Reddit mentions: The best historical asian biographies

I think the first point to consider is that The Orphan Master's Son should be read as a domestic drama, more along the lines of Nothing to Envy than any of the foreign-policy focused news and zomg-weird-pop-performance-footage that dominates this subreddit and /r/northkoreanews.

In that light, the Orphan Master's Son is a lovely, well-told story, and it was well-researched, but it's still clearly a second-hand impression of the country. It doesn't add to the outside world's stock of DPRK information; it just retells the tragedies already told by Shin Dong-hyuk and Kenji Fujimoto in a literary style.

Then too, there are places where the needs of the story subsume the reality on the ground. For example, the book entertains the notion that the state would promote just individual one actress its paragon of female virtue and one individual soldier as the paragon of male virtue. This is important to author's point about public and private identity and whether love also needs truth, but it's wholly out of step with the Kim regime's way of doing business. Kim Il Sung is the one god in North Korea, and the only permissible icons are his successors, and to a lesser extent, senior party politicians. Pop figures are disposable.

But The Orphan Master's Son is a good read. It would go high on my list of recommendations for someone who wants a starting point on the country but is scared of footnotes and foreign names. But if your DPRK obsession hinges more on predicting the fate of the Kaesong Industrial Zone, it won't give you much.

You can begin reading to understand the history of the Kashmir conflict.
So here are some suggestions, based on where I began my own reading, and drawing on easily available publications by Kashmiris.

1. The good old Tracts For The Times booklet by Bajraj Puri - http://www.amazon.in/Kashmir-Towards-Insurgenc…/…/0863113842
   
   
2. AG Noorani's volumes on Kashmir (you can also find many articles by him, from Frontline, online) http://www.amazon.in/Kashmir-Dispute-1947-2012…/…/9382381155
   
   
3. Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer - http://www.amazon.in/Curfewed-Night-Kashmiri-J…/…/1439109109
   
   
4. A Long Dream of Home - The Persecution, exile and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits by Siddhartha Gigoo and Varad Sharma http://www.amazon.in/Long-Dream-Home-persecuti…/…/9385436201
   
   
5. Until My Freedom Has Come - a collection of short fiction, reportage, essays, news reports, interviews and a rapper’s song by Kashmiris, edited by Sanjay Kak http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/…/until-my-freedom-has-com…
   
   
6. BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Indian-Administered Kashmir - a report by International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK) http://www.kashmirprocess.org/reports/graves/toc.html
   
   
7. Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? http://www.amazon.in/Remember-Kunan-Poshpora-Z…/…/9384757667
   
   
8. You can read updates from the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) http://apdpkashmir.com/ and JKCCS http://www.jkccs.net/ - these groups post Facebook updates also, regularly
   
   
9. Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths of Peace by Sumantra Bose - https://kashmirebooks.files.wordpress.com/…/sumantra-bose-k…
   
   
10. Some other good readings are included in this list compiled by HT http://www.hindustantimes.com/…/story-PKmPCQ5WtigTwp85vvSpR…
    
    
11. An interesting article by Yoginder Sikand in EPW traced the shifts in the Kashmiri movement in the 1980s http://www.epw.in/…/…/changing-course-kashmiri-struggle.html
    
    
12. Agha Shahid Ali - The Country Without A Post Office (poetry) http://www.amazon.in/Country-Without-Post-Offi…/…/0393317617
    
    
13. Jashn-e-Azaadi - How We Celebrate Freedom - a documentary by Sanjay Kak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJnwGEk1fzQ
    
    Start where you like, these are not in any particular order. It is most encouraging that so many, ignoring the ugly trolling and hate-filled propaganda, are asking to know more on Kashmir. Yesterday's silent march also saw many come forward to ask to know more. Silence can break the media-scripted cacophony, a space of quiet can allow voices of good sense, especially Kashmiri voices, to be heard, and make for a path to empathy and solidarity.

Formatted version:

1. The good old Tracts For The Times booklet by Bajraj Puri - http://www.amazon.in/Kashmir-Towards-Insurgency-Tracts-Times/dp/0863113842
   
2. AG Noorani's volumes on Kashmir (you can also find many articles by him, from Frontline, online) http://www.amazon.in/Kashmir-Dispute-1947-2012-1-2/dp/9382381155
   
3. Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer - http://www.amazon.in/Curfewed-Night-Kashmiri-Journalists-Frontline/dp/1439109109
   
4. A Long Dream of Home - The Persecution, exile and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits by Siddhartha Gigoo and Varad Sharma http://www.amazon.in/Long-Dream-Home-persecution-Kashmiri/dp/9385436201
   
5. Until My Freedom Has Come - a collection of short fiction, reportage, essays, news reports, interviews and a rapper’s song by Kashmiris, edited by Sanjay Kak http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/en/content/until-my-freedom-has-come%3Frate=1Jem0gUhLZKCLEzVRSto4bwhTDJWqJHs63AmYuUPQyo.html
   
6. BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Indian-Administered Kashmir - a report by International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK) http://www.kashmirprocess.org/reports/graves/toc.html
   
7. Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? http://www.amazon.in/Remember-Kunan-Poshpora-Zubaan-Violence-Impunity/dp/9384757667
   
8. You can read updates from the Association of Parents of Displaced persons (APDP) http://apdpkashmir.com/ and JKCCS http://www.jkccs.net/ - these groups post Facebook updates also, regularly
   
9. Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths of Peace by Sumantra Bose - https://kashmirebooks.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/sumantra-bose-kashmir_-roots-of-conflict-paths-to-peace-harvard-university.pdf
   
10. Some other good readings are included in this list compiled by HT http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/the-kashmir-reading-list-11-books-to-understand-the-conflict/story-PKmPCQ5WtigTwp85vvSpRM.html
    
11. An interesting article by Yoginder Sikand in EPW traced the shifts in the Kashmiri movement in the 1980s http://www.epw.in/journal/2001/03/special-articles/changing-course-kashmiri-struggle.html
    
12. Agha Shahid Ali - The Country Without A Post Office (poetry) http://www.amazon.in/Country-Without-Post-Office-Shahid/dp/0393317617
    
13. Jashn-e-Azaadi - How We Celebrate Freedom - a documentary by Sanjay Kak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJnwGEk1fzQ
    
    >Start where you like, these are not in any particular order. It is most encouraging that so many, ignoring the ugly trolling and hate-filled propaganda, are asking to know more on Kashmir. Yesterday's silent march also saw many come forward to ask to know more. Silence can break the media-scripted cacophony, a space of quiet can allow voices of good sense, especially Kashmiri voices, to be heard, and make for a path to empathy and solidarity.

There's probably a few ways you could go about expanding your knowledge base. The two that seem most fruitful are

1. Reading for a deeper understanding of the topics that you're already familiar with.
   
   
2. Ranging more broadly into other areas that may interest you.
   
   If (1), then I'd probably suggest one of two courses. Either, (a) read the stuff that influenced the existential thinkers that you've listed, or (b) read some literature dealing with issues related to the thinkers you've listed.
   
   For (a) I'd suggest the following:
   
   

• Anything by Kant
  
• (In the case of Kierkegaard) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or his Aesthetics
  
• (For Nietzsche) Emerson's essays, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, or Spinoza's Ethics
  
• Maybe some Freud for the later thinkers? Civilization and its Discontents is really good.
  
  For (b) it's really a mixed bag. I'd suggest going through the SEP articles on the thinkers you've listed and looking into some good secondary literature on them. If you're super interested in Nietzsche, I'd definitely suggest reading Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality. I really couldn't tell you more unless you told me something more specific about your interests.
  
  If (2), then I suppose I'd suggest one of the following:
  
  
• Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy for a good, broad introduction to Chinese Thought
  
• The Analects of Confucius. This translation is excellent
  
• A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
  
• Heidegger's Being and Time
  
• Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
  
• Some of Rilke's work
  
• Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life
  
  Again, it's hard to give you better directions without more information on what you're actually interested in. I've just thrown a bunch of stuff at you, and you couldn't possibly be expected to read, say, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation over break and be expected to really understand it.

There's a pretty good book on this sort of thing.You need to go digging through historical biographies and text to get a more typical view of what life was like back then (I'd start with those I recommended above.. A lot of people, myself included aren't a fan of Churchill's politics, but if you look at him through the lense of his era and keep in mind his differences to you or I... As in we weren't born in a palace as the son of a lord, on a first name basis with all of the richest & most powerful gentry. Getting to hang out in his teens & taken places by the Prince of Wales/the future King, Edward VII (who his mother was probably sleeping with)) its a great read and will give you a decent insight into what life was like for both the gentry & the people who worked for them:

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lion-Winston-Churchill-1874-1932/dp/0385313489


The book on how great today is:

https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp/1451614217

Genghis Khan left the cities to be ruled by their own people for the most part if they surrendered, which left them completely intact. The city would be required to pay a percentage of all goods to the Khan. In fact, this was substantially the Mongolian economy. For the most part, Mongols could not smelt, make pottery, craft with silk, mine, etc. Despite this, the entire Kingdom grew exponentially wealthy as peoples were conquered. It took a truly huge empire that spread across most of Asia, into the middle east, and into Europe. It would have encompassed more land if the heat didn't mess with their horses, men, and bows so badly. If the leaders did not surrender, or refused to pay tribute, there was no mercy. Cities could be razed. People were killed needlessly to instill fear. He could be brutal if it benefited him.

