Talk:Cuba/Archive 2

message: Because of the length of the talk page, I have decided to create an Archive subpage for topics that are not receiving current discussion.  I intend on moving topics that have not been discussed in the past three months.  I also intend to sort out the untitled other stuff section that is currently below and give it sectuion titles as appropriate. Caerwine 19:26, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: While helpful, moving only stuff that hadn't been touched in three months didn't move a lot to the archive, but I'm reluctant to do more without getting comment from others first. Caerwine 19:53, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: Someone has recently changed the name of certain US actions actions against Cuba from "embargo" to "blockade".  In one sense this is a correct change because both countries use this term (or bloqueo in Spanish).  There was of course a blockade during the time of the Missile Crisis in the 1960s, but over an extended period of time this has really been an embargo, and "blockade" is a misnomer.  In a blockade of a country, all traffic is prevented from enterring or leaving it.  All ships from third countries are blocked by military force from doing business with the blockaded country.  Cuba does continue to trade with other countries.
The question becomes, "Do we use the incorrect term supported by both parties to the dispute, or do we use the term that more correctly describes the factual situation?" ☮ Eclecticology 01:49, 2003 Aug 11 (UTC)
----
Or use both and explain?  Robneild 20:01, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: In this context since both American and Cuban official sources misuse the term blockade your argument that it is because of a political viewpoint has no basis in fact.  Some of us just like to use the language correctly.  Your quotation is fine, but it does not reflect what's happening.  The Americans forbid their citizens from trading with Cuba; that's an embargo.  They are not AFAIK maintaining a naval presence outside Havana harbour to obstruct the shipping of other nations; if they did that would be a blockade. ☮ Eclecticology 10:25, 2004 Feb 29 (UTC)
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It is not a "blockade" but a Trade and Financial Embargo. 
Orbis Tertius 04:25, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Embargo v. Blockade

message: I have reread the article and it became evident to me that is contains strong anti-communist/anti-Castro bias. We should somehow try to make this article NPOV...  Dr Bug  15:21, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Which is it, anti-communist or anti-Castro? -- orthogonal 16:25, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that I don't know exact numbers and facts too much, but my bull shit detector is ringing off the wall. For example, in the History section, pictures of flourishing Cuba before the revolution and emphasizing problems of communist Cuba look extemely non-NPOV. Use of wording like a small group of less than 100 "rebeldes" triggers the alarm too. In the Economy section there is evident nonsense that remittance from exiles amounts to third of the Cuban economy (at least wording imply this). All three paragraphs about Cuban economy describe how much US help to Cuba. All Cuban achievements and positive sides are omitted. This article evidently deserves huge refactoring...  Dr Bug  20:09, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've checked the article's history and found that all bias is introduced by single anonymous user: 66.176.126.243. And all words that trigger alarm, are written by him. Therefore, I will try to accurately revert his changes only. It will allow the comunity to continue with clear article.  Dr Bug  20:30, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti-communist bias 

message: Guys, this is crucial:
I have not much time to edit the history not to do in depth research on the history of Cuba, but it is relevant that there is 699 words on the history section, now, out of those 699 words, there is only 73 words of history before the year 1953, which effectively starts the revolutionary era, since it is the attack on the Moncada barracks. Notice the discrepancy, there is roughly 10% of the writing on a period of roughly 461 years, while there is roughly 90% of the writing on a period of roughly 52 years, or a relationship of 10% of writing for 90% of history, and 90% of writing for 10% of history. In addition to that, notice that there is a rich history of Cuba in the period between 1492 and 1953, and that after 1959 Cuba hasn't changed much, I mean, don't get me wrong, there is a lot of political talk about the island, there is a lot of opinions about the Revolution and whatnot, however, it is important for many to know the background of Cuban history, keep in mind that Cuba is the key to the Caribbean, keep in mind famous writers during the 19th century, keep in mind that Cuba has led the Latin America in several aspects, including the advent of the railroad, the advent of television, the first Latin American to go to space, and for that matter, I believe, the first black (or as many would like to say, African American, for Cubans are Americans as the rest of the inhabitants of the continent are) to go to space. In conclusion, there is a lot to write about, instead of write with so much unnecessary passion about the Revolution, for I believe not many of us live in Cuba, and thus this encyclopedia has the opinion of exiles and people that do not live in the island, and thus, to make the encyclopedia credible, it would be of great help to create a historical outline, and try to just write facts about Cuban history, and reserve our opinions to ourselves and perhaps comment about our opinions about certain historical facts in this discussion. So again, please, all together, let's try and create instead an outline of Cuban history, and then write, and only write, about the historical facts of Cuba, and leave the opinions, biased or not, to this discussion.
:Not only that, a lot of this is not needed in the main article.  I don't have time at the moment, but can someone please remove a lot of the infomation.  --harrismw 08:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: 199.125.186.19 has been ranting again. Some of his contributions seem constructive and Robneild has previously attempted to clean up his contributions. I don't have the patience or time for it, so I'll just revert it all. Let 199.125.186.19 do the cleaning up himself. Then maybe his contributions can be taken seriously. DirkvdM 07:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another revert of 199.125.186.19 

