Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 December 24

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December 24

Iraqis refugees in Syria

What has happened to the Iraqi refugees in Syria since the civil war started in Syria? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.247.49.80 (talk) 06:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

"Refugee" encompasses a wide range of people in a wide range of circumstances. But in broad brush-stroke terms, most Iraqi refugees have returned to Iraq; and according to a report by the UNHCR (the UN agency associated with refugee issues), 78,000 Syrians have fled - some have gone into Iraq. So at present, most Iraqi citizens have repatriated, and a small excess of Syrians have also fled into Iraq.

It is uncommon to see Iraqis in Lebanon, which has sheltered much of the Syrian exodus.

Of course, there is a darker tinge to every refugee-crisis in the Middle East. Among the Iraqis who entered Syria are militants such as the Al-Nusra Front (in fact, this and related groups constitute much of the opposition to Syria's government). These militants engage in the civil war, and reside in areas under their own military control.

The last time I checked, American soldiers no longer patrol Iraq's northern border with Syria, so the responsibility for guarding that border against illicit traffic falls to both the Syrian Army and the Iraqi Army. In practice, this means the border is un-guarded in many places; or is heavily-guarded by non-government armies; so the policy for allowing non-government military forces (and refugees) is difficult to monitor or regulate. Nimur (talk) 18:12, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Deadliest weapon

Yesterday I was wondering what the deadliest weapon ever invented was, and concluded that it was probably one of the weapons listed below. Can anybody find estimates of many people these weapons have killed?

1. AK-47
2. Bow & arrow
3. Sword
4. Spear

I suspected that the AK-47 was the deadliest weapon of all time (and many news stories claimed as much), but I'm not convinced that ancient weapons haven't killed more people throughout history. Thanks! --Bowlhover (talk) 20:57, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Although ancient weapons have inflicted massive casualties in a relative sense, the world population in modern times is so much greater than back then, that I don't think they could really compete. Anyway I don't think it's really proper to compare a very specific weapon such as AK-47 to a generic sword, considering the huge amount of sword types that have been around. They're very different sorts of categories. It would seem more logical to compare assault rifles in general to swords etc. - Lindert (talk) 21:07, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I would say the Tsar Bomba was the deadliest, although it has not been used in a conflict, just for testing. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:17, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

The post-humourous Ernest Scribbler (not to be confused with the equally late Mikhail Kalashnikov) is mentioned in our article WMD. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:57, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

The pen? The pulpit? 00:21, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll go with plain, boring fire. Aside from direct kills, it's a clear accomplice to all guns, bombs and steel. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:46, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Also, an arrow is just a tiny spear. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

• The blanket. μηδείς (talk) 01:40, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
• As long as we're now letting unreferenced commentary go without question, I'm going to say Religion. Religion has been the deadliest weapon throughout history. --Onorem (talk) 01:52, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh right. Facts. Merry Christmas! Remember to hang stockings with care. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:03, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

My brain is fried today, so maybe my question is unintentionally funny and I just can't see how. To clarify, the question was intended to be serious. I'm asking for the death toll due to the specific weapons I listed, where "weapon" is a tool designed to kill people during war. --Bowlhover (talk) 02:56, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The only funny answer above was in smallcase. Swords have never killed that many people, they have always been the tools of an elite. Starvation and disease, intentional and unintentional, kill the most. μηδείς (talk) 03:09, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Swords have always been tools of the elite? The entire Roman army carried them. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:01, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Um, exactly. μηδείς (talk) 04:07, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

In WWI, artillery fire was the biggest killer of soldiers, if one discounts disease. Alansplodge (talk) 12:35, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I think food might well be the deadliest weapon through history. Consider that Stalin killed millions by starvation, and North Korea recently did the same thing. Many of the starving people in Africa are also a result of one warlord blocking food deliveries to enemy tribes. And unlike other weapons, starvation has been used both in ancient times and modern times to kill large numbers of people. StuRat (talk) 12:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Or more accurately, the lack of food. And we don't have to go as far as Soviet Russia or North Korea. Consider the Irish potato famine, and how the English passively made war on them by refusing to help. (And the Brits wonder why the Irish historically hate them.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:30, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Refused to help? The Brits helped thousands upon thousands of Irish immigrants and emigrants during the famine either stay in the UK or use it as a stop-off point on their way to America. This is how my family got here. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 02:52, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure the million Irish who starved to death during Great Famine (Ireland) appreciated all the help they got from the authorities. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:03, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

KageTora -- I'm sure that the British were overall not mostly intentionally malicious towards the Irish, but many people in critical positions to actually do something were hobbled by Victorian "political economy" shibboleths about the "pauperizing" and dependency-creating effects of "outdoor relief", the idea that the best-off man on relief always had to be worse off than the worst-off employed worker (or otherwise poor people would immediately resign employment en masse to live on charity), etc. etc. ad nauseam magnam. The result was basically a patchwork of temporary local stop-gaps and ineffective ad-hoc palliatives, but no large-scale systematic thoroughgoing measures -- to match the real nature of the situation -- until a true catastrophe was already underway. The British also conspicuously refused to do certain things which might have had reassured people that the British were taking the situation seriously and had the best interests of the Irish at heart (and whose refusal had an opposite embittering effect), such as temporarily banning food exports from Ireland. The bottom line is that it's reasonable to conclude that if the British were truly concerned about the Irish, then they wouldn't have let rigid adherence to a narrow economic ideology override basic humanity and common sense as often as they did... AnonMoos (talk) 17:16, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Owing to the season, perhaps a quote from Scrooge is appropriate here, aimed at the poor in general, but also rather descriptive of the English attitude towards the Irish, at the time: "If they are going to die, they had better do it, and reduce the surplus population". Then we have Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, where he proposes a novel method both to eliminate the surplus population of Ireland and to solve the food shortage. StuRat (talk) 18:31, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

