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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 January 16

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January 16

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Usage of military in internal conflicts - where is this possible in an emergency?

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Following the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, German Federal Minister of the Interior Finance Wolfgang Schäuble wants to create a legal basis for usage of German military as an internal peacekeeping power in case of emergency.[1] He claims that "The situation might arise where police forces of federal government and states are exhausted. Any other country in the world would then deploy soldiers." (see article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung). Literally taken, this is of course wrong, as some countries don't even have a military, and as Austria (alike Germany) forbids such a step due to negative historical experiences. As an overview question: Which countries in the world do reserve the possibility to use military in internal conflicts in case of emergency? --KnightMove (talk) 10:17, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at Military aid to the civil power for some information on this. MilborneOne (talk) 10:24, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
WP:WHAAOE - thx. But still information on more countries is welcome (only seven are listed there). --KnightMove (talk) 12:01, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For more details on the US, see National Guard of the United States#National Guard active duty character. StuRat (talk) 02:58, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Some countries have a military force whose specific role is civil policing - see Gendarmerie. Alansplodge (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As an aside, Schäuble is Federal Minister of Finance (Germany) (he was Federal Minister of the Interior before). GermanJoe (talk) 02:38, 17 January 2016 (UTC) [reply]
Of course, my bad, sorry. --KnightMove (talk) 10:30, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If a person has an MBA, is it wrong to say he's an economist?

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  • Moved from the Science RD.

If your undergraduate degree is not economics, but you went on and completed an MBA, would it be misleading to say you are an economist? --Scicurious (talk) 22:21, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that an economist is someone who works as an economist, and that is not dependent on his or her training. John M Baker (talk) 22:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely it would be wrong and misleading. An MBA is a degree in business management, not a degree in economics; they are very different things.
Also, this question is better-suited for the Humanities reference desk than this Science reference desk.
SeekingAnswers (reply) 03:07, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Both of the above answers can be right. Does that help? :) Consider Tony LaRussa. He got a law degree, yet he was a baseball manager. His lack of a high-level degree in physical education did not disqualify him from being a manager - and a pretty good one at that. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots07:57, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Tony LaRussa is another issue. You can contribute to a science without having a degree of this science. For example, you have a biochemistry degree but research in medicine. Or not even have a degree at all. I do not dispute that. I am more interested to know if the claim is misleading. --Scicurious (talk) 13:56, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(I'm assuming you mean the MBA and perhaps an undergraduate degree are the only academic qualifications they've got.)

As John M Baker has said, it ultimately depends on your career not your academic qualifications. A person with an MBA could be an economist, but it's likely to be somewhat rare particularly in academia. Note that a person with a PhD (or other terminal research doctorate) in economics is not automatically likely to be considered an economist anymore than a person with a PhD (or other terminal research doctorate) in science is automatically a scientist. If both haven't published anything edit: or been involved in research in the 40 years since they got their PhD and in fact have been working as a checkout operator since then, very few people are going to call them a scientist or an economist as the case may be.

Our article suggests you need to have a PhD in economics to be an economist in academia, but if you have an excellent research and publishing record in economics and are a Professor of Economics at a prestigious university (I mean a real titled tenured professor, not simply a lecturer who are often called professors in the US and some other places), it's quite difficult to argue the person is not an economist. Most commonly this will happen if the person has a Ph.D likely in a related field and their research interest changes over time. However even in pretty much all sciences I would suggest it's still technically possible for someone who's always been publicly known to be without a PhD to become a full tenured professor with an excellent publishing record etc and it's probably slightly easier in economics.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:23, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

One does wonder which person (I'm guessing it's a politician, pundit, or blogger) the original poster has in mind. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:38, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How was India described when it joined the League of Nations and the United Nations?