message: There is some confusion about whether Cuba is to be called Socialist or Communist. Ultramarine changed that to 'Revolutionary' in one header, which also seems a good option because that's what it's called in Cuba (the Revolution is said to continue to this day). But, as the Revolutionary and Revolution articles say, a Revolution is sudden, so this use of the term does not follow the general definition and is therefore misleading.
The ideology of Cuba, as reflected in the name Communist Party, is Communist, but Communism is a social system that cannot yet be achieved in Cuba. First the mentality of people has to change to 'el Hombre Nuevo' (the New Man), as Guevara called it, and that goal hasn't quite been achieved yet, and the means of production will have to develop. In the meantime Socialism is used as an intermediate stage to achieve that goal. Also, in Cuba there is hardly any mention of Communism. The state is always called Socialist. So I suggest using that term. DirkvdM 08:52, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: for the last time. a "Communist state" is a state ruled solely by the Communist Party. Cuba could introduce market reforms and as long as the CPC still had a monopoly on power it could still be objectively called a Communist state. the term "Communist state" does not make a judgment on whether said states have achieved "true" communism. J. Parker Stone 04:42, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Communist, Socialist or Revolutionary 

message: To DirkvdM. You have admitted that you did not look over my post before you deleted my contribution. You have also threathened to delete everything I do:
"From now on I'm inclined to revert any edits of yours without even checking what they are."
I consider that violation of rules (unwritten or written, still a violation). 
You also wrote:
"Simply copying text from elsewhere requires at least a mention of the source. And a very sloppy edit again."
I remember siting the (same) source, not once, but twice. Yes, two times. However, I felt it would be "sloppy" to site the source more than that, because my contributions were in different sections of the article. Thus, repeating the same source 20 times... Well, if you would like me to do that, then fine. I would never delete yours, or anyone else's, contributions without even looking at them. I consider that bias and a violation on your part.
The second time of my larger contribution, I had different content. I removed a lot from what I added the previous time. I did add other things, WITH a source (BBC). 
I add these things, partly because most of the economic section is very biased. It does not give the version of both sides. The economic section is not neutral at all. I added less this time, like Wikipedia itself has suggested and gave as an example if a conflict would arise, so that it can be more properly balanced.
I did that, and you deleted the whole thing. I think I even used an hour our even more to get it in the proper context!
If you find something "sloppy" you should make an effort to edit it so that it is not longer sloppy, not delete it. By deleting my contribution, you deleted a whole more than what you were aware of, because you did not even look through my contribution. You simply deleted it! Now you are threathening or even outright said you will delete everything I add! You didn't even look at my source. Why? Because you deleted everything before even looking at sources! In reality, you say "I deleted your add because you don't add sources and I won't look after sources anyways, so I'll just assume you do not give any sources at all, and delete everything you do!"
You have also called me an idiot, later, after criticism, you took it back, but I don't exactly feel you are being "fair" here!  
I assume you are either doing this because you want this article to be inclined to your view of the world, have a personal dislike for me or anyone else who are not inclined to agree with you, or simply like to provocate. Perhaps all of them. Maybe not. Only you know.
Anyways, stop this conduct please. - NWOG, 17:01, 3 August, (UTC)
:What you assume about me ironically reflects fairly well the impression I have of you :) . I said that I'm contemplating not even looking at your edits again. So far, however, I have looked at them enough to see that most of it deserves deletion and haven't bothered too much with filtering out the bits that do deserve a place in the article. Also, your edits are indeed very sloppy. Like the extra open lines that don't make any sense (like you have done here again). I was wondering how you could spend so much time on such long edits and then, after they were deleted (by me or someone else) not bother to do them again in a more clever way. So I tested a theory and yes, it turns out you just simply copy texts from elsewhere. That is likely to be violation of copyright. Though that would not go for copying speeches by Fidel. But then if you quote someone, you should put that in quotes and mention the source. You claim you did, so I checked, but there really isn't any mention of the fact that your text came from a speech by Fidel. Especially the phrasing "Lately, we have seen an uplift of the Cuban economy" looks a bit odd in an encyclopedia when not in quotes. And now you do use qutoes to quote me with things I never said! Also, you go into way too much detail where that is not appropriate. Like I said, all very sloppy and I just don't feel like filtering through it all. Hence the inclination to just revert everything. Clean up your act and you'll have much less trouble with me. By the way, if I don't revert your edits someone else probably will. DirkvdM 20:17, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, now I see, in your last edit you put in the source twice. In rapid succession. Which is rather ehm ... sloppy? I didn't touch that. Caerwine beat me to it this time. DirkvdM 20:22, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

