijos were President of Panama, Panama’s media would likely be much more aggressive toward him. For example, despite La Prensa’s pro-Martin bias during the 1999 and 2004 campaigns, it has criticized Arnulfista and PRD administrations alike, inspiring the indignation of Panama’s current and previous Presidents for its investigative reporting. Once Martin is “on the inside,” public scrutiny of everything he does will increase.

12. (C) While Torrijos public relations team has shown its power to control the media, Embassy believes that the other three presidential campaigns have similar resources and influence to wield in a comparable situation. Controlling the media probably does not come cheap. For instance, Stanley Motta, whose powerful family controls COPA airlines, a large bank, and an import-export firm, as well as several Panamanian insurance companies, may simply see his involvement as good politics in dealing with the likely next president (Torrijos). Motta probably believes that building goodwill with the probable next President is a prudent business move.

WATT

I didn’t know at all that the Torrijos gang was considering legal steps in emergency meetings with Chilean advisors. Too bad they didn’t do it, it would have widened distribution of the files. All they did was send an old army guy to me to “correct” some parts of the story. After the elections, some Arnulfistas congratulated me for being the most courageous journalist during the campaign. I still have the documents somewhere; the story itself is no longer online after one of the frequent hack attacks of those days.

Oh, and last but not least: Raul Mata Zuñiga’s wife was appointed consul in Hamburg, Germany, as soon as Martin Torrijos took office….

Container ship transiting the Panama Canal | ©Okke Ornstein

Now that leaked diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Panama are slowly trickling down again, I can’t help noticing that the cables that have so far been published contain more than the occasional stab at Panama’s media, especially the newspapers.

The last one was in a cable about president Martinelli’s scheming to get some of his loyalists appointed as magistrates at the supreme court. It was believed at the time that these nominees would be Jose Almengor and Gerardo Solis, both controversial, the former for covering up Martinelli’s dealings with money launderer David Murcia and the latter because of a rich history of corruption and unexplained wealth (Almengor indeed was appointed, Solis wasn’t).

In that cable, ambassador Stephenson had little good to say about Panama’s newspapers, especially La Prensa. Here’s how Adan Arjona, himself a supreme court judge and a regular informant of the US embassy, described the views of La Prensa director Fernando Berguido:

Supreme Court justice Adan Arjona told poloffs September 16 that Panama’s newspaper of record, La Prensa, had been reluctant up to now to oppose Martinelli because it was very early in his presidency. (Note: Arjona is very close to La Prensa Director Fernando Berguido. End Note) He said if Martinelli appointed Solis it would force La Prensa into a difficult situation because it will “remove Martinelli,s mask too soon.” Arjona said Berguido understood perfectly well that Martinelli was not really a reformer, but that Berguido was afraid that La Prensa could threaten the governability of the country if it attacked him too quickly. Since so much of Martinelli’s power is based on his strong public support as a reformer, a sustained campaign of opposition by La Prensa would cause his power to dissipate as it became clear he was “more of the same.” The PRD would then become stronger and the country might become ungovernable. (…) Arjona insisted that Berguido just wanted Martinelli to act responsibly so he could hold off on attacking him, and keep the PRD in check.

Is it really a newspaper director’s job to hold back on exposing rogue deals so that Martinelli can enjoy a governable country? This sounds a lot like the New York Times sitting on an important story for a year to allow for Bush to be reelected. Stephenson wasn’t happy about it either:

Martinelli has received remarkably uncritical support from all the major media outlets since his election, despite a series of appointments and actions that might well have sparked outrage under the previous government. Unfortunately, the media, including La Prensa, seems to hope that the Embassy will prevent disaster by warning Martinelli about the appointments, rather then using their power to examine the candidates before hand, and organize resistance to the nominations.

On another occasion, Stephenson showed similar surprise about a press disinterested in covering a major story; that of the Panama Canal expansion project. Before Martinelli and VP Varela stated that the project was a “disaster”, the bidding process for the contract to build the new set of locks was mired in controversy, and the corporations bidding as well as the embassy were doubting that the Panama Canal Authority was capable of managing the process. While there was a lot of turmoil behind the scenes, the media were completely mute on the subject – as they have been all along, prompting Stephenson to comment:

The turbulence in the Panama Canal expansion bidding is only discussed in tight circles and is not present in the public domain. The messaging and press discipline of the Panamanians on the biggest economic story in Panama is stunning.