For the most part, conquered cities didn't need to produce military goods. They may have contributed arrows, but the Mongols mainly fought from horseback. They preferred to fight from distances as they believed getting blood on you would contaminate your soul. They conquered infantry and only used the troops they capture to lead a charge as a sacrifice to ease mongol losses. They had little need for heavy armor, swords, etc. In fact, their armor was very light and modtly covered their fronts to prevent retreat or to lighten the load. What they did enjoy were siege machines. The Mongols played a direct role in creating and furthering the catapult, flame thrower (gun powder with a slow burn), and cannons.

The Mongols also thoroughly pillaged towns. They would evacuate the town and systematically go building to building looking for anything valuable. Before Genghis Khan (pronounced jane-gis not gain-gis by the way), pillagers kept whatever they found. But under Genghis Khan, all of the booty was piled up and distributed by a shares allocation.

This is going beyond the question, but I thought I'd add how stable the land was that was conquered. Genghis Khan is largely shown as a barbarian in modern depictions. However, this is in a large part due to a play of Voltaire depicting him that way. He was using him as an allegory of the French king to avoid being prosecuted, but the image stuck to the great Khan. Genghis khan built and ensured safe roads, thousands of public schools, a writing system, freedom of religion, diplomatic immunity, paper money, and his influence is still reverberating through the modern world. They also assembled one of the largest sailing fleets in history, inspiring the British and Spanish armada. Edit: as I clarify later in this thread, he wasn't a nice guy. He was often brutal, but always cunning. He was constantly learning and was as elite a strategist as has lived.

Edit: to add another fascinating point related to your question, the armies of the Mongols spread out for miles. It could take days to ride from the left side to the right side, even in organized hunts as opposed to war. This was due to the horses needing to graze since everybody was mounted and each soldier had up to four or five horses. When they conquered an area, they often trampled crops so the land would return to grazing ground. They viewed the farmer peasants as little more than animals eating vegies and living in one area where their food was located. This was far different from the meat heavy diet of the Mongols.




All of this and more is available in the highly recommended and thoroughly captivating book "Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world." The audio book is equally captivating, and was recently on audible for $5. Currently $4 on Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705

My horde grows wealthy. Glad to see my vassals are showing their proper respect. I will not have to resort to violence for at least another month.

To get anywhere with anything Chinese, you have to read the Analects. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont's translation is, in my opinion, the best. The intro is an amazing analysis of the text, its key concepts, and how crucial understanding the way Chinese language works is in order to understand Ancient Chinese thought.

Here is Ames discussing his life's work: the idea of "Confucian Role Ethics". Really cool stuff, and the intro is done by Hal Roth, who does some amazing work on Zhuangzi, and early Daoist contemplative practices.

This by Michael Puett looks at Zhuangzi in relation to Confucius, and is a bit easier to grasp than Ames' talk.

If you have audible, Grant Hardy's Great minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition is a killer series of concise, informative lectures about Chinese, Indian, and Japanese philosophies. I highly recommend it because he goes through each culture chronologically, so you get to see the changes in Chinese and Japanese religions/philosophies before and after the introduction of Buddhism. If you don't have audible, you can get this one pretty cheap with the free trial.

Hope this helps, and I'll add more as they occur to me.

Barbara Tuchman was brilliant writer of history.

Albert Camus was a brilliant absurdist philosopher and novelist.

Jared Diamond has written some brilliant books at the intersection of anthropology and ecology. Another good book in this genre is Clive Ponting's A New Green History of the World.

Gwynne Dyer is an acclaimed military historian turned journalist on international affairs who has written a number of very engaging books on warfare and politics. His most recent book Climate Wars is the ONE book I would recommend to someone, if so limited, on the subject as it embodies both a wonderful synopsis of the science juxtaposed against the harsh realpolitiks and potential fates of humankind that may unfold unless we can manage to tackle the matter seriously, soon. Another great book on climate change is Bill McKibben's Deep Economy.

For social activists interested in ending world hunger and abject poverty, I can recommend: Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom; Nobel Prize winning micro-financier Muhammad Yunus' Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism; UN MDG famed economist Jeffrey Sach's End Of Poverty; and Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea

For anyone of Scottish heritage, I heartily recommend Arthur Hermann's How The Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It

For naval history buffs: Robert K. Massie's Dreadnought.

Last, but not least: Robert Pirsig's classic Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Enjoy!

To start, I would check out The Dragon in the Land of Snows by Tsering Shakya. He is one of the most prominent Tibetan historians in the West. It is a history of modern tibet since 1947.

Other notable books to start include The Tibetans by Matthew Kapstein and History as Propaganda: Tibetan Exiles versus the People's Republic of China by John Powers.

A history of Tibet is complicated. But there is a lot of misinformation out there, shaped by Orientalism, and reinforced by an apologetic look at Mao's destructive policies and rule. Tibet was never a shangi-la, only uninformed westerners thought that it was. But China's rule in Tibet has been incredibly repressive, devastating, and near genocidal.

If you get through those books, here are some more suggestions for some in depth understanding:

• The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk by Venerable Palden Gyatso
  
• Buddha's Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet by Mikel Dunham
  
• Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War by Carole McGranahan
  
• Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West by Donald Lopez
  
• The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama by Thomas Laird
  
• In Exile from the Land of Snows: The Definitive Account of the Dalai Lama and Tibet Since the Chinese Conquest by John Avedon
  
  I'll also mention these two by Melvyn Goldstein, with the preface that he is academically rigorous, but widely thought of in Tibetan communities as an apologist and biased towards China.
  
  
• A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, and
  
• The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama
  
  One final note is that Tibetans do not want a return to the past, they want freedom. They want freedom of religion, freedom to practice their culture, freedom from military occupation, and a return of the Dalai Lama. Check out Phayul for current news from Tibetan exile communities.
  
  Happy reading

I'm glad you got a chance to read those. Really interesting material. I discovered it after the whole series had ended and I guess it had a similar effect on me because I finished of it in one sitting because it was so compelling. It's also an account (or series of accounts) that I recommend to people when they have read all the more popular kwan-li-so and kya-hwa-so stories like The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Eyes of the Tailless Animals, Long Road Home, and a book I used to put on that list Escape from Camp 14. I think everyone knows why I have a hard time recommending it.

For anyone looking for even more information about the camps, a hugely valuable resource would be The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of "Those Who are Sent to the Mountains" (heads up: this is a PDF link) which was researched and written by David Hawk who is a former Executive Director
of Amnesty International USA, and a former United Nations human rights official. He has worked on documenting the Khmer Rouge atrocities, the genocidal massacres in Rwanda, and now most recently the topic of North Korea. He is a man I have actively tried to get in touch with to request an AMA for our subscribers to no avail, but I would have been surprised if he actually had time for it. We mods are also actively trying to locate Lee Jun Ha to come on for an AMA. Actually we have been quite busy behind the scenes for the last few weeks trying to bring the subscribers quite a few AMAs, some return guests and some new. So we are hoping to have a busy sub for the rest of the year and top it all off with another LiNK fundraiser. So stay tuned.

If "Soon" is in a few hundred years. Technological balances change during timescales like that you know.

So uh this existed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Poland_(1025–1385) And sure, there were internal power struggles -that doesn't mean it didn't exist as entity, or that it couldn't martial forces against an outside threat. Nobody traces the foundation of Poland to the foundation of what, the commonwealth? The traditional date is 966.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica

That's the forces of the Kingdom of Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, and crusader knights facing down against the Mongols.

As for Georgia, they were martialing for a crusade, and were a lot stronger at the time than they are nowadays. The sources say a hundred thousand knights, which is certainly an exaggeration, but 50,000 - 100,000 martialed men, including mercenaries and their Cuman allies, isn't beyond the scope of imagination. This isn't from an old book either, it's according to this book :

http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan’s-Greatest-General-Subotai/dp/0806137347

Feel free to quote any sources better than a history professor and prolific author, feel free! Hell, you can look some about that very attack up in the Google Books preview of that book and check out the sources for yourself!

Sure, maybe they didn't have exactly the same styles as Europe - but feel plate and heavy calvary they certainly did have, and given that the Muslim forces were still easily contesting European ones at the time I don't think being part of the same "Technological sphere" is exactly high praise.

Oh, so they couldn't sustain sieges which were thousands of miles from their homeland? Gee, I'm sure that has a ton of relevance for their general aptitude for it, and especially for a pitched field battle!

