Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 August 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 17

Ararat

Are there places that phonetically resemble the word, "Ararat"? 99.245.76.40 (talk) 01:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean, other than Ararat? --Jayron32 01:32, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

This fuzzy gazetteer lists a few more.—eric 01:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

If you are thinking of possible misunderstandings about where Noah's ark supposedly came to rest then see Mountains of Ararat. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think Noah's Ark landed on Arafat, or should have. StuRat (talk) 02:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

ARRGH! A RAT! Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Jayron32, I want to know the names of places that sound similar to the word, "Ararat". 99.245.76.40 (talk) 02:22, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Ayrarat. --Sean 15:37, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Powerful Acids and Bases known to Bronze-Age cultures?

Not sure if humanities will be able to help more than the science desk would; my question is what kinds of acids and bases were known to ancient cultures? Especially powdery bases. Lye and Baking Soda apparently weren't very common until the age of enlightenment or beyond. Even salts apart from sea water were more valuable than precious metals, by weight. Anyone know? --71.13.132.22 (talk) 02:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Sulfuric acid (aka Oil of Vitriol) was well known to the ancients, as was Potash, which contains potassium hydroxide. I think Geber was known to have isolated various mineral acids as well. --Jayron32 02:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

NM on Geber. You said "bronze age", so he's about 1000 years too late. --Jayron32 02:15, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

More like 2500 years too late. --Saddhiyama (talk) 13:17, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Wood ash is a moderately strong base, and has been used to treat foods all the way back to the stone age. Looie496 (talk) 02:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Folks on the American frontier and later in the backwoods did chemical manufacture using methods which might well have been used by the ancients, because they are pretty simple. Wood ashes could be put in an ash hopper, made of thin wood strips (or woven from bark) and lined with straw. Water was allowed to trickle through the ashes and was collected below in a pan. This was a strong base, equivalent to a weak solution of lye. The frontier folks used it to make soap, though soap is supposedly not an ancient invention. The wood ashes themselves were used to preserve food. Urine was collected in tubs by preemodern societies and used for tanning hides. Urine and manure were also used to prepare materials for dying. Urine and manure could be allowed to crystalize into saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, though this invention might not be so ancient as medieval. Colorful mineral oxides might be originally collected to use as decorative pigment, but some are oxides of useful metals, and by experiment or accident it might have been found that the metals could be refined by a hot enough fire in a primitive furnace, as when pottery is being fired. If stone age people extracted strong acids and bases, it was likely because they put them right to use in some process: food preservation, poison darts, dyineg, tanning hides, decorative pigment, "medicine," whether real or quack. If the medicine man paints something on your sore back and it stings, you are more likely to believe it is "powerful medicine." So researching the technologies is more promising than researching chemicals. I expect that a number of weak acids and bases were used by stone age peoples, and that stronger ones were used by Bronze Age technologists, consistent with the processes then current. I looked through the section on history of metallurgy in "A short history of technology" by T.K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams, Oxford University Press ((1961) but saw no mention of strong acids or bases. The section "The beginnings of the chemical industry" says (p261) that the first use of chemicals was probably gathering salt for seasoning and meat preservation. Then there was "natron" impure sodium carbonate, which the Egyptians used to preserve bodies. Natron was a very important chemical in the ancient world, used as a cleanser, preservative, and for many other purposes, per the article on it. P 264 says that natron was probably used as a base added to a lead salt to make lead carbonate, which could be heated with lead to make red lead, an important pigment. Lime kilns (p264)were developed by 2500 BC in Mesopotamia, used to burn limestone, producing a strong base, Calcium oxide or "quicklime," used to make plaster. P265 puts the invention of soap around 400 AD. That page says that a base, soda or stale urine (which I would have thought an acid) was used in "fulling mills" for fabric production in ancient times. Vinegar, a moderate acid, was known to the ancient Chinese (2000BC) and Egyptians (3000BC). P263 says vinegar was "the strongest acid known to the ancient world." See also [1]. It was widely used as a preservative, or as dressing for vegetables. It was used for making white lead. You should go to the library and read a history of technology such as Derry. It goes on to describe the Middle Ages developments in chemistry, with strong acids and bases developed for industrial processes. You might also be interested in the "Studies in ancient technology" series, available for preview online. (Edison (talk) 13:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --71.13.132.22 (talk) 03:38, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Copper oxide and other products of burning/oxidising metals are basic, although copper oxide is not soluble in water. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Calcium oxide and hydroxide may be slightly too late. I can't find when it was first known, but quicklime (calcium oxide) was probably an ingredient of Greek fire; however with the high temperatures it requires it might be iron age not bronze age. Calcium hydroxide was used in early mortars, but lime mortar only dates these to 4th century BCE. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Some lead oxides are found naturally (e.g. litharge, massicot); they will be alkaline, although I'm not sure if they were used for any purpose other than producing lead. Lead was smelted as far back as 6000 BCE. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Diplomatic relations without an embassy

