Fidel Castro Dies . . . Again! And this time it's for realz.

[Little Hater]

Fidel Castro and Janet Reno dead in the same month. God's Christmas present to the rest of us.

[Jackstar]

The US leads the world in new pharmaceuticals, in new medical procedures, and in new medical technology. 

You and I remember leadership very differently.

[Jackstar]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802499192237080576

[HedgehogNorman]

Poor little Colin will be devastated.

http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/11/25/colin-kaepernick-praises-castro-lashes-nfl-fans/

Can he praise Hillary next?

[21st Century Man]

Decent summary of Castro's life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-dies.html?_r=0

[Jackstar]

Decent

http://www.nytimes.com/

[21st Century Man]

Oh for God's sake.  Every once in a while they put out a decent article though they left out Fidel's flirtations with Hollywood in the 40's and his baseball aspirations.

[FightTheFuture]

Time to knock Raul off and get the casinos back in Havana.


GO BUCKS!!!!

[GuerrillaUnReal]

Castro has to be one of the most bad ass figures of the 20th century. Some people like him, some people hate him, I've always had tremendous respect for him. All the stories about him are insane. From his baseball stories (I don't believe a word) to his guerrilla stories, to him bringing the world closer to nuclear armageddon than ever before or since, to him being this dictator of this tiny island nation telling the biggest super power in the world to go fuck themselves while being only 90 miles away.

I have zero connection to Castro or the evils he caused his people, but I do understand and sympathise with people who think he's a monster. But his story has to be one of the craziest in human history. It's one of those incredible things to think about like what if Hitler died in WW1? What if Fidel had just a little more velocity on his fastball?

[whoozit]

Why can't it be both?

I'd wish you to get painful ass cancer in your cock but I don't think you have one. 

[Yorkshire pud]

Other than a few Canadians on here, I suppose I'm possibly one of a few who has been to Cuba. I went in 2005 for a holiday at Varadero which is on the north coastal peninsula.

Good points:
  the people are great. Working in hotels is a very well paid job (tips) and prestigious. There is no ripping off of the tourists, if you pay for a trip to Havanah for example, it costs the same with whichever bus trip you book with.
All the tourist buses are modern, well maintained and European sourced (Mercs, Scania, Volvo, etc).
Havanah is an 'experience', it has music coming out of nearly every bar, cafe and restaurant on every street. Very colourful, very touristy if you look for that.
Food is cheap and such as lobster especially so. The old US cars from the 50's are beautifully turned out. Health provision is fantastic, it could teach our NHS a lot of things. The standard of medical expertise is up there with the West.

Not so good points:
  A great deal of it is run down, some to dilapidation, and its very sad to see. The general standard of cuisine isn't like ours, largely because they're restricted to what gets imported due to embargos, (although that might not be the case now). The standard of roadworthiness of vehicles isn't good, aside from the tourist specific ones.
You're strongly advised not to use them. Cars with pools of oil and broken suspension beneath them at the roadside isn't uncommon.
Always be aware of your surroundings at all times; people are poor and pickpockets are rife in Havanah, never travel on the 'camels' (strange humped articulated buses, painted pink and white), where thieves take easy pickings.
Speaking Spanish is an advantage, but many speak English.

There is an underlying sense of paranioa. Not in a NK sense, more along the lines of Alex Jones' more faithful 'patriot' listeners, who are a few steps from believing they're about to be invaded by unseen powers. That's just information ignorance really, because the ones I spoke to, were quite intelligent and were keen to know about the UK, of which they're told so little about.

Go again? Probably not, but if you do go, go with a very open mind and don't expect Western quantities or quality, other than the hospitality which is genuine and welcoming.
 

[SciFiAuthor]

Well, at least they didn't bury him in the blue jumpsuit he's been wearing for public appearances the last 20 years.

[SciFiAuthor]

You don't. In some instances, profit concern is the very thing preventing certain types of pharma research.

Never cure a disease if you can treat it indefinitely. It's just good business, unfortunately it also kills people. I followed the development of oncolytic viral cancer therapies and saw this directly. In one case, a drug basically cured head and neck cancer at a rate of 93 percent and stopped the progression of the disease in the other 7 percent. It was stunningly effective.

So a big drug company moved in and bought it before the clinical trials were over and killed it by getting FDA approval for a completely different type of cancer where it wasn't very effective and then commissioned studies with set ground rules to "prove" that it wasn't effective at all. To boot, they sent out their lawyers to remove as much about the initial success studies as they could, even getting it off Wikipedia. They trashed their own drug in favor of less effective, but more profitable drugs in their portfolio.

Meanwhile a whole shitload of people have died of head and neck cancer.

We should set up government run, non-profit R&D labs to work on new pharmaceutical advancements, and any new discoveries should be open sourced for anyone to manufacture (provided manufacturers meet quality/safety standards).

This is the best approach, essentially run it like NASA or the NOAA and make all new drug formulations public domain.