Europe was maybe ahead of China with access to superior metal resources - but Georgia, Khwarizmi, and the other Islamic principalities? You ever hear of Damascus steel, kind of top of the line back then? It ain't from London. Europe wouldn't be solidly ahead of the Islamic world for centuries yet, and only decisively ahead by the 1600s. The Mongols trumped Islamic forces right up until the Mamluks, with rudimentary gunpowder weapons, beat them after they were well past their own height of ability and political unity.

💖

Half my life. She’s been gone half my life.

I was 17 when my mom died and there are so many things I have wished over the years that I could go back and do differently. There are pictures I never took, memories I didn’t get to make, words I didn’t say.

The night she died, I had been frustrated with her all day. I was angry.

I remember walking up to my room to go to bed and I walked past her room and mom said, “Good night sweetie, I love you.” I stopped and I looked at her and said in the most 17-year-old way ever, “I love you too, mom.” I look back now and I think she knew. Maybe she didn’t, but part of me thinks she did. I sure didn’t.

Hours later, everything would be different.

At 17, I didn’t have the proper tools to deal with my grief, so I shut it out and pretended it didn’t exist. Truth be told, it’s taken the past 17 years of working on a lot of internal forgiveness, accepting the things I cannot change, and making peace.

She was an absolutely incredible woman. She impacted literally thousands (if not millions) of people’s lives. She was a true advocate. She was an amazing wife to my dad. But to me, she was the most incredible mommy.

I don’t care how old you are, you always need your mama. And today, I need her. And she’s not here. And it sucks.

Some years I “handle” this day really well. This year? This year feels heavy. Knowing she’s been gone half my life feels heavy.

It will be okay, but today… today is hard. Today, I miss her.

I share all this to say that to anyone who has experienced loss or grief - whether it’s been a week, a month, a year, 10 years, or 50 years… your feelings are valid and it’s okay. God sees you in your grief. He weeps with you and He rejoices with you.

​

Lynda Van Devanter Buckley

May 27, 1947 – November 15, 2002

https://www.facebook.com/stillbeingmolly/posts/2532577566811111

https://youtu.be/2kgqlSqosNw

https://www.amazon.com/Home-before-Morning-Story-Vietnam/dp/1558492984

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/23/us/lynda-van-devanter-nurse-who-became-chronicler-of-her-wartime-pain-dies-at-55.html

Honestly, this question is really just asking "hey, could you retell the main narrative of Japanese history for 1000 years?" It's kind of like asking "What's the relationship between the Pope and European Kings and Queens?" and it should probably be in popular questions. I mean honestly just read any textbook, since this relationship is the central political question at any point from 1200 onwards. It's not in popular questions and this would make a crappy /r/askhistorians post though, so I'll go ahead and link-filled summarize:

It depends on what time period you're talking about. Since you explicitly asked for shogun/emperor, I'll start with the first shogunate. Established in Kamakura (symbolically, far away in the traditional lands of the Minamoto clan instead of in Kyoto where the Emperor was) in 1192 as a result of the Gempei war, it stripped the emperor of most of his temporal power. Even at that point, though, the operative power was not in the Emperor himself, but rather his courtiers (see the fujiwara clan), as the Emperor himself spent most his time fulfilling the many Shinto-Daoist rituals that were cosmologically needed to keep the realm in working order (a lot of waving stuff around, purifying stuff, burning stuff, etc.) The war was really between to rival warrior families who were desperately trying to marry into the courtiers and eventually the Imperial family itself. One won, the other lost, and the winner set up an alternate power structure. From here on, power fluctuated between a few sources. At some points, Emperors would 'retire' to become monks, leave their sons to do the ritual crap, while they exercised some measure of power
from the monastery (no small irony there). In this period, around 1340, after another short war/power struggle, the Ashikaga family deposed the Kamakura shogunate and set up their own shogunate within Kyoto itself. Depending on who was shogun and who was cloistered, real power fluctuated. Sometimes even abbots of powerful temples would get in the mix. In terms of actual family ties, all 3 groups were closely linked and regularly intermarried. For a really good monograph on this interesting period, I'd see Gates of Power by Adolphson.

By the late 1400s, though, that system was breaking down altogether. Local Samurai basically acted on their own perogatives on their own land. At this point, the Sengoku Jidai (age of country at war), there are people claiming this and that in terms of rulership, and all of it is meaningless. The only thing that mattered was military strength and personal loyalty, which could be broken at the drop of a hat if the benefits were seen to outweigh the consequence. For this period, the history shelf is littered with colorful picture books about the HONORABLE SAMURAI WARRIOR and all kinds of nonsense (it is also when Shogun: Total War (and its re-make) is set). One trustworthy monograph on the ending throes, that I'd say also captures the essence of the period, would be Japonius Tyrannus by Jeroen Lamers.

The Tokugawa Shogunate, set up by the eventual victor in 1600 onwards, sought to solidify sole control. During the wars, the great temples had been almost completely obliterated, so they were out. The Shogunate removed the other threat to their power, the Imperial Court, by taking over administration and funding of the Imperial Household (and thus removing the powerful courtiers that traditionally surrounded the Emperor together). In order to leave the Emperor to his important ritual business, they very kindly removed from his household the burden of managing any land--making them completely dependent and unable to cultivate their own powerbase. While the Emperor was still seen as the ultimate source of both political and cultural legitimacy, temporal power was seen to have been devolved entirely to the Tokugawa family (who did still regularly marry daughters off to Emperors). With the Royal Baby in our thoughts, I'd say it's similar to how the UK runs now; the Emperor is around, popular, and beloved, but not even a figurehead in terms of running things. A good window into how things ran in the middle of the period would be The Dog Shogun by Beatrice Bodart-Bailey.

This is, until the "Opening of Japan" leads to everyone going nuts. For the Boshin war and what follows, I did write a post about that here just a few days ago. One thing I didn't link to in that is a book about all the neat intellectual history, which really touches on your question in terms of how intellectuals built up a sense of legitimacy for the Imperial Restoration and how that leads up to the revolution, so I'll link it here: Before the Nation by Susan Burns.

Look, I totally believe that "people are people" and for the most part the regular folks living under any society are going to be good people. (Possible exception for places like North Korean gulags where they're not treated like humans and so don't grow up understanding basic principles like kindness and compassion - they can't really be faulted for that, though.) I believe that there are people trying to do their best and corrupt individuals in ALL types of gov'ts (some being more ripe for fraud and deception than others).

So when this conversation of "this clean up could only happen in the Soviet Union" began I was like "pssht! there are people everywhere who would sacrifice themselves for the good of their neighbors and the rest of the world." But as the sheer volume of people involved in this clean up effort is revealed - over 600,000 liquidators and over 3,000 on the Маша rooftop alone...I start to question if that could have happened in a Westernized country. I think there's too much "individuality" in America, too much focus on "my rights" for people to blindly follow instructions like this. And they certainly wouldn't have done so without absolute guarantees of wages and future medical care.

And I don't know which one is "right" or "better."

I am assuming you can't read Japanese.

Reading Materials:

Chronicles of Oda Nobunaga. Primary source record by one of his vassals.
Description of Japan Primary source by Jesuit Luis Frois comparing Japan and Europe.

Japonius Tyrannus by Jeroen Lamers on Oda Nobunaga

Hideyoshi (Harvard East Asian Monographs) on Hideyoshi and Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu (Tuttle Classics) on Tokugawa Ieyasu. These are outdated but I'd recommend anyone else other than Stephen Turnbull.

Speaking of Turnbull, everyone else please look in The Samurai Sourcebook and Samurai Commanders. The only reason I'm putting Turnbull on the list is there seem to be no other English sources. Just remember Turnbull takes propaganda, fiction, and rumor at face value (interestingly he says Sadler did, but Sadler's book is oooooold) and from time to time have outright mistakes. If he talks tactics, ninjas, backroom politics, or conversations without citing a primary or Japanese secondary source, use the information with caution. Also IIRC most of his general numbers (ie numbers he produce without saying which primary source they're from) is can be traced back to Meiji Imperial Army book which is not accurate.

