can any one advise me on getting a job flying on a tuna boat im a nz pilot looking for a job have a comercial licence cheers

So many oft repeated yet complete and utter lies about Cuba and the rest of Latin America.

Cuba has got universal healthcare, thats right. So does Panama and I’m sure many other places in Latin America. The only difference in Cuba you universally have the right to die, because there is no medicine or the doctors are out looking after their survival jobs, selling lobster in the market, prostituting themselves or being guides for tourists. Wake up. Cuba may have been a “paradise” in the 60’s. Now it is an absolute evil hell hole. Ask any cubans.

People mention Panama, Dominican Republic etc as being worse off. The only place in Latin America that is worse off than Cuba is Haiti. We have poverty here in Panama, yet it is not universal such as in Cuba or Haiti. This is true just about everywhere in Latin America. Even the poorest people in the ghetto of Chorillo in Panama, eat well every day. No one goes without health care. People can vote.

The lefties in Europe and the US have repeated these lies so much that they have forgotten to open their eyes. The democracy in Panama and most parts of Latin America is DIRECTLY a result of the “Evil” US foreign policy of the last few decades.

The only country in Central America that is falling rapidly economically is Costa Rica, where the social democratic government is forcing people into poverty.

Jim Campbell,
I got to see a video of the Canadians landing helos on covettes in what I thought was a very high sea state. Almost launched my lunch just watching. It looked impossible to me. I don’t understand state of mind of the helo pilots – a death wish? IIRC the video was from the early 1990’s as we also watched some Navy videos of action over Bagdad and some very interesting carrier operations.

It’s also true that the civil rights movement made its greatest progress at the height of the cold war, starting in the 1950’s. I wonder to what extent that would have happened without the threat of communism, and the need to convince the non-white people of the world to take our side?

|| Where did these defenders of Castro come from?

Nobody is here defending Castro. Just saying that after all the censorship and stifling of private enterprise, Cubans are better off than most (all) of their neighbors who are “helped” by the U.S. I am making a statement about the disasterous policy the U.S. leads in Central America, not about good policy of Castro.

Another point: the moment the Berlin Wall fell down, workers in Western Europe and the United States started loosing benefits, getting paycuts, having their jobs outsourced. The workers’ rights were stripped off as employers hired anti-unionization lawyers, and average Joe’s standard of living has been sinking ever since. The socialist “other side” of the Berlin Wall kept this capitalist side in check due to the fear that socialism might spread.

Arenas fled from Cuba to the U.S. to be free to “scream” (see comment above). With the departure of socialist countries, polititians stopped listening to the screams.

Third world communist countries have not advanced as far as first world capitalist countries. What a fresh observation. Perhaps you could get this published at Slate or something.

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Cuba has always been able to get whatever it wanted by shopping in Europe or elsewhere. The problem is that it got soft as the USSR overpaid it for its sugar and undercharged it for oil. When the USSR collapsed and reality set in, Cuba found that it could still buy whatever it wanted in Europe or elsewhere, but that didn’t have the money. Since it doesn’t allow private enterprise, it is still stuck in the primary sector (sugar cane, anyone?) and all those highly educated and intelligent people are either rotting away on a sunny island in the Caribbean, or making their way to the decadent West where their initiative and skills are justly rewarded.
Don’t blame Cuba’s predicament on the embargo. Blame it on a system that stifles human ingenuity and initiative.

Cuba has always been able to get whatever it wanted by shopping in Europe or elsewhere. The problem is that it got soft as the USSR overpaid it for its sugar and undercharged it for oil. When the USSR collapsed and reality set in, Cuba found that it could still buy whatever it wanted in Europe or elsewhere, but that didn’t have the money. Since it doesn’t allow private enterprise, it is still stuck in the primary sector (sugar cane, anyone?) and all those highly educated and intelligent people are either rotting away on a sunny island in the Caribbean, or making their way to the decadent West where their initiative and skills are justly rewarded.
Don’t blame Cuba’s predicament on the embargo. Blame it on a system that stifles human ingenuity and initiative.

Note that this comment is not relevant to this post.

It is relevant to your recent comment to me that I’m violating copyright, and confusing google. I apologize Phil.

My Blog/html skills are rather limited, so I have not figured out how to html a site into the blog entry. Also, I have found that sites and pages vanish from the web, so while I do occassionally copy short bits and rarely longer ones, I do always try to ID where they came from within the post. But I want to capture the idea not a dead link… I guess this is a blog tech problem (maybe some way to get cached links like Google…?)

Looking at your blog, and the volume of comments you receive, I can understand your concerns. Looking at my blog, I think I’ve received less than 5 comments ever, and you gave me two of them! I’ve mostly been writing for myself, with little thought or evidence that others are reading me.

But in googling on keywords from my blog, I found I must have wider readership, since my posts have been copied into other people’s blogs…

Again, I apologize for confusion – my hope is that people who find bits on my blog would click through to the sources to find even more interesting conversation and comments from people like you and your students.

Finally,

I hope you have a great time during your travels.