Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 August 30

= August 30 =

Indian state borders for Commons
I am looking for free, up-to-date data of India's current state and union territory borders, preferably in a form suitable for drawing maps. This is for an upload on Commons; see this request on the Graphic Lab. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 03:57, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Can you clarify what you mean by "data of borders"? The government of India's Survey of India's maps are here. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:46, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Do you want a shapefile or geodatabase? Perhaps www.gadm.org will help?  If you ever find a source for the Bangladesh - India enclaves, please let ME know... Hayttom (talk) 15:44, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Parliamentary prorogation and the options available to MP's to prevent a no-deal Brexit
Hi everybody, as you may have read in the news recently, Brexit is continuing to make waves in the UK after Boris Johnson announced he is proroguing Parliament, most likely from the 9th September until October 14, to present a Queen's speech, where he can outline his legislative agenda.

My questions concern parliament, and the limited number of options now available to it. The way I understand it, there are essentially three options for MPs plus the option of contesting the prorogation in court, but I don't see how any of them can result in the outcome they want: delaying Brexit, revocation of Article 50, or toppling the government:

In the second and third scenarios the precedent is not to interrupt the status quo, which currently (because of the EU Withdrawal Act and the Article 50 legislation, is no deal), so Parliament would be unable to amend the date.
 * Option 1 - Under standing order 24 Parliament can request an emergency debate and petition the speaker to allow amendments which could produce binding legislation - given Mr Speaker's lack of aversion to this sort of thing, this seems likely. This legislation will presumably take the form of compelling the prime minister to ask for a further extension
 * Problem Even if parliament could mandate the prime minister to request an extension, they can't dictate how he might ask for one. He could say, 'oh I've been forced to ask you for another extension, but if you grant it Britain will use its EU membership to be disruptive'. The PM may phrase the request in a way that guarantees the EU's refusal, or given his temperament may even ignore the request.
 * Option 2 - A motion of no confidence - under this mechanism, Parliament can say it no longer has faith in the government by a simple majority. This would trigger a 14-day window during which any and all politicians if they can cobble together a working majority can form a government.
 * Problem - this seems unlikely. Parliament may well vote for a motion of no confidence, but the government has indicated that it would ignore it. It seems unlikely an alternative government could be found within 14 days even shorter if the scheduled prorogation occurs mainly due to the fact that the remain cohort of MP's all have competing ideas. Jeremy Corbyn would probably insist on leading any such government and there is a lack of support among MP's for this option. Conservative MP's would be unwilling to endorse Mr Corbyn. The window then expires and a General Election becomes mandatory. By voting for the no-confidence motion, Parliament will have opted to dissolve itself. The timing of the election is in the gift of the executive, who will almost certainly schedule it post-Brexit.
 * Option 3 - vote down the Queen's speech, effectively expressing a lack of confidence in the government.
 * Problem - votes on the Queen's speech are anticipated about two weeks before Brexit day. If it is rejected and no alternative government is found, Parliament is unable to prevent an election before Brexit day.
 * Option 4 - Judicial review, asking the courts to examine the prorogation request for legality
 * Problem - Prorogation is typical parliamentary procedure and until very recently happened every year. It doesn't appear to be being abused, when the recess is taken into account the number of sitting days lost appears to be in line with averages. The Crown, in whose name the courts operate, also authorised the prorogation request. Can the courts go against the wishes of the crown?

