Raul Castro says state will reduce economic role

Good. These clods don't know what they are doing anyway.

They managed to survive after they lost their sugar daddy in the USSR.

Translation: Cuba is on the verge of collapse and Raul is trying to bring it back from the brink just like Gorby tried to do in the USSR by allowing small businesses to rise up. Once the small businesses start becoming big businesses (which is inevitable) the communist state will have to fall.

A lot of people in South Florida are waiting for that also for the day Fidel passes beyond the valley of the shadow. They will throw one hell of a party.

The most popular cottage industry in Havana is prostitution, just like in the old days before the revolution when Fidel was swatting flies up in the mountains.

Here's to hoping for their increased freedom and greater prosperity!

By opening up resorts to Canadian and European tourists.

Hopefully they have a severe-regulations regime in place to monitor and police businesses as they start up, especially for any that are subsidiaries of foreign corporations. I have no love for communist economics or politics, but I certainly hope that they don't go back to the usual Big (American) Business model that's wrecked most of the rest of the world with it's unending and all-consuming rape-a-thon.

Really? I hadn't noticed.

We could make it an Island Paradise like Jamaica.

We could make it an Island Paradise like Jamaica.

Or a capitalist mecca like Haiti.

If only that were true. Haiti's main problem is the breakdown of cultural civility under the Duvalier regimes and rebuilding a culture (which is really what's needed there) is what's needed as a prerequisite for building an economy.

Were I a Hatian leader I'd apply to the US/Canada to become a territory and, perhaps, a state/province. The imposition of civil law in the enforcement of simple contracts would go a long way to re-establishing the cultural civility that's needed to create common trust in that society.

If only that were true. Haiti's main problem is the breakdown of cultural civility under the Duvalier regimes and rebuilding a culture (which is really what's needed there) is what's needed as a prerequisite for building an economy.

Were I a Hatian leader I'd apply to the US/Canada to become a territory and, perhaps, a state/province. The imposition of civil law in the enforcement of simple contracts would go a long way to re-establishing the cultural civility that's needed to create common trust in that society.

Haiti was an unfettered free-market paradise - AKA capitalism.

That is why those of us who understand support socialism or regulated capitalism geared towards providing access to humanitarian services while letting the private sector sell us phones and TVs.

Were I Haiti I'd ask the UN for a reconstruction team with lots of police to partner with local Haiti police backed up by specially trained peacekeeping troops. Focus first on restoring order then rebuilding essential services like electricity, water, and sanitation. Make the rebuilding of hospitals a priority. Then the schools all the while providing security through presence rather then making a very loud effort going after drug dealers or petty criminals. Make the Haitians understand you are helping them rebuild at their request rather then simply trying to build a society over them.

Haiti was not and is not a 'free market paradise'. It was and is, to a great extent, anarchic and where anarchy doesn't reign it's corrupt officials and gang bosses who do.

A 'free market paradise' was Hong Kong from the 1970's to 1997.