(Part 3) Best history books according to redditors

This is a well-known story in the region around the Park and those of us who are native to the area are well-acquainted with the usual response to the story, which is "What a fucking idiot, what was he thinking?"

Kirwan survived long enough to be pulled from the water, and was clearly in shock -- but even in that state he obviously regretted the action, saying "That was stupid . . . That was a stupid thing I did." Unsurprisingly he died later in the hospital.

The horror of knowing you have literally cooked yourself to death makes me shudder every time.

Edit: also, for context, the Celestine Pool where this happened does not necessarily "look hot". It's named for the extremely deep blue color of the pool (caused by minerals/bacteria) and while the temperatures are well above lethal to humans and animals, the surface is still and smooth, not rolling/boiling. There was a lot of signage around it in 1981 reminding visitors of the deadly nature of the hot water and there's even more today, but to someone not used to Yellowstone, Celestine Pool might not have initially appeared as deadly as it is.

Edit 2: Since the link apparently does not work for some viewers, you can also read about it at Snopes here and in this Chicago Tribune review of the book I linked. The book is Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park by Lee H. Whittlesey. As other commenters have mentioned it's an excellent book in general, and right up /r/MorbidReality's alley.

For those interested
https://www.amazon.ca/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

An entire book describing the accidental deaths at Yellowstone national park.

Example: One guy was saving his dog which jumped into one of the sulfur ponds to chase.....something. He got his dog out, but was burned to badly and swallowed so much sulfur water that he slowly died after he was pulled out of the pond. He was constantly saying how stupid he was and how much he regretted it

IOW: Its the most entertaining Darwin Awards compilation you'll ever see.

I've recently read Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond and found them to be quite intriguing.

GG&S

Collapse

Trump's fabrications regarding crime should be getting more attention. Crime is a much less significant problem today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Trump lies constantly and without shame or remorse about this.

I would not call Trump himself an outright fascist--but Trumpism is a proto-fascist movement. I don't want to find out whether it blossoms into the real thing.

Robert Paxton's definition from The Anatomy of Fascism:

>"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Trump's nativist anti-intellectual demagoguery, and willingness to fan and manipulate ethno-nationalist resentment is deeply concerning, especially now that we know he's going to have people like Steven Bannon as his top political advisor.

He still doesn't have the power of the military and national security apparatus at his disposal. There's still time to stop him and not have to find out if he will abide traditional constitutional and normative restraints.

>Its the only biological difference between ethnic groups

Wrong. Evolution has produced a host of biological differences between ethnic groups after the interbreeding event. Here is a good introduction to the topic.

I'm a socialist with anarchist/Marxist sympathies, so I'm probably more receptive than most people to the economic/materialist critique you're offering, but just about everything you wrote here is wrong. It's historically uninformed. It romanticizes and idealizes. And it badly misses the point:

> Consumerism was forced upon the populace by profit-creation machines like corporations and advertisement agencies to drive our natural need to consume up beyond sustainable or even logical levels

Human beings have been destroying ecosystems since long before the birth of capitalism. The indigenous people you romanticize are guilty of it as well. It's not the fault of the elite. The elite are exactly what the rest of us would be and do what we'd do if we had their resources and power.

Humans are no different from any other animal, and the rich are no different from the poor; when you let us, we'll devour everything in our path until there's nothing left.

> Humans didn't always seek status and elevation - in fact, most peasantry throughout history was quite content with the wealth given to them by the natural world.

This isn't true. To the extent that it's even a claim that can be tested, it's false in every single instance I can think of. Human beings have always sought power, status and resources. Always.

If all you were saying were that corporations are parasitic, disastrous, amoral and hostile to the flourishing of any and all life that can't be extracted and converted into profit, I'd agree with you. But your historical critique is wrong -- and also dangerous, misguided and irresponsible. It deflects blame. It goes out of its way, very, very incorrectly, to argue that this is all the fault of a single economic system and a small sliver of the population.

All people are the problem, not just the rich or people who live in first-world countries. All social and economic systems have contributed to it, not just capitalism.

The last time a major political party died was the Whigs in the lead up to the Civil War. The Whig Party broke apart on the question of slavery. Northern factions became more anti-slavery, while Southern factions refused to abandon slavery. The Party could not contain these contradictory ideas, so it lost support and quickly found its members deserting the Whig Party for alternatives.

As the former Whigs began to abandon their party, new political parties appeared to take them in. Those parties included: the Free Soil Party, the American Party (sometimes known as the 'know-nothing' party) and the Republican Party. By the election of 1856, the Whigs were gone.

Interestingly enough, the Democratic Party also split on the issue of slavery in 1860, with Northern and Southern factions emerging to nominate their own candidates. However, the Democrats were able to recover after the Civil War and continue to be a major party to this day (of course).

The other major parties that died (The Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, National Republicans kinda) weren't really political parties in the sense that we understand them. They were more alliances of elites competing against each other, as opposed to mass mobilizing voters. The Federalists died largely as a result of the total victory of the Democratic-Republicans and the Democratic-Republicans also died largely as a result of their victory, leading to the somewhat party-less period known as the 'Era of Good Feelings.'

All the other parties you mention were minor parties that were either formed as result of a brief split from the major parties (Southern Democrats) or as a the result of a single influential man creating the party as a platform to run on (the Progressive Party).

In a sense the only true major political party that has died was the Whig Party.

So now comes the real question, why has there not been another party collapse in the 150 or so years after the Civil War? Why have we stuck to the Democrat/Republican divide, even as those parties have changed radically both in supporters and in issues?

The answer is that absent an issue so divisive as that it literally led to civil war, parties are pretty damn durable. Every time a major challenger to the two parties has emerged (such as the Progressive Party in 1912), one or both of the two parties have adjusted themselves and their issues to try to be welcoming to those voters and issues. Thus the Democratic Party moves from being a small government party in the 19th century, to being a progressive party in the early 20th to being the party of the New Deal in the mid-20th century.

In America's two party system, which is reinforced by our first-past-the-post system of elections, parties should be viewed less as solid ideological actors and more as alliances of disparate interests that come together in order to seek political advantage. Thus you have labor and environmentalists largely in the same party, not because those two views are immediately reconcilable, but because it is an advantageous political alliance. When those alliances break down, groups may switch from one party to another (something called 'realignment'). Thus the two parties survive, even as supporters and issues may change.

This is quickly veering into the realm of a political science discussion, so I'll just end here with a few quick answers to your questions.

1. The final years of the Whig Party were the chaotic years leading up to the Civil War.
   
2. The Whigs kept nominating war heroes in an attempt to find consensus
   
3. Lots of new minor parties and the Civil War
   
   Sources:
   https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X
   https://www.amazon.com/John-Quincy-Adams-American-Visionary/dp/0061915416/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
   https://www.amazon.com/Bully-Pulpit-Theodore-Roosevelt-Journalism-ebook/dp/B00BAWHPX2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468985270&sr=1-1&keywords=bully+pulpit+doris+kearns+goodwin#nav-subnav
   https://www.amazon.com/Presidential-Campaigns-George-Washington-Bush/dp/0195167163
   

I posted this in another thread, but going to post it again here since it's relevant.

------

I feel like we should be mailing textbooks/memoirs on fascism/authoritarianism to our representatives...

I thought about organizing a gofundme to send the same book to all Republican representatives (senate and congress) from Amazon, but I think it would be more effective if it was sent from individual constituents in the rep's districts. I personally feel powerless since all my representatives are democrat, but I think it would send a really powerful message if people in red districts sent copies of books directly from Amazon. It would only cost around $10 to do that, and you can include a gift message with your address and why you're sending it.

People smarter than me probably have better suggestions, and could even point out passages that should be highlighted and bookmarked, but here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:

• The Anatomy of Fascism
  
• It Can't Happen Here
  
• Or just go all out and send Inside the Third Reich (though this may come across a tad hyperbolic, even though there are some fair comparisons)
  
  EDIT: Adding 1984 by Orwell to the list for obvious reasons.

People fall into the Grand Canyon every year because they simply think they because they're on vacation or at some sort of attraction they won't get hurt. There's a book about this mentality written by a twenty year park ranger I have on my shelf. When I get home I'll give you the title. It's a good one.

Edit: Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon I was originally drawn to this book because it has accounts of most of the known, fairly recent deaths and how they occurred. I also need to correct myself in saying that people fall in every year. It is less frequent than that but I'm still sticking to the point I made earlier because this book has some seriously good stories in it about exactly what we're discussing.

We're discussing present systemic oppression rooted in past systemic oppression, and also proportionally how much that past systemic oppression has contributed to the present systemic oppression.

Comparing the traffic of the Irish and of British debtors--rated around 300K tops according to the one reputable source published by an academic press--to the 12.5 million slaves of African origins--as demonstrating equivalence is downright laughable mathematically.

While conceding the point that voluntary and involuntary indentures often faced conditions exactly the same as African slaves, they are distinct from slaves in that after their terrible indenture period was ended, their holders legally had to free them and provide them land.

Additionally, the grounds on which white indentures were sent to North America--they were politically undesirable--is substantially different from the grounds on which African slaves werte sent to North America--they were seen as inherently and genetically inferior, rather than merely a political nuisance.

Fast-forward some three hundred years and ask the following questions: (1) Statistically, how do white persons of Irish descent compare to other white persons in their proportional educational attainment, income levels, and political influence? and (2) Statistically, how do black persons compare to white persons proportionally on the same measures?

The results, I venture, will be starkly different--and thus showcases the differentially systemic impact of African slavery and the admittedly terrible conditions of white indentured servitude.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

Not available yet on Barnes & Noble, but Bezo's little site had it available one day after Charlottesville. How interesting!

>They promote peace and love while fighting fascism.

I wouldn't go that far. If you want a good book about antifa there's this.

Pay no attention to the reviews, it's mostly alt-right goons who probably haven't even read the thing and are just pissy somebody could make an actual effort to understand this shit.

A lot of these groups are violent, but one also has to understand the context they are coming out of, which is basically a sort of low level conflict that's been simmering between the radical left and right for almost a century. People who think neo-fascist/racist political organizations and groups aren't dangerous aren't paying attention. They are. Hence a complete lack of tolerance towards them on the part of the far-left
'

Strictly speaking, there is no Antifa organization anymore, originally "Antifaschistische Aktion", a pre-WW2 German antifascist movement, and it's basically an ideology and ways of organizing agaist fascism and racism.

Many left-wing socialist and anarchist groups have adopted their methods.

What the rightwing media is trying to push is that basically the Black Bloc is "Antifa", they're the ones with masks that people normally first think of whenever Antifa is mentioned and on the occasion doing the vandalism bits.

There are many other groups that do not do that and are aligned with Antifa views and methods, like Maledicte said.

Recommended reading: Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray. He was on a podcast a while back explaining the basics, but I've forgotten what it was. I'll update when I remember/find it.

edit: Ah, here it is, it's on The Gist podcast from Slate, here it is.

The interview with Bray starts at around 4min 40secs.

edit2: I just realized that my comment makes it sound that I'm down on the Black Bloc, but it's not as clear-cut as that. Yeah, I disagree with some of their methods, but they are Activists with a capital 'A' and they don't shy away from direct action which I can respect.

Nerd alert tiem!

Let me open my bookmarks...

ACLU study of arrest rates and self reported usage rates of black/white Marijuana users.

USSC report showing discrepancy in sentencing of black vs white inmates when controlling for other variables

For some background:

EPI paper on de jure segregation in education and it's effect on Black youth.

Book written by Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law, great book on how the government enforced segregation in previously unsegregated communities.

Hey, bud. I get you're upset at reddit's circlejerks. I get how you're trying to build solidarity by trying to find parallels in the treatment of other oppressed or disempowered groups.


