letters
Bouquets and brickbats this time
Loves Panama, but...
I enjoyed the letter about the buses. Having lived in Panama for seven years, I always traveled on the buses.
I have been coming back for the last two years, but I am very disappointed each time I return. Nothing changes,the government are as corrupt as ever. The people still get the same old c--p. When will they wake up and elect a true democratic government, free from corruption?
This was one of the reasons I left Panama.The corruption was too blatant. If you put this on top the money the government rakes in for paperwork for a business, it's a wonder you have any there.
Saying all this, I have some wonderful Panamanian friends, who I always feel sorry for when I read the bad news from there. I really do hope things get better for the future, though I won't hold my breath for it to happen.
Violent arcade games gone from Balboa McDonalds
I don' t know whether it was my letter you posted in your "paper" or the e-mails to McDonalds headquarters, but the violent Arcade games are gone from the playground at McDonalds in Balboa!
Thanks again for posting!
Return visitor likes our coverage
Hi, my name is George and I love your article!!!!!!! I was one of many thousands proud Panamanians who came from the US and had the great opportunity to share our first 100 years of independence with the rest of the world.
I have been living in the US for more than 20 years. A door was open for me 20 years ago here and I went in. But I can't never forget my roots from preschool, high school, the street, my block, my old friends from "El Barrio."
But, I always can said that "I'm a proud Panamanian." Our first 100 years celebration of Independence from Colombia it was one of my greatest moments of my life. I was so proud to bring my first child to Panama so she could be there with her daddy and be part of our History. She's 12 years old but understood complete why we were there!
Now, she knows more about our history and her daddy's roots from Calle 2da, San Felipe all the way to Chiriqui. She's a proud young girl.
Job well done, Mr. Jackson!
Stick to politics
Eric --- I never knew that you were a boxing sage, and that you are qualified to even call a professional boxing match. It's interesting that you saw Dottin fight a couple times, refused to criticize him in fights that he clearly lost in May (in Al Brown), and then felt brave enough to intersperse your commentary with advice for the young fighter. Since you were his biggest supporter, I'm also curious as to when you jumped off the Dottin bandwagon. Since you personally anointed him a "young Ali" in previous fights, you should at least admit that your knowledge of the sport is lacking, rather than give the young fighter pointers. Urging Dottin to work on his "power-punching" so an opponent's "belly will turn to jelly" is pretty insightful. I'm sure that his camp will read your column and realize that the one thing their fighter was missing was "power punching." And where did you get that secret information about the body and the head? Call Emanuel Steward immediately, such an intriguing theory has never been considered in a boxing match. I know you enjoy going to the fights, and you're a really good fan. But when you get engulfed by the action, you do a disservice to the fighters, to yourself, and your audience.
Editor's note: I shouldn't be surprised, given the fragmentation at all levels of boxing, and the pervasive "I'm a real journalist and you're not" snobbery within the fourth estate, to get an email like this. But as one who has seen most of Dottin's professional fights and also covered him in the Golden Gloves, let me respond.
First, the only way that Mr. Giudice could say that Dottin lost that fight last May would be by counting punches thrown but not landed. I saw the bout as a bit closer than the three judges who gave Dottin the unanimous decision did, but agreed as to the result.
In that very story, as at other times, I raised the question of whether Dottin hits hard enough to go to the top.
Did I dub Dottin, a talented athlete who is, after all, only 19 years old, a "young Ali?" Only if one tears things out of context. What I wrote was that, like the young Ali, Dottin is very quick. When you consider Muhammad Ali at the beginning of his professional career, the unusual thing about his "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" formula was not the sting of his punches --- Sonny Liston and many other boxers whom Ali defeated were harder punchers --- but his remarkable floating quickness. The young Ali was hard to hit, a quality that Dottin has also from time to time demonstrated.
In his most recent fight when Dottin connected with rapid combinations to the body and his opponent was unaffected, that begged some questions. To me it seemed as if Dottin's punches relied mostly on the strength in his arms, and that he did not get his body into them. It's a matter of technique, but one that makes a difference in the power of the punch. Or so it seems to me.
Now does Angelo Dottin have advice from someone who knows the art and science of pugilism a lot better than I do? Of course he does, and that's why I think that whatever I write about his technique is not likely to harm him as Mr. Giudice alleges. In Dottin I see a promising young athlete who now has a defeat on his record but who will get good advice and can learn, improve many aspects of his craft, and come back to vindicate all the support he has received from Colon fight fans.
And what of the adage "Kill the body and the head must die?" If Mr. Giudice is at all familiar with boxing journalism, he'll know that this axiom had been stated years before that Christmas in the early 60s when I got my first boxing gloves, and before I began a boyhood association with boxing literature by reading things like Floyd Patterson's "Victory Over Myself," Bert Shugar's Ring magazine and boxing articles in Sports Illustrated. Nor am I the one who coined the words "beat his belly to jelly." What I did was argue that if Dottin is to make such things happen, he'll have to be a more powerful puncher. (And I wouldn't say that this would be an appropriate strategy for any particular fight, because against most opponents it isn't.)
I don't specialize as a boxing reporter. I specialize in covering Panama, a country in which boxing is an important part of the culture. I have been following boxing for about 40 years now, and for more than half of that time it has been my practice when watching a bout in the flesh or on TV to keep score. I'm generally not far off of what the professional judges say.
When a guy who's listed as a contributor to fightnews.com blasts my coverage of the most recent Dottin fight and of boxing in general, it's only natural that I'd go to that website and see what he had to write about the same event. I found nothing. All that my Google search pulled up from Mr. Guidice's boxing journalism were some press conference stories, in which the promoters rather than the athletes received the most attention.
I have this habit of skipping weigh-ins and press conferences. I go to the arena, buy a ticket, go in and watch the fights, and report what I see. Now this may be an unorthodox style. It might even be called anti-social.
Moreover, it's reporting by someone whose only formal lessons in how to punch someone have been in the context of tae kwon do, and by someone who has come to journalism with a formal education in history, political science and law.
Yes, my journalism can always stand improvement. I can always find ways to better serve the readers. Heeding the jeers of someone who claims superior credentials as a boxing journalist yet doesn't much report on Panamanian boxing, and thus discontinuing this newspaper's coverage of this important aspect of our national culture, wouldn't serve either of those ends.
I call them like I see them. I will continue to do so.
The Panama News fills a gap
Just a short note to say how much I enjoyed reading your paper for the first time today. I hope to read many and someday meet you in Panama. My wife and I plan to retire in Panama within the next year and your paper fills a gap in good local journalism.
Keep up the good work and God will find the needed monies to survive.
Vaya con Dios,
Blew it on the theater review
"El Veredicto" is a good play which should get Panamanians talking more intelligently about our history. But I am surprised that your review did not identify the big mistake in the Ascanio Arosemena scene. The first to die on the Day of the Martyrs was not killed by US soldiers. The Canal Zone police shot Ascanio Arosemena.
Editor's note: You're right about that. Although the old Panama Canal Company denied that the Canal Zone Police killed anybody during the course of the January 1964 incidents, the reports of the International Commission of Jurists and many eyewitnesses indicate that Asacanio Arosemena's aorta was severed by a .38 caliber bullet fired from a Canal Zone Police revolver, and the US Army's accounts of those events also support that conclusion.
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