I might get back to you with the others if I get around to it, but as the request is large and I'm super busy lately I'll just leave you with a roundabout translation/paraphrase of Frois' description of Nobunaga:
>He is of average height, slender, little mustache, and has a high voice. He likes war and is constantly focused on training for war. He is very proud and very strict in delivering justice. If someone dishonours him he will without a doubt get revenge, but sometimes he displays a human and merciful side. He sleeps little and gets up early. He is not greedy, is decisive and very experienced at warfare. He [can be] incredibly impetuous and frantic but is not always so. He barely listens to the advice of his vassals, and all greatly respect him. He doesn't drink, eats little, is incredibly frank to others, and is arrogant about his own opinion. He looks down on all the other princes of Japan, and speaks to them as if they're subordinates. Everyone obeys him like an absolute monarch. Even when the fortunes of war are against him, he's calm and great at enduring hardship. He has great reason and judgement, and treats any kind of rites to God, the Buddha, pagan divination or superstition with disdain. In name at first he acts as if he belongs to Hokke Sect (Nichren Buddhism), but after attaining greatness he looks down on all idols. In a few points he follows Zen Buddhism and does not believe in the immortality of the soul or rewards and punishments in the afterlife. His house is incredibly clean, and he is incredibly meticulous in everything. He hates protracting in conversations and long preludes, and talks friendly even with lowly servants. He likes famous tea bowls, horses, swords, falconry, and really likes sumo wrestling. No one is allowed to wear weapons before him. He has a slight depressed look. Even when he meets difficulty he is fearless. Everyone obeys his every word.

You asked for everything really, but here is a selection I personally like that is more focused on the biography of Muhammad.

For Muslim books on the biography of the Prophet, I highly recommend:

A Biography of the Prophet of Islam: In the Light of the Original Sources, an Analytical Study

In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad

Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources

On the more academic side of his life and following centuries, I recommend:

Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction

Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World

In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire

The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam

For the four best primary sources of his biography translated into English:

The Life of Muhammad: Al-Waqidi's Kitab al-Maghazi

The Life of the Prophet Muhammad: Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya

The Life of Muhammad

The Expeditions: An Early Biography of Muhammad

>(someone pls recommend me some good books)

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Enlightenment-Central-Conquest-Tamerlane/dp/0691165858/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0/144-0242630-4897537?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1refRID=KKYE6CNQEBQAGXX727XD

Comparing Genghis Khan, Timur and Nader Shah is pretty fun.

https://books.google.com/books?id=nFx3OlrBMpQC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.fusosha.co.jp/Books/detail/9784594074760

https://www.amazon.com/Rulers-Guide-Greatest-Emperor-Timeless/dp/1501138774/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=VXGE1BG6WGDA6CJ8K9T2

https://www.amazon.com/Shi-Min-Founding-theTang-Dynasty/dp/0875869785/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=VXGE1BG6WGDA6CJ8K9T2

https://www.amazon.com/Poetics-Sovereignty-Harvard-Yenching-Institute-Monograph/dp/0674056086

https://books.google.com/books?id=VW2HJL689wgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=baburnama&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNjrCE_b_TAhXIOBQKHaDyCCEQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=baburnama&f=false

https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-Language/dp/160220408X

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guerrilla-Warfare-Mao-Tse-Tung/dp/956310014X

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai:_The_Last_Perfect_Revolutionary

https://www.amazon.com/Ho-Chi-Minh-William-Duiker-ebook/dp/B0095V89ZI

https://www.amazon.com/Admiral-Togo-Nelson-Jonathan-Clements/dp/1906598622

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung

http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/Constitution/node_2825.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Keiretsu-Inside-Hidden-Japanese-Conglomerates/dp/007042859X

The history of Austronesian Madagascar is interesting.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd also recommend Aleksandr Dugin's books and "The Intelligent Investor" by B. Graham.

The 14th Dalai Lama: "When I was not quite three years old, a search party that had been sent out by the Government to find the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama arrived at Kumbum monastery. It had been led there by a number of signs. One of these concerned the embalmed body of my predecessor, Thupten Gyatso, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who had died aged fifty-seven in 1933. During its period of sitting in state, the head was discovered to have turned from facing south to north-east. Shortly after that the Regent, himself a senior lama, had a vision. Looking into the waters of a sacred lake, Lhamoi Lhatso, in southern Tibet, he clearly saw the Tibetan letters Ah, Ka and Ma float into view. These were followed by the image of a three-storeyed monastery with a turquoise and gold roof and a path running from it to a hill. Finally, he saw a small house with strangely shaped guttering. He was sure that the letter Ah referred to Amdo, the north-eastern province, so it was there that the search party was sent.

By the time they reached Kumbum, the members of the search party felt that they were on the right track. It seemed likely that if the letter Ah referred to Amdo, then Ka must indicate the monastery at Kumbum -- which was indeed three storeyed and turquoise roofed. They now only needed to locate a hill and a house with peculiar guttering. So they began to search the neighbouring villages. When they saw the gnarled branches of juniper wood on the roof of my parents' house, they were certain that the new Dalai Lama would not be far away. Nevertheless, rather than reveal the purpose of their visit, the group asked only to stay the night. The leader of the party, Kewtsang Rinpoche, then pretended to be a servant and spent much of the evening observing and playing with the youngest child in the house.

The child recognized him and called out 'Sera Lama, Sera Lama'. Sera was Kewtsang Rinpoche's monastery. Next day they left -- only to return a few days later as a formal deputation. This time they brought with them a number of things that had belonged to my predecessor, together with several similar items that did not. In every case, the infant correctly identified those belonging to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama saying, 'It's mine. It's mine.' This more or less convinced the search party that they had found the new incarnation. However, there was another candidate to be seen before a final decision could be reached. But it was not long before the boy from Takster was acknowledged to be the new Dalai Lama. I was that child." https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Exile-Autobiography-Dalai-Lama/dp/0060987014

I can't really speak from my own experience, but from military buddies I have it seems like whatever good we're doing may be undermined whenever a drone goes and offs a handful of kids.

If our foreign policy was just carried out with daggers, I think we'd be in a pretty good place overall... but it's not, and so the innocent people who die might be outweighing the good that's done in terms of infrastructure and everything else.

What's depicted in Three Cups of Tea certainly makes a huge difference, but from what I can tell our military and governmental actions along those lines are outweighed by the accidental innocent deaths.

And the shit like the trophy killings that just broke this week.

You think that you've just made a super intelligent point because you've pointed out the obvious fact that the US has issues with human rights and with over-criminalization. It isn't an intelligent point because you don't know jack shit about North Korea. You don't know dick about how people live there, and I know that because if you did, you would pull your head out of your ass and realize that the issues that the United States has are not even in the same order of magnitude as the issues that North Korea has.

I recommend that you read the following books to give you a better sense of life in North Korea, so that in the future you can be more educated on the subject:

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

according to a really informative and entertaining book I picked up, korean entertainment firms acknowledge the fact that geniuses that can sing and dance in perfect sync like Michael Jackson only surface once in a hundred years, and that members of the Beetles can't meet in the garage and start their own band in korea, because everyone is busy studying, and preparing for their futures instead of practicing guitare. So that's why they train potential idols since elementary school, grooming them for the stage for 10 years! Imagine the risks and dedication involved for such a long-term investment. There are different things to respect for everything. It follows the korean belief that success should be a result of hard work and selfless dedication, not birthright or genetics. BTW the stage is really where these artists shine. You get choreography and moves you never seen in music videos. Personally, I prefer dance practice videos like this over the official music vids any day because they show the work they put into making a simple stage into a living storytelling arena.

Yang is Taiwanese. He was born in New York, went to Exeter (the No.1 private high school in the US) and Brown. He got his law degree from Columbia University. He does not even speak Mandarin. (or just a little bit) His career was all about tech startups and created thousands of jobs for America. I am curious how you would become worry that he has any connection with the PRC. Taiwan and US are alliances!

I am from mainland China but I spent 6 years in the US, legally. Full scholarship and full-time job. I was quite surprised to find out about the misunderstandings between America and Chinese people. I wish you could one day visit China and see how different it is from the narratives you read about in your media.

For the meantime, I would recommend you to read the former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan-Yew’s opinion about China and US. Probably this book by a Harvard professor:

https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-international/dp/0262019124/

Lee as the third-party and one of the best country leaders provide a lot of insights in this book.

I also admire the accomplishments of Subotai. We could probably be best friends.

I've been entirely fascinated by this time period, because it's had such an impact on the world. I always think of the "what-ifs" had the Mongols had not laid low they Chinese dynasties, as well as not decimated the Middle East.

I've read several books (and continue to do so) about the Mongols and especially Subotai (or Subedei) and I'm just left in amazement in how they could do what they did. I'm constantly looking for more literature on the Chinese of the period to find out more of the Mongol campaigns there, and see how advanced they were compared to other civilizations of the time period. Some books on the Song Dynasty's technology just blows me away. I'm hoping to find more on Subotai's campaigns in China.

Also, if you haven't read it, I suggest checking out Subotai the Valiant Now it's not completely focused on him but more on the campaigns themselves, but still a very good read.

"The New Koreans" is a recent publication (copyrighted 2017, although the narrative ends right before the juiciest moment of the decade, choigate, so more like 2016) that goes deep into korea's past and present. Even some points I never considered before.

However, read it with a grain of salt, because some of the things it says are just flat out wrong or biased (like claiming that korea's panic over pyramid scheme con artistry were an act of protectionism against western soap products, and implying that comfort women issue is nothing to bat an eye about because Joseon was a patriarchal society at the time. REALLY? ).

