Out of Pod Experience

The give-away for me was when the officers run back out of the bank and stand there comically blank. Comedic staging most indeed.

There are special forces trained "cops" and then , we have the "potatoes" that direct traffic and extort bribe money by placing roadblocks.

There´s a famous group down here, "Linces" , those guys are mean, lean death machines. They go in groups of 2 per bike, one driver, one gunner with a fully auto set machine gun ready to beat the crap of anyone near "hot spots" in the city and you can see them 24/7 patrolling the city.

See, those are real cops, then we have the potatoes. I was talking about them

As a side note, Brazilian police officers are , due the extremes they live in, the equal of several armed forces personnel, and sometimes more, as they see action constantly. Panama is , on the other hand, in a sense, a very small, relatively safe country.

Special Forces police here are usually stationed in the border, and deal regularly with Colombian Guerrilla in the Darien Gap. The city tho, they have real lousy police officers. They beat the crap out of you if you get too feisty and unlike other countries, there´s no real way to take actions against them. Remember that this is Latinamerica. They usually set you up with fines, car searches and other unsavory tactics to scare you off 10 to 20$ .

But all in all, I prefer the Panamanian Potatoes to the Psycho Venezuelan ones, that **** you, kill you then drop you in a common ditch. You cant differentiate the good guys from the bad guys there. A famous movie here tried to show off the day to day of living in Venezuela


There are several foreigners stories from Venezuela, where they got raped by the very police since they were so white (white people are more attractive down here) during roadblock searches, and Im talking both women and men ... here in Panama a loudmouth just gets beat up at most, and then a scandal ensues and this or that guy gets a sanction. Honestly, it´s a good trade in for me.

Then again I lived in a close to the border city, so police brutality there might be more common. I hate it when a fellow Venezuelan says "OMG you so extreme, it´s not that bad" , makes me wanna punch them and then spit them in the eye.

Not far from the truth. Rupert Murdoch is big over here and our tabloids eat American ones for Breakfast. Ashamed to admit it but we have the worst tabloids on the planet who if they had the chance, the Empire would be reborn tomorrow and show the colonies how it should be done. All while telling us why we are cowardly/evil/going to die of cancer and/or immigrants.

The irony is that its used by people more to have a laugh while reading the other papers more than for believing its social commentary, but some of it still bleeds into pop culture. For reference Michael Moore is considered a moderate over here.

I thought he was living in Venezuela. My current stalking of Bruce has been lapsing. I will need to hire one of those private detective agencies to keep up.

I enjoyed some of his films though. There was one where he made the Cuban Fire department give their sorrow and whatnot to people from 9/11 in the US.... that was so ... corny. I even had to show the scene to some friends to make them feel awkward, I was like ... "He actually comes up with these ideas by himself?".

It just means you remember the 80s

He himself openly admits he's a propagandist. You can't believe what he himself proclaims?

Hannity's a propagandist too. He's about on a par with Moore for over-all honesty (or lack thereof), save that Hannity won't admit to being a propagandist. Oh, and Moore is a fair bit smarter than Hannity, too.