Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:33, 6 April 2003

This is blatant propaganda. US-friendly countries in Misplaced Pages with appalling human rights -- I'm talking tens of thousands murdered, not thousands of prisoners -- get whitewashed, while Castro gets alomst nothing but invective for human rights abuses many times more minor.

I'm not disputing that Castro's an autocrat and puts people in jail for criticizing him. But where's the mention of Cuba's incredibly generous aid work program, which sends twice as many foreign aid workers to poor countries as does the United States, a country incomparably more rich and ten times larger? Where's the acknowledgement of the obvious American role in encouraging human rights abuses by Castro's regime? Cuba's been subjected to an American terror campaign out of Miami for decades now -- real brutal stuff, dropping germs on cattle, blowing up an ammunition ship in Havana harbour slaughtering scores of civillians, burning down a department store with a thermite-stuffed doll killing scores more, blowing up a factory right at the height of the missile crisis and killing hundreds, bombing foreign tourists who dare to visit Cuba, I could go on and on. And that's without even discussing an embargo specifically aimed at preventing food and medicine from getting to Cuba in violation of every international law and WTO rule you can think of.

When America was subjected to the deaths of many citizens, but nothing even approaching the loss of American independence or the fall of its government, it clamped down significantly on civil liberties. If some incomprehensibly powerful country was terrorizing and starving America, do you think they'd fail to imprison people who advocate overthrowing their government?

The attackers at the Bay of Pigs were not "slaughtered". They were defeated, surrendered, and were eventually released (with the exception of some leaders, who were executed). If Cubans tried that on Miami, do you think a single one wouldn't be executed?

"Soviet subsidies" were far less than the economic damage done by the American embargo and did not "finance Cuba's social conditions". Cuba's citizens are still better off than many Latin Americans living under "capitalist democracy" despite forty years of murderous blockade. America preaches about the abused Cubans but struggles fiercly to prevent them actually leaving Cuba.

America's internal documents show they decided to overthrow Castro before he was a communist and before he had nationalized anything other than phone companies and similar obvious public utilities.

This whole article reads like a Cato Institute briefing or something. I don't know where to begin to fix it.--Anon

Copyedited for NPOV. Factualy statements kept in and reduced the number of unneeded adjectives. --mav

172.161.185.97, may I offer you a few tips?

• Register yourself with a screen name so that people know who you are. (It's free, takes one minute, and need not disclose your real name or email address if you don't want it to.) People will take you more seriously if you are not just an anonymous number.
• Make small changes, a bit at a time, taking care to make sure that they are verifiable and expressed dispasionatley.
• The net effect of putting in an adulatory para like the one you added to this article is that someone will delete it, and the useful information that it contains will be lost. Tone down your language, take out as much emotive stuff as you can, and let the facts speak for themselves.

If you can do these things successfully, then you can make a real contribution to this page, and to the other pages you have been editing. Tannin

The version of Jan. 3, 2003 is heavily pro-Castro.

• It makes no mention of Castro's forcible suppression of opposition, calling him the "unchallenged leader" and claiming that the masses "rallied behind him."
• It fails to mention Castro's policy of forbidding emigration (I've read reports in newspapers of Castro's navy sinking boats carrying people trying to escape.)
• It ought to mention the lack of press freedom, too.

--Uncle Ed

Why is Cuba's infant mortality rate only "technically" lower than the US's? If it's lower, it's lower. Mswake 10:19 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

The way to deal with this is to find the figures from a reputable source, such as an appropriate international agency, and shoe the actual figures. "Technically lower" in my mind means "not statistically significant". Eclecticology 17:49 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll do some research. However "technically lower" still reads to me a bit like sour grapes, as if the lower figure is somehow not "real". Mswake 09:43 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

OK, figures are from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2002/02hus026.pdf. You're right that the rates are close (7.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births for Cuba versus 7.2 for the USA), but still I don't see the point of the "technically". "Slightly" I think would do the job and that's what I'm going to change it to. Mswake 09:57 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

Castro's not the only name on the ballot. He's not on the ballot. Cuban citizens don?t vote in presidental elections. He?s elected by the state council.

172

This anonomyous user has revised the comment regarding voting. It is now factual and accurate.

172

Does the state council vote for anyone other than Castro?

Do you have any voting results for all of the times Castro was reelected/reconfirmed by the state council?

Don't you think that I know this? I don't know anyone, including grade-schoolers, who doesn't know that.

172

Leaving aside the POV issues for the moment, one issue that strikes me is the amount of overlap between this article and the one on History of Cuba. Under the circumstances of a 44 year reign it can be difficult to separate the man from the history of his country. My inclination would be to use the present article to deal with what the man personally did, while the actions of his government properly belong with the other article. ☮ Eclecticology 20:33 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)