The summary says it outlines the three miracles of korea, each reportedly blew the author's mind as it happened. Economic miracle of the 70s, then democratic miracle of the 90s, then the miracle of breaking out in the world stage as a cultural powerhouse in the last decade. He doesn't really go into the last part in detail, and I can't blame him because he's been alive since the days of Park Chung Hee.

If you want a nice, entertaining and also informative reading on the cultural part, then pick up Birth of Korean Cool

There's a good book from a defector who was at one point moving through the party ranks before his family history caught up to him (he was an orphan whose parentage wasn't initially known).

I think this is it... but I'm not entirely sure. Read it for sophomore year in college.

Anyways, the guy ends up imprisoned, and when he's given some level of leniency and sent to a "nicer" camp, he basically still sees it as a sign of the benevolence of the great Kim Jong-Il. It's a pretty interesting look into the mental state of a North Korean who grew up in that environment.

I'm about to graduate with a degree in Japanese History so I can recommend a lot of books on different topics, but I need to know something more specific. For a broad summarization of Japanese history, I recommend Andrew Gordon's A Modern History of Japan.
Since you're interested in Okinawa (which has been a big part of my focus), I'd recommend Okinawa: Cold War Island ed. by Chalmers Johnson, this book is more rooted in poli-sci. I found Christopher Nelson's Dancing with the Dead an extremely fascinating anthropological account of war memory and trauma in Okinawa. The first chapter of Norma Field's In the Realm of a Dying Emperor focuses on Chibana Shōichi, an Okinawan who burned Hi no Maru at a national sporting event (the rest of the book is really interesting and well written as well). I can plenty of other books depending on what you're interested in. Just let me know :)

I love these kinds of things! Unfortunately I don't have many examples because they're hard to find, but I just read a book called This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood by Hyok Kang, which is a true story about day to day life in North Korea. It was really interesting. It also goes into the guys culture shock when he went to China, and then South Korea.

Escape from Camp 14

If anyone is interested, I highly recommend reading the book "Escape from Camp 14"

It's an easy and highly intriguing book and gives an unfathomable account of life in the camps and shows how mentally warped the people of the country are.

The guy is in the U.S. now and discusses how before coming here he didn't even truly understand the emotional connection of family or loyalty to them as much as he did fear and loyalty to the country.

Edit: Autocorrect

From fiction what about Sherlock Holmes? In the original books he is portrayed as the King of the FAs.

What about examples from real life? Leonardo DaVinci, Nikola Tesla, and George Eastman qualify. Charles XII of Sweden is probably the greatest general most people have never heard of, and despite being handsome, athletic, and a king, he was probably FA.

Winston Churchill was about the geekiest FA on the planet and goes on live a rich fulfilling life. Yes, he eventually marries, but he basically marries his first and only serious girlfriend at almost 34 years old.

To me that qualifies and because you mentioned books I suggest you read Manchester's biography. It is stone cold brilliant: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lion-Winston-Churchill-1874-1932/dp/0385313489

I recommend you read Camp 14 (https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916) if you haven't already. You will realize how little you actually saw, compared to harsh realities many people face.

Do you have a picture of the slaves? I'd like to see that..sounds fascinating.

Also, in South Korea, there is nothing stopping anyone from visiting the some of the poor rural areas, some of which can be viewed from public trains. I got drunk one night in Seoul and wandered into some pretty nasty areas north of the river...that was pretty eye-opening.
That is a major difference between a free country and a fascist (or whatever word you want to use) one.

Just sayin'...anyways I'm glad you got a lot out of your trip and appreciate you sharing with the reddit community.

If you're really interested in that part of the world... you might like to spend some time reading more in depth about what life is like on the ground, there. These are two good books you might want to check out: 1 and 2

And keep following the Al-Jazeera youtube channel.

I don't think that things are as black and white as you make them out to be, BraveSirRobin.

Good for you on choosing to dedicate your life to this goal. May I make a suggestion? Research stoicism. Hope will fail you and leave you worse off than ever before. Stoic determination in the face of uncountable odds will carry you through. Check out Marcus Aurelius book 'Meditations' or the works if Seneca or Epictetus. Start here: https://dailystoic.com/stoic-reading-list/ I would also recommend reading about how stoicism can help in your daily life by reading about James Stockdale and his experiences in the Vietnam war here: https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Philosophical-Fighter-Pilot-Reprint/dp/0817993924

Good luck to you! Live bravely.

I think you may like this book:

.com Link

.co.uk link (where I am)

Both are prime and are well under $20, so please use the extra money to gift other peoples :)

John Green talks about the book here.

Congratulations! I visited Okinawa on a school trip in 2007, and it was absolutely beautiful. And the food mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

If you're interested in political history regarding Okinawa, both as a Japanese prefecture and as basically a giant US military base, I cannot recommend highly enough the Okinawa chapter of Norma Field's In The Realm of a Dying Emperor It's a little academic but gives voice to native Okinawans, who are often overlooked in most US-Japan conversations about the islands.

Safe travels!

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143122916/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_clf7Ab99NDEFR

Also the person in the neighborhood that reports on you part I mentioned is from this book

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385523912/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fmf7AbD5VBWRV

It's a bio-trilogy called The Last Lion.

I'm still only on the first book but it is fantastically written, incredibly informative, and a joy to read.

They are not a quick read however; the one I'm reading now is over 800 pages, but I can't put it down. Right now I'm reading about Churchill as a 21 year-old youth serving in the Victorian army as a second lieutenant.

Really highly recommended.

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143122916/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_QO3NDbYP2JSFH

This is a terrific idea. I might suggest that you sponsor schools instead of hospitals. I think the most deserving charity is Greg Mortenson's "Central Asia Institute" that constructs secular schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The schools provide secular educational alternatives to Saudi-funded radical madrasahs. The institute builds schools for $25,000 and the schools are constructed with free local community labor and on community donated land. The schools often focus primarily on girls educational issues.

The official CAI website

Donation Page

Greg Mortenson on Wikipedia

Central Asia Institute on Wikipedia

Book: "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson

Book: "Stones into Schools" by Greg Mortenson

Are there set dances to these tunes, like I imagine, or is it just a free for all dance style?

Also, if you havent read it yet. Heard a ton about it. Sounds fascinating and is on my long list of reads. https://www.amazon.com/Birth-Korean-Cool-Conquering-Through/dp/1250045118

Have been looking for this book by him in libraries. I've read a few pages in a bookstore and kind of came to a similar conclusion that he seems to be a pretty good/reasonable leader. I don't care enough to actually buy the book but I'm interested enough to look if I can find it somewhere lol.

"Escape From Camp 14" by Blaine Harden is a great read as well if you are interested in what goes on in these camps.

What world do you live in? Seriously, I would really like to know what deluded fantasy that you live in where this kind of money goes back to the people. It doesn't. You think this tourism helps people, think its help them open their eyes? Well what happens then if their eyes are somehow magically opened by the tourists who they have little to no contact with. Its not like you can walk up to someone and start talking to them, or does somehow the sight of a foreigner open their eyes to over 60 years of continuous brainwashing? But say they are somehow magically opened, what then? They are stuck in a country where their neighbors would rat them out for a hint of dissent, and they and their entire family would be shipped off to concentration camps that would make the Nazis proud.

Are you so fucking naive to believe this actually helps the citizens? Every time we try to give aid to the North, we can't even get the simplest guarantee from them that they would go to the people. They can't even finish their own infrastructures without foreign help, and even if they finish the outside they don't even bother to work on the inside. The vast majority of their spending goes to the military, we know this for a fact, that's why they invest so heavily into nuclear weapons and they actually have been able to accomplish some things (albeit poorly).

Economic liberalization would be helpful to the North for a variety of reasons but this is all tightly controlled, regulated and run by the state. This is not some private enterprise of North Koreans, they are carefully, screened, chosen and watched by a state, whose only purpose is to keep itself afloat and to keep its top people rich off the backs of its own citizens. But this tourism is stupid, especially when people come back with these misguided ideas of "Oh it doesn't look so bad". To think that this benefits anyone other than the state is a complete delusion. If you actually want to learn something about North Korea I would reccomend those books.

See: Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, Nothing to Envy, and This is Paradise.

It's hard to find such a biography of Muhammad, but I hope this one can be of help: Leslie Hazleton's The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad

Edit: If you really wanna dig deeper, I'd suggest the Alfred Guillaume translation of Ibn Ishaq's The Life of Muhammad. This translation puts back some of the "cuts" made by the later editors of the biography (this being the quasi-official Sira). Caveat lector: this is difficult reading.