As indeed it is. One of the biggest infrastructure projects in the Americas in one of the most corrupt countries in the hemisphere – and nobody is investigating if they’re on budget, if the projections are still valid, if it will be completed on time, and if there is corruption going on. The media (and “civil society” for that matter) aren’t monitoring anything at all.

The fine people of WikiLeaks alerted me on Twitter that the subpoena you sent to Twitter, Inc. demanding all kinds of records, in fact, includes me too.

Under B 2, the document requests “all records and other information (…) including non-content information associated with the contents of any communication or file stored by or for the account(s), such as the source and destination email addresses and IP addresses”.

I hereby confess that I am one of the 635,561 followers of WikiLeaks on Twitter. I also follow Gabriel Garcia Marquéz and someone called PJCrowley. Just saying. To make things worse, I also signed a petition together with over a hundred colleagues in support of WikiLeaks – I think they’re doing a great job – and against the kind of thing your department is doing.

I’m also one of the 1,516,269 people who “like” WikiLeaks on FaceBook – I’m assuming that they received a similar subpoena. I also like the “Diving Wrecks and Reefs” page, the “Latin American Art” page, the “NO A LA REELECCION DEL RECTOR GUSTAVO GARCIA DE PAREDES” page as well as the “Fossil Sharks of Panama” page. Oh, I was also the first journalist in Panama to report on the leaked cables from your embassy. Juicy stuff! I thought I might as well make a full confession here and I don’t want to withhold vital information.

So, now that you have my confession, what are you gonna do with this information, if I may ask; put us all on a no-fly list? Guantanamo? Or some Kuwait torture chamber? A cease and desist order against over 2 million people to stop them from liking or following WikiLeaks?

Anyway, maybe I should thank the US Department of Justice for including me in this “criminal investigation”. It’s not every day that one gets to be part of history, even if it is a flawed attempt at damage control and political pandering.

Next time you need anything, feel free to ask,

Yours truly,

Okke Ornstein

1: U.S. looks forward to hosting World Press Freedom Day. We welcome the discussion about media in the 21st Century

2: No country believes in press freedom more than the United States. We practice what we preach. #WPFD

3: While Julian Assange places journalists in authoritarian societies at risk through the release of cables, we are protecting them.

I guess the anonymous administrator-who-can’t-answer-questions of the Press Freedom Day Facebook page passed the message on, upwards in the food chain?

Has Mr. Crowley been a journalist in an authoritarian country lately? Nope. But I am. I live and work in Panama, a place where journalists are routinely prosecuted, jailed and harassed for exercising the right to press freedom. Read Crowley’s own State Department country reports on Panama if you don’t believe me. Rule of law is a joke in Canal country, and I’ve been chased in cars, had gangsters show up at my house, my lawyer shot and there’s still a bunch of criminal defamation complaints against me from some Canadian and American fraud artists, Crowley’s fellow countrymen, waiting to be processed.

Do I feel threatened by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, or any of the revelations they have done over the last year? Not at all.

I do feel threatened by the State Department, though. Let’s forget about WikiLeaks for a second and see what State does here, in Panama, for journalists.

They bribe them.

Couple of years ago, a Panamanian journalist with whom I collaborated every now and then told me that she had been invited to this meeting at the US embassy down here. Present were some high-up embassy people and a number of Panamanian journalists, from news outlets varying from La Prensa, Capital Financiero to El Siglo. The proposal: They would investigate and write stories about corruption, and the embassy would make sure that investigations were funded and the results published in major news outlets, of which the “US News & World Report” was specifically mentioned. However, the whole arrangement had to remain confidential, and the involvement of the embassy was not to be revealed.

My acquaintance was all excited about it, and asked me if I would be interested to join. I thought it was unethical, if not sleazy, and instead of joining I wrote about it. It turned into a bit of a scandal, interwoven with the usual cloak and dagger stuff that goes on here. Needless to say that the US embassy people were not amused to see their scheme leaked.

In fact, it was them who left me and others unprotected with their conspiring and corrupt schemes to buy themselves a group of journalists. And if you don’t believe me; maybe there’s something about it in the Panama cables – I hear they’ll be released soon by WikiLeaks.

So, Crowley, why don’t you #STFU?

The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.

“Say what?” responded almost the entire internet.

Within minutes after the announcement, the World Press Freedom Day page on Facebook saw an avalanche of comments posted below its announcement. “This reads like an article from the Onion”, said one commenter. Yours truly wondered if PayPal, Mastercard and Visa would sponsor the event. And so on.

