Whats your secret?

[Lazie]

[Assasin]

RE: Whats your secret?

Mi think a Omar did a the wizard?

Look at our neighbours. Dominican Repbulic, Cayman and Cuba. Haiti soon start grow yah now too.

[Lazie]

RE: Whats your secret?

Because everybody else have dem priorities right. Jamaicans priority is to dem friend or party. Look how Jawge a try step away from his regular cry about education, because him see who more serious about it.

[Assasin]

RE: Whats your secret?

A wonder if you realise how much jobs come with 12% growth?

If we had that our national debt would be reduce by about 10% to the ratio of GDP in one year only.

[Jawge]

RE: Whats your secret?

Lazie what are you talking about?

Audley says the way to address competitive productivity in ja is to spend millions on Kindergarten and you are having a party. Please

[Lazie]

RE: Whats your secret?

As the guest preacher, yuh preaching to the pastor! Talk to Jawge, Karl, Balla, Sickko and the rest of the gang.

[Sickko]

RE: Whats your secret?

I would not be too quick to believe those numbers coming out of Cuba just yet, Just remember there is no freedom of the press there and the papers there print whatever the government wants them to.



I have been there a number of times and met people from both sides of the revolution and you woule be surprised at what you hear as opposed to what is said through the official government propaganda machinery.



One of the biggest myths is that every Cuban child gets the chance to go to University free of charge.



The reality is that only the top 10% actually goes to university and when they get out of school, they are not guaranteed a job in their field either.



There is actually illiteracy there as well but you wont read it anywhere. Also a serious AIDS Crisis but you wont read it anywhere either as as soon as the doctors find out, the infected person is taken against their will to a compound.



Pedro the best maitre 'd I have ever seen, works at the Italian restaurant at Breezes Varadero- he has a Masters in Engineering but cant get a job so he does what is best for him and his family.



Lisa a girl I met at a club one night- speaks fluent English and has a segree in hotel management but the closest she gets to the hotel's offices is when she cleans it.



I did meet a few people, even young ones- that is under 30 who believed in the reviolution but thyey all had good jobs and were allowed to travel but most i met just wanted to get to Miami as fast as they could.



While the Cuban trained doctors might be among the best in the world, we hear, they are not magicians as we are seeing from the many botched eye operations we see here.

[Lazie]

RE: Whats your secret?

Well believe this, under Omar's reign we average an annual growth rate of 0.8%. Yuh find that impressive?

[MdmeX]

RE: Whats your secret?

Sickko (11/30/2006)While the Cuban trained doctors might be among the best in the world, we hear, they are not magicians as we are seeing from the many botched eye operations we see here.

Thanks for that paragraph. Like doctors everywhere else, the Cuban trained ones have them likkle nuances.

What I observed during the 80's is that the Komrades (who had money and position) did not see out Cuba to remedy their ailments.

[Sickko]

RE: Whats your secret?

SIGH.....Lazie some times you really baffle me, or did Karl get your password and posted under your name?



Where in my post did you see me mentioin or even infer anything about Jamaica or Omar Davies???



Come on man do better than that...

[Sickko]

RE: Whats your secret?

In the 1980s and even now, the people with the money go to Miami or Atlanta...there is a skin condition, the one where you lose Melanin that they are the world's leaders however.



What I am told by an eye doctor sistren is that they use the young doctors just out of University to practice on the people from Jamaica and other Caribbean countries who go there for the free operation.

[Lazie]

RE: Whats your secret?

You that easily baffled? You started out saying,

would not be too quick to believe those numbers coming out of Cuba just yet, Just remember there is no freedom of the press there and the papers there print whatever the government wants them to.

We have freedom of the press in Jamaica and the data shows an average of 0.8% tell me if you believe them and if yuh impressed by them nuh? What in that is baffling?

[Assasin]

RE: Whats your secret?

While there can be some flated numbers the growth normally never more than 1% adjusted for any country. I will have to check the international institutions see what they say but if you look at it Dominican Republic have been growing between 5-10 % a year.