Let's say that I'm the Sultan of Oman, and I wake up one morning with a burning desire to begin quick negotiations with Paraguay. I consult the list of diplomatic missions of Oman and am disturbed to find that I don't have an embassy there or anywhere nearby, and the list of diplomatic missions of Paraguay alarms me because they don't have embassies to any of my neighbors. Do I just send a special flight of diplomats to Asunción, or is there some simpler way to conduct negotiations without founding an embassy? Diplomatic mission doesn't seem to address this subject, so it would be nice to add a section on "Negotiations without embassies" if we had sources. Nyttend (talk) 02:36, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

It is my understanding that such actions usually take place at the nearest convenient embassy where both nations have representatives; i.e. let's say, hypothetically, that Canada and Mexico did not have embassies in their respective countries, but they both had embassies in the United States. Ambassadorial-level talks could go on in one or the other's embassy in the U.S. (or a neutral site). Or they could conduct negotiations through an international body they are both members of (i.e. the UN). --Jayron32 02:43, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

"nearest convenient embassy where both nations have representatives" would mean "nearest" to what? One of the two countries? If so, which one? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:09, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't think there are rules, which is why it is not addressed in the article. You can send a member of your foreign office there, it will only take him 24 hours to get there, and become a temporary diplomatic mission. Or you can ask your ambassador at the UNO in NY to talk to their ambassadord at the UNO in New York, if you are happy to use 2 proxies. There are also very good encrypted telephone lines now, that are suitable for video conferencing, and you could be talking face to face to the prime miniter of Paraguay within 2 hours, if you insist that it is important. --Lgriot (talk) 08:01, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually I think there are often rules of a sort. As I remarked in another post that may have some useful info (I think that case involved Somalia and the UK) and should be in the archives, even if a country doesn't have an embassy in another country they often still have an ambassador assigned to said country if they have normal relations.

For example the Malaysian ambassador to Senegal is 'also accredited to Republic of Burkina Faso, Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Gambia, and Republic of Mali' [2] while the one to Kenya is 'Concurrently accredited to Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda' [3] while the one to South Africa is 'Ditauliahkan serentak ke (concurrently accredited to) Botswana, Madagascar, Mozambique, Lesotho dan Swaziland' [4].

I originally missed it on the embassy pages (hence the Malaysian info) but eventually from [5] I found it looks the Paraguay ambassador to Egypt is accredited to [6] 'Bahrein, Benín, Camerún, Nigeria, Paquistán, Sudán, Palestina' while the one in Lebanon is accredited to 'Arabia Saudí, Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Irak, Irán, Jordania, Kuwait, Omán, Qatar, Siria, Turquía' [7]. So yes, if your hypothetical Sultan of Oman doesn't remembered givingacccepting accreditation toof the Paraguay ambassador in Lebanon, he simply has to ask his advisors, who will tell him the Lebanese one is the one he wants.

The ambassador to India is accredited to Malaysia (amongst others including Thailand) so the Malaysian government is likely to contact the Indian ambassador [8]. Meanwhile Cambodia, the Phillipines, Mongolia and Singapore [9] will go thru (South) Korea. The page suggests the ambassador to Korea is also accredited to Indonesia but they also have an embassy in Indonesia [10] but with only a Chargé d'affaires (whether it's a new embassy, they haven't got around to replacing the ambassador or whatever I don't know). Australia, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos and New Zealand will go thru [11] Japan. In other words, foreign governments don't just randomly pick the closest embassy of another country if they need to make diplomatic contact with said country, the pick the ambassador accredited to them. As an aside, the ROC/Taiwan ambassador [12] is not surprisingly seemingly not accredited to anywhere else (I suspect they didn't try and even if they did I'm guessing most countries would have rejected any attempts for him to be accredited to their country).

