Jan 17, 2025
I worked for the Panama Canal Commission during the “transition period,” from 1981 through 1985. For the first two years the Canal Zone district court was still open. I was the last lawyer admitted to the Canal Zone bar.
I did a lot of reading about Canal history during those times. The Nicaraguan route was a possibility that was seriously discussed in the early 1900’s—the French effort in Panama had failed—and the presence of Lake Nicaragua was considered a plus. To convince his colleagues to turn away from the Nicaraguan route, a congressman brought a Nicaraguan postage stamp to the floor of the House. The stamp showed an active volcano and afterwards the Congress turned its attentions more seriously to Panama.
Today Nicaragua has its own problems: Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas. To quote Gerry Adams, they’re still around, you know. In Panama I worked with George Rivas, who had been the translator for William Stewart, the ABC News reporter who was shot by one of Somoza’s National Guard soldiers. George was a Jehovah’s Witness from Louisiana. In Nicaragua he met and married his wife, Cristina. She had been involved with the Sandinistas herself.
After Nicaragua, he moved back to New Orleans so Cristina could learn English. The Canal had a procurement office at 4400 Dauphine Street. George then got a job in my office in Panama and stayed after I left. It was around this time that George broke up with Cristina. Cristina took this badly.
The split was theatrical: George fell in love with a Panamanian stripper who worked at the same dive written about by William Burroughs in his novel Junkie. After shooting his wife, Burroughs headed south and spent some time in Panama before continuing on to Colombia where he experimented with ayahuasca, said to be a therapy to cure heroin addiction.
Cristina saw her husband and his new friend sitting in his car at the Balboa train station, a place where trains then appeared only twice each day. The discovery upset her. She drove into the station, accelerated and rammed her husband’s car from behind.
It is a bad idea to fight with your wife; it is a worse idea to fight with your wife when she has military training provided by a guerrilla army that successfully overthrew a government.
The Panamanian Defense Forces, then under the command of General Noriega, responded. The Zonians took Cristina’s side even though she was a newcomer and neither Panamanian nor American. Even the Witnesses had had enough and excommunicated Ted. He told me that he was confident he would someday be re-admitted to his faith and he did achieve this much later.
Cristina must have shared her military credentials earned during the war to overthrow Tacho because the Defense Forces did nothing and let her go. Eventually George divorced Cristina, resigned and moved to Miami. There he got a job in City Hall.
I was in Miami from 1985 to 2001, before I made the fateful decision to work in Saudi Arabia. There I saw George only twice. Back in the US, George married an FBI agent. I suppose it would have been awkward for us to socialize together as his new wife was working hard to put my clients in jail.
George then moved back to New Orleans, where he now works for the park district. I got his email from their web site and put him on the mailing list for my A Brief Unpleasantness pandemic newsletter from Bahrain, but I never heard from him.
From him and Cristina I learned a good deal about the war in Nicaragua. When I left Panama in 1985, the Contra war was hot. And Noriega? To quote an LA newspaper, He was our guy.
Dec 22, 2024
Three-pronged British electric plugs are touted as safer than US flat plugs. Brit plugs contain a fuse that is supposed to protect the user. Tried to unplug one today. Somehow it was live. 220v shot up my arm.
-
-
I guess they’re not as safe as advertised.
Sep 7, 2024
Red State or Blue State, if you need to contact Bank of America customer service by email, the sole monitored official channel is Twitter.
If Twitter is shut down, how will Bank of America provide customer service to its account holders?
You mean, you didn’t know that Twitter is the SOLE written channel for “@BofAHelp” troubleshooting, customer service and notification of data breaches?
So don’t be too hard on Elon if you bank at BoA.
BoA hides their email addresses and loves to send out one-way, unmonitored emails.
abuse@bankofamerica.com does NOT work.
lawenforcementrequests@bankofmerica.com does NOT work. You shouldn’t try the law enforcement channel unless there’s a real emergency. Is being stranded overseas with no money an emergency? I’d say ‘yes,’ but then, I have skin in the game.