So, coming to my question, does Parliament have any alternative avenues it can pursue to prevent a no-deal, and is there anything I'm missing in my analysis --Andrew 07:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * My thought would be even if the Remainers managed to get a bill through both Houses, Johnson could advise the Queen to withhold Royal Assent, at least until after 1 November.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:13, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Isn't this sort of thing the kind of advice that could lead to the abolition of the monarchy. Is the Crown entitled to reject advice that jeopardises the monarchy? --Andrew 11:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I would imagine all that would be discussed between aides and would guide any advice that was made.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:06, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems to be option 1 is missing a key point. AFAIK, the currently accepted legal situation is that the UK can unilaterally revoke their invocation of article 50 United Kingdom invocation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. They just have to follow their constitutional norms. AFAIK the extension is not considered to have affected this. If parliament is able to force whoever is PM to revoke the invocation, then there's nothing the EU can do about it. Parliament would of course need to consider factors like Wehwalt mentioned to ensure the PM cannot get around attempts to force them to revoke the invocation [//www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47668466] [//www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/07/stop-catastrophe-no-deal-brexit-revoke-article-50] [//blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/03/26/we-can-and-should-revoke-article-50-heres-how-to-do-it/] [//blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/12/20/the-legal-issues-of-revoking-the-notification-to-leave-the-eu-but-then-notifying-to-leave-again/] [//theconversation.com/article-50-can-be-revoked-heres-what-it-means-for-brexit-108522] [//www.ft.com/content/cdbb18b2-5624-11e9-91f9-b6515a54c5b1] Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU petition Also, per the sources, the ruling said that the revocation should be "unequivocal and unconditional". This is generally interpreted to mean that the UK cannot simply use the revocation as the ultimate form of kicking the can down the road and invoke article 50 again the next day, so it should really mean no Brexit rather than 'not Brexit this way'. (I'm not totally sure what would happen if the UK did try that. I would guess someone would challenge them and the outcome may be that the revocation was invalid and so the UK would leave the EU on 31st October barring a further extension. Maybe an extension would be granted from the time of the revocation until the decision to ensure they still have that remaining time.) Note that since this is a bit of a nuclear option, it's not something even many many remainer MPs like to talk about but of course that also means it's not something that any true Brexiteer wants to contemplate so they may be forced to accept alternatives if it comes down to it. Nil Einne (talk) 11:17, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I read a piece from a guy who seemed pretty more knowledgeable of the matter than me, his conclusion was clear: there WERE ways to force the PM out of the course to no deal brexit, now this is just DEAD. Short of a coup of a sort (like: "let's install a rogue Parliament"), of course, and it seems that some Bremainers seriously consider this option (which would certainly fail). Only the PM+gov may change course, if he wills, but he doesn't, and actually was installed just for this purpose, as democratically as possible under current UK rules.
 * And everybody knows that.
 * So methink the real question here is not Brexit, but next round of election, and platform building


 * Labour & Libdem : "look how badly conservatives managed the brexit, the mess they created,..."
 * Conservative remainers: "look, I fought the hard battle as much as possible, I lost, but you see you can still trust me,..."
 * Conservative Brexiters: "look, we delivered, despite the hindrance of these pesky remainers, who just managed to sabotage our getting a better deal,..."
 * all of them "...so, just vote for me to get rid of them and to finally clean up their mess"
 * Gem fr (talk) 12:22, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

What would Brexit happening or being prevented do to the pound?
2. What was the last era of history when British economic problems could cause a recession in every major world economy? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:29, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Not sure that there ever was a “last” time (the collapse of the sterling zone post WWII comes close, but it was off set by the rise of the US Dollar). As to whether a global recession will occur this time... we don’t do crystal ball predictions. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The UK was a hegemon for about a century, if any one country could've caused a global recession back then then UK would've been it, it just never got unlucky enough to test the hypothesis. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:59, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Answering the question in the section title: if a "soft" Brexit happens, it probably wouldn't affect the pound much; it might even make it rise a bit due to less uncertainty. If Brexit was cancelled, the pound would definitely rise. The pound has fallen quite a bit due to fears of a "hard" Brexit, including a sharp drop recently when Johnson announced his plan to prorogue Parliament. Traders fear a "hard" Brexit, which would likely impede growth of the British economy due to disruption of corporate activity and trade with the EU. As for the second question, this is a little prediction-ish. It's impossible to say whether something would definitely cause a recession. All kinds of things can pile up to cause one. There's also the question of which economies are "major" and which aren't. For a historical example, the 1931 failure of Creditanstalt in Austria, which was arguably not a "major" economy, is often credited with truly beginning the Great Depression. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 20:48, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * History classes in America tell kids that while the 1917-18 smackdown only happened cause the sides were evenly matched, by 1929 our economy was important enough for its stock bubble to singlehandedly cause a decade long world Great Depression that might've even continued (at least to some extent) if World War 2 and its disruption of European production didn't let America become the factory and materiel builder of the world and then it repaid the favor by donating like 2 trillion dollars 100 billion (inflation-adjusted ? ) to rebuild Europe and aid anticommunist regimes cause they were afraid of a war-wrecked Europe turning to Neo-Nazism or communism. So help the Germans rebuild bombed car factories and stuff so they make themselves rich again and don't want revenge. And also do some of their defense for them for free, especially Germany cause you know what Germans do when they have too much military. Okay they do not tell it in this fashion but I imagine this narrative is a bit flattering and incomplete? I read every word of that part of my high school world history textbook, if it mentioned Creditanstalt even once it must've been so minor I forgot. Thank you for telling me or I still wouldn't know. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:55, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, that tends to be the in-a-nutshell, U.S.-centric history people get taught here. Timeline of the Great Depression: While the stock market crash was not great, and did have negative effects on economic output in the U.S. and worldwide, it took a while for things to get really bad. The Creditanstalt failure touched off waves of bank failures across the developed world (you might recall bank failures were a huge issue in the 1932 U.S. presidential election), which also—because of the gold standard—forced the Federal Reserve to deflate the money supply to defend the U.S. dollar's gold peg, which is exactly what you don't want to do in a recession (this wasn't as well-understood at the time). For what it's worth, my World History Honors textbook got into more of this, and I believe mentioned Creditanstalt (California public high school, early 2000s). --47.146.63.87 (talk) 20:17, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