Within half an hour or so, the Press Freedom Day removed all these comments, and then I really got curious. Mocking them is one thing, but why not try to get a response from them about this wacky event? So, in the comments, your reporter had the following Orwellian exchange with the anonymous page administrator of the organization, with others weighing in:

World Press Freedom Day 2011 Thank you for your comments. Please note that in order to ensure a safe environment for all participants, we have removed posts that contain profanity, religious or ethnic slurs, and/or spam.
12 hours ago · Like ·

Okke Ornstein You have removed ALL comments earlier.
12 hours ago · Like

World Press Freedom Day 2011 ‎@Okke We have temporarily stopped wall posts simply because the traffic we’ve received far exceeded what are able to see and respond to right now! We simply had the structure wrong and weren’t ready for a wall with that much traffic, and once we have the logistics worked out, we look forward to continuing a robust discussion around press freedom ahead of World Press Freedom Day 2011!
11 hours ago · Like ·

Okke Ornstein Well, let me ask you two questions then.

1. Given the actions and statements of the US government, in particular the State Department and the Attorney General, about and against WikiLeaks, do you think it is appropriate to have a press freedom event hosted by that same State Department? Why or why not?

2. The fact that this announcement has provoked that you’re being mocked by media outlets ranging from the Guardian to the Nation and a great deal of others who exercise their press freedom on a daily basis – what does that tell you?
11 hours ago · Like

World Press Freedom Day 2011 ‎@Okke It certainly tells us that the world is more than ready to discuss and debate press freedom, and we hope World Press Freedom Day will be an opportunity to have that discussion in a respectful, engaging format.
11 hours ago · Like ·

Okke Ornstein That doesn’t answer my first question.
11 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Patrick Settle ‎@WPFD Temporarily preventing people from posting wall post is not the same thing as removing them all. And the excuse for deleting the comments of “we didn’t expect this much traffic” is laughable. Especially with the current relentless pressuring by the US government (State Dept. included) and US companies to shutdown Wikileaks.
11 hours ago · Like ·

World Press Freedom Day 2011 ‎@Okke The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. Regardless of any individual’s position on a specific issue, American involvement in the important, broader discussions of press freedom is (as evidenced by today’s discussions here on Facebook) important!
11 hours ago · Like ·

Okke Ornstein You’re evading the question. It’s not “any individual’s position on a specific issue”, but the position of the US government, specifically the State Dept. which hosts your event. Why do you think that is appropriate? Is their position and are their actions against WikiLeaks supportive of press freedom in your view?
11 hours ago · Like · 2 people

World Press Freedom Day 2011 ‎@Patrick In order to ensure a safe environment for all participants, we have removed comments that contain profanity, religious or ethnic slurs, and/or spam. All other comments remain here in these threads and in the discussion tab.
11 hours ago · Like ·

Nick Bezuidenhout ‎@World Press Freedom Day 2011: You still haven’t responded to Okke Ornstein’s last question.
9 hours ago · Like · 2 people ·

Nick Bezuidenhout ‎…or can’t you get hold of the guy at the US State Department who is telling you what to say? :-p
8 hours ago · Like · 1 person ·

World Press Freedom Day 2011 ‎@Nick Quite simply, we are on U.S. East Coast time and some of us had to get to sleep by 3am.
6 hours ago · Like ·

World Press Freedom Day 2011 ‎@Okke and @Nick It’s not within the authority of the admins of this Facebook page to comment on that matter as this page, which predated yesterday’s State Dept announcements, exists solely to promote World Press Freedom Day 2011. For better or for worse, the timing of yesterday’s announcements has motivated many followers of this page (and this thread) to share their thoughts on press freedom and World Press Freedom Day, and I for one am glad to see social media being used as it should – for discourse and discussion and debate. Thank you for your comments.
6 hours ago · Like ·

Okke Ornstein ‎@WPFD “It’s not within the authority of the admins of this Facebook page to comment on that matter as this page”…

So the WPFreedomD admins are not allowed to speak – fair enough. Who will answer the question, then?
3 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Patrick Settle ‎@wpfd What do you mean you don’t have authority, this is the official Facebook page for World Press Freedom Day how can you not have the authority to post an official response from the World Press Freedom Day to their question? Which was similar to mine.

In simple terms.

