Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 February 3

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February 3

Who has Syrian neutrality laws?

Australians apparently aren't allowed to fight for anyone in the Syrian conflict, unless they want a life sentence. Seems a bit odd for an enemy of the Islamic State to turn down help. Do any other countries, particularly those who've publicly picked a side, have similar laws? And does the Australian one only pertain to Syria, or anywhere? InedibleHulk (talk) 09:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

It's not a Syrian neutrality law as such, it prevents private citizens from participating in foreign conflicts: see this article about a similar case. For some explanation of the rationale, have a look at the debates behind the 2014 bill. Here is a Guardian article from the same period. Basically, the reason it does not distinguish between "good" and "bad" militant groups is because the government does not want to face questions of which faction someone was fighting for and whether that faction is "good" or "bad". Yesterday's mujahideen could quickly become today's terrorist. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:27, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, much enlightened. That bit about more general "no-go zones" was sort of surprising, too. Strange days, but I can see how the rules might make sense. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

That no-go part is apparently unique in "the West". Canada has something like a foreign fighters law, but only against helping designated terrorists. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The Dutch authorities have begun to prosecute a former Dutch soldier who fought without government permission in Syria against ISIS. The reasoning is that killing ISIS members without being mandated by the Dutch state to do so still qualifies as murder. See [1]. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I can see three possible reasons for this:

1) They really do want to maintain neutrality, so they won't be attacked. If so, this seems rather cowardly.

2) They are old laws on the books and they haven't gotten around to adding an exception for those fighting against ISIS, and they feel the need to enforce all laws, even the stupid ones. If this is the case, hopefully when they do update the law they will add a retroactive pardon.

3) They want to fight ISIS, but not this way, as it may result in Dutch citizens being held hostage. StuRat (talk) 15:29, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The Netherlands has decided to perform bombings in Syria against ISIS targets, but that is something like war of targeted killing, which are legal. That former soldier was simply put a civilian who went to a foreign country and decided to kill people there. The difference is having a mandate from the state or not. The Dutch pilots who are supposed to bomb inside Syria are killing, but not murdering (since they kill legally); the former soldier was killing illegally, which amounts to murder. Of course, there is a public campaign in his favor, many Dutch people see him as a hero. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I would have much more confidence in somebody on the ground actually hitting ISIS targets, and nobody else, than somebody dropping bombs. StuRat (talk) 01:00, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd have more confidence in the somebody dropping bombs to not get hit back, though. There's a method in their madness, and it's right there in the title. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:19, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

It's a legal matter. Formally, YPG isn't a state army and the former soldier is no Kurdish national. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Aye, makes sense. It'd make more sense to me if it were a only a legal matter for the courts of the victim's country (laws should protect, not punish). But yeah, universal jurisdiction is a thing. Good find, thanks! InedibleHulk (talk) 07:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Basically, in general, you are also simply not allowed to create your own militia, no matter whom you want to fight. In the case of the US, the country prohibits its citizens to fight for any foreign prince, state, colony, district, or people as a soldier. You could be fined or arrested for that (not just when fighting against the ISIS). Not sure if this applies here, or whether the direction you are shooting really matters.

For the UK, from [2] this source: " It’s a subject that the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, touched on in his report last year, saying: “There is a real debate to be had about how the law should treat foreign fighters.” There is legislation, the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870, that made it illegal for any Briton to enlist in a foreign army at war with a state at peace with the UK, but it proved useless when nearly 3,000 Britons, most famously George Orwell, went to fight in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. " --Scicurious (talk) 16:27, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Good stuff, thanks! InedibleHulk (talk) 07:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Our article Mercenary also referred to some difficulty with prosecuting Britons who fought in the Greek War of Independence, because it was uncertain whether the rebels were a state. That article also discusses similar anti-mercenary laws in some other countries. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd imagine that getting paid to fight risks some further white-collar charges, too. Visa, sanction or tax problems. I once got a firm warning from a temp agency for just helping my American neighbour/neighbor tear out a bathroom. Earlier that day, Mustapha Hussein was killed for less, so I'm glad I'm only kind of foreign and just stood to misappropriate $60 instead of a dynasty. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know to what degree, if at all, the kind of Country neutrality (international relations) has been practised since the second World War, but as that article mentions, one of the obligations of a neutral country is/was to do internment of troops from either side of the conflict who come into it. I suspect there may be some complementary requirement for actions toward its own citizens who join the conflict. It is possible that these laws are relics of that kind of politics, now given different justifications. But in the second World War neutrality had considerable advantages, such as not getting conquered and having all your Jews marched off to the ovens, so I can see why they might have made it a legal default position. Wnt (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

From Vladimir Lenin to Vic Toews, back to Spanish vet George Orwell, the current global policy seems to be you're either with us, or against us. In theory, anyway. In truth, Switzerland still enjoys some considerable advantages. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

