Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 November 30

= November 30 =

Successful assassination of Castro - what would it have accomplished?
Apparently at one point, the American government made great efforts to make Fidel Castro dead. Him personally, not the government he led. There were attempts to undermine and overthrow his government too, and even invade his country, but lets put that aside. I'm purely interested here in the attempts to kill him personally.

My question is, assuming such efforts had yielded fruit and Castro was killed, what would they have practically accomplished. Political assassinations of this sort, from what I understand, historically generally fail to accomplish the political goals of the assassin. Did Castro represent someone who was truly politically irreplaceable to his regime? Was his potential successor (most likely Fidel's brother Raúl) deemed any more amenable to U.S. interests at that point? (NOW, decades later, in a drastically different international geopolitical environment, is a different story). Was there the slightest chance that if Castro was successfully killed, his regime would somehow spontaneously come crashing down? Have any "alternative history" historians (those who speculate on what might have been) commented on what actually would have happened in the way of Cuba's political trajectory had Castro been successfully killed - and whether there was any realistic chance of it causing a regime or policy change in Havana which would have been favourable to U.S. interests? Or do they deem a successful killing of Fidel as something which, whilst perhaps emotionally satisfying to America, would not have really changed the overall situation? Eliyohub (talk) 15:08, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * There is some discussion here - though probably not very academic in tone - http://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/consequences-of-a-successful-castro-assassination.241302/ Wymspen (talk) 15:26, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that, amateur as it is. It seems that others agree that the mere death of Fidel would have been extremely unlikely to lead to any real shift in Cuba's political orientation, unless they could then bump off Raul as well, and even then, would things in Havana become more favorable to the Americans...doubtful? The Soviets could have always helped a replacement get a proper grip on power, couldn't they? Eliyohub (talk) 17:54, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The belief in the U.S. was based on the notion that Castro was a totalitarian dictator whose power was based on a cult of personality more than as merely the current leader of a particular stable government system. -- Jayron 32 17:28, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * That he was a totalitarian dictator, I do not doubt. But other regimes based on personality cults, the biggest example being North Korea, have survived the death of the "cult leader", and the passing of the torch to a new member of the "cult family". So is there any realistic reason to think Cuba would be any different? Or was this wishful thinking? Fidel is now dead, the transition to brother Raul was smooth, so would it have been different then? Eliyohub (talk) 17:46, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * It might be instructive to read about Ngo Dinh Diem and see how well that turned out. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:04, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * It may depend on a couple important factors:


 * 1) How early it happened. Early on Cubans were hopeful for free elections and many people who favored that were still there. Decades later, Cubans who had hoped for democracy had given up, fled or been executed.  Put another way, there was no civil society left to take control.


 * 2) Whether the assassination could be made to look like an accident. The US assassinating Fidel may have made enemies out of those who were opponents of Fidel, but nonetheless are even more opposed to their leader being assassinated by a former colonial power. StuRat (talk) 18:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Humiliation of Germany after ww1
How was Germany humiliated after ww1?24.90.72.195 (talk) 18:57, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * See World War I reparations which discusses all of reparations and concessions that Germany and the other Central Powers got at the end of World War I. -- Jayron 32 19:05, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Clarification: by "got", Jayron means that these requirements were imposed on the defeated countries, like saying that a sports team "got a penalty". --76.71.5.45 (talk) 23:11, 30 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah. I should have said what you said.  -- Jayron 32 00:22, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * In addition to reparations, the Treaty of Versailles imposed substantial territorial changes, massively reducing the area of Germany. German people who had lived in Germany all their lives found that their homes were now in the new countries of Poland or Czechoslovakia, and that their new governments bore them no goodwill. There were also military restrictions which prevented the German Army from having tanks and artillery, the Navy from having submarines or large battleships and altogether forbade an air force. For a country used to being a military super-power, this was a bitter pill. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, the blame of WW1 largely on Germany was humiliating, regardless of the reparations. In reality, the system of "entangling alliances" was largely to blame, on both sides, where successively larger powers were required to enter the war on the side of a smaller power who was at war, causing a tiny war to escalate out of control. StuRat (talk) 15:32, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * They weren't that innocent really; "At this time [July 1914] the German military supported the idea of an Austrian attack against Serbia as the best way of starting a general war" according to July Crisis.  Alansplodge (talk) 16:34, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Major academic journals
Hello! Could anyone help clarify as to weather or not Palestine Exploration Quarterly would be considered a major journal in the field of archaeology? If there is some way of quantifying the "level" of an academic journal in general, that would be helpful too. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk 22:43, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Impact factor is a common means of journal ranking. -- Jayron 32 00:24, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Sites like this one show that PEQ is a very low impact journal. Most of its articles are never cited, and those that are cited, rarely so. For the most recent quarter, it is ranked as the 64th most impactful journal in the field of archaeology. These rankings of course mean nothing about the trustworthiness of the journal, but suggest that most of the work published therein is pretty low-profile. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:01, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * All that, of course, does not necessarily relate to whether content in such a journal merits inclusion in content here. While in general it probably would be the case that an article with contrary opinions in a higher impact journal might carry more weight, if eventually some reference work refers specifically to an article in one lower-impact journal as a source, but no articles in other, generally higher-impact journals, the piece in question could obviously still be used as a source here. John Carter (talk) 01:11, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You also need to consider whether a journal has effective editorial control and peer review, or whether they allow anything to be published on payment of a fee. 81.134.89.140 (talk) 01:31, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comments! I asked the question because it is the only sticking point in a deletion discussion. Basically it comes down to whether or not the article satisfies criteria 8 of WP:NACADEMIC (IE "The person is or has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area."). The consensus here suggests that it isn't a major journal, and therefore being its editor wouldn't grant someone notability. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk 01:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Remember that in deletion debates, the Individual Notability Guidelines are meant to serve as aids to finding likely reliable sources and are neither meant to be inclusionary or exclusionary (i.e. everyone that meets a criteria MUST be included, or everyone without a specific criteria MUST be excluded.) The ONLY criteria that should matter is do we have in-depth, reliable, independent information about this subject we can use to help us write an article. Merely making a check-mark on a list means nothing if we don't have any information to base an encyclopedia article around.  When in doubt, revert to WP:GNG or WP:42.  If the source material doesn't exist, the article shouldn't either.  If the source material exists, use it to write the article.  The silly lists of individualized criteria, like "The person is or has been the head or chief editor..." etc. can be useful to deciding if it's worth your time to search for more sources, but ultimately, if you can't find source material, what are you going to cite in the article?!?  -- Jayron 32 02:11, 1 December 2016 (UTC)