Here are the email addresses of a few C-Suite executives who might know how to reach customer service.
brian.moynihan@bankofamerica.com CEO and chairman of the Board
Lee Mcentire, lee.mcentire@bofa.com
Joyce Seidenfeld, Media Relations, jocelyn.seidenfeld@bofa.com
Diane Wagner, diane.wagner@bofa.com
tom.scrivener tom.scrivener@bofa.com chief operations executive
If you’ve got time, here’s their street address:
Bank of America Corporate Center,
100 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28255
Aug 28, 2024
Yesterday, I suggested a careful response to a Dutch blackmailer whose victim is a Saudi woman. Despite our efforts to help him upon his release from jail—he announced to all and sundry that he was in the haram areas of Mecca—isn’t all Mecca haram?—he threatened at least two of our attorneys. Why we are paying attention to this client’s screed is beyond me. When I heard the outlines of his harangue and requests for money accompanied by threats it was clear to me that we were dealing with a romance scam. When one of our lawyers asked why the poor Saudi victim was sending him money, the client’s response was, “maybe as a gift?” He hadn’t even thought through his proposed justification for his crimes.
We are handling the case pro bono—there’s an employment case (of course) and some other litigation he’s involved himself with in addition to the criminal charges filed against him. I spoke up at our team meeting and asked, “why are we representing this guy when we decided we would no longer represent individuals?” There was no satisfactory answer.
Unfortunately, the only way to deal with crazy is to be more crazy. I proposed a draft letter to the Mecca-visitor modestly suggesting, since as he pointed out, his case is so difficult, that we need a lawyer who is spiritually gifted to handle the case. Unfortunately, that lawyer is currently involved with a particularly difficult exorcism in West Africa. A demon had implanted itself into the body of a young man there. Unfortunately, the demon in question has a fondness for Johnny Black, gambling and bank robbery to finance his pastimes. As soon as the spiritually gifted lawyer is successful in casting out the demon, he will be able to attend to the candidate client’s (his term) complicated case.
Of course, I didn’t stop there. I asked the candidate client if there was any way he could procure a live chicken and a transistor radio. The spiritually-gifted lawyer had asked that the candidate client complete a simple task that could shed light on the case at hand. The candidate client was to play American jazz at a high volume and then carefully transcribe the screeches of the chicken, if any. The document produced thereby could provide valuable clues as to the correct strategy to employ in the defense of the candidate client’s case.
For reasons that I don’t entirely understand, no one in the office was in favor of this approach.
The only way to beat crazy is with more crazy.
Aug 24, 2024
Following the publication of Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp in the Navy Times, https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/16/tinder-sailor-hooker-pimp-the-us-navys-sex-trafficking-scandal-in-bahrain/the police cracked down on a few buildings housing foreign women and increased harassment of Asian women walking alone at night in Juffair.
This was an “arrest the usual suspects” initiative. With the Sickness about, it is simply too dangerous to have sex with strangers no matter how attractive their profile on Tinder. BTW, Tinder in Bahrain is a dating app, not a hook-up app. Asian women arriving in Bahrain and hoping to find a Navy boyfriend are increasingly desperate to return to their countries, despite the impossibility or just prohibitively high cost of doing so.
At the time of writing, there are no international flights to China from the Middle East. China is not repatriating its citizens, either. There are irregular repatriation flights for Thai nationals, but a fourteen day paid in advance quarantine on arrival is required. Nighclubs and bars in Bahrain have been closed since March 8. Thai restaurants allow only a carry-out trade. The owner of one restaurant told me that on a weekday she is lucky to fill ten orders and often fills less.
While it is easy to point a finger at a three year old “trafficking” case, the situation on the ground is much more nuanced. What they used to call “Class B dependents” in Vietnam days were not mentioned. These are the full-time local wives and girlfriends of Navy personnel in Bahrain, as opposed to “Class A dependents,” that is, official dependents back in the United States.
A feature of Thai culture, the concept of the mia noi,” literally the “small wife,” or minor wife, is common and in no way dishonorable. The fact that a Navy man has a wife Stateside is no bar. Local laws in this part of the Middle East officially permit polygamy. Though the practice is not available to non-Muslims, it is hardly condemned either. Considering how easy it is to become a Muslim—you only need to say the shahadah in front of witnesses—a married American would find few obstacles in his path were he determined to espouse two wives. Navy regulations may prohibit such conduct, but what God has allowed man may not prohibit, at least as far as Bahraini law is concerned.
Navy personnel live with, and have children with, their Thai girlfriends.
And sometimes they kill them.
