Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 April 1

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April 1

British pound and friends

I've been researching the Pound sterling and the role of the Bank of England as a central bank today, and there are a number of questions I've been unable to pin down, perhaps because they are common knowledge in the UK or conversely, obscure. Any citations to specific laws or other sources would be greatly appreciated.

• I know the Royal Mint physically creates UK coins, but who tells the mint how many to make? The Bank of England? HM Treasury?
• I found the law where the Manx pound has apparently been created by the Manx legislature which ordered it to be backed by Bank of England notes. Is the same thing true for the Jersey pound and Guernsey pound? (I couldn't find a legal citation.) Those articles say that it is similar to issuances in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Perhaps that is true with respect to how the bills are backed, but the Bank of England website says it only regulates the amount of notes issued in Scotland and Northern Ireland, not the dependencies. If the legal authority comes from the baliwick parliament rather than the UK parliament that would also be dissimilar.
• Manx law makes any currency that is legal tender anywhere in the UK legal tender on the Isle of Man. Is that also true in Jersey and Guernsey?
• Did the UK parliament pass a law devolving the currency-setting and issuing power to the local governments in the Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories? If so, when?
• It's clear the Falkland Islands pound, Gibraltar pound, and Saint Helena pound are locally authorized, but I guess I could ask the same questions about what UK parliament law, if any, devolved that power, and if they are backed by Bank of England notes specifically like on the Isle of Man?

Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 01:22, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Our article Banknotes of the pound sterling may hold some of the answers. Sorry I don't have more time at the moment. I suspect that the original authority to issue local coins and banknotes was within the Royal charter by which each Crown Colony was established; the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 is the latest legislation but colonial currencies predate that by a long chalk. Alansplodge (talk) 14:17, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

On the OP's query about whether the UK parliament passed a law devolving power to the Crown dependencies then the answer seems most unlikely to be yes as the UK Parliament does not form part of the government of the Crown dependencies. They are not part of the UK and never have been. Nor have they ever been under the direct colonial rule of the UK. The UK Parliament has legislated for them on occasion, but generally only with their consent. There's more in the linked article. The right to issue currency appears to be theirs from fargone times (before there was a UK Parliament in the case of Mann) as the articles you linked to above themselves indicate. Valiantis (talk) 21:40, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Some information about the history of Jersey banknotes at ON DEMAND: New Jersey Currency. It seems that the first Jersey banknotes in the 18th century were a private venture. Alansplodge (talk) 15:53, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

If your interest is anything to do with the forthcoming Scottish referendum, it is also worth reading about the Irish pound. Moonraker (talk) 23:51, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Jewish perspective on the failures of rebuilding the Third Temple

What is the Jewish perspective on the failures of rebuilding the Third Temple? Perhaps, God doesn't want the Temple to be built, or perhaps the Jews are still oppressed by foreigners (non-Jews)? 140.254.227.101 (talk) 17:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article titled Third Temple which has a LOT of information. --Jayron32 18:14, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

As a practical matter, none of the main currents in Israeli politics (left/Labor, right/Likud, or traditionally-minded orthodox Jewish religious) supports the idea, and it would be guaranteed to stir up extreme international antagonism. Many religious Jews may not be too enthusiastic about returning to the era of frequent animal sacrifices... AnonMoos (talk) 07:24, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Probably the religious parties would say "not now, not when it would run the risk of being re-destroyed quickly by our enemies," and probably the other parties would be uninterested just in general. Where would they get priests? The Urim and Thummim article refers to a biblical account of not permitting ambiguous candidates for the priesthood to be priests until they were able to have someone ministering with Urim and Thummim (which perhaps were lost by then), and if a couple of generations of separation could produce ambiguity in the identity of some of the kohenim, nearly 2000 years since the destruction of the Second Temple mean that anyone's identity as really being kohenim would be difficult to establish. 2001:18E8:2:28CA:F000:0:0:CB89 (talk) 13:29, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think you fully understand the religious complexities involved within Judaism. The Temple existing and being in operation can be considered the theoretically ideal state of Judaism, but one very common view is that this won't happen until the Messiah comes. A large number of traditionally orthodox Jews in Israel have overall ambiguous and sometimes negative attitudes towards the state of Israel, and certainly would not regard it as having any legitimate religious authority to re-establish the Temple. The traditional Jewish ruling is that Jews should not go onto the Temple Mount platform at all, since they might transgress the area of the Holy of Holies without knowing it. Groups such as Ateret Cohanim (whose goal of rebuilding the Temple is for some reason not mentioned in the article about it) are in fact religiously non-traditional. As for practical difficulties, the problem wouldn't be so much finding priests (since men with names such as "Cohen", "Cohn", "Katz" are traditionally regarded as of priestly male lineage, verified to some degree in modern times by the discovery of distinctive Y-chromosomal variants among many so-named), as finding the perfect Red heifer, and other ritual requirements... AnonMoos (talk) 17:14, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Were there any pro-segregationist black people in the southern U.S.A?