I presume there are some cases where despite normal relations there is no accredited ambassador. At a random guess, in such a case there is probably still someone who is semi-officially assigned to the other country and both sides would know who it is.

Nil Einne (talk) 09:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Ambassador-at-Large may also be useful Nil Einne (talk) 10:30, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

• The concept of a protecting power is relevant here. ╟─TreasuryTag►contemnor─╢ 10:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The methods are outlined in the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations.

A country may be represented by another nation, for example the UK and Australia have mutual representation agreements in certain countries, similarly the UK and Canada. In principle there is an agreement with New Zealand as well but I understand that in practice this means NZ is represented by the UK. I'd need to be at work to find out which countries though.

Similarly some missions will encompass different countries, but with slightly different relationships; ambassador, Consul, Representative etc.

ALR (talk) 13:05, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Surely we need to mention the concept of an "interests section" here. Where two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations, the countries may sometimes still formally communicate and maintain the physical presence of diplomats by using an intermediary. For example, the United States Interests Section of the Embassy of Switzerland in Havana, Cuba represents U.S. interests in Cuba via the Swiss, while the Cuban Interests Section in D.C. does the same for Cuban interests in the United States. The Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the United States goes through the Pakistani embassy. Neutrality^talk 05:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

2 Questions; Flag of Serbia

A flag from the First Serbian Uprising.

Flag_of_Serbia

One of the images has the caption: "A flag from the First Serbian Uprising.". This flag has an icon which looks like a sickle. What is it?

Flag_of_Serbia#Revolutionary_flags

What is "stematography"?Curb Chain (talk) 06:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Not sure about your first part but a google search of stematography suggest it is a Serbian book from the 1800s by Kristifor Zefaroviae (or Hristofor Zefarovic) http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Hristofor+Zefarovic.ny156uk (talk) 06:57, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

See Hristofor Zhefarovich#Stemmatographia - it was a book published in Vienna in 1741 which "was illustrated by Zhefarovich with copper engravings and black and white drawings. It contains 20 images of Bulgarian and Serbian rulers and saints, as well as 56 coats of arms of Slavic and other Balkan countries ". It was based on an earlier book of 1701 with the same name by Pavao Ritter Vitezović. I have amended the flag article to show Stemmatographia instead of "stematography" which seems to be meaningless.

To answer the first part of your question, it looks to me like a curved sword in an open hand - the thumb is to the right and the fingers to the left, the wrist at the bottom. Alansplodge (talk) 08:06, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that it's a sword in an open hand. This is an odd way to hold a sword, though, so I suspect a hidden meaning. Perhaps the juxtaposition of the sword (a symbol of war) with the open hand (a symbol of peace) is the goal. I also note the juxtaposition of the cross (a Christian symbol) with the crescent moon (a Muslim symbol). (I've included the flag here, so people don't have to search through the article for it.) StuRat (talk) 08:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

A sword rather like this one which is Russian, but there's a shared Slavic heritage between the two. Also a bit odd that it's a left hand, unless you look at the reverse side of the flag of course. Alansplodge (talk) 09:43, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

It's in silhouette, so it could be a right hand viewed from the palm side. Pais (talk) 16:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

You're right, it could be - I hadn't visualised it that way. However, see below... Alansplodge (talk) 20:01, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I think you wouldn't have visualized it that way because it would be anatomically incorrect were it the right palm in silhouette because of how the fingers and carpals are flexed.Curb Chain (talk) 05:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Well it seems like "stematography [sic]" is a singular of "stemmatographia". What could "stemato-", "stemmato-" and "stemmatographia" mean?Curb Chain (talk) 10:53, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Latin stemma (genitive stemmatis); n, third declension 1.garland, wreath 2.pedigree, family tree. Italian stemma m. (plural stemmi) 1. coat of arms. I can't find any reference to "stematography" as an English word; Heraldry might be a better translation. Alansplodge (talk) 11:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Flags of the world has a mirror image of this flag. It is called Unidentified flag from 1807 and has a golden fringe. The Habsburg's supplied flags to the Serbians and they were embroidered in a store at Sremski Karlovci.
Sleigh (talk) 12:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense; the zig-zag bit on the left is a forked tail. It's conventional to show the "hoist" (ie the part nearest the flagpole) on the left, which would explain why the hand is back-to-front. Your FOTW link also confirms our sword-in-hand theory. Alansplodge (talk) 12:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Papal Salary

