Talk:Fidel Castro/Archive 7

message: It doesn't matter, as you say, that many Wikipedia editors believe that the concept of "totalitarianism" works well, given the policy of "no original research." What matters is the classification of Cuba's regime by professional political scientists, and this is contested. In fact, most political scientists do not use the concept of "totalitarianism" as a typology for explaining Cuba's regime characteristics. By stating that Cuba is totalitarianism as a matter of fact in the article means ignoring the view of the majority of scholars and accepting the view of a tiny minority. This is not allowed given the NPOV policy. Instead, what you should try to adopt a neutral point of view by describing Cuba in a way that experts of all types accept, for example as a single-party state. 18:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than asserting this can you be more specific?  If there is a tiny minority that classify him as totalitarian, how do they define it, and does Cuba have the defined characteristics?   Do the majority agree with the characteristics, and just contest the label/definition, or do they contest that Castro's Cuba has those characteristics?  As you know from the past, I am not wedded to a mere term, as long as the true character of Castro's regime is prominent in the article, and not shoved off to a nether corner while the summary/intro white washes the issues. --Silverback 19:26, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep in mind the how different the social sciences are in practice from the natural sciences. There are many competing definitions/conceptualizations of the term in the literature. Even scholars who share the same definition will disagree on whether or not the a particular case has the expected characteristics... If you are not wedded to a mere term, as you say you are, please use language that is not particular to certain kinds of perspectives. Instead, describe Castro's regime as a single-party state or a Communist state, which one cannot deny that Cuba falls under. 172 | Talk 19:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

text: BTW, thanx for putting in the communist party led wikilink to communist state.  I'm surprised that you are the first one here willing to compromise and not act as if the  clique means you don't have to consider compromise.--Silverback 19:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, but I do not know if that was my intent. I always favor the more accurate and precise language, regardless of the personalities involved in the editing. 172 | Talk 19:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Silverback

message: In 2005 Forbes magazine listed Castro among the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of $550 million. As a result Castro is considering filing a lawsuit against the magazine, saying the accusations are false and the article was meant to defame him.
This is hardly a health issue, why is it in the wrong section? --Bky1701 05:33, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a rather strange location for the issue.  Dictators are rich, but I don't know how they would arrive at that value, it seems far too low for someone with over 11 million slaves and that can take any part of the $30 billion in GDP that he wants.  That is his annual income, so his net worth would be much higher, based on the net present value of his future income.--Silverback 05:47, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Regardless, it’s not an illness, though it may attract the same number of doctors. Anyway it seems moved now, so I'll shut up. ;) --Bky1701 06:51, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Health issues? 

message: I admit that I have not verified your list of CIA operations for accuracy, but nevertheless it should be removed because it is off-topic in a biographical entry on Castro. Perhaps you should find another place for the content. Further, if you are stuck having to deal with reversions from other editors, please keep the reference to Communist Party rule, which is offers a more specific description of the structure of the regime that he has set up. Also, for a more complete picture of the history, it's essential to mention how he has alienated many Cubans, especially the exile community in South Florida, through the exclusion of those left unrepresented in or even brutally suppressed by the single-party state that he set up. 172 | Talk 16:28, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This guy obviously has no intention of discussing his reverts, so we can only revert him. CJK 18:07, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comandante

message: A recent edit over-broadens the reasons for early departure of those dispossessed by nationalization in the couple years after the revolution.  It's silly to claim people left because all of a sudden Cuba had single-party rule: Batista was a dictator just before that, and those people didn't flee.  Overwhelmingly, those who left in the first three years did so specifically to transport financial assets that would have been nationalized.  Clearly, later than that, wider opposition developed, but to conflate the later motivations with the initial movement to Miami is deceptive.
That said, I can accept "opposed to nationalization" rather than "dispossessed" specifically.  I think it's a bit less precise, but not openly false.  But the one-party thing is pure canard ("socialist" is uncecessarily abstract too, since it amounts to "nationalization" in regard to the initial emmigration). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, one party state can be removed but "nationalization" does not always have to go along with a socialist society. CJK 20:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't mean a general equation socialist=nationalization.  I mean specifically Cuba in 1959, where nationalization of specific assets was the prompt for emmigration. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:45, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Not all their assets, certainly, but many.  Clearly that was the motivation, for rich folks to take what they could rather than have it re-distributed.  And the one clause in the current lead doesn't attempt a breakdown of exact amounts frozen versus estranged from the country, or anything so detailed as that (this would be the wrong article in any case). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:45, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  One-party in lead 