How does the organizers of World Press Freedom Day justify allowing an organization currently engaged in the active suppression of media/press to host the event?
3 hours ago · Like · 2 people ·

Nick Bezuidenhout ‎@World Press Freedom Day 2011: Thanks for your response. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to get hold of someone in your organisation who has the authority to comment in this forum on the issue of the US State Department and WikiLeaks? Your organisation is getting egg all over its face here.
3 hours ago · Like · 3 people ·

World Press Freedom Day 2011 This page exists solely to promote World Press Freedom Day 2011 and we appreciate your comments. The questions you raise are being hashed out in discussions here — and we are glad to see social media being used as it should, for discourse and discussion and debate.
about an hour ago · Like ·

A press freedom club that deletes comments from its Facebook page, won’t answer a simple question and then cackles that they are “glad” to see social media being used for debate? Kafka couldn’t make this shit up.

So, I visited the web site for the World Press Freedom day 2010 (last year’s site, 2011 doesn’t seem to be up). Among its “valued sponsors”, we find no less than three Australian government institutions (Do I really need to link to what the Australian government has had to say about press freedom and transparency over the last week or so?). On this year’s announcement of the event on the UNESCO website, the organizers are listed as “UNESCO (CI/FED), State Department and United Nations”. The organization of the event is based in Washington, DC. In the true spirit of transparency, nowhere is there any information to be found about who is behind this press freedom fraud.

Fraud? Yes, that’s what this is. This circus has nothing to do with press freedom, it is a Washington beltway funding sponge run by impostors, influence peddlers and others who prefer being an “insider” over press freedom and honesty.

It is now easier to use our global financial infrastructure when you are a drug trafficker than while being a pro-transparency free speech organization – courtesy of the Obama administration.

There are still ways to get money to the embattled organization, but it is getting increasingly difficult.

At the same time, hundreds of volunteers have set up mirrors of the WikiLeaks website around the globe, and there are plenty of people, probably in the thousands, who would be willing to “do something” to help WikiLeaks survive. So, I was thinking, could that somehow be harnessed to construct a quick “open source” alternative to the financial predators who first plunge us all into crisis and then refuse us to donate money to journalism? In other words, can we build a WikiBank?

A WikiBank would have to be:

• Anonymous;
• Operate independently from the existing financial infrastructure;
• Use that infrastructure only in ways that can not be traced to WikiLeaks;
• Fast and reliable.

If you think about it, what it comes down to is that we’d have to borrow money laundering techniques to fund a free speech organization. The only form of banking that complies with all the above is the so-called “Hawala banking“, “an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers.” Here’s how that would work.

Volunteers become money brokers. They accept donations to WikiLeaks in cash or any other way they want. The donor gets a receipt. Both the broker and the donor send that receipt to the WikiBank cyber clearinghouse. The WikiBank verifies that both receipts are identical and then alerts an agent close to the destination of the money (Iceland, Germany or England). The agent deposits the amount in the destination account, or pays the lawyers or whatever the funds are needed for.

Eventually the transactions are cleared, in other words, the brokers send the money by either bank transfer or Western Union to the receiving agent.

The brokers would of course have to be vetted by the WikiBank. The final clearing of the transactions needs tweaking. I’m not by all means presenting a completed draft of the business plan, but this is the direction we need to be thinking if we want to avoid being strangled by the alliance of governments and global predators.

Further thinking is encouraged in the comments. Meanwhile I’m experimenting with some software solutions that might bring this idea further.

“I thought it would take two years instead of four to be recognised by others as having this important role, so we are still a little behind schedule and have much more work to do.”

Julian Assange, in a Q&A session with readers of the Guardian, December 3rd.

Nobody has really picked up on this yet, but apparently there is a schedule. And where there is a schedule there is a plan. And looking at where things are going, the plan is for radical change, and it relies on an open source model.

First step, apparently, was getting the ammo. As John Robb pointed out, WikiLeaks started building its insurgency by making a “plausable promise” to participants:

Julian created a very simple plausible promise around which this diverse community assembled. The promise can be seen on the “Wikileaks:Submissions” page:

Submitting confidential material to WikiLeaks is safe, easy and protected by law.

The recent wins against the US government is a clear demonstration that this promise — the idea that it possible to safely leak anything, regardless the power of target — is plausible. The promise above is followed by an advertisement of its plausibility:

Over 100,000 articles catalyzed world-wide. Every source protected. No documents censored. All legal attacks defeated.

And indeed the community grew and responded, with WikiLeaks now sitting on enough material to keep us glued to our monitors for probably years.