That being said, comparing reddit circlejerks to the Rwandan Genocide or the Nuremberg Laws is a bit out of the scope of the issue it looks like you're taking issue with. Sure, the circlejerk of the "shitty chinese tourist" is probably an effect of european imperialism, just like some of the shitty things in Africa are also a result of european imperialism. But the "shitty things in africa" include genocide, while the "shitty chinese tourist" trope is a probably very real circlejerk on reddit that is not comparable to genocide, even if you can make the broadest of connections between reddit circlejerks and the Rwandan Genocide.


I get that you don't like how reddit circlejerks about an important aspect of your identity. But respectfully, you're overestimating how important reddit circlejerks are in broader cultural discourse.


If you're looking for academic books that look at orientalism and imperialism and identity and all that jazz, to situate your thoughts in the broader context I think you're searching for, here are some books:


http://www.amazon.com/Orientalism-Edward-W-Said/dp/039474067X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426553762&sr=8-1&keywords=orientalism+edward+said


http://www.amazon.com/Rescuing-History-Nation-Questioning-Narratives/dp/0226167224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426554057&sr=8-1&keywords=rescuing+history+from+the+nation


http://www.amazon.com/Japans-Orient-Rendering-Pasts-History/dp/0520201701/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426553687&sr=8-1&keywords=japan%27s+orient+stefan+tanaka

Und in diesen 70 Jahren sind die bekannten Operationen fast ausschließlich mit negativen Langzeitfolgen für die globale Allgemeinheit in Verbindung zu setzen. Der weitreichendste Schandfleck ist für mich der Coup d'État 1953 im Iran (mithilfe des MI6).

Zur CIA kann ich zwei Bücher empfehlen:

David Talbot - The Devils Chessboard Englisch/Deutsch - Review der CIA

Alfred McCoy - The Politics of Heroin Englisch

Talbot setzt sich viel mit dem Begründer der CIA Allen Dulles außeinander. Der Mann hat eine faszinierende Geschichte und hat sich insbesondere gegen Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges ein Spionageimperium zusammengestellt.

Bei Alfred McCoy geht es hingegen spezifisch um die CIA Verstrickung in den globalen Opiumhandel um Ihre komplett verdeckten Missionen zu finanzieren. Ausgezeichnet recherchiert.

Always applicable quote from 'The Anti-Fascist Handbook':

"It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of people who oppose limiting free speech on political grounds are not free speech absolutists. They all have their exceptions to the rule, whether obscenity, incitement to violence, copyright infringement, press censorship during wartime, or restrictions for the incarcerated.

If we rephrase the terms of the debate by taking these exceptions into account, we can see that many liberals support limiting the free speech of working-class teens busted for drugs, but not limiting the free speech of Nazis. Many are fine when the police quash the free speech of the undocumented by hunting them down, while they amplify the speech of the Klan by protecting them. They advocate curtailing ads for cigarettes but not ads for white supremacy.

All of these examples limit speech. The only difference is that liberals pretend that their limitations are apolitical, while anti-fascists embrace an avowedly political rejection of fascism."

The thing I can't get over is the fact that there is an actual Antifa Handbook out there which actually details the ideology of prominent antifa groups as well as their histories and how they operate. But if the guy who made this actually read this book his head might explode once he realizes how reasonable it is

Democratic reform needs to continue to be the corner stone of politicians we put in power moving forward. Sam's conversation with Timothy Snyder and Snyder's book On Tyranny have been really impact for me in how I approach the political world. The 20 rules he lays out, if more of us followed would create a strong resistance towards bad actors trying to take advantage of our political process. Things like defending institutions, pay for investigative journalism, speaking out and donating and participating to causes that matter to you.

THIS!

Pretty sure the slaves didn't get a vote in that democracy and if you think the NSDAP rise to power in the Weimar republic had anything to do with democratic process I have to assume you have not take the time to look at how that shit went down.

In 32 they received 10% fewer votes than just six months earlier, that's when the conservative parties there made a literal deal with the fucking devil and threw all their weight behind him and had him declared chancellor in order to maintain some semblance of power. While it was "legal" Hitler was not elected president by the German people. Even then Hitler only had 2 cabinet appointees from his own party.

Course, then they lit the Reichstag in a false flag and seized power under the guise of a communist revolt, and the rest is nothing but a stain on human history.

But Nazi's being democratically elected? Rofl, good one Fritz.

If you have an interest in the truth of this check out "The Death of Democracy" and/or "The Anatomy of Fascism". While more general, the Anatomy of Fascism is the better read IMO.

> and I always thought "oriental" referred to the Far East, so really not sure what the article was on about.

The article is drawing upon Orientalism by Edward Said, which is a important and popular text among cultural studies types. And is specifically about European attitudes towards the Middle East.

Hey look at that, my evening is booked now.

Speaking of books, has anyone read his followup: Collapse?

i didn't know this until i read The Color of Law, but back in the early 20th century the popularity of personal automobiles skyrocketed to such a size that cities simply weren't able to keep up with the congestion they caused. the number of people who owned cars essentially doubled every year for a while and traffic was a plague. it's one of the reasons why cities embraced the idea of widening roads and eventually building highways so much in the first place, even back then they thought doing so would solve congestion

>In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal’s claws.

>Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror: life in the calamitous 14th century"

The book On Tyranny goes into this. Every day becomes a new normal. What we tolerate today is drastically different from what we would have tolerated 6 months ago.

Edit: if you haven't read this book, you should. It's only 6 bucks on Amazon, and you can finish it in a few hours. It is incredibly insightful.

There's a book about deaths in the Grand Canyon, and one of the conclusions made is that children hardly ever are the ones involved in falls or other accidents; they seem to have an innate sense of danger that keeps them from doing really stupid things around cliffs. The highest demographic for deaths in the GC: males in their early 20s.

People have got to stop with this massively hyperbolic trash repost. Calling the far right 'nazis' is unworthy of discussion. Calling the far right 'fascist' is only slightly less ignorant, but is still extremely hyperbolic. 99.95% of people using the term are completely ignorant of the history.

Why?:

There is no 'definition' of fascist/fascism. This shitty '14 points list' has been floating around the internet for a while and Trump checks all 14 points (as does Obama, as does HRC, as does Bush2). 1) This list is completely fabricated (fake news?). 2) The actual definition of fascism is extremely debatable by very educated people (see below). 3) you can take these lists and look at the Obama administration and check 12-13 of the 14 points. 4) and I should have to tell you this, but if you see something thats being passed around the internet between like-minded people, its probably bullshit.

If you want to read/learn about real fascism, read these two books:

Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) 2nd Edition

The Anatomy of Fascism Reprint Edition

They are both excellent, and pre-Trump. They provide and excellent overview of the fascist movement(s) throughout history. The quick takeaways are: 1) there is no 'definition' of fascist (eg that 14 point list is facebook bullshit), 2) both right-wing and left-wing political movements have shown many elements of fascism (eg extreme right wingers are just as intolerant as extreme left wingers), 3) the current right movement in America bears little in common with actual fascist movements.

So why are people calling the right 'fascists'? In my personal opinion, the left is using the term to justify vilification and aggression towards the right (I say this as a political moderate). This is not to say 'the right' are the good guys - there are plenty of situations in life where there are no 'good guys' - the current left/right debate is one of those situations.

I'm sure you saw that white nationalist, Richard Spencer got sucker punched a few weeks ago. The entire left was hand-wringing about wether or not this was justified - even the NYT published a half-assed assessment. You saw it here on reddit - 'the alt-right' is so toxic they deserve violence. You know who also thinks that speech should be silenced with violence - fascists.

As a moderate I find this rationalization for 'violence to silence' horrifying. Violence is never an answer. You'll note that actual fascists use violence and threats of violence to suppress speech - so what is the difference between the left and right these days?. I stand in the middle and have a hard time telling.

TL;DR they very people that claim to be 'anti-fascist' are abusing the term to create an enemy that's (apparently) worthy of a priori violence - if you think about that for a second it should be horrifying.

And just watch - by virtue of 1) trying to inject a little reason here 2) showing a refusal to call the more extreme right 'nazi-fascists' and 3) criticizing the left for being shitty too, I am going to get called an alt-right wing Trumpeter.

You might be interested in Robert Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism."

The CIA is or was directly involved in drug smuggling. Specifically, Air America was used to fly in food to the hill tribes of the Golden Triangle so they could farm opium poppies instead; the opium was flown back out on Air America to the refining sites in Hong Kong and elsewhere, and then flown on to transshippers in South and Central America (including Manuel Noriega, the big bad guy of the 1980s, among many others). The money from this drug trade was then used to finance black operations in Asia and elsewhere. After the war in Vietnam dried up, the CIA started doing the same thing with opium from Afghanistan.

Also, the CIA bought the planes that formed Air America from the French, who were using them for exactly the same purpose when they were fighting in what was then French Indochina.

All of this I got from a very convincingly well-researched book called The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

If you would like a detailed report of what happens when people do jump or fall into the pools, check out Death in Yellowstone. You can read most of the first chapter using the 'Look Inside', which has the 'boiling to death' stories.

> On the supply side, fuck the people that make those things, especially for a profit.

The people growing the poppy that's turned into heroin are impoverished farmers who basically have no other options for crop growth if they want to make a living. Even Myanmar's government acknowledges this.

They are also sometimes forced to grow these drugs by armed resistance groups who use the money to fund their operations. Why are there armed resistance groups in Myanmar? Leftovers of imperialism of course, the entire area is still destabilized from arbitrarily assigning a single-ethnic group complete control over a region that had always been populated by hundreds of groups that, while they didn't necessarily exist in a peaceful balance with each other, didn't live in constant oppression because some one community had the luck to meet the British on the shore first! Yes that's simplifying things quite a bit, but in essence the groups that rule post-colonial countries are the ones that worked with the colonial governments in exchange for power.

We can also look at how the CIA was complicit in drug trafficking around the world and in America in order to understand the modern layout of the black-market and how things like Mexico's cartels came to exist as "lesser evils" for fighting communism.

Finally lets not forget that what we consider illegal drugs aren't the most trafficked things in the black market - Prescription drugs are, as well as things like televisions, cigarettes and that most dire of evils: food.

In short: Shit's fucked, yo, and lots of people have no choice but to participate in this fucked up system just to make a living, and this is the essence of FinalageCapitalism isn't it?

If you wanted to take your interest further

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

Had a friend who worked at Yellowstone for Xanterra (the folks who run concessions and lodges in the park). He had so many stories of the completely insane things people do when they have never been exposed to nature before.

I think my favorite story was a guy getting out of his car and walking up to a bison, trying to put his kid on its back for a ride. Bison are wild herd animals, are fucking huge, and are at LEAST as dangerous as a grizzly (most of the time). The bison flipped out and charged, managing to gore the guy pretty badly (he survived). The kid got away fine, and probably has a little goddamn respect for nature and the wild now.

If you're a bit morbid, and want to marvel at the stupidity of people in a national park, check out Death in Yellowstone. It's a book full of this sort of shit.

> Still wondering why anyone really cares where people choose to live.

Actually, where people live is one of the biggest drivers of life outcomes. If you're born in KCK instead of Leawood - your probable life outcomes is much worse.

At one time, segregation was official city/state/fed policy, which subsidized the development of all-white suburbs (like Prairie Village was one of the first) and movement of people from urban areas to the suburbs - aka 'white flight'. Today, we're still living with white flight. If there were a middle to upper income suburb of Kansas City that were 88% black, do you think many white people would choose to move there? Me neither.

Check out Richard Rothstein's book "The Color of Law", or his lectures on YouTube. Great history and info about the relationship between housing segregation and life outcomes in the US.

As the Vox illustrates, segregation is still going on today (it's actually getting worse) due to policies like zoning laws and drive to prevent low-income housing and apartment complexes from being improved in middle-upper income cities, resulting in low income minorities living in a small number of areas in the metro (as illustrated by the original Vox piece map).

Stories abound that this assessment that you just "picked your family" or "picked your state" aren't correct, just FYI. It was much more complicated than you think.