text: I didn't revert your edits because of just one thing like not mentioning that something was a quote. It was a whole range of things that would require too much work to put straight (hence the term 'sloppy'), so I reverted it, half expecting you to work on it yourself and put up a different version, as I often do when that happens to me (after all, the original editor is the best person for this). I see that the sentence you mention is indeed (almost) equal to several other texts, but the most literal 'equations' are in copies from Wikipedia, not the other way around. Or am I missing a source? Anyway, what I mean is that if it's just something like that, it's easily fixed. although it would also be a good idea to figure out who put the 'unquoted quote' there and ask them to be more careful in the future. DirkvdM 07:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Deleting whole contributions without even looking at them

message: I first thought of making a section for health, and another for education. After a few minutes of thinking, I created a section: "Health and Education". This was, however, deleted. 
Instead of starting a "adding - deleting war", I wanted to start a discussion on the subject, and if they are going to be seperate sections, or not. When I think of it, I think a seperate would be the best. - NWOG, 19:35, 3. August, 2005. (CUT)
Okay, are any of you seriously going to deny that the Cuban health-care system is two-tiered?
Admit it, let the relevant content stay and move on. Sheesh. Unsigned by 18.187.1.62
:Right, but you (inadvertantly?) deleted much of the rest that was there. I just merged both, the narrative seems cohesive enough. El_C 01:59, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Health and Education  

message: Cuba was occupied by the United States in 1898, until 1902. Cuba did not gain independence before the Cuban revolution. It was not a sovereign nation until then. In the little article "República de Cuba" on the right side, it says that Cuba gained independence from Spain, and that it happened during the Spanish-American War, which is false.
:That is indeed complicated. I fixed it to some extent. See the talk page (Template talk:Cuba infobox#Independence). Whether Cuba was really independent after 1902 is debatable, but officially it was. So that needs to go in the Info Box. An explanation of that in the text is another matter, but that would have to be worded very carefully. What about a comparison with the Soviet influence in Eastern Europe? :) Now that would really bring the ceiling down! (or how do you say that). Just kidding. You have a point, but it's a bit too sharp, so to say. :) DirkvdM 18:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, I didn't know that. That deserves a mention in the article (and of course the history aricle). But it's a bit too complicated to put in the Info Box. DirkvdM 08:01, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, and in any case there have been historical "independent states" that have remained close to a larger power. Cuba was a Spanish colony and it gained it's independence following the Spanish-American War. the U.S. was originally a major player in Cuban affairs and during the '60s it became close to the USSR, but it was still officially independent. J. Parker Stone 10:24, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Regarding Cuba's independence 

message: There has been some controversy regarding the US state department link. Some has argued that the link should be placed in "General", while others say "Opposition". Frankly I see no point in having a US state department link in General. The United States is Cuba's enemy. They have bombed an terrorized Cuba, and frankly, that link should only be in the Opposition section, where it belongs. If this was an article regaring the US, would we have an "Al Qaeda's views on the US" in "General", or in "Opoosition"? We have enough talk about the US already in this world. Let us not let the US take over articles concerning Cuba. - NWOG
:Frankly, if any one link needs to be moved from Greneral to Opposition, I'd say that the CUBANET link would have the greatest claim.  At least the boys from Foggy Bottom provide information even you would categorize as neutral in addition to their well-sourced disses of Cuba's woes because of Castro's oppression.  That CUBANET site seems to me to be more selective in its choice of material so as to be rather uniformly anti-Castro.  The fact that you haven't tried anything with the CUBANET link indcates to me that you probably based you choice what link needed moving based on pre-conceived impressions without actually examining the sites. It's a close call, but the value of the neutral information causes me to think the U.S. State Dept. link belongs in the General section not the Opposition. Caerwine 04:05, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  State department link 