Yup, he was a very stoic guy, his book is pretty great.

https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Philosophical-Fighter-Pilot-Reprint/dp/0817993924

yes, i am pretty sure it was this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

You can do something about it by donating to charities that support girls' education in Afghanistan. Last week I gave $25 to The Asia Foundation's Afghan Girls' Education Fund. National Geographic is matching donations at this time :)

Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world and one of the largest disparities in literacy between men and women (source)

Girl's education reduces child mortality rates, increases womens' independence, increases equality, leads to increased women's rights, and increases the probability that her children are educated (Reference - PDF)

I recommend these related books:

Half the Sky

Three Cups of Tea

Stones Into Schools

Wow you really are full of yourself. Honestly, you're not coming off as very knowledgeable of anything, quite frankly.

Read:

https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydidess/dp/0544935276

https://www.amazon.com/Can-Asians-Think-Kishore-Mahbubani/dp/9814276014

https://www.amazon.com/When-China-Rules-World-Western/dp/0143118005

https://www.amazon.com/World-Disarray-American-Foreign-Policy/dp/0399562362

https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-International/dp/0262019124

Escape From Camp 14

It bummed me out but it was a great read.

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Rein

http://www.threecupsoftea.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Cups-Tea-Mission-Promote/dp/0143038257

I received this book as a birthday gift, and haven't stopped loaning it to friends since I finished reading it myself. It's intriguing, insightful, and inspiring. The life he's lived strikes me as a non-fiction version of the classic Hero's Journey.

I'm currently reading and rereading:

• Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind
  
  
• When Breath Becomes Air
  
  
• Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States and the World.
  
  

Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan by Robert Whiting.

Book description:

>"A fascinating look at some fascinating people who show how democracy advances hand in hand with crime in Japan."--Mario Puzo

>In this unorthodox chronicle of the rise of Japan, Inc., Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa, gives us a fresh perspective on the economic miracle and near disaster that is modern Japan.

>Through the eyes of Nick Zappetti, a former GI, former black marketer, failed professional wrestler, bungling diamond thief who turned himself into "the Mafia boss of Tokyo and the king of Rappongi," we meet the players and the losers in the high-stakes game of postwar finance, politics, and criminal corruption in which he thrived. Here's the story of the Imperial Hotel diamond robbers, who attempted (and may have accomplished) the biggest heist in Tokyo's history. Here is Rikidozan, the professional wrestler who almost single-handedly revived Japanese pride, but whose own ethnicity had to be kept secret. And here is the story of the intimate relationships shared by Japan's ruling party, its financial combines, its ruthless criminal gangs, the CIA, American Big Business, and perhaps at least one presidential relative. Here is the underside of postwar Japan, which is only now coming to light.

More here:

Robert Whiting’s Adventures in the Tokyo Underworld

According to the biography, The Last Lion, he did not drink nearly as much as he led other's to believe. He'd typically nurse just a single drink throughout the entire day (a tumbler of whiskey). He had serious health issues early on that prevented his lifestyle from actually matching up with the stories told.

He felt it was important to give the impression that he was the sort of man he ended up gaining a reputation for, as he used this as a political tool.

The man was a genius in many ways. Writing, orating, and strategy were among his top attributes.

There's the local stuff that a lot of people will share with you, but there's some macro-stuff as well.

For example, The ministry of economy, trade, and industry has often flat out obstructed foreign business owners/investors from otherwise legally participating in the foreign markets due to "market confusion," which has been the most illogical defense, and has contributed to ridiculous prices in Japan at the consumer's expense for several decades.

There's also the story of インチキ外人レスラー, or "cheating foreign wrestler" in Japan's pro-wrestling. This is the time honored tradition of having huge foreigners playing the part of fighting dirty before they get their ass handed to them by the honorable, hard-working Japanese fighter.

Why, yes, I am reading Robert Whiting's Tokyo Underworld right now. Obviously focused on organized crime, but it often centers around its role in international relations for Japan, as well.

But it wasn't his intention to murder people just because he wanted to kill people. It was actually the contrary. Mongols didn't even like having blood being spilt on them due to their culture. This was how war campaigns were done by all civilization in the past. The Mongols only had a high death toll because they were more successful than any other conquerors.

If anything, Genghis Khan was a lot more merciful than any other conquerors back then. He gave cities a chance to surrender and to be considered his "kin" if they were to surrender without fighting. But I'm not saying he was a saint. He did plunder villages and impressed civilians of those that didn't surrender to the frontlines of battles. But I want to reiterate that this was how the world back then was. War was quite common. Unlike other nations, he never tortured anyone. European, Persian, and Chinese leaders would resort to terrorizing torture but Genghis Khan never allowed torture.

And fine, even during their standard the Mongols did commit horrendous things, but they did open up the East/Asia to Europe which led to the rebirth of the civilization (which we call the Renaissance). They were one of the first civilization to promote religion tolerance and the first to have it's own continental postal system. They also vastly promoted trade.Without the Mongols, Columbus would probably have never gained support from Spain to sail West to gain access to the Mongol riches of the East.

The Mongols were not evil. They were just a product of their time's constant turmoil.

Source: "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford

The Last Lion. It's a three part biography series, and they're some of the best biographies I've ever read.

If you want to know about Winston Churchill, this is the definitive series to read.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Lion-Churchill-1874-1932/dp/0385313489

Yes, thank you, I've read that. I also just read Escape from Camp 14.

An Army nurse who served in Viet Nam wrote [Home Before Morning] (http://www.amazon.com/Home-Before-Morning-Story-Vietnam/dp/1558492984) - a great and very moving book. I read it years ago, and some scenes are still with me -

http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705# || Great book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Read it, if this is interesting to you.

a movie based on this would be great: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143122916?pc_redir=1406967681&robot_redir=1

"Nothing to Envy" https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912

Good read if your into that stuff.

Also "Escape from Camp 14" https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

That one is less about ordinary citizen's lives and more about the modern day concentration camps the North Korean government is controlling.

The political impact of kpop is so fascinating to me. Have you read The Birth of Korean Cool? Its not perfect, but still its really interesting.

Escape from Camp 14

It's a brilliant, true-life story.

And if one gets the feeling it's all fun and games, here's a book on the subject.

you also need to read Sira and then some Hadith.As Quran and Sira equally play huge role.here is authentic copy http://www.amazon.com/Life-Muhammad-I-Ishaq/dp/0196360331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420744241&sr=8-1&keywords=sira+ibn+ishaq

from what i read they have nearly no fun at all.
you should check out this book as it goes very deep into what its like.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0143122916

Lee Kuan Yew, the late former leader of Singapore, talked a lot about geopolitics and the effect of China's rise in particular.
https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-International/dp/0262019124

I don't know much about this one but it looks interesting:
"Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia (Politics in Asia)"
https://www.amazon.com/Non-Western-International-Relations-Theory-Perspectives/dp/0415474744

You may want to read this book the life of Muhammad . It says a lot when the person who is given credit for the beginning of Islam has an 800 page historical book on his military campaigns. From a military standpoint it makes sense to take such views because you don't want subordinates betraying your ideology.

This is pretty ignorant. Tibet was in the process of being modernized and conditions for Tibetans were improving. The national government of Tibet wasn't really doing anything to harm it's own people, except there was some local corruption, and a lot of poverty.

You basically bought into Chinese propaganda about Tibet. The two governments are not equal at all. The Tibetan government was governed by monks whose basic principle in life is kindness and do no harm to others.

Edit:
This is great book (and an easy read) that documents the invasion and gives a lot of info about the Tibetan government at the time of the invasion of Tibet by China. Anyone who really wants to know the facts should read this. It's a great read too. Very interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Exile-Autobiography-Dalai-Lama/dp/0060987014

Here's what I found:

The Seventeen Point Agreement

Wind Between The Worlds

Autobiography of The Dalai Lama

​

I couldn't find much available online for free. Maybe check with your local library?

Some tips:

-Look at the sources in wikipedia articles

-Look in databases of primary sources (Fordham University, Avalon)

> Kindly link the history book, otherwise skidaddle.

http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705

Genghis Khan without a doubt!

Why? Because he had Subutai and Jebe. It is a pity that historians have not focused on the instruments behind Genghis Khan's success. AFAIK, there is only one book dealing with Subutai's achievements: Subotai the Valiant

I just can't be bothered writing you a wikipedia article, simply because you don't have the required background knowledge to follow my meaning.

Why not read a book instead? This one is interesting enough.

I recently read Escape from Camp 14. I really opened my eyes to this issue. Anyone that has any interest in the North Korea situation should read it.

I posted a link to this before, it's my favourite essay from this book by Stockdale. It details his thoughts on Stoicism and how it helped him survive a Vietnamese POW camp for 7 years, it's a really interesting read in my opinion.

OP isn't looking for neutral, he's looking for insights into how Singapore came to be. My recommendation: Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World. Not a book written by LKY, but a collection of his thoughts.

Thanks

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Muhammad-I-Ishaq/dp/0196360331/ref=pd_sbs_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0196360331&pd_rd_r=XFBHWWVBPG0EZ9HQ5KK8&pd_rd_w=yuUu7&pd_rd_wg=fjqRB&psc=1&refRID=XFBHWWVBPG0EZ9HQ5KK8

Euny Hong wrote "The Birth of Korean Cool".