Aug 24, 2024
Voltage in Saudi Arabia
Lately, I have had little success with cooking in Riyadh. My appliances, an air fryer and a coffee maker, simply did not work. A few days ago, I did find out, though at the moment I’m lacking instrument confirmation, why my appliances have not been working here. The air fryer’s fan did not turn. The now-boxed coffee maker took forever to bring water to a boil. I knew the three-pronged British-style outlet was working because the “on” light lit up on the coffee maker. I plugged another appliance in and it too, showed signs of life. So I went and bought a new coffee maker. No sooner had I freed the machine from its box that it exhibited the same symptoms: the power light illuminated but there was no hot water. In my mind I ran through taking the coffee machine back to the store, the drive through horrible Saudi traffic, language difficulties, a test at the store to insure I am not a scam artist of some kind. I had already been through this recently after I replaced the air fryer.
But then, something happened. I don’t know why I did this, but I plugged the new coffee maker into another outlet on the other side of the kitchen. Not only did the power button illuminate, but the machine steamed, gurgled and started spitting out hot water. We’ll leave a discussion of this inspiration or message from the Gods for later, but as water dripped into the basket holding the grounds I realized what had happened and I felt like a fool: if anyone should have been able to diagnose the problem, it should have been me. But I failed.
When I came to Saudi Arabia, you couldn’t trust electricity. A home might have round European outlets; flat American ones or three-pronged British ones. If the builders ran out or a previous tenant had made a change, you might find slanted Australian plugs or even the thick tusks of a South African plug. In some cases, tenants simply removed the plug, stripped the wires and inserted bare wires into the outlet, ignoring the preferred plug. In any event adapters were easy to find and were sold in all the grocery stores. There were times when I was back in the US or in Europe and realized I needed an adapter. “I’ll just get one when I get back to Saudi” was my solution.
What voltage the outlet supplied was a matter of guesswork. You certainly couldn’t determine the voltage by looking at the outlet. The energy supplied might be 110v, 220v, 100v or—in the laundry room—440v. One of the first things you had to do was acquire a voltage meter. The meter would tell you what was coming out of the outlet. The next step was to write, in black marker, the results on the white outlet. The outlets are always white. There’s a market for a canny home designer who can bring out a line of colored outlets. But I digress.
About five years ago, or maybe a bit more, one of the Saudi ministries (I can think of several that might have had a hand in this) decided to standardize on British plugs. With each plug containing its own fuse, these are the safest. They also decided on 220v, to at least standardize with the UK and with the added benefit of conformity with the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and I think Qatar. There is an international agency called the “GCC Interconnection Authority” that was attacked by Al Qaeda around 2002 or so and that agency might have weighed in on the subject. While 110v is normally insufficient to kill a man, 220v packs a sufficient punch. Safety often carries trade-offs of one kind or another.
Prior to standardization, I bought a microwave manufactured in China that carried a round European plug. Despite the European plug, the device ran on 110v. Perhaps the factory ran out of flat plugs on the assembly line, knowing that the fault would be overlooked in Saudi Arabia. Fortunately I read the manual before blowing up a bag of popcorn.
On one occasion, I left Riyadh on extended leave and left the microwave in my apartment. The white outlets were clearly marked. While I was gone, my employer let another attorney use the apartment. Excited by the prospect of tasty popcorn, and not bothering to read the manual, the new tenant looked at the round European plug and was not so provincial as to lack knowledge of its meaning, but not cosmopolitan enough to realize that in Saudi Arabia, making assumptions carries risks. He plugged the microwave into the appropriate outlet. Two hundred and twenty volts surged through the machine, twice the amount that the machine was designed for, and laid it to rest.
“Sorry about your microwave. I don’t know what happened,” was the mea culpa in the note he left me. But I immediately knew what had happened. You can plug a 220v device into a 110v outlet and it will sputter but it will not be ruined. Plug a 110v appliance into a 220v line and there will be a bang, perhaps a flash and that acrid smell often accompanied by the kind of smoke that sets off fire alarms, leaving the appliance ruined.
It is one thing to have an international agency advise the Saudi Ministry of Housing and Rural Affairs (MoMRA), the Ministry of Electricity and the Ministry of Interior on standardization in the field of the supply of electricity, followed by an amendment to the Saudi building code. It is quite another to have this new rule explained to someone wearing a tool belt who has just arrived from Bangladesh and whose main concern is sending money to his poor family back home.