This is just sick trolling. You have so little respect for the Irish that you think that their knowledge of what happened in history translates into anti-English hatred? No, sorry, there are vast reserves of respect and friendship between the neighbouring islands. It's embedded in our family history, KageTora's, mine, and those of many other WP editors and readers. The actions of an undemocratic elite government can't be equated with the wishes of a whole people, no matter how you try and hide that behind references to "the British". Off-topic and uncalled for. Itsmejudith (talk) 00:32, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

The drive for independence in Ireland was that people thought of themselves as Irish and not British. In fact it was quite widely acknowledged before 1916 that Britain might rule them better than they did themselves. However they wanted a government that was their own and reflected their values rather than British ones. Probably Americans go on about the famine more because the famine was the last their ancestors knew about Ireland but that's just my own ignorant musing about America to balance the silliness. Dmcq (talk) 16:02, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that it was indicative of 'the English [sic.] attitude' at all. A moment's searching reveals that both A Modest Proposal and A Christmas Carol preceded the Irish Potato Famine. The root cause, unfortunately, was an early modern state that was simply unable to cope, rather than famine being used as a deliberate policy, such as the hołodomor. A more enlightening read is Colm Tóibín's book The Irish Famine: A Documentary which, inter alia explores how this tragedy has been subsequently manipulated for political ends. It is instructive, incidentally, how this book is not listed in Tóibín's Wikipedia bibliography, despite having a Wikipedia article to itself, the Talk page of which probably explaining why and which is, in its own way, a classic of its kind. 86.183.79.28 (talk) 00:46, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

86.183.79.28 -- There were limits to what could have been accomplished (though Britain was the wealthiest and most industrialized nation in the world at that time). However, much dithering and delay was caused by trying to stay within the localistic framework of the old Elizabethan poor-law system (when the crisis was obviously not local), and by Victorian middle-class attitudes about the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the "pauperizing" tendency of direct relief handouts, etc. Also, there were several confidence-building measures which the British could have undertaken to show that they were serious (such as banning food exports from Ireland. etc.), and which they instead conspicuously refused to do... AnonMoos (talk) 15:52, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I am afraid that I have long ago got bored of trying to correct ignorant opinion by reference to historical fact, especially in relation to Ireland. Having given you a pointer to Tóibín's book, I can only repeat the suggestion that you and Dmcq either read the Wikipedia article about it or buy the book and read that. Tóibín is particularly good on how de Valera promoted the use of the Famine as a nationalistic stick with which to beat the English/ the British - there seems to be some confusion as to the particular villain of the piece, but we get the idea - and how poor much of the actual historiography of the subject is. Of course, the same potato blight hit Scotland, with much of the same conditions - in particular a lack of transport infrastructure - and effects - notably starvation and emigration; but the promotion of that famine does not suit the political needs of the present and so those ghosts can be safely left in peace.

The irony is that there are much better sticks to beat both sides - what the Elizabethans got up to in Ireland was appalling; the sanctimonious Irish (government) neutrality during the war, disgraceful - but the famine is the preferred weapon of choice. So be it; as Itsmejudith points out, most people accept that they are the inhabitants of a rain-lashed archipelago off the north-west coast of Europe, with rather arbitrary borders and an interesting common history, without defining themselves by reference to which particular island they come from and which particular piece of history is 'theirs'. In fact, we have a special word for people who do define themselves in such terms, many of whom have commented on the article's Talk page. --86.183.79.28 (talk) 20:06, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Whatever, I'm not Catholic or generally anti-British. (I am, however, anti Victorian "political economy".) I'm sure Scotland had its own problems, but it did not have the same overall demographic population crash (Scotland's population increased from 1841 to 1851 with a steady upwards trend thereafter, while Ireland's decreased by over 20% during that decade, and kept on decreasing until after WW2), nor did anything remotely approaching a million people die... AnonMoos (talk) 10:18, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, starvation due to siege, blockade, and the theft and destruction of crops and livestock as well as death from disease (incidental or germ warfare) are the killers of war. μηδείς (talk) 16:33, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the "creative" responses (i.e. listing things that virtually nobody would call a weapon), but I'm really just curious about how many people the AK-47 has killed compared to the other weapons. The media keeps on calling the AK-47 the deadliest weapon in history. I want to know how many people it killed to see if that claim is even remotely accurate. --Bowlhover (talk) 04:08, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Blankets deliberately infected with smallpox killed millions of native Americans. I would consider this a weapon. Weapons do not have to be something you hold in your hands. Starvation, disease, bio-warfare, etc. have been around since (and probably before) records exist. The AK-47 is used in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of East Asia, quite simply because it is easy to copy (the reason Kalashnikov went out of business). They are used by armies, militia, and civilians, alike. I don't think we can get numbers on how many people have been killed by an AK-47. But considering it has only existed for 50+ years, I doubt it would be many. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:31, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

The only documented case of distributing smallpox-infested blankets was the Amherst incident, as far as I know... AnonMoos (talk) 15:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Some references: "Sixty years after it was first launched, this weapon still kills around a quarter of a million people every year." and "If it was possible to measure such things, you'd almost certainly find that the AK-47 has killed more people that any other weapon in history" [1] This info seems to have been repeated widely in the news stories over the last few days following the death of Kalishnikov; for example: "The designer of the AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle that has killed more people than any other gun in the world died today aged 94." [2]. I found a good source for the numbers of assault rifles in the world (75 million per [3]) but not yet for the total number killed by it. 142.134.220.49 (talk) 12:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)