Obviously the Pope get a nice place to live as part of his job, but is he paid a salary? I know it is not-traditional for a pope to resign (though they are allowed to do so apparently), but would he receive post-papal benefits like a pension or protection by the Swiss Guard, analogous to what former US presidents have? Googlemeister (talk) 16:11, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

"The Vatican spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, ended speculation about the Pope’s salary, saying, ”The Pope does not and has never received a salary.” An ambiguous statement by Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani had suggested that the Pope did receive a salary." (New York Times; 07/20/2001) Alansplodge (talk) 16:32, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The last time a Pope resigned was back in the middle ages... and he retired to a monastery. I think there is a good chance that if a modern Pope wanted to resign, he would do the same. In which case, he would not need a retirement salary, as anything he did need (food, robes, a place to sleep/study/pray, etc) would be provided by the monastery. That said, I am sure the Vatican would arrange for the monastery in question to be well funded.

An ex-Pope might get a guard... but whether to protect him or to make sure he stayed retired is another question. (At least one of Popes who resigned, back in the middle ages, subsequently decided to un-resign... and set up as an Anti-Pope... not something the Church would want to have happen again). Blueboar (talk) 18:29, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Did Congress repeal the CLASS act?

...as part of the budget reduction bill the beginning of August 2001? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.94.85.128 (talk) 17:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

This is the C.L.A.S.S. Act, and presumably you mean August 2011. Answer: no. There have been proposals to repeal it, including by the so-called Gang of Six, but they have not passed so far. Looie496 (talk) 17:54, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Last line of poem: "and the _, the _, the_."

I have the memory of the end of a poem in my head, but rather unhelpfully I can't remember the actual words to it. The line is "and the **, the **, the *.", with * standing in for a syllable. If anyone has any ideas it would be nice to set my mind at rest.

Thanks, Daniel (‽) 18:24, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Do you remember any poetic diction other than the rhythm? ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 20:18, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Having returned to this question, the answer suddenly appeared in my head: it was Wendy Cope's 'Bloody Men', and the line was "and the minutes, the hours, the days". Apparently in my memory 'hours' has two syllables. Thanks a lot for your help. Daniel (‽) 20:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I pronounce "hours" with a diphthong, so it's almost two syllables. --Tango (talk) 21:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

If your speaking a rhotic dialect the offglide doesn't matter. It's more like a syllabic /r/: /awr̩z/. μηδείς (talk) 23:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Bar graph for income

Where can I find a bar graph that shows the number of individuals and corporations that had income within equal divisions of the range of income from $0 to $10,000,000 per year? --DeeperQA (talk) 23:01, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you interested in a specific country or the whole world? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:17, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

USA. --DeeperQA (talk) 02:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

When you say income, what specifically are you looking for? Since you want information on both individuals and corporations, we have to be careful about what measurements we use. Household income? Net worth (assets minus liabilities)? Profit (revenue minus expenses? Something else? There are some graphs and charts in household income in the United States and personal income in the United States you may find of interest. Neutrality^talk 05:42, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

All of the above starting with gross income and assets so that each departure from gross can be compared with gross. --DeeperQA (talk) 18:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

There's also some interesting data at "Income inequality in the United States", even if that article doesn't appear to have the specific bar chart that was originally requested. Gabbe (talk) 07:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Austria and Hungary

I remember my history teacher telling me that Austria and Hungary got ripped off after World War I and the disbanding of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, how some lands with Austrian people and Hungarian people went to other states rather than Austria or Hungary and how the two became landlocked and lost their access to the Mediterranean Sea. Did they ever get any land back or compensation for this?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 23:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