The Afghanistan and Iraq diaries were early releases, proof of what they could do and to reach a critical mass of followers. Now, with the diplomatic cables, all hell has broken loose and not even 1% of it has been released. The effects are already visible everywhere and in ways we would not have held possible even a year ago.

Obama went to visit Karzai, and supposedly got stuck at an Air Force base without the mightiest country in the world being able to even set up a video link with his Afghan counterpart, because of “bad weather” as the official version had it. But WikiLeaks has again confirmed – with the force of a sledgehammer – that we should never believe official versions ever again. I think Obama got dissed by Karzai, who is understandably pissed about how he’s being portrayed by his American “friends”.

Imagine that. The US president left waiting in the cold on some Afghan airfield because of documents leaked by a website.

The next step in the WikiLeaks plan would then be to create a swarm. The website almost immediately came under a DOS attack, and then another one, and then Amazon pulled the plug on hosting, followed by EveryDNS.

Assange, in the same Q&A quoted above, said that they actually expected this to happen with for example Amazon.com. On top of that, an expectation of the wikileaks.org domain getting in some sort of trouble would not be unreasonable, especially since the US government seized domain names just days ago to “combat piracy” on the web.

On the Wired.com Threat Level blog, Kevin Poulsen wondered why WikiLeaks had not done more to keep its DNS service up and running:

It’s unclear why WikiLeaks went with a free provider, instead of paying for bulletproof DNS that could withstand attack. But according to EveryDNS, the distributed denial-of-service attacks that have been dogging WikiLeaks were threatening to overrun EveryDNS’s servers, which serve some 500,000 sites.

(…)

WikiLeaks had the four regional domains working on Friday, resolving to hosts in Sweden and France. Domain-registration records show that WikiLeaks still has control of the WikiLeaks.org, but for whatever reason, the organization still has EveryDNS set as its name server for that domain.

Poulsen insinuates that the struggles with domain names, hosting and DNS servers shows bungling on the part of the wikileakers, but I don’t really believe that; I think it has been deliberate.

After all, what has been the net result of the affair? A swarm. Not only did WikiLeaks itself set up numerous other domains to host cablegate, but people all over the globe have been busy setting up mirror sites, pointing their domains towards WikiLeaks and so on, a reported 100,000 people have downloaded the “insurance file” which contains all the un-redacted cables plus some more goodies, the released cables have also been made available as a package for easy download – in other words: it is now 200% sure that this cache of secret documents will never ever go away again and for those who seek to stop the leak the only possible outcome is that things will get much worse.

There is even, as we speak, set up a page (don’t know by whom) to allow anyone who owns a website to allow for a mirror to be set up under that domain by just filling a form and adding a subdomain to your domain (not sure how safe that procedure actually is).

All this points to grand strategic thinking. With WikiLeaks now being hosted by a swarm of people around the globe, these volunteers are now part of WikiLeaks themselves – the emerging WikiLeaks tribe – plus releasing new cables becomes a simple matter of syncing all the mirrors, and the distribution of the material is now invulnerable to any kind of attack or regulatory oversight, no matter how much they whine about it in France or the US.

With the infrastructure now firmly in place and bullet-proof and the hype-hungry mainstream media waiting to be fed, the stage is set for further releases of classified cables, probably even more damaging than the ones we’ve already seen. And then the Bank of America files. And then who knows what.

By that time the “conspiracy” will be crumbling under the relentless attacks of this open source insurgency – our insurgency, really. So that we can build something new, from the bottom up, to replace it.

Question is: Is WikiLeaks’ tactic working?

There’s a pretty good analysis here on what the WikiLeaks strategy actually is. You should read the whole article, but the grist of it is that founder Assange sees governments that are exposed (which includes big corporations, international bodies and so on) as conspiracies:

Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.

He then continues to explain how these conspiracies can be best attacked. The way not to do that, he argues, is to respond to the actions of the conspiracy, because you are too late by then, and even if such action may be stopped the Hydra will simply grow a new head. Nor does Assange advocate the elimination of members of the conspiracy or attempting to cut the links they maintain among themselves.

