Look at the tables of contents. If you didn't know better, you'd think Pinochet was more corrupt and murderous. But, Castro killed 10x as many people, tortured 100x as many, stole orders of magnitude more money and wealth...
There's 36 links in Castro's Wikipedia table of contents. Only four of them are mildly negative: 9 Controversy and criticism, 9.1 Human rights record, 9.2 Allegations of mismanagement, 9.3 Allegations of wealth.
There's 24 items in Pinochet's table of contents. 10 of them are very negative.
2 Military coup of 1973, 2.1 U.S. Backing of the Coup, 3 Military junta, 4.1 Allegations of fascism, 4.2 Suppression of opposition, 5 Arrest and trial in Britain, 7 Secret bank accounts, tax evasion and arms deal, 8 Human rights violations, 9.1 Demonstrations
If you didn't know better, you'd think Pinochet was a very bad man and Castro was a good man. But regardless of your politics, Chile is a much nicer place to live than Cuba these days, yet Cuba was a much nicer place than Chile before Castro came to power. Castro's policies destroyed Cuba. Whereas Pinochet has a mixed, but pretty good record. Hell, Chile just passed net neutrality laws last week.
By almost all analysis and objective metrics, the 2007 troop surge worked. Violence went down, insurgency went down, attacks went down, crime went down afterwards. But if you look at the article, it's loaded with criticisms, opposition, and things unrelated to that particular military campaign. Then there's a quick blurb, "Interpretation of the surge's results ... Whether the surge led to the improvement in Iraqi security, or other factors caused it, is disputed by some."
Wikipedia is not neutral. It's edited by people who have more free time on their hands are and are more tech savvy. People with more free time who are more tech savvy tend to skew demographically, which is sad, it should be a neutral resource and would be better if it is.
Compare the Castro and Pinochet articles if you want to see it in action, you'd never realize that Pinochet was a much better and more effective leader. They both did bad stuff, but Pinochet did less bad stuff and more good stuff. His country was worse when he took power, and better afterwards. Cuba was much wealthier, prosperous, and better off before Castro, and is much worse now. It's a shame that this is misrepresented in Wikipedia.
Both Castro and Pinochet were military dictators that killed and tortured a lot of people.
To compare how good or bad they were by comparing how prosperous the countries are is silly, one of the reasons being the external influences.
Pinochet's junta "disappeared" over two thousand people and tortured over 30,000 (people with names, not estimates). I don't see any credible source stating that Castro killed 20,000.
I actually see this type of Castro/Pinochet comparison as a test for Human Rights and checking if someone is inconsistent because of their right/left wing preconceptions. I find most people dislike or hate one while justifying more or less the other when they are both basically the same.
> I find most people dislike or hate one while justifying more or less the other when they are both basically the same.
Fair enough, I'm not here to argue the merits of one murderous dictator over another. The point is that Wikipedia has 36 sections on Castro with only 3 slightly negative, and 24 on Pinochet and 10 of them are very negative. You'd agree there's a bias there, yes?
Well, I didn't make a comparison study between the two articles but I just read the first ones on Pinochet that you said were "very negative" (Military coup of 1973 and U.S. Backing of the Coup) and they don't seem negative to me at all, pretty mild if you ask me. This overthrowing of a government would be the equivalent of Castro's revolution so I don't get your point sorry.
First time I've ever defended Castro even partly. :-)
>>This overthrowing of a government would be the equivalent of Castro's revolution
Arguably, Castro overthrew a dictator. Allende was, afaik, quite democratic(?).
Castro did break promises about general elections. He took over and got military/economic support from other dictators.
The main difference is that today Castro+family are still dictators of Cuba -- while Pinochet and his junta are gone since a long time, leaving a quite nice country.
And this is totally off topic for HN and the article, of course.
By almost all analysis and objective metrics, the 2007 troop surge worked. Violence went down, insurgency went down, attacks went down, crime went down afterwards.
The surge was enacted with a particular goal: create breathing space to foster political solutions to Iraq conflicts. It has failed. The political solutions never came about.
Beyond that, claims that the surge caused a decrease in violence require evidence. Correlation is not causation. And there are many other reasons that explain a decrease in violence in the same time frame.
Please don't turn a discussion of how wiki's are no longer the free form web-based collaborative scratch pads they were envisioned to be, into some stupid political nitpicking based on some specific wikipedia article not being "neutral" (in your viewpoint's favor). The point, is that wikipedia has turned the popular idea of a wiki into a formal documentation system, and that idea has gone viral into other places where such clinical sterility of expression is not appropriate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro
Look at the tables of contents. If you didn't know better, you'd think Pinochet was more corrupt and murderous. But, Castro killed 10x as many people, tortured 100x as many, stole orders of magnitude more money and wealth...
There's 36 links in Castro's Wikipedia table of contents. Only four of them are mildly negative: 9 Controversy and criticism, 9.1 Human rights record, 9.2 Allegations of mismanagement, 9.3 Allegations of wealth.
There's 24 items in Pinochet's table of contents. 10 of them are very negative.
2 Military coup of 1973, 2.1 U.S. Backing of the Coup, 3 Military junta, 4.1 Allegations of fascism, 4.2 Suppression of opposition, 5 Arrest and trial in Britain, 7 Secret bank accounts, tax evasion and arms deal, 8 Human rights violations, 9.1 Demonstrations
If you didn't know better, you'd think Pinochet was a very bad man and Castro was a good man. But regardless of your politics, Chile is a much nicer place to live than Cuba these days, yet Cuba was a much nicer place than Chile before Castro came to power. Castro's policies destroyed Cuba. Whereas Pinochet has a mixed, but pretty good record. Hell, Chile just passed net neutrality laws last week.
A similar article is this one -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_surge
By almost all analysis and objective metrics, the 2007 troop surge worked. Violence went down, insurgency went down, attacks went down, crime went down afterwards. But if you look at the article, it's loaded with criticisms, opposition, and things unrelated to that particular military campaign. Then there's a quick blurb, "Interpretation of the surge's results ... Whether the surge led to the improvement in Iraqi security, or other factors caused it, is disputed by some."
Wikipedia is not neutral. It's edited by people who have more free time on their hands are and are more tech savvy. People with more free time who are more tech savvy tend to skew demographically, which is sad, it should be a neutral resource and would be better if it is.
Compare the Castro and Pinochet articles if you want to see it in action, you'd never realize that Pinochet was a much better and more effective leader. They both did bad stuff, but Pinochet did less bad stuff and more good stuff. His country was worse when he took power, and better afterwards. Cuba was much wealthier, prosperous, and better off before Castro, and is much worse now. It's a shame that this is misrepresented in Wikipedia.