[Yorkshire pud]

Never cure a disease if you can treat it indefinitely. It's just good business, unfortunately it also kills people. I followed the development of oncolytic viral cancer therapies and saw this directly. In one case, a drug basically cured head and neck cancer at a rate of 93 percent and stopped the progression of the disease in the other 7 percent. It was stunningly effective.

So a big drug company moved in and bought it before the clinical trials were over and killed it by getting FDA approval for a completely different type of cancer where it wasn't very effective and then commissioned studies with set ground rules to "prove" that it wasn't effective at all. To boot, they sent out their lawyers to remove as much about the initial success studies as they could, even getting it off Wikipedia. They trashed their own drug in favor of less effective, but more profitable drugs in their portfolio.

Meanwhile a whole shitload of people have died of head and neck cancer.

Can you be more specific? I've never heard of a cancer called head and/ or neck cancer.

[PB the Deplorable]

... We should set up government run, non-profit R&D labs to work on new pharmaceutical advancements, and any new discoveries should be open sourced for anyone to manufacture (provided manufacturers meet quality/safety standards).

... So a big drug company moved in and bought it before the clinical trials were over and killed it by getting FDA approval for a completely different type of cancer where it wasn't very effective

... This is the best approach, essentially run it like NASA or the NOAA and make all new drug formulations public domain.

Another anecdote that may or may not be true, that may or may not have left out defining details.  Even if completely true, and even with other similar stories, this is a reason to throw away what we do have, for the unknown? 

While we're at it, should we destroy the rest of our system of free exchange because there are crooks abusing the system?  Why not organize everyone into work groups?

Why didn't you guys vote for Bernie in the primaries, then Hilary?  Seriously

[Yorkshire pud]

You don't. In some instances, profit concern is the very thing preventing certain types of pharma research.

We should set up government run, non-profit R&D labs to work on new pharmaceutical advancements, and any new discoveries should be open sourced for anyone to manufacture (provided manufacturers meet quality/safety standards).

To a lesser degree to what it once was, the NHS had/has such a thing. Not so much open sourced, because very few medicines could be r&d financed, and not be expected to get a return on investment. These days, the NHS is a victim of its own success and the big pharma companies (are there small ones?) rip off the NHS, basically holding them to ransom.

Having said all that, many now common medical techniques and drugs used throughout the world, only exist because of the investment in the early years of the NHS.

[Uncle Duke]

Other than a few Canadians on here, I suppose I'm possibly one of a few who has been to Cuba. I went in 2005 for a holiday at Varadero which is on the north coastal peninsula.

Good points:
  the people are great. Working in hotels is a very well paid job (tips) and prestigious. There is no ripping off of the tourists, if you pay for a trip to Havanah for example, it costs the same with whichever bus trip you book with.
All the tourist buses are modern, well maintained and European sourced (Mercs, Scania, Volvo, etc).
Havanah is an 'experience', it has music coming out of nearly every bar, cafe and restaurant on every street. Very colourful, very touristy if you look for that.
Food is cheap and such as lobster especially so. The old US cars from the 50's are beautifully turned out. Health provision is fantastic, it could teach our NHS a lot of things. The standard of medical expertise is up there with the West.

Not so good points:
  A great deal of it is run down, some to dilapidation, and its very sad to see. The general standard of cuisine isn't like ours, largely because they're restricted to what gets imported due to embargos, (although that might not be the case now). The standard of roadworthiness of vehicles isn't good, aside from the tourist specific ones.
You're strongly advised not to use them. Cars with pools of oil and broken suspension beneath them at the roadside isn't uncommon.
Always be aware of your surroundings at all times; people are poor and pickpockets are rife in Havanah, never travel on the 'camels' (strange humped articulated buses, painted pink and white), where thieves take easy pickings.
Speaking Spanish is an advantage, but many speak English.

There is an underlying sense of paranioa. Not in a NK sense, more along the lines of Alex Jones' more faithful 'patriot' listeners, who are a few steps from believing they're about to be invaded by unseen powers. That's just information ignorance really, because the ones I spoke to, were quite intelligent and were keen to know about the UK, of which they're told so little about.

Go again? Probably not, but if you do go, go with a very open mind and don't expect Western quantities or quality, other than the hospitality which is genuine and welcoming.

Several of the BAE guys I worked with on JSF talked about their holidays in Cuba.  All said pretty much the same things you said, with one exception.  To a man they commented on the Cuban women being stunning, with many of them being available for a price and quite aggressive.

[21st Century Man]

Several of the BAE guys I worked with on JSF talked about their holidays in Cuba.  All said pretty much the same things you said, with one exception.  To a man they commented on the Cuban women being stunning, with many of them being available for a price and quite aggressive.

Hmmm.  Now I want to go to Cuba. 

[Yorkshire pud]

Several of the BAE guys I worked with on JSF talked about their holidays in Cuba.  All said pretty much the same things you said, with one exception.  To a man they commented on the Cuban women being stunning, with many of them being available for a price and quite aggressive.