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India was a full member of the League of Nations and of the United Nations even before independence. As a member of those bodies how was it described, since it was not a dominion (like Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand) and, on the other hand, even though it may have been run as a colony, I doubt it could have been described that way, as colonies never joined either body as full members? Contact Basemetal here 14:21, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Article 1 of the Covenant of the League of Nations provides that "any fully self-governing State, Dominion or Colony not named in the Annex may become a Member of the League."
Article X, however, talks of "States Members of the League."
I have no doubt India was not seen as having the same standing as Australia, though. Its delegation until 1929 to the League was led by non-Indians. That was just one more add-on territory of the British Empire. --Scicurious (talk) 14:33, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you have time on your hands, Legg, Stephen (2014) An international anomaly? Sovereignty, the League of Nations, and India's princely geographies. Journal of Historical Geography, 43 . pp. 96-110. ISSN 0305-7488 may be an informative read. Alansplodge (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A quick scan of that reveals that India's membership was based on its being a separate signatory to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the Government of India's subsequent argument that they should be treated similarly to the British Dominions which, before the Statute of Westminster 1931, were also not fully sovereign states. Alansplodge (talk) 09:05, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Article 1 of the Covenant does say that, but there is no Article X, and the text that Scicurious says is there is not in Article 10 or any other article. Perhaps Sci meant to replace X with an actual section number after finding the wording, but was unable to do so and forgot to delete that part of the posting. In fact it seems that the nearest thing to that wording is in Article 17, which refers to states that are not members of the league, not to ones that are.
As for the United Nations, see India and the United Nations#History. I can't cite a source because I don't remember where I saw this, but I've read that the Soviets objected to the membership of Canada as well as India, and demanded that if the other great powers wanted those two admitted, then in compensation they should be able to have two of their member republics admitted as separate members, and this compromise was accepted. (Canada progressed to independence through a series of stages from 1867 to 1982, but was independent in most ways by the 1920s.) --76.69.45.64 (talk) 08:29, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes Belarus and the Ukraine had their own seats at the General Assembly even before the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The choice of Belarus is bizarre. If anything you'd have expected Russia and the Ukraine. The Ukraine was even a member of the Security Council (alongside the Soviet Union which was a permanent member) in 1948-1949. I kind of understand why the Soviet Union objected to India. But why object to Canada more than to Australia or New Zealand? Note until 1963 there was always a Commonwealth country in the Security Council (alongside the United Kingdom which was and still is a permanent member). Btw, thanks to all and especially to Alan who always comes up with great links. Contact Basemetal here 16:18, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"The choice of Belarus is bizarre. If anything you'd have expected Russia and the Ukraine." I assume the USSR seat was the Russia seat, just as the UK is England and the Netherlands is Holland. The three were thus All the Russias: Great Russia/USSR, Little Russia/Ukraine and White Russia/Byelorussia/Belarus. jnestorius(talk) 16:06, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the Philippines was also a charter member of the UN in 1945 (the independence date of 1946 had already been announce, just as the fact that India would soon be independent was also known). As for the USSR representation, Stalin originally demanded that each of the 15 or 16 soviet socialist republics be granted a separate seat, ultimately "settling" for three seats (the USSR, Byelorussian SSR, and Ukrainian SSR). Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So the USSR seat is supposedly the seat representing those 13 SSR that did not get their own? (Starting with Russia, etc.) I don't suppose Stalin had the nerve to demand 15 seats, one for every SSR and on top of that a seat for the USSR as a whole?
As an aside, that fiction of the Soviet and Yugoslav republics being independent states "freely" associated in the Soviet and the Yugoslav federation respectively, with a full right to withdraw if they wished, came back to haunt them and eventually did those states in. Had they had a constitution like the American that did not explicitly allow for secession (and in fact is now construed not to allow for secession) it would have been harder for those states to come apart, if not for Yugoslavia, then certainly for the USSR. Of course it was never going to be a problem in Stalin's and Tito's time. But instead of showing some foresight and understanding that conditions may change in the future when will no longer be there when their personal power will no longer be there to deter any attempt at secession, they instead chose, for ideological reasons, to indulge in that fiction. That's dictators' megalomania for you. It's ironic that when the USSR wanted to use that fiction to get more seats in the UN that only got them a measly two additional seats, but on the other hand, that allowed the whole of the USSR to collapse 45 years later.
Contact Basemetal here 19:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division

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What's the remit of the USMC CID that;s not already covered by the NCIS? Rojomoke (talk) 21:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The mission statement of NCIS is "The NCIS mission is to investigate and defeat criminal, terrorist, and foreign intelligence threats to the United States Navy and Marine Corps—ashore, afloat, and in cyberspace." They investigate the more serious crimes. Take a look at pg 1112 of this book. It states that in 1999 it was agreed that USMC CID would be "integrated" into NCIS. The agreement maintained the existence of USMC CID with "the responsibily for dealing with a number of offenses", but made the investigation of the more serious crimes the "province of NCIS".--William Thweatt TalkContribs 22:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To split a hair, the NCIS investigate the more serious threats. Often pertaining to crimes, but those which never actually happen (if everything works as it should). The CID seems more limited to regular whodunnit work. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:08, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "threats" is more inclusive and probably more accurate. However, the description linked is for USMC MOS 5821. That job description is only for the MOS, and probably doesn't describe the entire purview of CID, especially since this MOS is not unique to USMC CID; marines with this MOS may be assigned to either CID or NCIS. Additionally, CID, like NCIS, also employs civilians (i.e. people other than MOS 5821) as agents/special agents. They also employ techs and cyber/lab specialists and gather and maintain their own intelligence (all of which are also not MOS 5821).--William Thweatt TalkContribs 06:07, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
True enough, this and this are the wider look at CID. At least the wider on that site. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:16, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]