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Friendly and unfriendly messages, advice and questions

Drummer liked our coverage

Hi dear people from The Panama News, I just read the article regarding our show with Carlos Garnett and Sakaino, the pics were wonderful and the comments were right on the money!!

Thank you for the support!!

Hopefully next year Innova will be featured!!

All the best

We just visited Panama after 17 years...

I just came back from Panama. Eight days, we stayed. My wife is Panamanian (30 years married) and we saw some nice things. Visited with family. Yet I noticed the government doesn't understand and it will be their demise. As the Czar of Russia failed to see. (I own two businesses in the USA) You rule people not land. In other words, there is crime going nuts, murders every day. Panama, with 3.5 million people: we don't have this murder rate in New York, with 12 million people. Police in Panama are paid $400 a month. Give me a break. I'd quit or rip people off to get more money. They ought to be paid $700-$800 a month at least. The government has no right to ask the police to protect and be loyal if they are treated like dogs in pay and equipment. The Czar treated his people like dogs and his whole family went to the grave. I see a Hugo Chávez uprising on the horizon. What about ambulances? Police are bringing people in the pickups with no bandages, treated like a piece of meat. Please give me a break. Panama, you're asking for a socialist/communist takeover and then you'll be enslaved because their promises are empty as well. Remember, after 50 years Castro is still fighting the revolution, blaming everyone for his failure, and people keep following. Wake up. I'm not saying government should do everything but police and ambulance care are musts for a modern civilized country to exist. Right now I would and will warn people to not travel to Panama. It is not safe. No politician is addressing it aggressively.

Needs immigration advice

I lived in Panama three years and I miss my second home country. I have been back in the states now four months and each day I find myself missing more and more my new country and her people and my friends and co workers there. I lived in Las Cumbrecitas for three years and have many friends there. I worked for Sitel and never missed a day of work in almost three years.

I am telling you things in hopes that you can send me some information on the new immigration laws and what I would need to do and have for my return to Panama in September.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I wish you and your family and friends good luck in the new year.

Editor's note: What you will need will depend on your particular circumstances, but one of them would seem to be a competent immigration lawyer. There was a new immigration law passed that was to go into effect at the end of August, but certain things like the new ID cards for foreigners have been delayed. (The current government, headed by a guy whose only previous real job was as a shift manager at McDonald's, likes to pass new laws on whims and stereotypes, and only afterwards consider the consequences and the practical matters of implementation.) Although I once practiced law in the USA I have left that way of life behind and am certainly not a person in a position to give specific advice on Panamanian law.

You may want to read the immigration law, and also the regulations implementing it, to know how it is theoretically supposed to work.

Watch out for Jorge Barroso

Just wanted to pass on my experience for the benefit of others that may have contact with this guy. We wrote up an agreement to rent our house here in Diablo to Jorge Barroso for four months while we went to the states. He agreed to deposit the money in my Panama account. and pay the utilities and gardener monthly. This flake made one rental deposit, never paid any of the utilities he used, and paid the gardener $20 one time. Then a few days before we came back he skipped out without paying, and left the house a total disaster.

After five days we are still cleaning up and repainting. He may now be trying to do the same thing with some other trusting person. He is, or was, in the real estate business and speaks English, so I can imagine any chance he had to rip someone off, he would not hesitate.

Jorge is the type of guy that thinks that his outright dishonesty and failure to follow his agreements should never have any repercussions for himself --- but I feel that anyone considering doing business with this guy should take heed based on his history.

Dix Roper

The inaugural address of Barack Obama

While many seem enamored at the ground-breaking election of the first black US president, few seem cognizant of the fact that Barack Obama’s core beliefs and record fundamentally disagrees with his nation’s founding principles that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and which states that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Obama’s pragmatic inaugural address confirms that he is governed by the Marxist belief that the end justifies the means --- a belief which allows him to support the systematic murdering of innocent children through abortion and embryonic stem cell research as if such people were a sub-class of human beings.

Obama is a false prophet who preaches "change" and "hope" while pursuing a culture of death. Though the slogan "change" is usually invoked to signify something positive, in this case it hides a different agenda --- one which is very dangerous for America and the world.

Medical services for transsexuals in Panama?

I live in Southern California, and I am transgender male to female pre-op transsexual. I have family in Panama and I want to move to Panama.

Question: Do you think I'll have any problems in Panama? Is there health care for transsexuals, such as hormone treatments?

PS: I have a handicapped son. Are there services for the handicapped?

Editor's note: For the postscript first, we do have public services for the handicapped, but they are not very good. The widespread disrespect for existing barrier-free design laws is but one symptom of a society that doesn't treat anyone with any sort of disability very well.

About medical services for transsexuals, you asked a question about which I knew not the answer, so I forwarded it to the PARATU (Panamerican Rainbow Alliance Together United) email group, whose moderator forwarded it to Ricardo Beteta, the president of Panama's Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered human rights organization the Asociacion Hombres y Mujeres Nuevos de Panama (AHMNP), who replied as follows:

I have investigated this issue for some time now, and there is no clinic, public or private that does this kind of treatment. I have it from a good source that this treatment is illegal in Panama, and if one wants to do it, he or she must have the financial resources to do so privately. Most of the transgender I know improvise with hormones without medical supervision. If a doctor is caught doing treatment to a transgender is in risk of losing his or her license.

A sample of the hate mail some folks have been posting

Hey Anti-Semite Jackasson .... you need to gather your pals in the Aryan Nation and call President Obama .... he fucked up. He spent the day on the phone today calling Mid-east leaders. He called Israel (FIRST, of course) then Jordan and Egypt and finally Abbas over at Fatah. NOT ONE supporter of your little love object, Hamas got even a nod. Oh well, so much for your theory that Obama would better for your friends, the "highly educated" Palestinian rocket scientists (ooooops, sorry, the rockets were designed in the West, your friends were only capable of learning how to pull the trigger). Oh well, they "won" .... and that should be enough for you to whip out your copy of The Communist Manifesto and party hard with your bottle of Seco and few Lithiums. Sleep well Anti-Semite dinosaur ...... nothing will change between the US, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, we'll all continue to ignore the "plight" of YOUR "people". Wahhhh******

doGg

Editor's note: This guy says he's organizing an advertiser boycott of The Panama News. And I still oppose war crimes, whoever commits them.

My opinion on the Gaza War that set this guy off is set forth at http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_15/issue_01/opinion_10.html, toward the bottom of the page after all the comments of world leaders and other observers.

By the way, this guy whose pseudonym insults humanity's ancient canine allies has the facts wrong about President Obama's phone calls. He called Mr. Abbas first, and only then Mr. Olmert. But Obama's Arab-American peace envoy, Mr. Mitchell, will sooner or later have to go beyond these figureheads and talk with the leaders of the forces that are actually fighting if he is to have any chance of success.