Same with "citations" for arguments. Read this book as a starting place. It is pretty settled that the only valid reason that the South had for secession was economic anxiety from the removal of the barbaric slave trade. They were to choose between owning people as property (an untenable act) and having less money. They chose owning people. They lost.

Psychedelics played a bigger role than most people realize. It was the first time on earth there was a substance available to the mainstream in huge quantities that actually changed your perception on a massive level, and it was being taken by prominent social figures. Even as a psychedelic user and advocate myself, I totally underestimated the impact until I read the book "[Acid Dreams - The Complete Social History of LSD]
(https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623)". Highly recommended.

Edit: Incoming downvotes from people who probably dont know much about psychedelics

https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

this is a very good and concise starting point.

I was just reading about the link between labor aristocracy and the rise of fascism a few days ago. The ruling class becomes decadent and complacent, the opposition is unable or unwilling to act, and this spurs radical change.

However, if you reject leftwing action based on internationalism and feminism (anti racism and anti sexism), and especially the destruction of class society (communism), then you're only alternative is to double down on narrow, chauvinistic nationalism, patriarchy, and patriotism. You can find anti capitalist and socialist sentiment in fascist movements, but usually it's against an imagined corrupted form of capitalism, "crony capitalism," and not the existence of class society generally. In other words, the fascists want to be the boss, not get rid of them. They think they can manifest a truly just and natural order once deviants and subversives are liquidated and everyone becomes unified by a grand national impulse. In short the fascist solution is to unleash war within and without--the standard capitalist response. But the fascist impulse carries a vital, energetic tone that fetishizes action and violence for their own sake, against both decrepit old guard bourgeoisie, low class deviants and radicals, and the foreigner.

The historian Robert Paxton described fascism as "pallangenic," or Phoenix-like, a desire to rebirth society into an imagined former greatness, but America was never great. It hasn't fundamentally changed it's character since 1776, which is why we've been fighting the same battle against the same ruling class for over 200 years. The first rebellion in the US was against onerous taxes imposed by an unelected regime built on slavery and native land theft, and since sustained by more land theft, a racial-economic hierarchy, and aggressive resource wars. All our problems stem from this, problems that cannot be addressed using tools this same system provides, for obvious reasons.

So fascists seek revolution without revolution. Not a change in fundamental order, but to supplement the current order. German Nazi party loyalists were installed into factory management positions alongside the old managers, for example.

There's a complicated mix of factors. White supremacist hegemony is threatened by an increasingly (but necessarily) globalized labor market (outsourcing and immigration--capitalism direly needs cheap labor to avoid recession) and destruction of the family as it was shaped by capitalism--its nuclear form, as women become more economically independent and no longer need to be with a man they don't want to, but this also grows the labor pool. Now that more and more whites are subjected to the economic conditions familiar to the underclasses (which are mostly nonwhite and women), they are panicking. There's nothing in the bourgeois political toolkit to handle severe existential crisis except racism, sexism, and other scapegoats.

But the Democrats and their unions are in no shape to fight this, just as the social democrats in Europe were in no way ready to combat the fundamental nature of capitalism. The problems now are so great and the interests in the status quo so entrenched it would take an aggressive movement with revolutionary orientation to reconstitute society on a less inherently antagonistic basis. Fascists believe they can do this, but have never been able to

We must've had different history classes. :/

But yep. I'm finally going to have to read this book, huh?

This is completely wrong. The consequences were intended. FHA loans were first set up so that African Americans could not buy them. Then mortgage insurers drew maps that labeled AA neighborhoods and neighborhoods close to AA neighborhoods uninsurable. The government adopted those maps in its own regulations and so redlining continued to be an issue through the 70s. We still had segregated public housing through the early 80s. 3 of the 9 supreme court justices ruling on restrictive covenants banning sale to minorities had to recuse themselves because their mortgages had those covenants. The issue was never social engineering's unintended consequences, it was always the intended consequence of discrimination. It's taken decades to make any headway in remediating the problems that our earliest attempts at regulating homeownership have caused. The problem was never that the government guaranteed loans to people who couldn't afford them, there's a system in place to prevent default on FHA loans, the problem was that we withheld homeownership from minorities for decades.

African Americans earn 60 percent of the wages White Americans do, and yet they have less than 10 percent of the total wealth that White Americans do. That's because our system of homeownership has systemically discriminated against them for almost 100 years. Don't believe it? read this book. Too lazy for that? Listen to this interview. Don't have the time for either? Then don't comment on threads about race and housing.

I'm sorry, but yours is a very disingenuous take. Not only do you get the facts wrong about this article and the history which is its context, but you also get the basic premise of government backed mortgages wrong too. Also, the one-two punch of "poor minorities" is either ignorant or bigoted take your pick. The government guarantees loans to plenty of poor people, regardless of their race, and the idea that it sets them up to fail is almost Breitbartesque.

I was with you until your last paragraph. While slavery and racism in the U.S. were deeply intertwined, it's important to make the distinction that being anti-slavery does not imply being anti-racism, especially up until the Civil Rights Movement.

Often, abolitionists weren't advocating for the end of slavery out of a love or respect for black enslaved workers. They were arguing from a moral, theoretical standpoint of the concept of owning other people as being reprehensible. Which it is - but then if you go around and treat black people as inferiors - you're still racist, just a racist who doesn't like slavery. For one example of this, check out this essay on Walt Whitman - prime example of a Northern abolitionist who held some decidedly racist views. He was by no means the only example.

My point in saying this is that it does little good to split the nation between north and south when it comes to prevalence of racism. It's going to be difficult to quantify how racist a geographic region is. But even when you take even the most cursory glance at various metrics, you'll find that racism is not isolated to the South.

If you look for racism in the South 100 times, you'll find it 100 times. If you look for the same examples of racism in the North, or out West, or anywhere else in the country, guess what - you'll find it 100 times.

It is disingenuous to say that the South bears the only, or even largest, burden of racism in the history of the U.S. That holds true even "to this damn day". You can definitely remove Democrat and Republican from the equation. But you also must remove South or North or East or West from the equation. No region, no state, no city in this country is free from countless examples of racism. Everywhere is guilty of it.

We need to be realistic and honest about the problems we have. It doesn't matter which region is more racist (if you could ever even determine that). We need to realize that while the South has a history of racism, that history extends to the North and the rest of this country just as much. Overlooking that is a surefire way to make sure all of our racist policies and institutions never change.

> A) what should I call the group of people that split off from other lineages up to 200000 years ago? A subspecies? A clade? Race is the colloquial, and it works well to describe what I mean. There is pretty clear evidence the different 'races' split off at a specific time in the past and evolved to suit different evolutionary pressures.

"Race" is a fine word to describe what you're talking about. But my point is that what we are all talking about is a human invention. There is a lot of genetic variation in humans. We can create groups based on things like skin and hair color. Or we might decide that there are other characteristics around which we would like to group people, like height and hand size.

I understand what you are getting at. Of course it's possible that traits like intelligence are somehow genetically linked to traits for dark skin and woolly hair. But we haven't found such genes. And it strikes me as very unlikely that any association, if it did exist, would be meaningful in size.

> Jews were literally raped, murdered, pillaged, and exiled from various european countries for over a millenia. They are now the most successful group on the planet. Reconcile their history, along with asian's treatment in America and their current condition

The oppression experienced by Jewish and Asian Americans is neither as large nor as recent. Less than a generation ago, government policy explicitly prevented black Americans from buying housing and generating the wealth that white Americans of your parents' and grandparents' generations built in the period after World War II, relegating them to ghettos.

Asian and Jewish Americans of course experienced discrimination, and continue to experience it in specific instances. These groups lived in ethnic enclaves for the first generation or so after immigration (as immigrants tend to do). But they have not experienced the legally enforced segregation that Black Americans have throughout our entire history and into our very recent past.

if you give me her address i'll send her this book

-People are missing or found near creeks, rivers <br />

of course they are, thats where people go when they are lost. they think it will lead them out of the forest. (it doesn't)

-There is a geographical clustering of disappearances

-Bad weather usually occurs just as the search party gets under way
What? This doesn't make any sense. to be able to make a claim like that, you have to analyze thousands of NPS records to find a correlation between weather and searches. Also most searches take place right after someone went missing, which is probably also connected to the weather.

-Swamps and briar patches play a role in the disappearances
Do you know how easy it is to get lost in a swamp?

-Many disappearances occur in the late afternoon
Late afternoon is the time when people are usually expected back from outings, if they left in the morning. They may have disappeared earlier, but are not reported until later.

-If a person is later found, they usually are unable or unwilling to remember what happened to them.

PTSD. Simple as that.

-The missing are often found in places that were previously searched
The people doing the searches are not usually well trained parks staff, but locals and volunteers. Also, most bodies are found years later when someone stumbles on the body accidentally.

-Berries are somehow related to the disappearances.
that is so vague I honestly don't know where to start. "he ate berries." "there were berries on the trail." "they had a blueberry pie yesterday." you claim pretty much anything is related to the disappearances if you try hard enough.

how i feel right now

/rant


for anybody actually interested in National Parks search and rescue, i suggest this book, written by two park rangers who get paid by the government to rescue people

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Good job missing the point. Literally there is no rules outside of fuck nazi. Tactics are decided on the individual and group level. Also trust me NO ONE bitches about AntiFa like other AntiFa members.

Yes there are dumb AntiFa with bad optics and tactics but we aren’t a card caring organization with membership logs, aside from telling a guy to fuck off there is no real way to kick people out.

That’s the benefit and negative of AntiFa. Anyone can be AntiFa, but ANYONE can be AntiFa.

Local group decide their targets some are more legitimate targets than others, would I have gone after Milo whatever his last name is. Meh, probably not but the Berkeley crowd has different motivations then the groups I rolled with.

Also I’m getting a 404 on the article listed so I can’t respond to it directly, but I will also posit that not every punk in Black is AntiFa so lots of stuff gets blamed on the group.

If you are interested in the topic I would recomend this book it does a pretty good job at explaining the motivations and history of AntiFa.

I hear what you're saying. Memphis is in desperate need of redevelopment, revitalization, an increased tax base, more jobs, greater density, increased walkability/bikeability/livability, less violent crime, etc. All of the good things that come along with gentrification are things we really need. But we have to consider the bad along with the good (warning: wall of text incoming).

I think the big reason why people are so concerned about the negative aspects of gentrification has to do with the fact that the displacement of the black community is, in effect (if not by design although that is debatable), a continuation of the unequal and unjust housing discrimination that has existed in this country for generations.

Ghettos didn't happen by accident. They are a byproduct of explicit racial discrimination at the federal (and, in the case of Memphis, also presumably the local) level.

In the mid-20th century, the federal government actively encouraged and subsidized suburbanization. The FHA, the federal agency tasked with overseeing this policy, required that the developers who received these government subsidies sell the new properties only to white people and institute racially discriminatory restrictive covenants that would prevent them from being sold to any non-whites moving forward. Black veterans following WWII were excluded from applying their GI Bill benefits to buying homes in these areas.

By the time these practices ended, the deed had been done. White suburban subdivisions/municipalities had been created, the values of the homes had increased significantly from the prices they had initially been sold for, and they were by and large prohibitively expensive to black people (who needless to say were also subject to economic discrimination). Not to mention the fact that they weren't exactly the most welcoming places on Earth for the middle-class black families who could have afforded to live there by the time they were legally able to do so.

The end result of these policies had a massive impact on racial disparities in wealth, as the working-class white families who bought government-subsidized homes with government-subsidized mortgages were able to accrue enormous gains in equity while black people (many of whom could have afforded these homes had they not been precluded from buying them at the outset) realized none of those gains, as the areas of town they were forced to live in were effectively abandoned by the rest of society. If you are not familiar with the history of housing discrimination in this country, I recommend listening to this recent episode of Fresh Air and following up with the book the episode is based on.

So, bringing this full circle, if we sit on our hands as the black community is displaced in gentrifying areas around Memphis, then we are complicit in perpetuating unjust racial disparities in housing for the next generation. How would you feel if your family had been forced to live in a shitty part of town by means of discrimination, and then as soon as that area became vibrant and livable again you were forced out by economic forces? You'd be fucking outraged, and rightfully so.

The good news is that displacement is not an inevitable byproduct of redevelopment. The mechanisms by which displacement occur are rising rents and increased property tax liabilities, which are issues that can be remedied by public policy (namely upzoning and property tax abatement for incumbent property owners).

But if redevelopment is going to occur in a just fashion, we're going to have to give real consideration to preventing the negative aspects of gentrification and stop focusing on whether the upper-middle class white people of Lea's Woods might have to, GASP, park their second car around the corner from their house as Binghampton urbanizes (for example).

tl;dr Memphis needs redevelopment but sitting back and allowing the black community to be displaced in gentrifying areas would be to perpetuate a long history of unjust housing discrimination. The good news is that it isn't inevitable.

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

This is an excellent summary. White Americans got success by making sure the lowest rungs of the economic ladder were full of black people. It was done intentionally with laws and descrimination at all levels of society, city, state and federal.

So, if you knew the position of every atom in the universe, you could write perfect history? So what?

One of the difficult things about history is you have limited evidence. Every written document from Anglo-Saxon England we possess would fit into a small box. The largest amount of surviving text we have from Ancient Rome is monument and gravestone inscriptions.

Our most sophisticated computer models can't predict the weather in 10 days or the stock market opening tomorrow, and we know way more about the current prices of stocks or the current weather data than we do about, say, Ancient Sparta. The data for any model based approach just isn't there. It some ways, environmental determinism in history is like being given a puddle of water and the room temperature and trying to figure out what the ice cube looked like.

There's a reason economic determinism in history has gone out of fashion, and that ecological determinism never really went in: it's a less useful model for understanding why things happen compared with a more nuanced approach.

FWIW, Diamond's follow up book, Collapse contained several sections specifically rebutting the suggestion that he was an "environmental determinist."

We can always dream that politics and short-term interests won't overshadow an existential crisis.

For those interested:

• The Little Prince
  
• Eating Animals
  
• The Hero With A Thousand Faces
  
• The Illustrated World's Religions
  
• Jihad vs. McWorld
  
• Collapse
  
• Just And Unjust Wars
  
• Descent Into Chaos
  
• The Landmark Thucydides
  
• A People's History of the United States

Have you read Collapse? Fascinating book dealing with that exact question. Not everyone agrees with his ideas but it's still a good jumping point.

From the Amazon page:
> Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.

http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422282600&sr=8-1&keywords=white+cargo

I don't know about outright "denial" outside of fringe circles, but it's not uncommon to see folks engage in mental gymnastics to downplay the legacy of imperialism, chattel slavery, etc., or even attempt to turn it into a "good" thing. Think about it:

• "Other cultures engaged in slavery, too! Why all this focus on American slavery?" or garbage like White Cargo
  
  
• "Hey, I'm of Irish/Slavic/non-WASP descent, and my ancestors were just as oppressed, but you don't see me complaining!"
  
  
• "Hey, we 'civilized' them! Without us, they'd have no railroads!"
  
  
• "Racism would go away if it wasn't for 'race hucksters' like Al Sharpton and we just all ignored it!"
  
  
• The naive but earnest belief that passing anti-discrimination laws somehow reverses the racism that is so deeply ingrained in society it's embedded at the cultural level

Lots of love for you, here are some thoughts of mine...

• it is a mistake to believe that you should be asking the question "What is the purpose of my life?" it's not a question you ask, IT IS A QUESTION YOU ANSWER! and you answer it by living your life as ONLY you can, having the adventure that is your life experience, discovering the magical miracle that is ONLY YOU in all of this vast universe!
  
  
• After losing Mormonism and the understanding of the universe that goes with it, I find myself an atheist, which has made this little journey of life INFINITELY more precious to me. It's all and everything we have! (as far as we know).
  
  
• I have pulled in many helpful, empowering, peaceful ideas from Buddhism, Philosophy, Science that has helped me start to form a new, optimistic, and amazingly open minded new world-view. I no longer have to believe anything that doesn't make sense, I get to believe only sweet things now, and that is SO nice.
  
  Here are some resources that I have been really grateful for on my journey, which I am 12 months into...
  
  The Obstacle is the Way
  
  The Daily Stoic this is my new "daily bible" I read a page every morning
  
  Secular Buddhism podcast
  
  Waking Up podcast
  
  End of Faith
  
  The Demon Haunted World
  
  Philosophize This! podcast OR Partially Examined Life podcast
  
  I wish you the very best in your journey, be patient with yourself, you have EVERY reason to be! Start filling your mind with powerful positive ideas, keep the ones that help you find your way, set aside the ones that don't.
  
  And remember, you are young and free and the possibilities of what your life can become are boundless!

This review literally made me laugh out loud. I never think about kids getting angry about books in school and then writing bad reviews on the internet, but I suppose that's a thing now.

>President Roosevelt was responsible for Pearl Harbor attack, knew about it in advance but didn't warn the Hawaiian commanders, because he wanted to sucker Hitler to declare war? -- That would easily find a mention in my list of worst conspiracy theories ever.

Actually this is very likely the case. This guy offers plenty of evidence to back it up: http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4489636-8060653?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179674151&sr=8-1

It's not a totally crazy conspiracy theory. Throughout history there have always been cases of leaders setting up, provoking or allowing attacks in order to convince the populace into supporting a war. It would be naive to think that that practice would have any reason to have stopped.

They weren't just dosing citizens for experimental purposes - they would regularly dose each other just for shits and giggles. It began as a search for a mind-control drug.

Acid Dreams is a great book about the history of the CIA's interactions with LSD. You'll also find appearances by the likes of Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey and their kin. It gives a nice contrasting view of the two (or three, or thirty) different ideologies present amongst the assorted Acid taking groups of the 60's in regards to what they could all agree was a chemical that was going to change everything.

There's actually a whole book detailing all of the people who have died in the Canyon over the years. The overwhelming majority of deaths can be attributed to being young and male. There's also a maybe not surprisingly large number of guys who died while peeing off the side of the Canyon.

The gold standard on this topic is definitely Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

It's only recently that America's forestation rate has increased, and only in the north. South and west are still in decline.

Excellent book if you're interested in learning why cultures would cut down the last tree, even when they know it's the last tree: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

This book, it seems:

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035/

> t’s not surprising to anyone who has lived in or visited a major American metropolitan region that the nation’s cities tend to be organized in their own particular racial pattern. In Chicago, it’s a north/south divide. In Austin, it’s west/east. In some cities, it’s a division based around infrastructure, as with Detroit’s 8 Mile Road. In other cities, nature—such as Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River—is the barrier. Sometimes these divisions are man-made, sometimes natural, but none are coincidental.

The Racial Segregation of American Cities Was Anything But Accidental
A housing policy expert explains how federal government policies created the suburbs and the inner city Smithsonian magazine recently ran an article about this. The article is about a recent book that was written by an economist at Berkeley.

>Am I missing much here?

Ignorance, racism, and hypocrisy. Their precious bible is sexist. Their ownership, control, and exploitation of Native Indian, Black, Asian, and even White women is sexist - during imperialism, slavery, before the civil rights movement, Native Indians in reservations, mass rapes in wars over seas, and even now at their foreign military bases. After they rape you, they blame you. Here, take a look.

 

Here's BEFORE:

"White women were encouraged to be chaste, while slave women were pictured as outlets for men's sexual desires...Despite the violent or coercive mistreatment of slave women, they were considered promiscuous. Their high birth rates and skimpy clothing--both consequences of their status as property--were used to justify the creation of negative imagery."

"This practice remained the status quo until 1967"

Gender and Legal History Paper Summary
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/library/collections/gender-legal-history/glh-summary.cfm?glhID=9737A959-C21A-47D3-75CF5754015C05F9

 

Here's NOW

>Racism and sexual harassment could lie behind the higher incidence of suicide attempts amongst teenagers adopted from foreign countries.

>Adopted teenagers from foreign countries are more than four times more likely to attempt suicide than other teenagers.

>The research team believe they've detected a pattern following interviews with young adopted women of Asian descent. 'People have preconceptions that [women of Asian descent] are promiscuous, prostitutes, have a strong sex drive and are considered to be exotic,' said Frank Lindblad, who believes that such sexual prejudices can be difficult for the women concerned to understand.

Racism behind suicide attempts - The Local

https://web.archive.org/web/20121006195710/http://www.thelocal.se/2942/20060126/

 

But, because white people tell the world they're great and egalitarian and simultaneously spread lies about Asian men (who are far less criminal across the board), the world ignores these inconvenient facts and goes along with their story - kinda like how "America is spreading freedom" even though they're the world's #1 terrorist group http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-C-I-Interventions-II--Updated/dp/1567512526/ and http://www.amazon.com/Rogue-State-Guide-Worlds-Superpower/dp/1567513743/, and #1 drug traffickers http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global/dp/1556524838

 

Here are some more areas where they are the world leaders in.

● World leaders in murdering their own families

>In almost all of these cases, the killer is a white, non Hispanic man. n most cases, the man exhibits *possessive, obsessive and jealous behavior.

Murder-Suicide in Families | National Institute of Justice http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/pages/murder-suicide.aspx

 

● Pedophile profile: Young, WHITE, wealthy | ZDNet

http://www.zdnet.com/article/pedophile-profile-young-white-wealthy/

A People's History of the United States, but only if you are an American

Seconded; for a great history of this, check out Cadillac Desert

Also, one problem I have with this graphic is how the United States is treated as a single entity. While the West is running out of water, the Great Lakes region sits on 1/5 of the world's available fresh water. To this day one of America's strengths is abundant natural resources.

Sam Harris is good at being the "gentle" voice of New Atheism. Someone mentioned the End of Faith, check out Letter to a Christian Nation as well.

You might find it worthwhile to read the book your parents gave you, then sit down with them for maybe half an hour a week or so, and critique a chapter, pointing out flaws or logical errors.

After that, you can go through the book you gave them together.

I hate that I don't know how to link you to the right spot, but hit "look inside" on this book. You want to read the chapter titled "Hold Fast to Your Children: Death in Hot Water". It gives actual accounts of people who went into the pools. One man dove, most fell accidentally; either way it isn't pretty.

There are no knights in shining armor in the books any more than on the show. Knights in ASoIaF are of the Gregor Clegane variety: they use their title and power to rape and pillage.

There's a fantastic book on the Middle Ages called A Distant Mirror, and it explains how even in Medieval times, the idea of the "knight in shining armor" was an outdated myth that didn't reflect reality. One of the reasons I took to A Game of Thrones when I read it is that it was the first "accurate" portrayal of historical knights that I could think of.

A Song of Ice and Fire is by no means faeries and fair maidens... The show extrapolates the tone of the books.

If you're a Sam Harris fan, there are a few of his debates on the DebateGod podcast on iTunes. You don't have to be an atheist to like those podcasts either. Good points from both sides. Also, here is a great article he wrote about BJJ from his site. Lastly, feel free to read The End Of Faith. It is a HUGE eye opener.

Sorry to just get all teen girl on you guys... I just get excited when multiple interests of mine join together like Voltron.

You know what won't give them the ability to believe whatever they want? If they release the actual fucking statistics instead of hiding it and spouting crap like "every human is the same, race doesn't exist" when modern biology and evolution has proven that is not the case. I recommend you read The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. If the west refuses to acknowledge biology and evolution in its policy development, it will be in real trouble in the future.

In New Zealand, Europeans make up 74% of the population, but only 33% of the prison population. Where as 15% of the population is Maori, but they make up 51% of the prison population. http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/snapshots-of-nz/yearbook/society/crime/corrections.aspx

And you naive Europeans think that this won't happen to you as you haven't really had much experience of multi ethnic societies.

https://smile.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X?sa-no-redirect=1

There's even a book.

Morbid, but interesting read about every death in the Grand Canyon. It's a lot. Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

Edit: ~12 per year (700ish total and counting)

Always amuses me the similarities (in general) between Pearl harbor and 9/11 and how they were able to get away with the same thing 60+ years later.

If you're bored, grab Day of Deceit....great book on the PH conspiracy

I'm assuming you're mostly interested in the LSD/"Mind Control" aspects of MKUltra.

Much of the official CIA/DoD documentation on MKUltra was destroyed during the 1970's in a big document purge around the time of the Church Comittee. After the revelations of Watergate as well as the era of the post J. Edgar Hoover FBI and revelations of COINTELPRO, the CIA began to purge a lot of it's documents as well as turn a lot of them over.

Much of their clandestine works that were being conducted inside the U.S. with testing and experimentation, as well as it's working with the FBI on counter-espionage were shut down, however MKUltra was officially shut down in '73.

Much of the MKUltra research work was basically "outsourced," to universities, pharmaceutical companies, and research and teaching hospitals. It's a well known and established fact that known psychologists and psychedelic researchers received government grants to study drugs like LSD, BZ, mushrooms, peyote, etc. The DoD also conducted their own experiments

One of the ironies of these paid government experimentations was that it "leaked." People like Leary became so enamored with the drug and the atmosphere of a collegiate environment (Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, etc.), allowed the drugs to quickly get out of hand and out of the laboratory setting. Essentially many of the researchers and doctors being paid by the CIA and government were the first to start the psychedelics movement.

However, by the mid 1960's the CIA had lost interest in LSD, but not before it turned it lose on the world. There were some wild experiments such as dosing an elephant to death, dosing cats.

Some experiments were pretty nasty too. They experiemented on prisoners, and in one case kept 200 patients dosed on LSD for over 45 days. In some of those cases the doctors have been sued or been subject to censure. However, on the whole, many of these scientists and doctors simply went on with their work in pharmaceuticals and psychology.

In the end, over 1000 academic papers were written about psychoactives. However due to the widespread abuse of and criminalization of the drugs, halted experimentation by the mid 1960's. During this period though, people as varied as housewives to Carey Grant and Francis Crick (of DNA fame), experimented and used the drug. Due to the problematic nature of the drugs abuse a lot of information has been clouded and thorough, modern research has not been done until very recently. During it's brief period of testing, it was discovered that LSD combined with psychotherapy in a controlled environment with a trained facilitator had strong potential to aid treatment. There is also strong evidence that it is very useful in treating other substance abuse issues such as alcoholism, but of course this requires more study.

There is a great book about MKUltra and LSD called Acid Dreams which covers the history of LSD from it's discovery through the 1970's to include its use in MKUltra and the CIA, as well as a history of MKUltra's psychedelic experiments.

One of the leading Holocaust historians disagrees with you a wrote a book explaining how it can happen: https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

Robert Paxton, made famous for his book Vichy France, has a book titled The Anatomy of Fascism. He focuses more on how the actions of particular fascists defined the political ideology. Maybe not the best source, but definitely worth a quick read if only to make a comparison to other books.

it's based on the real life shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick. Other posters point to the Nathaniel Philbrick non-fiction book [In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex] (http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828)

lol. the book is totally amazing if you want to learn more.

It's a bit of fact and a bit of propaganda. There are many claims in here, so I'll probably miss some, but let me start with the first big red flag that's demonstrably not true:
>And in the blighting shadow of Slavery letters die and art cannot live. What book has the South ever given to the libraries of the world? What work of art has she ever added to its galleries? What artist has she produced…

There were several big names from the south in literature during the Antebellum period. The best example I can think of, William Gilmore Simms, whom Edgar Allen Poe praised as "the best novelist which this country, on the whole, has produced.". The south even had at least one literary magazine that I know of, The Southern Literary Messenger, also edited by Poe for a short time, coincidentally. It's safe to say the south was not suffering for lack of writers during that period.

As for fine arts, I'm struggling to come up with native southern painters who remained in the south through their lives, though I'm not well-versed in art history. If you expand that to painters born elsewhere who worked in the south, I can come up with some like John Audubon and George Caleb Bingham. There are probably others, but I have to admit that art history is totally out of my realm of knowledge.

As for the greater claim of the entire article:
>Possessed of all the raw materials of manufactures and the arts, its inhabitants look to the North for everything they need from the cradle to the coffin. Essentially agricultural in its constitution, with every blessing Nature can bestow upon it, the gross value of all its productions is less by millions than that of the simple grass of the field gathered into Northern barns. With all the means and materials of wealth, the South is poor.

There's some truth in that. No, the south did not have much industry outside of agriculture, save for a few places in eastern states like Virginia. However, I'd say it's a stretch to say that the South looked to the North for everything they needed. Most of the whites in the south weren't plantation owners, but subsistence farmers who mostly took care of their own needs. The claim that the difference in economy was due to slavery is mostly true. In order to support industry, you need people to sell things to. Slaves don't need that many goods, so producing goods to sell is less enticing in such a market.

>Why are they subjected to a censorship of the press, which dictates to them what they may or may not read, and which punishes booksellers with exile and ruin for keeping for sale what they want to buy? Why must Northern publishers expurgate and emasculate the literature of the world before it is permitted to reach them?

There's a small bit of truth to the censorship, but I only know of one very specific case of censorship. There was an outrage among southerners in 1835 over mailed abolitionist pamphlets, Post Master General Amos Kendall allowed them to be banned them from being mailed to the south. During this time, several southern states also passed laws against distributing abolitionist literature.

The bigger issue here might be that of self-censorship. I think this goes beyond people who might have believed in abolition privately, but publicly denounced it (although those certainly existed as well). Newspapers in the south, even those that took a more liberal stance, seemed unable to reconcile that the system of slavery their part of the country relied on was an inherent evil. A great example of this is Brownlow's Whig, a newspaper created by William Brownlow, who would eventually serve as governor and senator of TN, following the Civil War. I choose Brownlow because he's the perfect example of this confusing dichotomy and the shifting view of some southerners on slavery. When the paper begins in the 1830s, he is decidedly pro-slavery. As the war approaches, he continues to support slavery, but he is staunchly opposed to secession. During and after secession, he continues to oppose secession and in the meantime, his views on slavery shift. First, he begins to admit that Union is more important than slavery before finally taking a flat-out abolitionist stance by the end of the war.

From a transcript published in the July 2, 1864 issue of his paper, illustrating the strange position before advocating complete abolition:
>I do now know that I would be willing to go so far as probably he would. But I cordially agree with him in this -- I think, considering what has been done about slavery, taking the thing as it now stands, overlooking altogether, either in the way of condemnation or in the way of approval, any act that has brought us to the point where we are, but believing in my conscience and with all my heart, that what has brought us where we are in the matter of slavery, is the original sin and folly of treason and secession, because you remember that the Chicago Convention itself was understood today and I believe it virtually did explicitly say that they would not touch slavery in the States. ... We are prepared to demand not only that the whole territory of the United States shall not be made slave, but that the General Government, both the war power and the peace power, to put slavery as nearly possible back where it was -- for although that would be a fearful state of society, it is better than anarchy; or else use the whole power of the Government, both of war and peace, and all the practicable power that the people of the United States will give them to exterminate and extinguish slavery.

It's pretty clear that no one told Brownlow not to talk about abolition. His paper was known for being inflammatory and he didn't really care what the authorities had to say. It was shut down and reopened several times over the years as he fled from public backlash, assassination attempts, and eventually the Confederate army. It changed names almost as often as he changed locations including: Tennessee Whig, The Whig, The Jonesborough Whig, The Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, The Knoxville Whig and Independent Journal, and perhaps most colorfully, Brownlow's Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ventilator. My point being, it was pretty clear that he didn't care if he upset people and wasn't the type of man who wouldn't talk about abolition because it might against some regulation. He didn't believe in abolition for other, personal reasons until later on. I think this might be indicative of the more widespread form of "censorship" and not talking about abolition.

As far as the entire article, it seems to fall into the old view of looking reasons why the south was backward rather than seeing the north as revolutionary and the south as being more in step with other countries, like those in Europe and Russia. I agree with James McPherson's assessment in Battle Cry of Freedom that the war was the south's counter revolution to an economic, social, and political revolution that was happening in the north. In short: the article presents a heavily biased, though not completely untrue view of the south and its problems.

edit: added more sources and expanded a bit.

You might be interested in Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. It’s a little old but he does an amazing job of laying out the issues with California’s water system.

This is a good point, but we can't just rest on our laurels and assume speech in this country will always be free. I read On Tyranny yesterday, and its second lesson is quite relevant here:

> Defend Institutions

> [...] Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.

Want to know more about Grand Canyon fatalities? I have a book recommendation for you.

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

> Right-wing nutjobs (fascists)

Not even remotely the same, fascism originated from the Italian left and got great under Mussolini, whose party was hugely supported by Italian Jews.

Well, until he thought of Hitler as a serious threat and tried to get cozy with him.

Experts like Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and many more generally agree that fascism is neither "Left" nor "Right" exclusive.

Edit: I just realized the glorious irony in your comment.

Death in Yellowstone is a very interesting book. But I just couldn't finish it. It was too depressing, especially the stories of little children who died horrible or painful deaths.

I highly recommend the book "Death in Yellowstone"

A LOT of people have died from the hot springs.

One of the people mauled by a bear was someone from my hometown and a good friend of my dads at the time.

There is a whole chapter about horrible deaths resulting from people getting too close to the hot springs in the book Death in Yellowstone. It should be required reading before entering the park.

The New Yorker has a more sympathetic view:

An Intimate History of Antifa. It is a book review of the brand-new Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray. It's 288 pp, 14 dollars, and you can buy it on Amazon. 33 reviews with a 2* average for now.

(I am not going to make any comparisons to my Rage Against the Machine CD's manufactured by the Sony Music Corporation. That is the New Yorker's job. They don't.)

Highly recommended book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Rothstein goes back to the 1920s to trace the various methods government, and mostly federal government, used to create and maintain segregation.

I have to agree. Although many were privately in favor of segregation they required the law to hold it up. Even gentlemen's agreement deed restrictions were subject to block busting.

There's quite a few good books I'd recommend on the subject:

• A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960
  
• Racism in Kansas City: A Short History
  
• Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, Second Edition: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2010
  
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
  
• Take Up the Black Man's Burden: Kansas City's African American Communities, 1865-1939
  
  tagging /u/NotGerkonanaken since they said they were interested
  
  edit: obligatory 'thanks for the gold' edit. :)

Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).

The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).

Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.

Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.

Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.

After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.

Happy reading!

edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

Enguerrand I, Lord of Coucy

I have been reading "A Distant Mirror" an amazing book about medieval history, and decided to play as , the first royal ancestor of the main character in the book.

To play him the start date has to be January 1, 1077, and choose the County of Amiens in the Kingdom of France.

Me and my friend have had a back and forth succession game as his line and it has been a blast. You are constantly caught in the middle of France exploding into revolutions, the English, Flemish, and HRE, among others, all trying to encroach on your position. It is a constant defensive battle, but very rewarding when you manage to snag an extra county or two.

I'm a historian by major but working outside the profession. That said, I don't often post here but when I do, I hope I'm writing within the rules. Apologies in advance.

What OP is refering to is Historiography . The rest of the question depends completely on what you're reading/watching etc. If you're reading scholarly publications typically bias level is very low. If you're watching a documentary on any cable channel you need to be much more aware. One of the first things you're taught is to examine the source of the information and intent of the author.

The end goal of creating original historical scholarly work would be a product with as little bias (exaggerations and hearsay) as possible. I say as little because Historiography tells us it's impossible to create work completely free of bias.