There's also the possibility that a no-deal Brexit happens but turns out to be far less damaging (even if only in the short-term) than the markets anticipated, which would probably result in a rise in the value of sterling. How likely this scenario is ... that's a different matter. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:01, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Isn't this discussion inconsistent with "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate" at the top of the page? It is clearly a request for a prediction. To riff off what Dweller said, nothing is certain, so all people are doing here is speaking of what they believe will happen, thus a prediction.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, I tried to limit my answer to the history of what has happened since the referendum and the mainstream analyses of likely effects. Since the second question asked about history, I took the overall topic to be Brexit's economic effects as compared with past instances of economic disruption. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 09:45, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * "mainstream analyses of likely effects" = predictions.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:19, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Understanding text: "Not to know the relative disposition of things"
What does John Henry Newman mean by the "relative disposition of things"? Would that be equivalent to "Not to have a general understanding of things"?

"The principle of real dignity in Knowledge, its worth, its desirableness, considered irrespectively of its results, is this germ within it of a scientific or a philosophical process. This is how it comes to be an end in itself; this is why it admits of being called Liberal. Not to know the relative disposition of things is the state of slaves or children; to have mapped out the Universe is the boast, or at least the ambition, of Philosophy." From: --C est moi anton (talk) 18:58, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd say it means "not knowing how things compare", like which nations have the best health care, for example. He does seem to have used needlessly complex phrasing, though. SinisterLefty (talk) 19:12, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Yep. Of course, 'disposition' here being 'how things are in relation to one another' - you'll notice that Newman is describing in that paragraph, in way too many words, that he thinks of "knowledge" as being more than simply making an observation. He is saying that a slave or a child can see and hear and be aware of what is around them, but someone with "knowledge" understands something about the world beyond what they can immediately observe. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:54, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, "the relative disposition of things" is a concept similar to the contemporary idiom of The Big Picture, which ought to be an article about the underlying concept instead of a disambiguation page. As John Muir famously wrote, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." It is interesting that the writer also pokes at the pretensions of Philosophy. It proves easier to map the physical universe than to map the human psyche. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  02:58, 31 August 2019 (UTC)


 * BTW, it's a rather racist statment, in that it assumes that slaves (who would have been black, at that time) were incapable of understanding the world at a level any deeper than children. Such statements were often used to justify slavery. SinisterLefty (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. Slaves were often intentionally kept ignorant of the world at large. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:07, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with Bugs. In addition, Newman certainly would have been familiar with the large numbers of Christian Europeans and even some Americans held as slaves on the so-called Barbary Coast from the 16th to the 19th century. Read Barbary slave trade for information about this white slave trade, which may have enslaved over a million people of European ancestry. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  02:45, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Before this turns into a black or white thing, I'll just remind people of pre-Columbus people in post-Columbus years. A reddish-brown olive thing in parts, too. The important thing is they were all often kept ignorant and obedient, like children. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:26, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

75 hours of the gulag archipelago!
I have just spent 75 hours of my life over the past 5 months listening to The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn here... Http:/youtu.be/ccASsjhhgP8 (the black screen one) only to find the last recording, number 7 ends mid-sentence! What happens in the end!?!? How much have i missed? Do i now need to buy the book and read for myself and find where the recording ended? (An arduous task!) What happens in the end? Is there a recording that picks up where this one ended? OMG PLEASE help! BtW. Thanks to Dr Petersen. Thanks all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.8.201.211 (talk) 19:09, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * You could start by posing that question to whoever uploaded it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:55, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * How frustrating! You don't have to buy it - if your town library doesn't have it, just ask the librarian if they can get it through interlibrary loan - they might even be able to get you the audiobook, if you prefer, but they surely will be able to get the actual book. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 21:19, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Part 7.5 has been recorded by another, a link can be found in the comments of video 7, or search for The Gulag Archipelago 7.5 and afterward. Thanks Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 10:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)