I would agree, the women are very curvy, but I can't attest to their enterprising. What struck me, and something I've never seen elsewhere, is the melting pot of every race, physical attribute, hair colour, bone structure and skin colour all in one place, and cross matched. You see black men with caucasian face and nose shapes with undyed ginger hair! Or a white girl who looks as if she could be from Nigeria and had her skin bleached. It is probably not surprising that about 55% are from Spanish stock, but about 11% are Chinese ancestory.

[chefist]

Hmmm.  Now I want to go to Cuba.

https://news.vice.com/article/cuba-is-facing-a-condom-shortage

[SciFiAuthor]

Can you be more specific? I've never heard of a cancer called head and/ or neck cancer.

Squamous cell carcinoma in the head and neck.

[The King of Kings]

So what's worse - a zionist or a communist. You stupid socialist fuck.

(((Zionist))) obviously.

[The King of Kings]

Can you be more specific? I've never heard of a cancer called head and/ or neck cancer.

http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/head-and-neck-cancer/symptoms-and-signs

It's called a generalization you dumb fuck british queer.

Shouldn't you be on towel patrol while your wife enjoy's her muslim and afrikan bulls in the other room?

[SciFiAuthor]

Another anecdote that may or may not be true, that may or may not have left out defining details.  Even if completely true, and even with other similar stories, this is a reason to throw away what we do have, for the unknown? 

It's true, I watched it happen. I used to hold your exact position until I saw it first hand. It's not really even intentional most of the time in big pharma, they just don't develop drugs that aren't profitable. Unfortunately that doesn't always match up with the science and desire to cure disease. It's inefficient.

It's not the unknown. We already do that with NASA and the aerospace industry, they develop and research and the fruits go down to industry. We also do it with military technologies, for example DARPA programs to create exoskeletons for soldiers to increase strength and endurance in the field are being back engineered by a company to become exoskeletons that allow paraplegics to walk. It would be no different a situation if we put pharmaceutical development research under the CDC as promoting public health. But, that probably can't happen due to the lobbyists and lawyers.

While we're at it, should we destroy the rest of our system of free exchange because there are crooks abusing the system?  Why not organize everyone into work groups?

I'm more worried about our dinosaur system's ability to deal with organizing everyone into welfare groups. We no longer live in a world where free exchange can cover everyone. With technological unemployment and automation shutting out workers free exchange stops not because of regulation, but because of chronic unemployment. Since capitalism drives innovation, i.e. automation, then the end result of capitalism is necessarily a form of communist welfare state as ever increasing amounts of people are put of work by technology. I'd like to put the skids on that as best I can.

Unfortunately most on the right don't yet realize that this is the reality of capitalism in a technologically advancing civilization.

Why didn't you guys vote for Bernie in the primaries, then Hilary?  Seriously

Because Bernie's an obsolete Marxist clinging to 19th century ideas and she was a flagrant crook. Trump will at least listen to the people that watch science and tech and his business experience will at least hopefully allow him to dynamically manage the country as opposed to sticking rigidly to outmoded or outright obsolete ideologies.

[K_Dubb]

It's true, I watched it happen. I used to hold your exact position until I saw it first hand. It's not really even intentional most of the time in big pharma, they just don't develop drugs that aren't profitable. Unfortunately that doesn't always match up with the science and desire to cure disease. It's inefficient.

As disturbing as that is, I've seen the other side of it with NIH-funded gene research, not pharma per se but the therapies were used on real patients.  The place where I used to work got most of its funding because the director was a scientist on the board that reviewed grant proposals.  Pure science funded on its merits, free from cronyism and influence, is a fantasy.  I like your proposal, but it'd have to be set up in a competitive, adversarial way.

[albrecht]

Norry always said he wanted to interview Castro on C2C (did you know he was the last person to interview Hoffa?) and I recall him saying once to a guest that "his people" were working on it. Maybe Castro got wind of it and the thoughts of doing such an interview killed him?

[The King of Kings]

Trump's statement, and Canadian BitchBoy Trudeau's statement.

[K_Dubb]

Norry always said he wanted to interview Castro on C2C (did you know he was the last person to interview Hoffa?) and I recall him saying once to a guest that "his people" were working on it. Maybe Castro got wind of it and the thoughts of doing such an interview killed him?

I think the CIA prevented it -- the pizza roll was his exploding cigar.

[norland2424]

Norry always said he wanted to interview Castro on C2C (did you know he was the last person to interview Hoffa?) and I recall him saying once to a guest that "his people" were working on it. Maybe Castro got wind of it and the thoughts of doing such an interview killed him?

noory killed castro, hence why he wasnt on the air last night

[albrecht]

noory killed castro, hence why he wasnt on the air last night

He also was "the last person to interview Jimmy Hoffa." Hmmm. Maybe Norry is really a clever hitman. Who would suspect such a seemingly bumbling dolt as being a hitman? Perfect cover.