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Countries that backed the US like South Korea and Chile are democratic and prosperous. Countries that back the USSR like North Korea and Cuba are Orwellian nigh

Countries that backed the US like South Korea and Chile are democratic and prosperous. Countries that back the USSR like North Korea and Cuba are Orwellian nightmares.

pampa 11y ago
those russkies! how dare they spy on every person in the world and invade iraq under false pretense! oh wait...
- deleted 11y ago
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pjc50 11y ago
> Chile Apart from all the people tortured and "disappeared" by Pinochet?
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  Let's put numbers to this, because I find people (myself included) often react to things like this without having looked at what was actually going on. The high-end estimates according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet and the links from it are that about 3,200 people were killed, about 30,000 tortured, about 80,000 interned, and about 1000 disappeared but are not known to have been killed (some of these definitely left the country, though). The official numbers accepted in Chile today are a bit lower (about 10-20%) than the above. That's over the 17 years 1973-1990. The population of Chile at the time is around 10-13 million people according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Populati... Let's take the lower 10 million number as our total population, to make our per-capita numbers as bad as we can. If you assume that all the people who were interned were interned at the same time (not likely), that's an incarceration rate of 800 per 100,000. Which is, I agree, fairly high when I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... -- Cuba has an incarceration rate of 510 per 100,000. But again, this is assuming that all of the 80,000 people who were interned were in prison for all 17 years, which is unlikely. The execution rate, based on the numbers above, is somewhere between 30 and 40 per 100,000 over the 17-year timespan overall; I haven't looked into what the distribution over time looks like, but the average is 2-2.5 per 100k per year. For comparison, though it's harder to get data on Cuba because the government won't exactly allow an investigation, estimates are that somewhere between 8,000 (totally documented) and 140,000 (with some guessing) Cubans were killed by the Castro regime for opposing it, over the course of about 50 years. During this time Cuba had a population of about 7-11 million people (it grows over time). Taking the very lowest end estimates for the number killed and the highest-end population estimates, that gives us an execution rate of about 80 per 100k, for a time average of 1.6 per 100k per year. So the Pinochet regime was at most 1.5x as murderous as the Castro one, and we've totally stacked the deck in favor of Cuba any way we could here. Accepting that there are pretty much _any_ appreciable deaths in Cuba that are not in that "totally verified" list of about 8000 would easily put Cuba ahead in this weird competition. The 30,000 torture victims in Chile, though, that's just inexcusable. I can't find any useful data for Cuban equivalents, so let's assume nothing like this happened in Cuba, for the sake of argument. The upshot is you were more likely to be tortured in Chile, about equally likely to be imprisoned both places, possibly a bit more in Chile, and probably more likely to be executed in Cuba. And of course today Chile is a much nicer place to be than Cuba in all sorts of ways related to freedom of speech and whatnot....
scott_karana 11y ago
After the coup in Chile killed their probably-democratically elected leader Allende, they got Pinochet. How is that a win? And how about the US support of Mujahadeen Afghanistan during the USSR's invasion? Or South Vietnam? Or the monarchies in Saudi Arabia or Iran? It's not such a simple dichotomy. The US and the USSR have both fucked up a lot. -- (Also, it was the support of the Chinese in Korea that swayed the outcome, not the USSR.)
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- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Stalin set up the North Korean dictatorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War
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  - scott_karana 11y ago
    Yes, just like the USA, the USSR was involved in the partitioning and occupation of Korea. However, their lack of direct involvement in the following war was one of the big reasons that the Chinese Communists and Soviets parted ways. It's much more accurate to say that the Chinese support of North Korea made it what it is today. Not Soviet.
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      Not directly involved ? China and Korea produced the tanks and MIGS and flew the combat aircraft ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War Stalin's fingerprints are all over the North Korean state : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Ko...
iamcurious 11y ago
Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea

Countries that backed the US like South Korea and Chile are democratic and prosperous. Countries that back the USSR like North Korea and Cuba are Orwellian nightmares.

pampa 11y ago

those russkies! how dare they spy on every person in the world and invade iraq under false pretense! oh wait...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pjc50 11y ago

> Chile Apart from all the people tortured and "disappeared" by Pinochet?

bzbarsky 11y ago
Let's put numbers to this, because I find people (myself included) often react to things like this without having looked at what was actually going on. The high-end estimates according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet and the links from it are that about 3,200 people were killed, about 30,000 tortured, about 80,000 interned, and about 1000 disappeared but are not known to have been killed (some of these definitely left the country, though). The official numbers accepted in Chile today are a bit lower (about 10-20%) than the above. That's over the 17 years 1973-1990. The population of Chile at the time is around 10-13 million people according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chile#Populati... Let's take the lower 10 million number as our total population, to make our per-capita numbers as bad as we can. If you assume that all the people who were interned were interned at the same time (not likely), that's an incarceration rate of 800 per 100,000. Which is, I agree, fairly high when I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... -- Cuba has an incarceration rate of 510 per 100,000. But again, this is assuming that all of the 80,000 people who were interned were in prison for all 17 years, which is unlikely. The execution rate, based on the numbers above, is somewhere between 30 and 40 per 100,000 over the 17-year timespan overall; I haven't looked into what the distribution over time looks like, but the average is 2-2.5 per 100k per year. For comparison, though it's harder to get data on Cuba because the government won't exactly allow an investigation, estimates are that somewhere between 8,000 (totally documented) and 140,000 (with some guessing) Cubans were killed by the Castro regime for opposing it, over the course of about 50 years. During this time Cuba had a population of about 7-11 million people (it grows over time). Taking the very lowest end estimates for the number killed and the highest-end population estimates, that gives us an execution rate of about 80 per 100k, for a time average of 1.6 per 100k per year. So the Pinochet regime was at most 1.5x as murderous as the Castro one, and we've totally stacked the deck in favor of Cuba any way we could here. Accepting that there are pretty much _any_ appreciable deaths in Cuba that are not in that "totally verified" list of about 8000 would easily put Cuba ahead in this weird competition. The 30,000 torture victims in Chile, though, that's just inexcusable. I can't find any useful data for Cuban equivalents, so let's assume nothing like this happened in Cuba, for the sake of argument. The upshot is you were more likely to be tortured in Chile, about equally likely to be imprisoned both places, possibly a bit more in Chile, and probably more likely to be executed in Cuba. And of course today Chile is a much nicer place to be than Cuba in all sorts of ways related to freedom of speech and whatnot....

scott_karana 11y ago

After the coup in Chile killed their probably-democratically elected leader Allende, they got Pinochet. How is that a win? And how about the US support of Mujahadeen Afghanistan during the USSR's invasion? Or South Vietnam? Or the monarchies in Saudi Arabia or Iran? It's not such a simple dichotomy. The US and the USSR have both fucked up a lot. -- (Also, it was the support of the Chinese in Korea that swayed the outcome, not the USSR.)

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tosseraccount 11y ago
Stalin set up the North Korean dictatorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- scott_karana 11y ago
  Yes, just like the USA, the USSR was involved in the partitioning and occupation of Korea. However, their lack of direct involvement in the following war was one of the big reasons that the Chinese Communists and Soviets parted ways. It's much more accurate to say that the Chinese support of North Korea made it what it is today. Not Soviet.
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Not directly involved ? China and Korea produced the tanks and MIGS and flew the combat aircraft ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_the_Korean_War Stalin's fingerprints are all over the North Korean state : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Ko...

iamcurious 11y ago

Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

tosseraccount 11y ago
Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea