By the way the old section actually included a link to a Granma article On a related note economy of Cuba also needs a clean up Most of the text there is not unsalvageable Still the article predictably does in detail extolling Cuba s world class biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry while not mentioning the word rationing even once And your present paragraph doesn t mention the US embargo 172 Your re write omits that elephant in the room Nor does your re write recognise any of this or this or this etc etc But we re in for the long haul towards NPOV so we will have plenty of time to discuss the economy section in more detail once more pressing issues are resolved I agree that the embargo and its effect on the economy need to be discussed While revolutionary regimes which claim to reject the world capitalist system can t really complain when that system takes them at their word and excludes them the loss of Cuba s most natural export market and source of investment the US has obviously had a major impact on its economy But ultimately of course Cuba s poverty is Castro s fault because the embargo however misguided is a response to his undemocratic regime When Castro came to power Cuba and Puerto Rico had roughly comparable standards of living Today Puerto Rico is six times wealthier than Cuba per capita in per capita GDP although I concede that in Cuba the poverty is more evenly distributed If Castro had never come to power Cuba would by now not only be a democracy it would be at least as rich as Puerto Rico and probably richer Don t worry comrades I m not going to try to put that in the article I m also struck by 172 s assertion that Cuba is a net importer of sugar What is his source The FAO doesn t seem to support this 1 My omission of the embargo was intentional Still if you want to add a few details on the embargo please go ahead Since you re the main author of the article I ll defer to your editorial judgment on how to organize the article In case you re interested I ll lay out my reasoning on the omission First when I was writing the section and contemplating the choice of adding a few lines on the about the embargo I realized that by the time the reader would work his or her way down to the Economy section the embargo had already been mentioned about half a dozen times particularly in the History section Hence I was interested in avoiding redundancy Second while I do not disregard the role of the embargo in cementing Cuba s isolation from the world capitalist system I think that s a topic belonging under a broader discussion of economic history in the History section My assumption is that a section entitled Economy is not necessarily going to offer an economic history The Economy section is supposed to be a discussion of the contemporary Cuban economy right The model I had in mind was something along the lines of a shorter version of the type of write up one would find in Economist Intelligence Unit country report At any rate if you disagree I won t make an issue out of it 2 Regarding the claim that Cuba is a net importer of sugar the figure is indeed quite surprising I found that claim in the Heritage Foundation s most recent report on Cuba While I m not much of a fan of Heritage generally I don t think the factual accuracy of their reports is too much of a question Still if you want to remove the claim go ahead It s only one possible anecdotal illustration of the deep seated structural problems in Cuba commonly associated with other past Soviet style command economies If you can think of more relevant please add them Archive manipulation Maybe as an archive worker I m being a bit sensitive but I am finding it a tad disturbing that the archives of this discussion are being manipulated probably by Adam and his allies Last time I dropped by I wrote some comments under the heading The Cold War continues on Adam s claims to be the standard bearer of the truth round here The next time I looked a new page had been started and the last section of the previous page now Archive 5 had been broken up by subheadings all of which begin with Bruce complains about M