Instead, he says that by inducing leaks, the conspiracy will turn against itself. It has to reduce its processing power, its ability to absorb and share information among fellow conspirators, thus reducing its “conspirational power”:

The leak, in other words, is only the catalyst for the desired counter-overreaction; Wikileaks wants to provoke the conspiracy into turning off its own brain in response to the threat. As it tries to plug its own holes and find the leakers, he reasons, its component elements will de-synchronize from and turn against each other, de-link from the central processing network, and come undone. Even if all the elements of the conspiracy still exist, in this sense, depriving themselves of a vigorous flow of information to connect them all together as a conspiracy prevents them from acting as a conspiracy.

Others, like John Robb, explain this slightly different and call what WikiLeaks does an “open source insurgency” that uses “system disruption” against its targets:

Like other open source insurgencies, Wikileaks uses a very effective method of attack called systems disruption. Systems disruption is pretty simple. It simply means that small and carefully aimed attacks against any large network/system, can result in levels of damage a million times greater than the attack itself. Why? The dynamics of the targeted system serve to amplify the damage of the attack.

This means that by targeting a vulnerable piece of a system or network – any type of network; social, computational, roads – the failure will then cascade through the entire system – think one power plant failing and the others, unable to catch up with heavier demand, fail one after one, causing the entire network to collapse.

The tactic WikiLeaks is using to pursue its strategy is that of massive releases of secret and/or confidential information. They release that information through established media channels that agree to certain conditions and embargoes.

This tactic was questioned yesterday by Al Giordano of Narco News on his Field blog:

From public relations stunts to court case discovery proceedings, there is a rule of thumb as old as PR itself: If you want to confuse people, or distract them from something you did, give them too much information.

And if you want them to focus on one thing, give them that one thing and nothing else.

Thus, every Friday afternoon, government and corporate press secretaries do “negative information dumps.” That’s when they announce resignations, or disclose scandals, or unfavorable economic reports, usually in the context of lots of competing information being dumped into public view at the same time so that the undesirable story gets drowned in the ocean of data and largely forgotten by Monday morning’s news cycle.

By releasing all 250,000 documents at once, WikiLeaks deprived every single one of those documents of the solitary importance that many of them could and should have had if released on its own, with well reported stories explaining the document’s full context. That is indeed how WikiLeaks first came to the attention of many: when it released a single leaked video from a US military helicopter in Iraq, documenting the assassination by US forces of a journalist. That story had legs, because it was given the space to stand on its own two feet.

Giordano writes that he would have chosen to publish these stories one by one, to avoid the chatter about who called Sarkozy an asshole and what Khadaffi wears for dinner.

Whoa! Say what? The US Secretary of State violated the treaties the United States signed to host the United Nations in New York? Had WikiLeaks led with that story all its own, that’s what everybody would be talking about all week long. And instead of Julian Assange’s call for Clinton to resign, it would have come from a thousand surrogates, instead of becoming another free-floating piece of data in the “let’s make Assange look crazy and dangerous” lobby’s arsenal.

(…)

Instead, WikiLeaks chose to “partner up” with the same big five daily newspapers so responsible for the protection of State power in their respective countries (and, yes, all of them will squawk that to the contrary, they’re at odds with governments, but you and I both know how untrue that is). And the overall result is mass confusion that buries all the stories in these documents under a gigantic mound of distraction.

As I commented below Giordano’s article, this is the approach of the sharpshooter versus the carpet bombing of a target.

Why did WikiLeaks work with big media corporations that are in reality part of the same conspiracy it seeks to dismantle? Assange had the following to say about that in a recent interview:

In 2006, “we thought we would have the analytical work done by bloggers and people who wrote Wikipedia articles and so on,” he said.

But “when people write political commentary on blogs or other social media, it is my experience that it is not, with some exceptions, their goal to expose the truth.

“Rather, it is their goal to position themselves amongst their peers on whatever the issue of the day is. The most effective, the most economical way to do that, is simply to take the story that’s going around, [which] has already created a marketable audience for itself, and say whether they’re in favour of that interpretation or not.”

Now, he said, the analytical work was “done by professional journalists we work with and by professional human rights activists. It is not done by the broader community.” Social networks acted as amplifiers, he added – and, as WikiLeaks gained more publicity, an important supplier of source material.

This is understandable reasoning from Assange’s experience, which is that the “Wiki” part of WikiLeaks has never materialized. The expectation was that people would swarm around leaked documents and add analysis, background and other news to them in a Wiki format, more or less like that of Wikipedia. This never happened, but it’s unfair to blame “bloggers” for that. An initiative like that needs a critical mass to succeed, and in order to obtain that you have to either build a dedicated core of members that takes the lead and/or make a plausible promise that such efforts will actually bring results for participants.

