From Jeff Childers

Keep an eye on Panama. Panama controls the canal, a critical world economic chokepoint. Widespread unrest in rural areas and empty stores have led to massive protests in that country. Unrest in Panama could mean economic disaster for the Western Hemisphere.

Former war correspondent Michael Yon is covering the developing Panamanian situation on his Locals page, publishing emails he’s receiving from in-country. One report from a guy named “Matt” described the bleak grocery situation:

“I just came out of one of the biggest supermarkets here and there is absolutely 100% Zero produce you can’t buy one leaf of anything green. There’s zero produce nothing and the meat section was half empty. And there’s no produce anything from agriculture is not getting into the city right now… the road to Chiriqui Province, where were all the agriculture most of it comes from is completely unpassable and blocked. And the President has basically he’s allowing this blockage to happen. And he’s the police are just standing down.”

Another person emailed Yon this hair-raising story about trying to get out of Panama this week, which I’ve fully reproduced in very slightly-edited form:

Our trip back to Panama City from Boquete lasted from tuesday morning at 8 o’clock till friday 15 o’clock. FOUR days we had to live in our car at the blockades. Some of the protestors were threatening and were throwing rocks at the people who attempted to pass. 80 full hours of misery.

We’ve seen some really sad things. People with kids who had to sleep on the side of the road, people who went through the blockades by horse, protestors with sticks in the ready to attack, police who just stood there and took pictures.

We’ve gotten through 8 blockades. The first two took us 50 hours, only to drive 18km between the two.

Hot as hell both day and night, no toilets, often no shade, sleeping in the car was too warm and sometimes the protestors also made noise at night so we barely had any sleep. Luckily there was food from the stores and sometimes a fondo but at some blockades there was nothing. We could also buy fruit from the fruit vendors who were stuck with us. It was heartbreaking to see how their loads stood rotting in the sun.

Eventually we heard rumors that the San Felis blockade had been stuck for three days straight so we took the small roads through the mountains and even through a riverbed. We had no 4×4 cars, so we had to push the car uphill many times. We had two more blockades after this and then we did the same offroad backroads to avoid the Santiago blockade. We drove to a place called Ocù at night on terrible roads. From there we could take a bigger street back to the highway. One of the guys with us lost a tire and had to continue driving on his rim.

The nearer we got to city, the shorter the blockades were. And the protestors were less hostile.

We saw a lot of really tragic things but also a lot of bravery, friendship and perseverance. Everyone who took the Ocù backroad helped and waited for the guy who lost his tire, people were giving and trading all sorts of things, we banded together at the frontline when things got heated, we put out burning tires with dirt together. It was crazy.

I feel the media is not covering how bad it is right now. They say the blockades open every 4-5 hours but this is only near Panama City. In the centre of the country it is sooo much worse. We now heard that abandoned cars have been stolen and even that people have even died.

We made it to the airport and we will be able to catch our flight. We have never been so happy to sleep in a bed and take a shower.”

He made a really good point. Where’s corporate media on the situation in Panama? This seems like the kind of thing they LOVE to run long-form photo-essays about. I could understand — kind of — the embargo on stories about covid protests, because those protests contradicted the media narrative that covid mandates were just minor inconveniences opposed by small groups of goofy antivaxxer conspiracy theorists.

But why blackout news of people protesting forced starvation? What narrative do these stories contradict? Is it the climate change agenda? Is media intentionally ignoring how disastrous lockdown policies have been, especially in the third world, because science? Is corporate media worried that if people find out how unruly and unstable the world is right now, they might vote democrats out of office even faster?