You should read it and it will give you a very clear idea about what areas and sources you can explore.

No way, he was amazing. Read about him & find out.

I do not but this might interest you http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Underworld-Times-American-Gangster/dp/0375724893

It's not a particularly easy read but interesting enough.

Try a book by Vernon O Egger: A history of the Muslim world to 1405

It was used in one of my courses on the history of the Islamic Middle East.

Or if you want, you can read the first biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq.

It one of the sources used on understanding his life by every scholar. However since you are asking about biases you should note that the only surviving copy of this work is a self proclaimed redaction and editing of it by Ibn Hisham.

I recommend reading Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. .

i'd recommend this book. it is written by someone who left DPRK while still a kid.

I listened to this and Jack Weatherfords book in audio. I'd say the book is more detailed and would recommend it instead.

http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705

The Manchester books are terrific: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lion-Winston-Churchill-1874-1932/dp/0385313489

A few peeves, though:

• The Kindle version is more expensive than the paperback, which usually disqualifies it from consideration for me. In this case, I would still get it, even if I get a used paperback because screw those guys.
  
• The third volume was written by his protege and is nowhere near as well written as the first two.

While not exactly geopolitical, I read a history of Genghis Khan which isn't necessarily fictionalized, but delivered with a readable narrative, in 9th grade, that left a lasting impression on me.

https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705

my GPS

or...

an alternative suggestion:
I just read "Three Cups of Tea".
(TCT on Wikipedia)

Please take a picture of a teacher teaching girls, everywhere you go.

Someone needs to make sure every young Chinese students finds out they are not allowed to read http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0231147465?pc_redir=1406819869&robot_redir=1

To answer your question, I am not interested in killing thousands of innocent North Koreans, many of whom are good people, but rather the people who are enslaving, killing and torturing them, often for decades while wiping out whole family lines. I hope you aren't too sympathetic towards kim and the cabal surrounding the kims who perpetuate this mass and inane human slaughter but if you are in favor of it, not much else needs to be said. The problem is there are too many pieces of old artillary pointed towards Seoul and they can't all be neutralized at once. I would like for the suffering to stop for the NK people though if it ever becomes possible from an international standpoint. If you would like to learn more about what the North Korean people go through I highly recommend you read;

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Falling-Star-Survived-Escaped/dp/1419721321/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492036877&sr=1-1&keywords=star+north+korea

Also you might like watching this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc

and to lighten up the mood after;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0TYCEXmi90

edit: fixed derpy stuff, also added kim himself into it because he is responsible as are his inner circle and the military. also added some links to books i've read that give perspective.

escape from camp 14..

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0143122916

I've seen satellite imagery and have read descriptions of escapees.

I'd rather not run the risk of needing to go;"Wir haben es nicht gewusst" in a couple of years.

Concerning prison camps, I might suggest Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey by Blaine Harden.

> It actually isn't

Well crap, I thought this was based on a book. So it doesn't even have that.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Read his book. Its incredible http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406833573&sr=8-1&keywords=escape+from+camp+14

song of ice and fire

What do you think of this http://www.amazon.com/Life-Muhammad-I-Ishaq/dp/0196360331/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414519809&sr=1-2

Someone born and raised inside the labor camp escaped. Here's his book.

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Escape From Camp 14 by Shin Dong-hyuk and Blaine Harden

I'll throw out a recommendation for Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

Currently, the translation of Ibn Ishaq's Seera RasulAllah:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0196360331?keywords=life%20of%20muhammad&qid=1453252097&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

Got this from interloan at the library, but haven't quite gotten into it yet:

http://www.amazon.com/Banquet-Reading-Fifth-Rhetorica-Semitica/dp/193499605X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453252143&sr=8-1&keywords=the+banquet+quran

https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/1491513705

Here is a book for you to read.

Tokyo Underworld, nuff said.

http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Underworld-Times-American-Gangster/dp/0375724893

I don't believe that all of Islam is that way. Tell him to try reading 3 cups of tea sometime.

Adding on to this if you wanted to read a book on the historical aspect of how integrated it all is, check out Tokyo Underworld. I had to read it for one of my seminar courses and boy was it a bit telling. The Yakuza are involved in so much.

Luvassa elokuvia, elokuvia ja ehkä joku satunnainen Netflix-sarja. Kokemusta aion ryydittää oluella.

Historiapuolelta voi suositella Robert Whitingin Tokyo Underworldia. Ensimmäinen luku on hieman hidas, kun kertomus pohjustetaan katsauksella 2. maailmansodan jälkeisen Japanin tilanteeseen.

Tämän jälkeen alkaakin sitten aivan uskomaton tositarina, kun länsimainen gangsteri päättää avata pizzerian Roppongiin ja vallata oman nurkkansa yakuzojen vedonlyöntibisneksistä. Kulttuurishokista seuraa surrealistista menoa, puolin ja toisin.

Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam. New York: Warner Books, 1983.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1558492984

I am a grandkid of a woman that fled the Communist Party in North after the State police tortured her father and wrecked her family because her father could read and speak Japanese, post occupation. I don’t care if you hold socialist or whatever ideals and philosophy you deem suitable for your life. It’s your human right to believe in something regardless of what people say. But please don’t spread something that is so irrevocably untrue or at best controversial as a fact. My grandmother still has nightmares about the horror she saw when she was 12.

About the concentration camps, reportedly there are about 12 known concentration camps spread throughout the northern part of North Korea. Of course, NK government denies any of this, but there are countless anecdotal accounts of such camps from North Korean refugees and a few years back, we had the first NK refugee who was imprisoned in one of those camps. Later he went on to publish the book titled Camp 14 in English. I recommend you give it a read.

Those camps, according to him, are used as a way to maintain what is already failing regime. Their occupants range from political dissenters to families left behind defectors who successfully made the escape. Their size has been reported to have exceeded that of concentration camps in Nazi Germany.


*the book is titled Escape from Camp 14

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Anyone who hasn't already should absolutely read Escape From Camp 14. It's a first hand account of being born into and living in a North Korean prison camp.

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Take a look at Sartre's Nausea. Although it takes place in the middle of a city, in terms of isolation, the author still manages to make it feel like it's taking place on the moon.

Escape from Camp-14 might be another thing you could look into.

This happened in camp 14, the same that is described in Escape from Camp 14, about a North Korean born and raised there and who lived to escape and tell his story. It's not a long read and I recommend it to everyone who want to learn about the horrors that are going on in North Korea. Not for the faint hearted.

What kind of depth and detail are you looking for? A sure bet to start with is surely the Cambridge History of Japan series.

I enjoyed this book, but the price is wicked high apparently and I had the luxury of interlibrary loans. Oda Nobunaga isn't as popular in English-language literature because he's overshadowed by the Tokugawa shogunate that came after and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, unfortunately, and there's actually a great deal of Japanese and Chinese literature on the subject that never gets translated. Luckily, most works about Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi Hideyoshi will involve Oda Nobunaga, so you an always go that route.

Try reading this book - I'm not sure how reliable it is, but even if 50% of what he claims is true, this is much worse than gulag.

Are you familiar with the novel, Escape from Camp 14? It was a very moving read. The subject of it, Shin Dog-hyuk, also worked for a similar human rights organization after he escaped the prison camp.

Lol proof? It's common knowledge dude, like globally. Just google north korean concentration camps or watch any video from the numerous defectors who've made it to South Korea and are campaigning against the human rights violations in NK.


For a book assuming you're not just being a little troll, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea, about Shin Dong-hyuk is an incredible and horrifying read. He's the only man alive to have escaped their concentration camps.

For a video that highlights the difference between life in North and South Korea, watch this pair of videos Part One and Part Two to hear direct from the mouths of North Koreans what it's like there. How they stage brutal public executions of anyone trying to escape the country, and send their next 3 generations to gulags.

For another interesting video with many of the same people from the other two videos, this shows North Koreans trying American food, and discussing how shocking the differences are between American and North culture.

We're on the internet man, it's really easy not to be ignorant, just up to you to put in a basic modicum of effort to not look like an idiot when commenting on things.

> No, I haven't listened to them. Why would I have, when I've already made my disdain for him known?

Nobody is saying "please listen to Dan Carlin."

However, I think you should listen to the podcasts if you are going to try to critique them. You know, so you don't type stuff like:

> Why does he list as sources for a podcast on Verdun and the Somme a book about the Admiralty during WWI?

When, as others have pointed out, the podcast "on Verdun and the Somme" spent quite a lot of time talking about Jutland.

Hardcore History is not academic history. It's far from it. However, regardless of my views on the podcast, I'm not going to pretend that I've listened to something and then come up with critiques of it. It's like reviewing a book that one hasn't read. I have a deep suspicion that I would dislike Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, for example, based on various things I've heard about it - but I'm not going to skim the book's bibliography and then spend my time critiquing Jack Weatherford for using various sources when I have no clue as to how he used them since I haven't actually read the thing.