At the same time, Giordano’s approach is too much that of causing scandal; investigations are launched; heads roll; everything goes back to normal. It is attacking the actions of the conspiracy, not its processes that lead to those actions, and Assange is right when he says that if you have to attack the actions you’re too late in the sequence to make a difference (Hydra just grows new head). The significance of cablegate is not just the content of these cables, but also the fact itself that they are leaked and made public on such a massive scale. Putin and Berlusconi can attempt to control the damage, appoint strawmen, hide the loot and they’ll probably get away with all of it – but the systemic damage caused by this massive leak is irreparable. And just as Assange predicted, the US “conspiracy” is already reducing its processing power, its cognitive functions and internal information flows, which inevitably results in ineptness and reduced “conspirational power”, as he puts it.

On the other hand, the choice of working exclusively with “big media” is also working against WikiLeaks’ stated goals. While it ensures the releases make a big splash around the globe, it also adds the usual layer of spin to the content of the leaked information – most notably in the New York Times which now relies on the White House for editorial guidance. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to attack a conspiracy by releasing the attack exclusively through the PR flacks of that same conspiracy.

Assange’s disappointing experience trying to put the Wiki in WikiLeaks doesn’t mean that the idea of crowdsourcing analysis and reporting is a bad one, or impossible. Giordano has proven the contrary for a decade now with the Narco News Bulletin, a journalism school and other initiatives – it just requires organizing. I am sure the team of Narco News co-publishers – which includes yours truly – would do a tremendous job reporting on the Latin American cables, and I can think of several other publications that are not part of the corporate “conspiracy” that would be better suited than Spanish newspaper El País.

If big media is part of what WikiLeaks seeks to end or reform – which indeed it is – it should be placed outside the game instead of propped up with sales, hits, ad sales, and so on – which reinforces the traditional commercial top-down model of news distribution and “we know what the reader needs”. Let them instead get their scoops from those real journalists who are diligently working outside that conspiracy and who aren’t worried about their access to power circles, or, better said, let’s include them in the goal of rendering the conspiracy useless.

Assange and Giordano are both right: The carpet bombing of the conspiracy with leaks is a good way to shut down or limit its processes and at the same time one or just some revealing stories, as long as they’re not simply responses to the outcome of conspiracies but aimed at “system punkts“, can cause enough damage to shut down the entire system.

The best would be to work with a combination of both, not simultaneously but in conjunction. Giordano’s example is right, had the focus this week been on Clinton’s espionage efforts against UN officials, there would be a howling choir by now demanding for her head to roll. Then, after that, you release a larger trove of documents. Then spread yet more documents among regional publications where people will demand explanations. And so on.

One of the defining features of Open Source Insurgency is, just as with the software movement, that it is constantly innovating, tinkering, tweaking itself. And then release early and often.

In bruine kringen denkt men – zeggen ze niet hardop, ze weten dat het onzin is – dat iets pas kunst en cultuur is als het geld opbrengt. Net als toen de eerste commerciële TV in Nederland kwam en je als programmamaker ineens niet meer met collega vakmensen maar bij marketing types een programmavoorstel moest gaan verdedigen: “Zijn er wel sponsors voor te vinden? Hoe scoort het in de doelgroep?”

Waarom zijn bruinhemden bang voor cultuur? A) Omdat ze het niet begrijpen en B) omdat je ervan zou kunnen gaan nadenken. En nadenken is iets waar ze op rechts een godgloeiende tyfushekel aan hebben, want rechtsmensen zijn zelf namelijk dommer dan de rest. Moeten we niet willen, nadenken. In plaats van nadenken houden ze zich in de bruine sfeer liever bezig met geld. En geld verdienen is met kunst en cultuur nou eenmaal niet vanzelfsprekend. Nooit geweest ook – maar weten zij veel.

Het inkomen van de gemiddelde muzikant, artiest, filmmaker en andere cultuurwerkers ligt veel lager dan dat van het rechtsdragende leasebak-van-de-zaak volk. En het kan nog best minder, let maar op!

Vandaar dus dat Bruin I het cultuurgedoe met wortel en tak gaat uitroeien en kapotmaken, en dan kunnen we alleen nog maar kijken naar commerciële TV en concerten door muzikanten met ABN/Amro T-shirts aan (mits ze zich verplichten tot het uitvoeren van reportoire dat geld opbrengt, zeg maar het Andre Rieu werk).