I am referring to the pre-1950s history of the southern USA. Many whites supported segregation, but were there any outspoken supporters of segregation that were black? --Aśter Fartiyet (talk) 20:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

For the exact era, I'm not sure, but you might look up Malcolm X and Black nationalism. Of course they probably weren't exactly allies of the white segregationists. --Trovatore (talk) 21:25, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Louis Farrakhan famously met with Tom Metzger in 1985, to discuss possible common ground (has nothing to do with the pre-1950s South, though)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:34, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

See also Liberia. Sigh. Wnt (talk) 21:45, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Thurgood Marshall 1908 - 1993 later to become the first African American justice of the US Supreme Court, in his freshman year at Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) opposed the integration of African-American professors and as a lawyer representing the NAACP in Murray v. Pearson (1936) argued for the "separate but equal" segregationist doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) because the state of Maryland did not provide a comparable educational opportunity at a state-run black institution. Thurgood is better known for arguing against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that desegregated public schools, but that was later in 1954. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 21:55, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

From the article, I'm guessing you mean that Marshall and the NAACP argued against SBE. —Tamfang (talk) 06:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

No, I think neither of the two statements is quite right. If I've understood it correctly, separate-but-equal (or at least equal-but-allowably-separate) was the law of the land at the time, and Marshall and the NAACP did not directly attack it, but rather attacked it indirectly by seeking out cases where it was hard to accomplish (Maryland was not likely to build a whole new law school just so they could be separate-but-equal). So it's not right to say they argued against it, but it's also misleading to say they argued for it; rather, they argued within that context. --Trovatore (talk) 06:44, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I do agree with Trovatore's understanding and think it right to say that Thurgood was outspoken for a strategic reason in the NAACP's interest at that time in formally supporting an existing segregation law for which he certainly had no love. An American hero IMHO. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 01:06, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Somebody else can fill in the missing details, but there was an all-black town in the Southern US which had a leader who helped it survive by going along with the segregationists. He was even elected as a state senator or representative. (The only black one there at the time.) StuRat (talk) 22:24, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Aśter Fartiyet -- I doubt that any significant number of blacks ever supported the exclusion of blacks from the political process, or segregated drinking fountains and back-of-the-bus nonsense. However, one of the effects of segregation was that black professionals (lawyers, doctors, preachers etc.) were often required to live in the same city neighborhoods as working-class and lower-class blacks, and that black communities sometimes had a lot of say as to how local all-black schools were run, etc. When many middle-class blacks were able to move to more upscale neighborhoods after the end of formalized segregation, the neighborhoods they moved away from often became much poorer and more dysfunctional. Some schools were no longer local black community institutions, but became part of larger bureaucracies.[1] Looking back on Jackie Robinson and the desegregation of baseball, some have claimed that a better way to do it would have been to admit some Negro Leagues teams to Major League Baseball... AnonMoos (talk) 08:08, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Turkey, censorship, emigration, Europe

Over the past month censorship in Turkey has progressed to an extreme condition, with popular sites like Twitter and YouTube banned. Elections of dubious validity have further confirmed this approach, with Erdogan making rather blunt threats against political opponents.^[2] Usually when we read about things like this, they occur in poor countries whose citizens are fairly effectively incarcerated within their borders. But in this case, so far as I know, the Schengen Agreement still permits Turks to simply leave and live in a free country, though this has drawn criticism from various parties. So... is there a huge wave of emigration presently underway? And are European countries frantically devising a way to shut the door in their face? Wnt (talk) 23:04, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Turkey is not in the Schengen Area. Rojomoke (talk) 23:31, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Oooooops! Sorry - I had been under the impression that Turks in Germany were the result of that; I'd remembered hearing of people somehow getting into the EU via Turkey... but obviously I was confused! Wnt (talk) 23:43, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

There were noticeable numbers of Turks in Germany before the Schengen Agreement, I believe. —Tamfang (talk) 06:04, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed - see Gastarbeiter and Turks in Germany. The large inflow of immigrants from Turkey began in the early 1960s. --Xuxl (talk) 08:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

And for all the recent turmoil, Turkey is a country that has a strong tradition of political parties and has had regular democratic elections since the early 1980s. It has also undergone tremendous economic growth during that period. Comparisons with the economically-crippled "prison States" of Cold War Eastern Europe are inapt. The Turkish opposition is looking at changing government policies through the current political system, not at leaving the country en masse. Major emigration from Turkey was economically motivated and peaked in the 1960s and 1970s. --Xuxl (talk) 08:55, 2 April 2014 (UTC)