I've had to write critiques of books in history classes (I'm doing one right now, as a coincidence), and just bashing sources isn't enough. You have to look at how the sources are used. If you have no interest in Carlin's stuff, fine, but don't try to come up with source-based critiques of the podcasts if you don't know how Carlin is using those sources.

Awsome book on the subject, Kim Yong's - Long Road Home: http://www.amazon.com/Long-Road-Home-Testimony-Survivor/dp/0231147465

One of very few people to have ever escape forced labour camps under Kim Jong-il and write about it. Just excrutiating living conditions.

Let this sink-in:
He's an author of an amazon bestseller - escape from camp 14

Which is now turned out to be a fraud.

Different country, but Escape from Camp 14 if you want a depressing read about North Korea's current system.

People that offend the government, and people that are born there. In NK they have something called the 5 generation imprisonment, and basically you go to the camp, and you and your next 5 generations have to live there all of your life. They are essentially little communities or ghettos, but with strict enforcers. There are farms, jobs, and things of that nature but no one is payed and people are harshly punished.

There is actually a book written by a young man who escaped one of these camps -
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

I would recommend reading it, but it is not for the faint of heart. One of the tortures he describes includes him being hung by a meat hook through his stomach...

I read "Escape from Camp 14" a few years ago.

Black markets are huge there, and they operate under the knowledge of the government. Imagine a North Korean city, you've got big-wigs, soldiers etc- they're supposed to arrest black-market dealers. But the thing is, those officials are just dirt-poor N. Koreans themselves. So, bribe them with some cigarettes, a VCR even, and they look the other way.

But if there were enough pressure on them from command, they'd have to crack down. So maybe that just means now there is.

> bourgeois propaganda

Really?


So, a country that would create Kijŏng-dong, wouldn't even consider telling their citizens that they are required to stay indoors for the filming of something?

As to sources, sources for what? That NK is completely fucked? I needn't look that hard.

Why are enough people attempting to escape that this begins to happen?

"I had to be careful of my thoughts because I believed Kim Jong-il could read my mind."


["He controls his administration exclusively. It operates absolutely by his word. It's an autocracy."](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/them/defector.html
)


I'm all for defending the Soc\Com view and promoting it, but if you think that NK is working out great and simply being held down by the capitalist majority, you're being ignorant. Take the picture of a pitch black NK surrounded by the lights of Japan, China, and SK. You would have me believe that that's a propaganda job? That they've colored over the actual amount of lights? Who exactly benefits from that? It's not like NK has some vast supply of resources that are highly sought after. They provide nearly nothing to the international community. The Korean was is long over, and the only benefit that NK serves currently is a Buffer between The US and China, which is why China props them up-something that they are growing quite tired of doing if the rumblings are indeed correct.

Propaganda benefits someone or something. If it doesn't, it serves no purpose.


Furthermore, are you trying to say that The Famine which was documented by numerous aid groups, wasn't true? In that case, what leads the NK military to lower its physical requirements in a fitting time span for stunted growth patterns due to undernourishment? Just plain chance?

I mean, read some books about the reality of NK. Here's some good choices-

Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea

Nothing to Envy

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

Escape from Camp 14

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

If you honestly believe that his many people are part of some propaganda campaign to make a country that already looks terrible look worse, that's pure /r/conspiracy thinking.

Here's my suggested reading list:

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters

The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea

Escaping North Korea

This is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood

White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea (Memories of War)

The Tears of my Soul: An autobiography of the bomber of Korean Air Flight 858

The Great North Korean Famine: How and why it happened, and why it will happen again and again.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Escape From Camp 14. It's written by a guy who was born into the camps as a result of an arranged marriage between his father and mother, both of whom had never been accused of anything, but were caught up in the three generations policy.

To get an idea of the conditions; imagine a mix of Schindler's List and Twelve Years A Slave, but with a lot more starvation and rape. It's been operating for longer than anyone in this thread has been alive.

My family is from an Eastern block country, and was there while the area was under USSR control, and that is how things were at the time. You escape, and your family dies.

You're an idiot if you think that North Korea is any different.

Edit: check out this book when you get the time:
"Escape From Camp 14"
It might open your eyes a bit...

> But to address your point you make on Immigration tariffs, what's wrong with making people pay to immigrate?

what if it were a bunch of whahabist Saudi's? they have the money..... to buy citizenship... whats wrong with rich whahabists (the extreme version of Islam ISIS Al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia ascribe to) and no religious safeguards? this is a self answering question

>Why should someone be able to come from a different country, to this country and instantly get access to all the social services and security nets that this country offers it's citizens, when they haven't paid a red cent into the system?

read this book if you can, i highly recommend it, or this one, or this one, or this one , or this one.... etc

see above, also because if they are are unable to pay, and they are fleeing say, our bombs? or warfare aided by us? or our lovely Wahhabi Saudi allies or economic hardship caused by capitalist greed... the list goes on, but we have no problem causing that as a nation, the time for this line of dialogue was back before we went to war for 17 years as Americas loyal lapdogs, over a lie of WMD's that little johnny KNEW was a lie (or was too much of a weak person to demand the truth about) after spending BILLIONS at war, crying poor mouth when it comes time to fix what we did, just doesn't sit right, why is nobody ever asking "how are we going to pay for XYZ" when it comes to buying obsolete hand me down jets, defective jets or retrofitting nuclear subs to diesel? or drones (which there is a good case to be made, actually causes more terrorism than conventional planes) to the tune of BILLIONS AND BILLIONS

>If the profession they work in, is not in an 'in demand' area, then while we have thousands of unemployed Australians, why should we be taking these people in? Further disadvantaging the native Australians.

>This idea has been championed by Nobel Prize laureate Professor Gary Becker, who argues that a tariff is always preferable to a quota approach on efficiency grounds as it applies price theory rather than bureaucratic procedures.

>native Australians.

drone king Obama also won a peace prize, after he droned his own citizens (albeit terrorists) depriving them of their constitutional rights, lets not put too much weight into a peace prize, after all of you know who DR nobel was......there was an invention of his.....

>None of that seems bad.

on the face of it no no it doesn't, the saying "don't judge a book by its cover" comes to mind

>The Liberal Democrats are, however, opposed to those who seek to impose their religious views on the entire population

so as a religious view, one couldn't say stop gay marriage on a national level, and that i agree with, but one certainly could do a chick fill-a

130577878| > None Anonymous (ID: mXFgZAVg)

Here's an super-graphic book on the 200,000 people who were born into North Korean prison camps

>kids fighting over the undigested corn kernels they find in pig manure
>being strung up for questioning and put over a fire burning your whole back
>snitching on your to-be-executed parents for food

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

That was surprisingly accurate and reasonable.

I really hope whoever is helping him write these script is helping him make foreign decisions too.

North Korea is the worst. The concentration camps there are far worse than hitler. Hitler's camps are paradise comparatively.

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Morals are learned. There are normal people who would kill pregnant women and poison family to test types of chemical weapons and not feel any guilt. Apparently they felt like those who were killed deserved it. All because the regime fcked with their heads.

https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/

I read Escape from Camp 14 in which the author was imprisoned because of the crimes of his parents.
I can't remember, but I think he never found out what they had done.
Awful, brutal story.

Escape from Camp 14 (http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916) tells a survivor's tale of escape from one of North Korea's brutal prison camps. It's terrifying and very real. Will piss you off and give you nightmares.

Seriously. I don't understand why so many people here keep dismissing him as the "stupid child dictator" thing. Speculate what you want about the nuke situation, if he has the balls to do it or whatever, but the human right violations in that country are horrendous and blatant. I really urge people to read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1504557988773

Not so sure on that starving part anymore. I like to listen and read stories from the people who defected to understand their world. Many of them are saying that while it's not super abundant meals, for the most part many of the agricultural reforms that the western world helped out with in the 90's/2000's are paying off. Food still isn't great -- meat and products of the like are still expensive and difficult for the average Korean to get, but it can be bought. Freedom now is really the worst problem they have. Escape from Camp 14 is from one of the people who escaped the prison camps and it sounds like that it is the worst conditions you may encounter in NK now.

Of course a war tends to make every destabilised. A war might actually bring on a new famine.

Based on testimonies from escapees of these prison camps - not to mention the report of numbers in the prison camps is probably biased.

The most notable of these testimonies is from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Death seems to be extremely common in the prison camps of North Korea at least much more so than the typical prison in the United States or any developed country.

We can assume if it is true that people die much more quickly in prison than in civilian life in North Korea that their prison numbers will stay lower due to fatalities. If you arrest 100 people per year and 5 of them die per year your prisons grow at 95 people per year, if 50 of them die they grow much more slowly. It is simple math and extrapolation from things we can assume to be true.