For the terms of the peace treaties with Hungary and Austria see Treaty of Trianon and Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The treaties largely recognised the "facts on the ground" so to speak. They did not get compensated for loss of territory but neither did they ultimately have to pay reparations. Both Austria and Hungary were so broke as to need loans from the League of Nations to avoid collapse. There was no IMF back then, but things weren't all that different from today. The League sent "consultants" and "advisors" along with the loans to make sure they were spent appropriately. Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The great majority of the territorially-contiguous area inhabited by German-speakers was included in Austria (excluding the Sudetenland and Tirol). It could be said that Hungary got screwed -- but from the point of view of the Allies, the Hungarian ruling classes had collaborated with the Austrians to oppress the Slavs for many years, and Slavic nationalism was in the ascendant right after WW1. And when the Allies remembered the fighting of 1916-1917 in central-eastern Europe, they naturally felt inclined to prioritize Romanian interests over Hungarian interests. The Hungarians didn't help their cause by going Bolshevik in 1919, or later on by allying with Nazis. There are no German-speaking or Hungarian-speaking areas on the Adriatic, so it's difficult to see how either could get a seacoast without opening up a whole bunch of nationalist and irredentist cans of worms... AnonMoos (talk) 02:42, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Both countries were always essentially landlocked; though they often had control over much of the Adriatic coast at various times Austria's traditional port area was the Austrian Littoral (basically Istria and Trieste), which had been under the control of Germanic peoples since at least since the late tenth century. The Hapsburgs acquired it in the 1300s, so it had been the main Austrian seacoast area for almost 600 years by the time of World War I. Hungary's coast was essentially the modern Croatian county of Lika-Senj County, though I don't believe that Hungary ever had a major port on the Adriatic; Hungary Proper being cut off from most of the Adriatic by the rather formidable Dinaric Alps. I think most of Hungary's boat-borne trade would have gone east down the Danube; the twin cities of Buda and Pest were major river ports. However, it should be noted that neither the Littoral nor the Hungarian Adriatic coast were ever ethnically part of Austria Proper or Hungary Proper; The Littoral was always a multi-ethnic region and Germans were always a fairly tiny minority there; while Hungary's coast came as part of its personal union with the Kingdom of Croatia. --Jayron32 02:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Hungary's main port on the Adriatic was Zadar, though of course this was not a traditionally Hungarian city (and they frequently fought over it with Venice). Adam Bishop (talk) 06:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposed ethnically autonomous federal states of U.S. of Greater Austria

G. K. Chesterton was highly critical of the outcome of the Treaty of Versailles, especially in regard to the treatment of Austria. Austra-Hungary had a clear cassus belli with the assassination of the Archduke. Prussia's motivations were purely militaristic. There would have been no world war without Germany's involvement. Austria-Hungary had been liberal compared to the Prussian state prior to the war. Prussia was a threat before the war and remained a threat after the war. Austria-Hungary was an old union devolving toward local autonomy. Prussia had swallowed up the German states and was moving toward increasing autocracy.

Prior to the war, liberals including the Archduke had been planning to institute a United States of Greater Austria, for which see the article and the map above. I strong suggest reading Chesterton's The End of the Armistice, perhaps one of the best and most sadly neglected posthumous essay collections of the last century. I would also suggest you look at the Hungarian part of the linguistic map on the USofGA article if you want to see how Hungary was shafted in the post war settlement, which will help explain its support of Nazi Germany in WWII. μηδείς (talk) 04:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

However, nothing significant had yet been done by 1914 (before Sarajevo) to address Slavic grievances or aspirations, and Austria had already entered into a close alliance with Germany... AnonMoos (talk) 04:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I am a Slav. There were no "Slavic" grievances. Just various anarchistic and fascist ideologies and plots attributed to various collectives but carried out only by specific lunatic fanatics. As for Slavic "aspirations", what do you mean? Sarajevo doesn't only appear in history once you know. μηδείς (talk) 05:10, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

What about all the nationalist groups in the late 19th century like the Young Czech Party, Slovak National Party, the United Slovenia movement, etc? Few of these could be characterised as anarchists or nihilists, but most seemed to have both aspirations and grievances. And then there was the Second Balkan War, which is generally attributed to Bulgarian grievances over the outcome of the First Balkan War. Are you saying most Slavs didn't want to be independent of Vienna and Budapest? --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:41, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