message: Es su deber patriótico a rebelar contra el régimen de Castro para el motivo de la democracia y de la libertad. NOSOTROS, que la gente cubano exige la libertad del discurso, libertad de desean, libertad del miedo, libertad de la prensa, y elecciones del Multi-partido. ¡Es nuestro trabajo llevar las calles de La Habana y de otras ciudades cubanos importantes y exigir las estas derechas!
¡Abajo Con Castro!
-- Comandante Gomez del Ejército Cubano de la Liberación
:Es nuestro deber como Wikipedianos de relatar la Verdad, sea lo que sea. 
:¡Abajo Con Grupos de Presión! 
:DirkvdM 08:29, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  ¡CUBANOS DE LA ATENCIÓN! 

message: The fact is, Cuba was in fact occupied by American soldiers. The US only pulled out from large parts of the country after Cuba accepted the Platt Ammendment, which limited Cuba's sovereignity, and put Cuba in US hands, yet again. Cuba WAS invaded, AND occupied. There is no question about it. Thus, I believe, occupation is a perfectly find word. Just like the occupation of Iraq before the elections. - NWOG
NWOG that makes it 1933. Please tell me aside from a base near Havana during WWII, that the US put troops in Cuba outside of Guantanamo. (El Jigüe, 10/1/2005) 
There are a number of words that have roughly the same meaning here, such as administration, occupation, and regency.  Occupation has decidedly negative connotations, while regency has decidedly positive connotations.  Administration is the most neutral as while it clearly indicates that the United States was in charge, it provides no implications of the nature of that control.  However, even beyond connotations there are other reasons to prefer administration.  In the parlance of 1898 English, it would not have been refered to as an occupation (as that would have then referred to the actual assumption of control) but as an "occupancy", which is what it is called in the 1898 Treaty of Paris.  To refer to a U.S. occupancy, would be somewhat silly tho, for the English of 2005 is not the same as that of 1898.  Administration has not undergone any shift in connotations in the past century unlike the term occupation.
As for the comparison with Iraq, unlike Cuba of a century earlier, the term occupation was, as far as I am aware, never used by the U.S. authorities in Iraq to describe themselves.  Yet more evidence of how the interpretation of the word occupation has come in the past century to indicate a negative bias that it did not formerly possess. Caerwine 22:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "dominance" has nothing to do with the technical use of "independence," no one has argued that the U.S. wasn't a major factor in Cuban government after the end of the Spanish colonial period. J. Parker Stone 05:32, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Good Grief! I doubt if any but the most rabid of anti-Communists would try to argue that Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Mongolia were not independent (sic are you sure you are not President Clinton  as if he were defining sex (;>)) states before 1989 despite the fact that as shown in 1953, 1956, and 1968 that if they strayed too far from Moscow's line, the Soviet Army would see that that they stepped back into place. Similarly, to try and claim that Cuba has not had independence in at least the de jure sense since 1902 is ludicrous. Wikipedia doesn't bother with placing entries in the Infoboxes of the Soviet satellites showing when they were no longer under Soviet domination, so I don't see where that info bleongs in Cuba's infobox.  Wikipedia uses the de jure definition of independence in the infoboxes, i.e., do other states accept ambassadors from the place and send ambassadors of their own there. Caerwine 17:48, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  US occupation or "administration"? 

message: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez was the first Cuban cosmonaut and the first person from an American country other than the US to travel in space. I think this is worth mentioning in the History section, but so far, there is no word on him. - NWOG
Probably worth adding to the History of Cuba article if it isn't already there, but not to this article. Caerwine 16:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And maybe space exploration or some similar article. Also the first black man in space. DirkvdM 08:15, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cuban cosmonaut, worth mentioning? 