message: Just to note: the changes by Tanya Ravine are definitely ingenuous.  Essentially her entire edit history has been to rollback changes I make to all kinds of different articles.  I haven't the foggiest idea who she is though, or how I acquired a "secret nemesis".  However, other editor's concern with the phrasing is certainly legit.  The 85% white migrants figure is taken from p.317 of the referenced document "CUBA'S REFUGEES: MANIFOLD MIGRATIONS" (the actual PDF is an extract from a book, so it doesn't have all 317 pages).
In terms of historical privilege and minority, I basically just rely on the Cuba article.  Mentioned there is:
:According to the CIA's World Factbook, Cuba is 51% mulatto (mixed white and black), 37% white, 11% black, and 1% Chinese. 
And also:
:It highlights the shock that Castro's rise to power had on the white upper class, a large portion of whom moved to Florida in the 1960s and 1970s. Also, economic shock caused their birthrate to fall precipitously, even as the poorer black and mulatto populations soared. 
So basically, I'm just trying to provide a one-clause condensation of the info in the main Cuba article, combined with the US census data (the census data also gives the exact migrant numbers, so is worth citing). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 20:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historically privileged 

message: The first paragraph in 'the road to power' suggests that Guevara joined M24-7 in the USA, but I'm pretty sure that was in Mexico. Probably an unfortunate edit, when the sentence about the USA trip was added. So I changed that. I had never heard of that trip. How long did it last and who went (I suppose not all of them)? I also deleted the 'clandestinely' bit. Does this refer to the fact that they had the Mexican authorities after them? DirkvdM 12:07, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mexico / USA 

message: # Does anyone else prefer the previous left-justified layout of the article? It seems so much more amorphous now.
# I have tried to simplify the language a little without losing anything of the content. I hope I have been successful. Sentences seem to have become noticeably longer, with more clauses and connecting 'and's.
# Is there a (Wikipedia) policy as regards using "US" rather than "U.S." (or vice versa) as the abbreviation for "United States"? Personally I prefer the former but will adopt the latter if that is where a consensus lies.
# Anyone else feel the close of the first section, "...should assume his leadership posts.", reads a little clumsily? As well as being President I imagine Castro is still Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, but are there other named positions he (still) has? (Apologies in advance if my knowledge of Cuban politics too thin here.)
Thanks,</br>
David Kernow 04:16, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: U.S.-centrism is a problem in many articles; but I'm not sure if it's a major one here. The Soviet Union was eager to integrate its first American ally into the Eastern bloc, and offered Cuba favorable conditions for markets and loans until it collapsed in 1991. The U.S. struggle against Castro, in contrast, featured far more twists and turn, with tensions reaching the surface in one confrontation after another for nearly 50 years. So it's little surprise that the U.S. is mentioned more often... By the way, the differences in the numbers of occurrences probably won't appear so large if you counted both "USSR" and "Soviet Union." 172 | Talk 09:33, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent facelift to article's beginning 

message: 172 recently reverted the version written by Saravask and edited by several editors, to something fairly ancient (at least by the standards of this article's change).  Unfortunately, the best that might possibly be said of 172's version is that "no sentence in it is specifically false or NPOV".  The rewrite by Saravask actually makes the lead have a narrative flow, and it makes you feel that this is an article you might want to read.  That version might have a bit too much of the favorable-to-Castro element, but little that is outright POV (unlike many recent edits that have blatantly anti-Castro propoganda).  And the version is a bit too long for the lead as well.  But those flaws can be fixed without rolling back to something so much worse literarily.
But I think it is highly desirable to have WP articles that readers would actually want to read, rather than ones that merely "avoid misinforming" (if only because they are so dry no one would actually read them). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 14:30, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Narrative flow 

message: I apologize for the baseless suggestion in one of my edit summaries that David Kernow and Saravask are sockpuppets. From past experience I've found that when two new editors (with hyperlinks to their user pages appearing in red) are making the same major changes to controversial articles at once, it's usually a sockpuppet. Nevertheless, looking at the editing histories, this generalization doesn't seem to hold up in this case... Nevertheless, I think that reverting back to an order version of the intro was the right move. The Saravask and David Kernow version, though less POV than other recent versions, adopts the perspective of Western human rights advocacy groups. Instead, we should strive more a more positive and less normative framing of the information, adopting a neutral omniscient voice to the best of our abilities. In practice this means not evaluating him according to our own values, but assess how he has gone about consolidating power and how effective he has been in securing his political interests. 172 | Talk 14:36, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: My edit summary and the intro

message: I feel there are now too many editors working on this article at the same time, so, for the time being at least, I will withdraw. Thanks to those who have responded positively to my efforts.</br>
David Kernow 14:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I apologize once again for whatever role my bumbling return to the article played in your decision to withdraw. I encourage you to return and look forward to your feedback. 172 | Talk 15:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too many cooks 

message: It's really all about whether Castro is or is not a cult of personality. I was expecting to read that in the U.S. the popular image is w and x and in Cuba the popular image is y and z. Instead I got a debate about personality cultism. Change the title or move the discussion to its own page where Castro could be one example. (IMHO)
Wegerje 13:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason for this is that the text was originally written by TJive for the Cult of personality article. However, there, it took up about one third of the article and it seemed more in place here, so I moved it, sort of expecting that it would be modified to fit better (I didn't have the time for that at the moment). Sort of like you're suggesting now. That's the way Wikipedia works, so go ahead. DirkvdM 07:40, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular Image?