If Cuba grow at 10 % a year then many of those people will no longer look to go to Miami.

Remember Ireland? All the young Irish were heading to America and England, now they are heading home after 10 years of real positive growth and a booming economy.

I would like to see more numbers out of Cuba to see how they manage to grow a communist country by that margin because most economics will tell you only under free market that can happen, but then again there is China.

the Truth be is that our neighbourhood is growing economically and we need to step it up.

[Muadib]

RE: Whats your secret?

Jawge (11/30/2006)Lazie what are you talking about?

Audley says the way to address competitive productivity in ja is to spend millions on Kindergarten and you are having a party. Please

You prove the point that it is not only Literacy that is important but COMPREHENSION.

Your lack of it is alarming.

[Assasin]

RE: Whats your secret?

<H2>Cuba Comes in from the Cold </H2><DIV class=entry><H4>Bolstered by New Investments and Beneficial Trade Agreements, the Island’s Economy Surges while Washington Grumbles over Havana’s Possible Big Oil Surprise</H4><DIV class=superbox>Announcing COHA’s Dissent Channel:

From time to time, one of COHA’s research associates produces a piece that, while intellectually rigorous, is not consistent with the political analysis normally espoused by the organization. In order to accommodate such works, COHA has created a new section on its webpage entitled “Dissent.” This new forum will allow high-quality scholarship produced by COHA’s large staff to receive the exposure it deserves and, in so doing, more accurately reflect some of the countervailing ideologies that define hemispheric affairs from varying points of view and the differences of opinion that exist in COHA’s office.

The first article released as a “Dissent” piece is written by COHA research associate Timothy Hatfield and will be placed on the website in the coming days. Utilizing Chávez’s own Bolivarian Constitution, his piece paints a pessimistic picture of the future of Venezuelan democracy. </DIV><UL><LI>Cuban society reaps benefits from new investments and from major equity transfers coming from China and Venezuela <LI>New economic arrangements and wider political ties have led Havana out of its U.S.-consigned international purdah <LI>Regional political shift blows apart Washington’s already failed policy of attempting to isolate Cuba <LI>Bush Administration commits its latest blunder in announcing another scorched earth attack against Castro, but it’s fast running out of arrows and credibility </LI>[/list]

For a country long in the grip of a paralyzing economic malaise, and with living standards which have not always endeared government officials to ordinary citizens, Fidel Castro’s May Day boast of 11.8 percent growth in the first three months of 2006 came as welcome news to a long suffering population. The upbeat report, reflecting a far better-stocked national larder than ever before, replaced the usual exhortations for personal sacrifices that the average Cuban was used to hearing from the leadership, which usually offers more fiery rhetoric than caloric intake. In front of more than one million people gathered at Havana’s Revolution Square, Castro trumpeted progress in all sectors of the economy, despite an unshakeable U.S. trade embargo. Since then, and in widely different locales, Fidel has continued to boast a climbing rate of economic growth, claiming that Cuba’s economy had expanded by 12.5% in the first quarter of this year. “We should thank [the blockade] because it has forced us to grow and rise to the occasion,” the near-octogenarian leader satisfyingly declared on May Day.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 inaugurated the beginning of the very harsh “Special Period” in Cuban history. As its Eastern-bloc financial subsidies dried up and trade dwindled, the Cuban economy suffered a crushing 35% decrease in its GDP. As one U.S. observer noted, “Almost all of Cuba’s sugar harvest had been sold to the communist bloc throughout the Cold War era, and in return the island imported two-thirds of its food supply, nearly all its oil and 80% of its machinery and spare parts from the same sources.” As a result, after 1990, 85% of Havana’s export-import trade –mainly from Eastern Europe—was lopped off, bringing on extremely bitter days for Cuba’s population.

Now, after over a decade of struggle, the island is making a relatively extraordinary recovery: Havana has linked up with new trading partners while revitalizing old ones, resulting in a surging relationship with most of Latin America (albeit involving modest volumes) and much of the rest of the world. The growth has captured the attention of free-market, capitalistic economists who once deemed Cu