Het is ergens wel zielig, om zo’n aanstellerige aandacht-verslaafde hufter als Geert Wilders te horen zwatelen over Nederlandse cultuur en hoe die beschermd moet worden tegen kwade invloeden van Moslims, om hem vervolgens diezelfde Nederlandse cultuur als een waarachtige Jihad strijder te zien ausradieren.

Er is trouwens een petitie, Stop Culturele Kaalslag, die men kan tekenen (meer dan 77.000 mensen deden dat al) en er volgen allerlei acties en manifestaties.

Journalists from every region of the world have joined together to support the whistle-blowing organization Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange who, they say, have provided an extraordinary resource for journalists around the world and made “an outstanding contribution to transparency and accountability on the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars”.

(…)

The journalists, who are linked through investigative journalism networks, decided to speak out publicly after watching a growing campaign of threats and unfair criticisms against Assange and Wikileaks.

I’m number 94 (and the only one from Panama), of a total of 142 journalists who signed it. It’s a relatively small gesture which I nevertheless hope will have some impact. Wikileaks has done more in just months to reveal the truth about the US led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than all the US media combined since 9/11 and, on top of that, it has exposed much of the corporate media as the charlatans they are. I’ve been more than a bit annoyed by the ridiculous attacks on Wikileaks and Assange – attacks that only seek to distract, to cover up, and more often than not in a rather unintelligent way. In my own country for example, the Netherlands, journalist Bert Brussen wrote on Tea-Party-On-Wooden-Shoes website Geenstijl about the “anonymous little cowards” (“anonieme lafbekjes”) of Wikileaks – say what you will about Julian Assange, but “anonymous”? – before dismissing the content of the 400,000 documents as “old news”, in good Fox News fashion.

In a recent tweet, Wikileaks wrote:

Ethics101 for mainstream media: Ask not what llegal & illegal but what is moral & immoral. Recall that slavery was once legal.

Which, the media being what they are, will mostly fall on deaf ears, but there is a bit more to it. As a journalist, you don’t want to just be on the side of morality; you also want to have an impact. Because of the publication of these war logs and the clever strategy to create simultaneous global coverage of their contents, Wikileaks has accomplished that a number of countries and international bodies now demand answers from the US, about killings, torture, war crimes, human rights abuses. And that’s where a lot of the whining and attacking and hand wringing comes from, from the hurt sense of entitlement of the impostors who created war so that they could then make money by ineffectively and falsely reporting on it.

So yes, I happily signed that petition, and if there’s anything else I can do to keep Wikileaks afloat I’ll do it.

Estoy cabreado de la falta de profesionalidad y la ética en el ministerio publico, donde los fiscales ni saben diferenciar entre las denuncias serias y denuncias totalmente absurdas que claramente solo sirven para el acoso judicial.

Estoy cabreado de fiscales que me tratan como delincuente por escribir la verdad sobre los verdaderos delincuentes.

Estoy cabreado de un ministerio publico que malgasta fondos publicos en la persecución de ṕeriodistas en lugar de investigar a la delincuencia y a la corrupción.

Estoy cabreado de que me violan sistemáticamente mis derechos constitucionales, niegandome un interprete en mi idioma cuando me llaman a declarar o al juicio.

Estoy cabreado de los intentos de notificarme por telefono por que ni quieren mandar un notificador a donde vivo, violando el debido proceso.

Estoy cabreado de los abusos de poder y las extralimitaciones de funciones de los fiscales y personeras que piensan que su poder llega hasta los medios en el extranjero.

Estoy cabreado de que la delincuencia extranjera, desde David Murcia hasta Monte Friesner, siempre puede contar con el apoyo de politicos como José Blandón F., Herbert Young, Arturo Vallarino (para mencionar algunos) que abusan su influencia para evitar que los procesos legales acerca de los mal llamados “delitos contra el honor” se manejan en una forma profesional, justa y honesta.

Estoy cabreado de tener que someterme al abuso legal institucionalizado de Panamá solo por hacer mi trabajo, y no lo voy a hacer más. Voy a ser el periodista de “no voy”. Si me llaman a declarar: No voy. Si me llaman al juicio: No voy. Si me dan ordenes para remover mis escritos: No lo hago. Si me pegan una multa: No lo pago.

¿Si no se respetan mi persona, mis derechos, mi trabajo, mi profesión – para qué respetar a los capricios del ministerio publico y el organo judicial?