A number of U.S. citizens, mostly veterans, have joined the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in their fight against ISIL; this is the "Lions of Rojava" group (see here for a profile in the New York Times Magazine). As far as I can tell, these efforts do not necessarily fall afoul of U.S. domestic law (the volunteers are fighting for an ally, not an enemy), but there are potential pitfalls. For example, the Logan Act prohibits U.S. citizens from conducting private diplomacy. Neutrality^talk 07:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That's also pretty messed up. The last bit, I mean. Thanks! InedibleHulk (talk) 07:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Denmark has (had?) the largest number of foreign fighters per capita, and Aarhus has (had?) the idea that giving returners counseling, an education and a job makes more sense than fighting them. The Washington Post says this is soft-handed and dangerous. I say it's not as dangerous as giving them the same, plus war. There's probably a middle approach somewhere. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:45, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Ok, that was October 2014. As of October 2015, Denmark is second per capita, after Belgium, and wants to get Australian about them. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

One woman asks, “How can I pose a threat to Denmark and other countries by being a soldier in an official army that Denmark trains and supports directly in the fight against the Islamic State?” No clear answer given, at least in that story, though Søren Pind says the law is "very clear". Maybe they're both right. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

There are all sorts of reasons to not want your citizens rushing off to "help" in wars that you support or intend to support. For example:

• Chain of command. Without this, the effort to defeat an enemy is a chaotic mess.
• Identification of friend and foe. Will these people who go off and fight by themselves hit the right targets? Will they "murder" innocents because they lack the required military intelligence? Will they even kill people on your own side by mistake? - Consider the possibility that you have spy in the enemy camp.
• Wrecking already made plans. Suppose you plan a surprise attack on some location and a lone vigilante or militiaman gets the enemy into a state of alertness.

It's easy to see how one lone 'hero' can completely screw up a carefully orchestrated political and military strategy - so it's quite reasonable to have rather generalized laws stopping that from happening. If you have such a law and only enforce it patchily - then people will tend to assume it's OK to ignore it - so even when there are special circumstances, it makes sense to at least apply the law - even if you ultimately give the person a light sentence as a result.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:54, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

True enough, in general. Though in most cases, these wolves aren't John Rambo or Liam Neeson. They join (somewhat) established units, under (somewhat) seasoned commanders, and (particularly with former "real" soldiers) follow the gameplan. It's not hard to find examples of a carefully orchestrated political and military strategy completely screwing up under a five-star general, either, simply because war is difficult.

Seems unfair (but perhaps natural) to retain a clusterfuck monopoly for nationalized armies, especially when it comes to battling terrorists and iron-fisted dictators, who target far more Average Joes than G.I. Joes. Not much different from the right of self-defense or standing your ground, just with more cooperation. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Cameroonians are (reportedly) not only free to fight Boko Haram, but officially encouraged to liberally apply the dark arts. That tends to always backfire in fiction, but a wizard once semi-fictionally helped win World War II. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Sierra Leone's Civil Defence Forces seems to have featured warlocks prominently. Seems to not be remembered fondly. Things aren't always what they seem. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

While trying to find stuff about Charles Taylor and bad juju, I discovered Charles Asampong Taylor believes it's also quite real on the other world stage. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:55, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

And "Black Star" was on Rising Force, from 1984. It's finally making sense. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

This article by Vice talks about wizards fighting Boko Haram who are known for herbal healing and chucking about mandrake root. I imagine a sufficient quantity of mandrake would affect Boko Haram's health in a most salutary fashion. I'll also suggest an open mind on the weaponization of precognition, though I certainly would not recommend using it. Wnt (talk) 12:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Mandrake root is mainly good for appreciating "Mandrake Root" or slowly killing your spouse. The good stuff comes from the lips of an ancient three-headed hellhound. Next best thing to Hydra blood (some say). There was a Stargate Project, which the CIA claims to have scrapped as useless. The Llangernyw Yew is both poisonous and foretells death on Halloween; I have no idea if MI5 is aware of this.

In any case, Islam generally fears magic, and if that terror is fundamental enough, it might not matter if it's malarkey. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Back on topic, the guy from the first story was apparently turned away for clerical reasons, not dangerous ones. And in his country, freelancers are as heroic as normal soldiers doing the same job. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Dewey classification

Hi, this could easily be a stupid question, but the answer might be genuinely helpful to me so I'll try anyway. I'll be taking an exam soon, to test my ability to do a library job of intermediate skill. They give only vague ideas of what I'll be tested on. The only aspect that gives me pause is this: "Finding the proper order for items arranged by the Dewey classification." It was my understanding that the Dewey system was pretty straightforward, and that the most taxing part of it would be memorising what each of the numbers means, something only a very experienced librarian would probably know. So is their testing on Dewey classification probably going to be as simple as putting things in numerical order, or should I be learning a lot more about it to do well? One of the other sections of the exam is "Arranging items in alphabetical and numerical order" so either their exam is repetitive, or I'm missing something. Thanks! Julia\^talk 21:11, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