It's impossible to remove our understanding and experience from the material because we use everything as context. If this is a subject that interests you I would highly recommend reading Orientalism by Edward Said. It's focus is the idea of our understanding of anything (person, event, time period, etc) is formulated based on our own culture.

I recognize linking wikipedia isn't a great thing to do in this sub however, I felt it appropriate to the topic.

Yes. Read this book.

OP are you reading Acid Dreams? I'm reading it right now... seems like every page there's multiple mind-blowing TIL's like this.

Historian Timothy Snyder is doing an AMA now regarding his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, written following Trump's election.

In the aftermath of the election, he said in an interview elsewhere:

> We have at most a year to defend American democracy, perhaps less

I suspect it'll be interesting.

EDIT2: it's in progress so eliminating starting time info

https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

> Because white people didn't go through slavery.

Wrong.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm

http://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056

http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

Prosim te, ne ti ne jaz nisva citirala enega samega kosa literature, ker je to reddit debata. Tako da ne ti meni, da si ti nadobjektiven, jaz pa dajem samo mnenja.

Kar se tiče pokolov, pobojev, te izvajajo skozi čas bolj ali manj vsi politični sistemi. Samo poglej si pokole ameriških Indijancev v 19. stoletju in prej. To je bil tudi en vzor nacistom glede njihove politike v Vzhodni Evropi. Da so ZDA to počele, to ne pomeni, da je njihov sistem enak fašističnemu. Politične podobnosti se določajo na globlji ravni, kot samo o tem, koliko se pobija, strada itd.
ZDA so po mojem mnenju kljub tem dejanjem svetlobna leta pred nacistično Nemčijo glede svoje dobrote. Enako tudi glede Sovjetske zveze, sicer malo manj.

Prosim te še enkrat, ne govori iz riti. Predpostavljam, da si libertarec (popravi me če to ni res). Za osnovo ti priporočam delo Roberta Paxtona: Anatomy of Fascism.
Evo link od Amazona: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918. Ni le o fašizmu, temveč tudi o pojavu množične politike nasploh.

Če ti to ni všeč, predlagam tudi klasiko: Hannah Arendt: Izvor totalitarizma. Zelo dobro opisano, kaj je bilo pred 130 leti skupno imperializmu, fašizmu in leninističnemu komunizmu.
https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Totalitarianism-Harvest-Book-Hb244-ebook/dp/B004Q9TLJW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Da ne bo spet, da podajam samo svoje mnenje.

I won't give any direct answers because this is something you need to know for yourself, not because someone told you.

So if you want to know how to approach this, first you need to know the history. Read for example A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn to see specific instances how was government behaving in last 500 years. Watch documentaries from John Pilger. Watch Assassination of Russia to see how Putin got into power. Read War is a Racket. I could go on and on; there are hundreds and hundreds of great books and documentaries and unclassified documents which you can get today and check for yourself.

Also I need to point out - don't make a (common) mistake thinking of any government as a single entity. It is made of people, each of them having his own agenda. More proper question then would be, could some people in government have so much power and skill and at the same time be so unscrupulous, that they plan, commit, and get away with committing terrorist (false-flag) acts for their own profits?

I can't offer you squat on job hunting, but I used to be a water lawyer here in California and if you want to read an insanely interesting book, that will always up your interest with anyone in any part of the water business in the US (or probably Canada, too), read Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert, which all about the history of the aquafication of the West. Looks like you are Europe-based from your job applications, but it is a fascinating story well worth your time.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

Since you didn't specifically mention it: it was a whaleship that was attacked and sunk by a whale. For those who want to read more on this, I enjoyed this book.

That ELI5 is, of course by nature, too simplistic. The Germans didn't "install the Tutsi into power". Instead, Rwanda as it exists today is one of the few countries where the current borders pretty closely approximate with the borders of a complex hierarchical kingdom that existed before the country became a colony.

Colonial powers prefer using existing governing structures as it saves them the time and effort to set up an entire administrative system of their own, and in the case of Rwanda, this was easier than usual. They simply solidified the existing system, so in their eyes, at this point they weren't inducing volatility at all, but strengthening a stable system.

After WWI, the Belgians took over the administrative functions and they not only continued to rely on these governing structures, but, guided by the racist and eugenics movements of the time, came up with a racial explanation for the Tutsi rule: their superiority was demonstrated by their lighter skin, aquiline nose, tall stature, etc. as opposed to the broad-nosed, darker and shorter Hutus. According to this new racial mythology, Hutu were Bantus while the Tutsi were part-Caucasian.

So they didn't intend to induce volatility, but they certainly weren't well-intentioned when they decided how to rule. As to direct economic gain, Rwanda has few resources and covers a small and landlocked territory, but it was well-suited for cash crop production of mainly coffee and some tea.

This is another important cause of the volatility of the country in itself. The post-colonial one-party dictatorship under Hutu rule relied almost entirely on a mix of foreign aid and profits from the coffee trade, and purposely kept the country rural and the population uneducated in order to maximize the exploitability of its only profitable natural resource.

When coffee prices plummeted in the late 1980ies, this caused serious problems for the regime as both the international and domestic communities as well as the exiled Tutsi community in Uganda mounted a serious opposition to the dictatorship. They were eventually forced to agree to political reforms, but hard-liners who were unwilling to relinquish their power seized control after the assassination (probably by the RPF - Tutsi rebels from Uganda) of the President, were able to use the years of anti-Tutsi propaganda, trained submission through dictatorship, and fears about the rebels from Uganda to organize the genocide.


There still is a lot more to it, and it is also interesting, but worrying to see many parallels between the current post-genocide Tutsi government and the pre-genocide Hutu government. I mostly based the above on academic sources, but more accessible reading I could recommend about the country and the region would include Dancing in the Glory of Monsters and anything by Prunier and Mamdani. Jared Diamond's Collapse has a chapter on Rwanda which focuses on the economic dimension; it's a bit controversial, but based on some very interesting research.

For the American Civil War:

Jean Edward Smith's Grant biography goes into some detail regarding logistics, as Grant's experience as a Quartermaster during the Mexican-American War, in particular when Scott's army was cut off from supplies during the Mexico City campaign, influenced actions like Grant's mule train to Chattanooga to relieve Rosecrans, and Sherman's March to the Sea.

However, it's not purely about the logistics of the war, which is covered in some more detail in McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, especially the comparisons of the economics of the Union and Confederate states.

And regarding World War II, the US Army Center of Military History has published two free books:

• Global Logistics and Strategy - 1940-1943
  
• Global Logistics and Strategy - 1943-1945
  
  > What college departments usually offer logistics courses? Business Administration usually?
  
  Or a dedicated logistics department. MIT has its Logistics and Supply Chain Management course available online.

Prejudice can develop at the lower levels, but it's the government's job to clamp down and diffuse the situation and foster understanding. That's what Asia does to an extreme degree to the point of self-harm by presenting white pedophiles sepats as "honorable gentleman". The western government has been the polar opposite for much of its history. Not only do they not clear up the confusion, they are one of the main instruments of confusion and hate. One of the reasons why so many whites celebrate when non-whites die is because they're only heard of atrocity stories eg non-white harming them. They don't get the context AKA the big picture eg whites started it first.

 

>First Nations killed our soldiers

No word on breaking mass rape, genocide, theft, and 400+ broken treaties http://www.amazon.com/Pagans-Promised-Land-Christian-Discovery/dp/1555916422/

 

>Gooks were merciless!

No word on white-inflicted systemic rape, torture, and murder http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/1250045061/ and http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Program-Americas-Forbidden-Bookshelf-ebook/dp/B00KGMIW6Q/

 

>Mexicans bring drugs

No word on the biggest drug cartel on earth [aside from the british "Christian" opium drug dealers] http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global-Trade/dp/1556524838/

 

>China is bullying our friend the Philippines. We need to protect them.

No word on the mass rape, genocide, theft, http://www.amazon.com/Benevolent-Assimilation-American-Philippines-1899-1903/dp/0300030819/

 

White man speak with forked tongue - global proverb

 

To stop these atrocities from occurring, we must spread the truth and discredit Western media.

There's a whole book of this stuff. We read stories aloud as we drove to and from the park. "Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park." Many stories of attempts at hot tubbing the pools, falling into the pools, rocks falling on heads, etc.

Before this thread is locked, last time the topic came up someone asked if there’s an Antifa manifesto or anything. I recommend this book:

https://smile.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

Ignore the title, it isn’t a “handbook” to being Antifa. It’s a history of anti fascism and the reasoning behind the movement. It’s by an academic so it isn’t the best written thing in the world but is still interesting regardless of what you may think of Antifa.

>answering violence with violence will not get anyone anywhere.

you know literally nothing about the history of anti-fascism. what you are proposing has literally never once worked. antifa has worked.

> please feel free to change my opinion on the subject.

If you were skeptical you'd already have read on the subject of fascism and anti-fascism, but you haven't. At all. All you're doing is regurgitating "le common sense" redditisms about how fascists deserve to be allowed to terrorize us.

This is a concise history of anti-fascism. As someone who has been in anti-fascist circles for many years, I can say that it is quite good. Read that if you're actually skeptical. If not, then don't ask for people to change your opinion. What you need to know is all in that book.

> if you think your side is in the right by punching them then you're in the wrong.

My family was in the camps. Modern nazis want to recreate those camps. Violence isn't the only means of resisting nazis, but it is entirely acceptable. A variety of tactics is required to stop nazism.

It's honestly upsetting how many nazis and nazi sympathizers are flooding this sub lately.

"...considering how old it is"? You don't need to go back all that far to find a time when restrictive covenents were still stipulated and enforced. If you'd like a pretty in-depth treatment of the subject, check out the book, The Color of Law.

It is a very complex issue, and certainly on the poorer end of the spectrum housing policy, especially pernicious starting in the New Deal era from the Federal level which was deliberately racist and codified segregation, still accounts for much of the racial segregation in the country today (see The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein for a very good analysis).

But what is interesting about the wealthier end of the spectrum is that many middle class black families are choosing to live below their means in majority-black suburbs rather than be a minority in the common majority-white suburbs. This is a really interesting paper about the issue. While there are several factors, including discrimination, a major factor is that many black families prefer not being a minority in their own neighborhoods even if it comes at the costs of de facto segregation.

It just is not as simple as people like Klein want it to be. Klein's point is definitely not the slam-dunk he thinks it is. First, his talking point is based on statistics specific to a few large urban areas. It is not representative of the country as a whole and shouldn't be framed that way as Klein did in the podcast. It is much more complicated than simply looking at New York, LA, and Chicago and the average income of neighborhoods to determine the relative quality of social services, schools, etc.

I read "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond" over the summer, not knowing much about LSD history besides the CIA made it, and it was one of the greatest reads of my life. Explains all of the steps of the movement, about public opinion, the main personalities involved, and the political movements that came from all of these different groups.

This is true. Outlined well in Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain Known as MKULTRA, another interesting aspect is the psychiatric community and some of their personal lives intertwining with those governmental groups.

Highly recommended: Acid Dreams by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder is also amazing because it gives you easy things you can do in your everyday life to fight tyranny.

I've been doing a lot of reading trying to figure out this election and why the heck we are so divided as a county:

https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Resentment-Consciousness-Wisconsin-American/dp/022634911X

https://www.amazon.com/Complacent-Class-Self-Defeating-Quest-American/dp/1250108691

https://www.amazon.com/Glass-House-Economy-Shattering-All-American/dp/1250085802

https://www.amazon.com/Colony-Nation-Chris-Hayes/dp/0393254224

https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

>hurr durr source is funny

• http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-forgotten-white-slaves-part-ii-nehesy/
  
  
• http://www.rhettaakamatsu.com/irishslaves.htm
  
  
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664862/The-forgotten-history-of-Britains-white-slaves.html
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/White-Slaves-African-Masters-Narratives/dp/0226034046/ref=pd_sim_b_8
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Testimony-Irish-Slave-Girl-McCafferty/dp/014200183X
  
  now fuck off

Here Star-Lord, let's put the quote-mined text you presented in context with the rest of the section of Sam Harris' book:

----

Sam Harris: The End of Faith

The Problem with Islam

Jihad and the Power of the Atom

For devout Muslims, religious identity seems to trump all others.
Despite the occasional influence of Pan-Arabism, the concept of an
ethnic or national identity has never taken root in the Muslim world
as it has in the West. The widespread support for Saddam Hussein
among Muslims, in response to the American attack upon Iraq, is as
good a way as any of calibrating the reflexivity of Muslim solidarity.
Saddam Hussein was, as both a secularist and a tyrant, widely despised
in the Muslim world prior to the American invasion; and yet the reaction
of most Muslims revealed that no matter what his crimes against
the Iraqi people, against the Kuwaitis, and against the Iranians, the
idea of an army of infidels occupying Baghdad simply could not be
countenanced, no matter what humanitarian purpose it might serve.
Saddam may have tortured and killed more Muslims than any person
in living memory, but the Americans are the "enemies of God."

It is important to keep the big picture in view, because the details,
being absurd to an almost crystalline degree, are truly meaningless.
In our dialogue with the Muslim world, we are confronted by people
who hold beliefs for which there is no rational justification and which
therefore cannot even be discussed, and yet these are the very beliefs
that underlie many of the demands they are likely to make upon us.

It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims
pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little
possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed
with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties
be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom
and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United
States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or
less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an
Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of
paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is
any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads
are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to
rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such
a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a
nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an
unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent
civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action
available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an
unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the
Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a
genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make
it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war
with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat
of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just
described a plausible scenario in which much of the world's population
could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on
the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone, and unicorns.
That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the
sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen.
Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith
enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly
likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are
every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get
their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in
particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent
it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say
that time is not on our side.

----

So Star-Lord, in your quoted text, why did you terminate the quoted text where you did and omitted the last 4 words of the sentence - "given what Islamists believe."?

> Do you agree with his position on launching nukes in the muslim world pre-emptively and causing mass genocide?

Strawman argument. Sam Harris does not endorse a first strike preemptive attack against the Muslim world. Nor does he condone genocide. At best you could claim that Harris proposes and considers a scenario where Muslims acquire long range nukes, and that combined with the inherent martyrdom and jihad zealot mindset demonstrated by so many Muslims (based upon their No-True-Scotsman interpretation of Islam, of course), provides little to no self-imposed restraint as shown, for example, between the US and the USSR based upon MAD - especially if "zealous [...] may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry."

Star-Lord, if ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham), with an ideology that aims first to reestablish a Caliphate system of governance across the entire Muslim world and then from there the intention is to spread the Caliphate across the entire world, were to acquire long range nuclear missiles, and given their expressed intent on taking their demonstrated murderous genocidal mission to the rest of the world, do you wish to attempt to make a credible argument that ISIS would not use these tools to further their mission and increase the scope of their genocidal actions already underway? To strike at the United States or other perceived threat?

I posit that if ISIS, or another of many Islamic ideology groups (or any group with the same type of genocidal expansionist goals), were to acquire long range nuclear missiles, in addition to diplomatic and economic and conventional arms options, a preemptive nuclear strike will also be considered as an option as such a scenario, e.g., zealots who worship martyrdom and jihad, represents a clear and present danger to the world. Under these conditions, a preemptive nuclear strike is an option under the military response doctrine of many countries that possess nuclear weapons capable of neutralizing the threat. Will this nuke option be utilized? I posit that such a response would be a last resort after all other options have failed, and probably would not be utilized regardless; and even if a group such as ISIS were to acquire and use nukes, there is a good chance that a nuke retaliation will still remain off the table as a viable response.

Yes - all other things being equal. This exact situation has played out countless times in real life with ships lost at sea, and sailors on barren islands. Just look at what happened to the whaleship Essex (the inspiration for Moby Dick, and very well documented in Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea) - the fattest sailors lived the longest/survived, while the skinniest ones died first. In the case of the Essex and many other ships of the 17th-19th centuries, the white sailors lived longer than the black sailors because they had more privileged lifestyles and thus weren't as skinny. This is also why, apart from other social and diet factors, Polynesian peoples are bigger on average - when their ancestors where colonizing the Pacific and on the sea for months at a time, the naturally larger individuals didn't die of starvation as often, and were thus selected for.

>can you please clarify your ideological position

Sure.

I'm a paleoconservative deep ecologist. This means I adhere to the oldest values of American conservatism and pair them with an interest in environmentalism through a more wholesome design of society.

I moderate /r/new_right because the new right ideas are closest to paleoconservatism in some ways. I tried to write a description of new_right that encompassed all of the ideas that the movement has tossed around.

Beyond that, I think politics is a matter of strategies and not collectivist moral decisions, am fond of libertarian-style free market strategies, and take interest in many things, hence the wide diversity of stuff that I post.

I've learned that on Reddit it's important to ask for people to clarify definitions before ever addressing any question using those terms. If you want me to answer any specific questions, we need a clear definition first agreed on by all parties.

I recommend the following books for anyone interesting in post-1970s conservatism beyond the neoconservative sphere:

• Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue
  
• Pat Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower
  
• Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies
  
• Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot
  
• Jared Diamond, Collapse
  
• Mark Steyn, America Alone
  
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
  
• Bruce Charlton, Thought Prison: The Fundamentalist Nature of Political Correctness
  
  Other than that, I'm pretty much a mainstream Republican. Not all links I post constitute endorsement, such as this fascinating article.

The most-often recommended single volume is Battle Cry of Freedom.

If Gettysburg is an interest, I found Hallowed Ground by the same author to be a good read. More exhaustive is Sears's Gettysburg, which helped me to understand a very dynamic picture.

Finally, we often get inquiries about the roots of the war. The Pulitzer Prize winning
Impending Crisis is first-rate.

I've read the Letter to a Christian Nation and the Moral Landscape. Like the derpy gentleman below said, LTCN is very short and easy to read. I'd recommend starting with that over the Moral Landscape, which is a denser book.

To be fair, the textbooks most of us studied in school (in the US anyway) tended to gloss over some of these more uncomfortable truths about our history. I highly recommend reading A People's History of The United States by Howard Zinn. It really put things in perpective for me.

Cadillac Desert, one of the greatest books pn the topic of vanishing water and the American West.

According to the beef industry, it takes somewhere between 450-850 gallons water/pound of beef. Less biased research has put that number as high as 5,000 gallons water/pound of beef. Even at 450 gallons water/pound of beef it is still pretty ridiculous.

The vast majority of this water is consumed by irrigating fields to produce feed for cows. And this is no small portion of total water supplies. In CO, 30% of the total water use in the state goes directly to the livestock industry.

Cadillac Desert put it very succinctly "The West’s water crisis — and many of its environmental problems as well — can be summed up, implausible as this may seem, in a single word: livestock." As a restoration ecologist working in the western US, there is no greater hurdle I face than damage from cattle and cattle related activities.

If we're dropping books with mundane topics count me in

Cadillac Desert is a great book that talks about this Dam and the general messed up water policy in the America West that led to it (and many other misguided projects).

Fascinating read that gives a lot of context to just messed up water policy is in the USA.

here's the book. I myself haven't gotten around to it:

http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376622637&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=wahleship+essex

Not specifically about LSD, but good:

Anything by Aldous Huxley (Doors of Perception in particular)

About LSD and great:

LSD: Doorway to the Numinous

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD

Check out the book Acid Dreams . It's fantastic, and it covers this and all the other totally wild things that happened in the early days of LSD. It also includes information on the weaponized hallucinogens that were used against enemy troops in Vietnam.

Just wanted to point out that there are real books on this stuff, and not just websites.

Read "White Cargo" http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. You won't read about this in High School History textbooks

https://www.salon.com/2000/06/15/white_slaves/

https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

https://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056

Just because you didn't learn about it in school or see it on TV, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

There's an entire book about people who die in the Grand Canyon: https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

I read part of it and I recall that the most common death was 30ish males who died of dehydration because they underestimated their water needs. A lot of them thought it was a quick day trip to the bottom of the canyon and back. Didn't take any water and succumbed to thirst and exhaustion on the trip up.

This reminded me of a book I bought in Arizona... There is a book that documents every death in the Grand Canyon. A large chunk of those deaths is people who died trying to pee into it. http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

The Politics of Heroin - CIA Complicity in the Global Heroin Trade

This book is incredibly thorough, though around half around talks about the economics of the drug trade, how the markets for producers and consumers shift from one region to another, and the legacy of CIA complicity, not their actual involvement, when after setting up the infrastructure for the drug trade in one region their drug smuggling clients turn it into a Pandora's box that can't be shut down even after the CIA leaves.

Narcoland - The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers

Very thorough as well, blowing the roof off US and Mexican government support of the cartels.

[CIA and drugs] (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/12247-cia-manages-drug-trade-mexican-official-says)

CIA and drugs

CIA and drugs



Not the entire budget, but probably billions of black money for black ops.

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

Drugs=money with no strings attached.

https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global-Trade/dp/1556524838

Gnostic Media's Jan Irvin and James Corbett do a fine job going into this very subject. The truth is stranger than fiction, and this whole thing is super fucked up:

• The Corbett Report 672 -- Jan Irvin on the CIA, MK-ULTRA, and the Creation of the Drug Culture
  
• Magic Mushrooms and the Power Elite - An Interview with Peter Levenda
  
• On the Huxleys, Gordon Wasson, Terence McKenna, Esalen, Psychedelics, 2012 & Mind Control
  
• 198 Dave McGowan "The CIA and the Music of Laurel Canyon -- The Magic Carpet Ride"
  
• 186 Dave McGowan CIA & the Magic of Laurel Canyon --Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
  
  Much of the above is from this book on amazon:
  
  
• Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart Of The Hippie Dream Kindle Edition
  
  ---
  
  I just want you to understand something. Your government created the psychedelic movement as an alchemical social experiment. It didn't go the way they wanted, so they "shut that shit down". It was also used as a distraction from the many MKULTRA experiments happening concurrently, and the JFK assassination / no-moon government conspiracies, including the 'cult at Jonestown'--which many of us got wrong, it turns out.
  
  So they started the drug movement, put the drugs out there, then made them illlegal, then they campaign them as the first domestic 'terror war', using them to incarcerate criminals, activists, nonconformists and outliers. All the while importing drugs into mena arkansas for decades, then occupying afganistan and defending poppy fields and heroin / painkiller interests for the DEA and Pharma companies respectively.
  
  

Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1570980217/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ZPwTAb8JCFRZX

Letter to a Christian Nation is short, accessible, and always relevant. It's written as a response to the critics of Harris' first book, The End of Faith, but you certainly don't need to have read The End of Faith to appreciate what he says in Letter.

Sam is perhaps a generation younger than Hitchens, Dawkins, and even Dennett, but as others in this thread have pointed out, he tends to be more reserved, collected and cool in his talks, debates, and interviews. He does use some dry humor, often to pretty good effect.

I think Sam's address at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival is probably one of the most well-written and compelling anti-religion speeches I've ever seen. And although the moderator is pretty awful, he has some similar powerful talking points in the Truthdig debate against Chris Hedges of the same year.

Congrats! You're officially on my "you're fucking ignorant" list.

Go read his books. Letter to a Christian Nation is a great place to start. And yes he does support his stance in many different positions. You can check it out of your local library.

Edit - added link to Amazon.

Both of Sam Harris's Books, "The End of Faith:Religion, Terror and the future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" are life changing masterworks.

http://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393327655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251609052&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Yes, this. The Protestant Work Ethic: idle hands, etc.