What does that mean? The late 19th century was the epoch of proliferating "romantic nationalisms" and demands for greater self-determination. The fact that the Austrians had done almost nothing for the Czechs before August 1914 played a very significant role at crucial moments in determining that Austria-Hungary would be broken up after the war. The Austro-Hungarian empire can assume a certain retrospective nostalgic glow in the eyes of some -- especially in contrast to what came afterwards -- but those nationalities who remember how the 1867 "dual monarchy" reorganization of the empire increasingly took on the aspect of an alliance between ethnic Germans and Hungarians to keep the other nationalities down, and how almost nothing was done to fix this for more than 40 years afterwards, are sometimes quite a bit less nostalgic. AnonMoos (talk) 10:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Romantic nationalism was exactly the precursor of both Nazism and Serbian and other pathological nationalisms that lead both to WWI and the Yugoslav Wars. The gift that keeps on giving. The fact that various ideological factions complained, in the name of nationalism, that they should be the ones in power, not the other faction, has nothing to do with individual rights or the aspirations of non-politicals. I find the notion that the then status quo in Austria-Hungary only looks good in hindsight particularly humorous and telling. μηδείς (talk) 15:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your view that only some ethnic nationalities are legitimately entitled to nationalist sentiments and aspirations to self-determination, while the rest are only worthy of being ruled over by other ethnicities, seems to be tendentious and highly-selective. Such things as "Germanization" and "Magyarization" policies are almost always counter-productive in promoting more resentments than integration (see recently Sudan, South), unless the minorities they are applied to are quite small, weak, and dispersed. As I mentioned above, if the Czechs had been happy and contented within the Austro-Hungarian empire, and had exerted their influence during WW1 and immediately afterwards for the preservation of a Greater Austria in some form (instead of for an independent Czechoslovakia), then the outcome would very probably have been quite different -- and I never heard of any significant "Czech fascism"... AnonMoos (talk) 18:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

You would do better to stop attributing to me arguments I haven't made. I don't believe any nationality or collective (which in reality always means self-appointed ideological statist agitators whether of the right or the left) has any rights as such, only individuals. I won't dignify the rest of your victim-mongering collectivist grievances with a response. The simple fact is that real people were better off so far as human rights under the Hapsburgs than under their successors of the next 75 years. μηδείς (talk) 21:58, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

To say that the desire for Czech independence is only "victim mongering" based on "no grievances" wouldn't seem to make much sense unless you think that Czechs (unlike other selected nationalities) are not worthy of self-rule. Almost anything looks good next to Hitler and Stalin (a rather low standard!), but otherwise a backwards semi-autocracy with a low level of economic development and a governmental system based on maintaining the dominance of two ethnic groups over many others is by no means a utopia... AnonMoos (talk) 08:44, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

My point, AnonMoos, is that whereas states based on individual rights and equality before the law make no demands on minorities to abandon their culture, the principle of "ethnic self-rule" per se is an inherently statist and fascist concept which ultimately entails ethnic cleansing or forced deracination of minorities, that such self-division is endless--how about self rule for the poor oppressed Moravians? the Bohemians?--and that no one is entitled to say that he or his party alone speaks on behalf of a collective. μηδείς (talk) 17:59, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

If you think that the Austro-Hungarian empire did not include elements of "ethnic statism", and was based on strict individual equality, then you would appear to have a very selective view of history... AnonMoos (talk) 09:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

As discussed above, after WWI, all the different countries and wannabe countries went to Paris to ask for favors from the victorious Allies. Because the Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as Romania, were on the winning team, while the Austro-Hungarian government was on the losing side, the Slavs and Romanians got most of the territory they wanted when the borders were redrawn. This left a lot of German-speakers in Czechoslovakia and a lot of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. So a lot of them were ticked off, and Hitler exploited this sentiment in his attempt to divide and conquer Europe. In 1938, Hitler got Britain and France to agree to his idea to partition Czechoslovakia, with the predominantly German-speaking parts going to Germany and the Hungarian areas to Hungary, a Nazi ally. (The Nazis would later wipe Czechoslovakia off the map.) The Nazis then forced Romania to give up a predominantly Hungarian-speaking part of Transylvania back to Hungary, and during the war, Hungary occupied and annexed a part of Yugoslavia that was formerly part of Hungary.

After the war, the Allies reversed all of these measures. The reborn Czechoslovakia kicked out most of the Germans living there, settling that issue. The Hungarian issue was not as easily addressed because Hungary, like Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, was occupied by the Soviets, who didn't want to destabilize it. There remain large Hungarian-speaking populations in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:54, 19 August 2011 (UTC)