The assignment would be given in English—not the native language of the foreman—to the newly-minted electricians whose native language wasn’t English either. If they want all the outlets to conform to the British standard, that’s what they’ll get. The tool belt guy would turn the power off at the source and replace the offending outlets with the correct ones. Then he would turn the power back on and throw the old outlets into the bin. Then, on to the next.
No one would come by afterwards and mark the outlet. There was no need because the tool guy had already changed the outlet and marked it on his checklist as conforming.
So that’s what happened. Silly me. I plugged a perfectly good, 220v coffee maker into a 110v outlet. No matter that the plugs matched, there wasn’t enough voltage to reliably heat the water. The 220v volt air fryer also malfunctioned, there was barely enough power to warm the heating element and not enough to get the blades of the fan to turn.
In short, I should have known better. In my defense, I’m not the only one who has made this mistake. Pre-pandemic, there was great concern in Saudi hospitals about the sterilization of hospital rooms where avian influenza victims have been treated. Muslims from all over the world come to Mecca to pray and they bring their diseases with them. An American medical devices salesman had the solution to this problem: a robotic machine that sterilized a hospital room using ultra-violet light. He proposed to sell the robotic sterilization device to the Ministry of Health. Before committing, they asked for a demonstration to be conducted in Riyadh. The salesman made hurried arrangements to have the device air-freighted to King Khalid airport. It arrived in just three days. Various Saudi officials, including the Minister of Health himself, attended the demonstration. The salesman whipped through his presentation and then…plugged the machine into the wall.
The Minister of Health was not the only one who heard a loud “pop” before the fire alarm went off. The Kingdom declined to enter into further contract negotiations.
I could buy a voltmeter—these days they’re hard to find— and test the rogue outlet, but why? I am reasonably sure that the digital display will read ‘110’ and not ‘220’ and I don’t have any 220 appliances here anyway. Importing them is technically prohibited. I say “technically” because Saudi Aramco, the country’s oil company, has historically supplied 110v to its compound in Dhahran. There is a Royal Decree which says that Aramco is privileged to ignore Saudi laws when they conflict with (and could possibly harm) Aramco’s operations. So Aramco can import appliances that otherwise would be confiscated. So if you are going to Dhahran, you better get yourself a voltmeter.
You never know what’s behind the wall.
Aug 3, 2024
As of a year ago, Austin Tice was held in the basement of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the same one bombed by the Israelis months later.
The US was not interested in this intelligence at the time.
Strange.
Nothing said about Austin Tice in the prisoner exchange between the US, Russia and Germany.
Aug 3, 2024
My fellow obese citizens: Americans overseas are afraid to express nationalism. Own your idiosyncracies: insist on ice in your water and 8x11 paper, tip freely, put pineapple on your pizza, Half & Half in your coffee, write m/d/y, guzzle Coca-cola like there’s no tomorrow and demand Ranch dressing.
After all, no one would tease a Japanese tourist for asking where sushi could be found. Why should American tourists be treated differently?
Jul 15, 2024
Returning to Bahrain. The street they call the American Alley, near the US Naval Base, a place of interest to the Islamic Republic of Iran, just a short way across the Persian Gulf. Spies from a hundred countries try to capture overheard conversations. Guards at the Base monitor the tall buildings nearby for snipers. Sailors on leave patrol the Alley at night, looking for diversions or a touch of home. The Alley doesn’t disappoint; there is a McDonald’s–the Burger King is gone, as is the Chili’s; a Starbucks–the iHop didn’t make it either—and a KFC. And a Dunkin’ Donuts.
I walked into the Dunkin’ Donuts and asked for “coffee, cream and sugar.”
“You want whipped cream on your coffee?” Samira asked me. Samira was from Uganda.
I tried to explain. Dunkin’ Donuts is an American franchise. Surely a sailor or two had wandered in and made this pedestrian request before. But no. I had requested exotica.
Whipped cream would not do. I tried to explain Half and Half but Samira had never heard of it. She called her manager, a Filipina woman who had never heard of it either.
“You mean milk? You want a macciato?”
Samira suggested a flat white, a beverage unheard of in the USA. I surrendered.
www.linkedin.com/pulse/bri…(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/british-readers-half-counsel-michael-okane/)