message: The Communist Party of Cuba article states that as of 1997 the party had a membership of approximately 780,000 in 1997 (Fifth Patry Congress).  The Demographic of Cuba article gives a 2005 estimate of 9,127,614 for the population aged 15 or older.  That gives a percentage of 8.5%, but allowing for the fact that 15, 16, and 17, year olds aren't generally considered adults along with the slight population growth that Cuba had had in the past eight years, being more exact than one in ten would be overly precise with the figures available.  More recent data on party membership to make a better estimate would of course be appreciated and should be added the to the Communist Party of Cuba article in addition to being used to form a better total. Caerwine 22:00, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of PCC 

message: It looks like this atricle is once again the focus of an edit war as the anti-Castro wackos have a contest with the pro-Castro wackos to see who can score the most propoganda points.  Unfortunately, this means that attempts at productive edits of the article are going to be largely moot until this sillyness subsides. Caerwine 17:35, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arrgh!!!! 

message: Why can't you add all your info to the History of Cuba article? --Hottentot
And learn how to edit properly. Knowing stuff is one prerequisite for working on Wikipedia - unless you do a copy-edit. Knowing how thing work here is, however, another - unless you're a passer-by who adds a bit of stuff that others can then format properly. But if you do big edits you should know how to do it properly. Otherwise you're just as likely to get your edits reverted at the history article. DirkvdM 08:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I won't bother to read the above since the real issue is not what you put in but how you do it and obviously you still don't get it. DirkvdM 18:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Look at the header. This thread is not meant to spew random info. It's about you. If you want to talk about a different subject then start a new thread. Learn how Wikipedia works. I make some mistakes too, but I'm not that thick-skulled. And can you blame me for not reading the above if you write something like "Also considering process above content in an encyclopedia is not the wisest thing either." ? DirkvdM 04:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

text: No, that was not me and there is an extremely simple way to find that out. But if you're that disinterested in how Wikipedia works I'm not going to tutor you. Simply click 'help' in the sidebar and start reading. It's not very compicated for simple text-edits. Just one thing. Sign with four tildes as shown below the edit box. Didn't you even read that? Clean up your act and your edits might get taken a bit more seriously. DirkvdM 10:13, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  El Jigüe, aka 2005 205.240.227.15 ...

message: Like all four of the conficts from 1689 to 1763, the one that ended in 1763 had different names in Britain and in the British colonies. I strongly doubt that war is called the French and Indian War in Cuba, as the Cubans fought neither French nor Indians in that war.  Furthermore, the equivalent article on the Spanish Wiki is Guerra de los Siete Años, which also suggests that Seven Years' War is the better name to use in this article, so there is no need to place a (sic) or a reference to the French and Indian War in this article in addition to Seven Years' War. Caerwine 05:31, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: While the article is written in English, it is not written by only those in the U.S., nor is it intended to be read by only people there.  The simple truth is that of the two names used in English for the war, it appears that only Seven Years' War is used in Spanish, despite the fact that for Spain it was actually a three year war since Spain and its colonies did not become involved until 1761.  Secondly, as much as I strive for some some degree of Political Correctness, it is extremely silly and hyper-PC to refer to "Native Americans"  (Didn't you complain earlier about the usage of "Native Cubans"?) when talking briefly about the two principal enemies of the English American colonists in the "French and Indian War". Caerwine 18:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Seven Years' War

message: Caerwine If one checks the US colonial losses at Havana were only second to those on the Plains of Abrahams Quebec or should I say Kebec (xe xe).  I notice you go into paroxysms of pettifoggery to get all excited about this and complete ignore the constant erasure by pro-Castroites of mentions of the dictator's misdeeds.  
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. velly int-er-er-esting!"  Surely this is not pedantry or prejudice on your part? Xe! Han! Han! Xe! El Jigüe (October 7th 2005)
That's because I've given hope of doing anything with NWOG except reverting his damage, and his edits never contain anything except propoganda (or the removal of facts counter to that).  I still entertain a slim hope that you can become something more than a nuisance, especially since my primary disagreement with you continues to be that you fail to realize that this is a summary article, and hence by its very nature needs to be brief.  You don't need to editorialize the section titles to indicate that they are summaries, that's what the links to other articles, marked up in accordance with Wikipedia's usual standard to indicate that if you want more info than what's in this section, you go there. The data you have has been generally interesting, if not always on topic or useful in a summary article. Caerwine 03:44, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Paroxysms of pettifoggery

message: I've created three new stub articles National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba, Council of State of Cuba, and Council of Ministers of Cuba so that the details of those three institutions can be dealt with there rather than this article. They should also be linked to from any articles that contain lists of legislatures and cabiniets as appropriate. Caerwine 00:34, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Politics