This mock test and explanation written by a librarian may be helpful. 184.147.121.46 (talk) 21:31, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm a library technician and have performed these tests myself. What is the job you are applying for? If it is shelving and checkin or other basic clerical work, then the test will likely be simply putting stuff in order. Not all materials are necessarily classified with Dewey: is it a public library? If so, then fiction will use some other system, which is why there might be a separate section for alphabetical and numerical order. Most people in any role don't need to memorize Dewey beyond a very basic level, and if their library uses a different system they won't know Dewey at all. Anyone who needs more detail will have specialized training and access to special material (and even then we just copy what someone else did). I do cataloguing myself: I just look it up. Mingmingla (talk) 04:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Dewey starts off easy - there is a set of magic numbers for each class of thing - and the most significant digits on the left give you the broadest feel of the subject - with the digits to the right getting down into finer and finer distinctions. Sorting books for non-fiction is basically just a straightforward matter of sorting the numbers. Where it gets complicated is with fiction, biographies and books about other books. Then there are complicated codes involving the first letter of the author's name, the first letter of the title - with books that criticize or inform about other books or their authors being placed not in non-fiction but in the same group as the book that's being discussed. Biographies are filed with the name of the person who is being talked about - not with the author so that all of the biographies about a particular person end up together. There are lots of special case 'tweaks' - and a hell of a lot of ambiguity. For example, if I write a book that compares two other fictional books - which one is my book shelved with? If I write a biography of an entire family of people - where does it go? Ultimately, the system can't possibly get it 100% right - which is why we have secondary indices - like the good old fashioned card file and more modern computerized versions of it. At that point, the main requirement is that if you can find title and/or author, you can eventually figure out the number...and then, you can find it on the shelf really easily. So even if a book about ants that's woven into the life of a famous ant enthusiast gets put under biographies rather than insects - you can at least find it at one unambiguous location on the shelves even if it's not categorized in the way you might expect.

It's tempting to ask why we don't just shelve by ISBN and have a computer find the location of book for you using Google or Amazon or whatever. But that misses out on the one hugely wonderful thing about physical libraries and book stores - the ability to browse. If you wander through the shelves to find books about your favorite author - you'll find them all together, so you'll spot books that you didn't even know they wrote - and you'll find books about those books that you might never have thought to look for. To make that work, it makes better sense to shelve using Dewey...which is why it's still done that way.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:42, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

As an aside, there are alternate classification schemes that functionally do what the Dewey Decimal system does, but attempt to clear up some of the inadequacies of it (of course, having their own shortcomings which Dewey does better. No system is perfect). In the U.S., while historically public libraries have used the Dewey Decimal system, most academic/university libraries use the Library of Congress Classification system, which uses letters rather than numbers for classifying books by category; i.e. Q = Science QD = Chemistry, and so on. --Jayron32 16:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Yep, indeed. Fundamentally, the idea of a perfect classification system is doomed. If the intent is solely to make it so books can be found on the physical shelves in a gigantic library - then the ISBN is as good a criterion as any and in libraries where people can't go strolling through the stacks browsing books on similar topics - that's probably the optimum solution. But if you want people to be able to browse the stacks and find books on similar topics shelved together - then there are absolutely guaranteed to be cases where books 'belong' equally in two or more places. Unless the library purchases multiple copies of the book and shelves each copy under a different number - you have a problem that no classification scheme can possibly resolve.

Honestly, these days, the answer should be to scan all of the books into computers so you can "shelve" them in multiple virtual locations according to Dewey *and* the Library of Congress scheme *and* alphabetically by author *and* alphabetically by title. Finding a book becomes no different than searching for a web page - and indeed, for non-fiction, GoogleBooks lets you do exactly that. Then you can arrange the physical books on the shelves in any order you want so you can find them again (and the ISBN works reasonably well for that since it's a widely recognized unique identifier - although some books escape it by virtue of age or by being self-published - so maybe Dewey wins on that basis). There are similar schemes (ISSN and ISMN, to name but two) that sequence other things like magazines and musical scores that libraries might choose to collect. SteveBaker (talk) 15:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

You should see what they're doing now with automated libraries. The James B. Hunt, Jr. Library at NC State has a fully automated robotic system for retrieving books. See here. You order your books online, and a bin shows up with all of your books on it. The organization system exists solely for optimizing the robotic system. Doesn't have to worry at all about human concerns. --Jayron32 15:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

With a system like that, you can have the robot shelve books just anywhere - so long as the system remembers where the book was placed, it can go fetch it just as easily as if there was some kind of classification system in place. Probably the smartest thing to do would be to keep the most frequently requested books towards one end of the stacks to reduce the distance the robot has to travel. But perhaps people frequently request a bunch of books on a single topic or by a particular author - in which case Dewey might still be the best thing to increase the probability that robots will work efficiently. SteveBaker (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all for your fascinating insights! Definitely better than just reading the article. :) If they ask me anything about the pros and cons of Dewey I shall be all set! The example test the IP posted was really helpful too. Cheers! Julia\^talk 19:15, 6 February 2016 (UTC)