Of course the puritans weren't the inventors of such notions. In the Middle Ages, usury (making money out of money, or charging "excessive" interest for loans) was a sin, technology which allowed one person to do more work than another were forbidden. The word curfew ("cover fires") comes from the extinguishing of all lights so that no-one could work after dark to increase productivity. (For most of this I use Barbara W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror as reference)

Human beings do seem to have an innate distaste for unfairness. We're social creatures, after all. Perhaps the drive that motivates the above, as well as the denigration of work that seems "too easy" is simple jealousy, maybe combined with the fear of being used.

ETA Link to A Distant Mirror on Amazon. It's a great book; y'all history buffs should read it, or some of her other works. A history prof I know regards Tuchman very highly.

I'm a big fan of Barbara Tuchman. Her book A Distant Mirror is about the Fourteenth Century. It is specifically focused on Europe (mostly France and England). It has an excellent chapter on the black death.

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

"Orientalism" By Edward Said, professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University

https://www.amazon.com/Orientalism-Edward-W-Said/dp/039474067X

If you're interested in a book that examines HOW Foucault's ideas work and their relationships to the writing of history, I'd suggest Mark Poster's [*Foucault, Marxism and History*](https://www.amazon.com/Foucault-Marxism-History-Production-Information/dp/0745600182). He argues that Foucault marked a fundamental shift in the writing of history and the construction of historical analysis and narrative because Foucault reoriented the focus away from the (Marxian) laboring subject, and toward the discourse, the ways of knowing and communicating that shape human experience and through which power flows. I don't recall his precise language, but the phrase that stuck with me was something like "The forces that govern us are not visible at the level of the subject." In other words, for Marx, and for so many historians before and since, if you wanted to understand change over time, you look at people: their experience as an "objective" thing, and their responses to those experiences.

So, in a Marxian account of historical change, you'd look at the material conditions of people in a society and then attach their actions to those material experiences. Say, for example, you study the condition of the working classes in Britain in the mid-19th century, and you find that they're terrible because their wages are low. When those same people develop class consciousness, organize into trade unions, have strikes, organize a Labour party, and so on, then you have an essentially Marxian, laboring-subject focused history. Foucault would argue, however, that because of the mutually constitutive nature of power and knowledge, we have to look not to the apparently objective experience of certain historical subjects, but rather to the discursive field that serves as the medium for communicating and effecting power. Power for Foucault is therefore diffuse, spread throughout society, and not visible in the actions of any single person or even necessarily in a single group.

Now, if you want to see this idea applied more broadly, let me suggest a couple, in different areas. A really important, well-known example of Foucauldian analysis is Ann Stoler's Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, in which the author examines colonial power and sex in Southeast Asia. The idea is to understand how the discussion of sexuality, race, and gender, by and through the colonial state, shape the way that power relationships are constituted.

Edward Said's Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism both deal with imperialism as a discursive construction.

A final example, right in line with Stoler and Said, would be Ann McClintock's Imperial Leather.

Many evolutionists disagree. For example:

http://www.amazon.com/The-000-Year-Explosion-Civilization/dp/0465020429

We weren't taken by surprise at Pearl:

http://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299

And the French were surprised by Hitler. They were well prepared for war sadly they were prepared for WWI

My standard recommendation here is Letter to a Christian Nation. It's a smallish book with a message directed straight at "moderate" Christians.

It's just you. Hobb's Elderlings series was first published in 1995. GRRM's ASOIAF was started in 1991, and there are many accounts/interviews that document GRRM's inspirations and overall vision he planned from the beginning.

GRRM's website FAQ also lists a number of book titles he used for research. I've read some of them, and the specific influences are not hard to pick up on. For example, A Distant Mirror describes a family that grew to importance because they built up their main keep at a major river crossing and controlled all traffic through it, just like House Frey.

Additionally, themes of mental connections with fantasy animals, people riding dragons they are connected to, etc. are all old tropes. An easy example is McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series that was first published in 1967.

EDIT: Also you may want to fix the references to "worgs" in your article; you have them down as "wogs."

When I was a little kid I loved the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. They are very Christian, but I just enjoyed them as entertaining stories. So I guess that's an honest answer to your question. (Although reading his apologetics like Mere Christianity now it just looks like a lot of double-talk and logical fallacies, it seems like it would only seem deep or meaningful to people who really wanted to smooth-over their own cognitive dissonance, and doesn't prove any points if you weren't already assuming his conclusions to be true.) If you broaden your question to "from a religious perspective" without requiring that it specifically be a Christian one, it gets easier to think of answers. I just read "The Story of God" and even though the author was a theist (Jewish) I thought he made a lot of good points in explaining the cultural and religious history of how monotheistic religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam came to be.

I think Sam Harris stands out as a very readable atheist author. His books such as "The End of Faith" and its follow-up "Letter to a Christian Nation" are short and powerful paperbacks. Watch this short talk and you can get an idea of his perspective before you buy any books:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3YOIImOoYM&t=1m25s

Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

In The 10,000 Year Explosion, the authors, an evolutionary biologist and an anthropologist, argue that homo sapiens most likely inherited almost all the beneficial genes of the neanderthals, and that only a few dozen cases of interbreeding would have been enough for this to happen. It's an interesting read.

People have argued that in fact Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor to specifically entice the Japanese into attacking because he knew it would make people demand involvement in the war. It sounds like a conspiracy theory but it's pretty documented.

https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299

I'm on my phone so can't type as great an answer as I'm die you'd like. However I just finished reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

It goes into all the detail you would ever want about psychedelics and their affect on our culture over the years. I'd highly recommend it.

This is accurate. People have way too much faith in the "strength of our institutions." They aren't that strong and as we've all learned in the last few months, they depend on the good will of the people in those institutions. It is no laughing matter.

Edit: This podcast episode has an interview with the author of a book which was not written about Trump, but lays out some of the details about what leads a democracy to be overtaken by tyranny. It was interesting and worrying.

Yaman din lang at nabanggit na rin ang usapang history, nirerecommend ko itong aklat ni Timothy Snyder na On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Napakarelevant nito sa atin. Read this book, please!

you might want to give this a quick read. Also, look up how the States treated the Chinese post Civil War, Native Americans at really any point in time, Hispanics post WWII...

Did black people get the worst of it? Yes, although the Natives come very close. Were there black people who weren't slaves? Yes. Were there black slave owners? Yes

Full disclosure: I am part Irish.

I don't know of a single place that has compiled all of the relevant information through history, you have to look on a smaller scale and combine all of it. I guess you could start with these:

http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

http://www.amazon.com/They-Were-White-Slaves-Enslavement/dp/0929903056

But you have to go so much further back before you see just how many whites were enslaved, mainly in Europe. You also have to be specific with how you define "white" people. In America, anyone with white skin is white, and if you expand on that it's pretty obvious there have been more white slaves throughout history than blacks, there are simply more white people. But if you get more specific and only include English/British people, then probably not.

Books I’d recommend:

House of Rain by Craig Childs: Part travel journal, part science. It gives the best account of pre-historic and historic southwestern history I’ve ever read. I really recommend this to anyone who knows a little (or a lot) about the Ancestral Puebloan (formerly Anasazi) culture and wants something that puts it all together. If you only visited Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Wupatki, Chaco, or Walnut Canyon, you might be a little confused by the different narratives. This’ll straighten you out and is just a really great read.

The Outlaw Trail by Charles Kelly: Written in the 1920’s by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park. What makes this different from other books about Butch Cassidy is that Kelly interviewed former members of the Wild Bunch. Many of them were still alive, so it’s a great historical account, as well as being a great western story. If you plan to visit SE Utah at any time, read this and you’ll recognize a lot of the place names as you drive from Arches to Canyonlands and Capitol Reef.

Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Ghiglieri & Myers: Tired of the books filled with heartwarming ranger tales about baby bears? This contains an account or listing of every person who’s ever died in the Grand Canyon. Drowning, suicide, accidents, falls, snake bites, tetnus - it’s all there. Has just as much nitty gritty info as you ever wanted, if kind of morbid, but extremely fascinating - and now part of a series.

Photographing the Southwest by Laurent Martres: Obviously a great book for photography tips, but I use it mostly as a guidebook. He has fantastic directions to all the popular spots as well as some little-known areas. What makes it even better is he’s very clear on if a normal sedan can drive there, or if you’ll need a Jeep. As a Camry owner in the land of Jeep trails, this is invaluable. His information is accurate in the National Parks and he doesn’t direct people into dangerous or illegal situations. It’s an excellent book for areas outside the parks as well. Then, when you get to your cool spot, you’ll know how to get a good photo of it.

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton. Amazon link

I think going into this it would be wise to get a good picture of what was happening in Europe leading up the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. I recently read The Guns of August, which is a great book about the lead up and early days of WW1. You can see that the major European were focused on expansion into Africa. The tactics they employed to control the population, particularly by the English, (notably concentration camps) were then adopted by the Nazis.

So many roots of fascist ideology are grounded in settler colonialism. With that in mind a good read for more background would be Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Its not about preference. That's like saying the difference between slavery, feudalism and capitalism is whichever someone prefers living under. Its mutually exclusive.

Communism is not your "life your life to the fullest" type of philosophy akin to Buddhism. Its not a way of life or a way of thought, its a set of viewpoints and conceptions about the nature of society, and of its respective institutions, with private property being its main focus. Communism is about viewing the contemporary world as a result of its logical, material precedents, known as historical materialism. Its about gaining an understanding into the nature of property relations and essentially of capitalism.

Marx's viewpoint in looking at history essentially centered these principles

>1. The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.

>2. There is a division of labour into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others.

>3. The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.

>4. The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.

>5. Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, whereby the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.

From this viewpoint he went on to conclude that capitalism inherently was a class system, based on an economic and political hierarchy, which give rise to many phenomenon that is harmful to humanity. Marx for example explained Imperialism as being the result of such a construct. This is a widely documented study and something you can find so easily.

Michael Parenti gives a good talk here which encompasses these ideas. I highly recommend watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzOgpMWnVs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZTrY3TQpzw

If you never heard of the book "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn, I also highly suggest it. Its a great and popular book that tells the history of the US through the perspective the American proletariat, and clearly explains how dominant role economic hierarchy plays in history.

You see, communism is not just an opposition to commercialized lifestyle, and what not, its an explanation as to very contemporary problems within society itself. Problems that are very much deeply rooted within the system. For example, the mass media and its operation as a business. Noam Chomsky, considered US's best intellectual, along with Edward Herman wrote a great book called Manufacturing Consent that
deals with this topic.

You're operating on a huge straw man. You see, communism is more about understanding society from a logical, scientific perspective, rather than creating some utopia. I can point you to a few more sources that you might find of interest. Or at least start with Wikipedia articles. But I do recommend at least watching the Michael Parenti clip. Chomsky has good talks to but I don't like hes style as much. You don't even have to call yourself a "communist" to accept that world view and knowledge.

> that people on the downstream side of the watershed will not have enough water

...or more likely agribusiness, state/local governments, NA tribes, or other highly organized interests. A horrifying but thorough analysis of the Western water crisis can be found in Marc Reisner's 'Cadillac Desert.'

There are a lot of water rights disputes going on in court all the time. When it is one state suing another state, they have to start at the US Supreme Court, like Montana v. Wyoming (pdf). If you are ever in a law class and they ask you if the US Supreme Court could be the first court a case is held in, state vs state is it.

In this case, farmers in Wyoming switched from flood irrigation to sprinkler irrigation, and this resulted in less water running back into the river (and thus less water flowing to Montana). Wyoming still only took the same amount of water they always took, which was what the 1950 treaty/compact allowed. Montana claimed that the water treaty didn't allow this sort of behavior, but the Supremes ruled that if the treaty was going to work the way Montana wanted, it would have been written that way (and they gave examples of other state treaties that were written that way).

One older book that discusses how badly we've screwed our water up in the Western US is Cadillac Desert.

The book Cadillac Desert is an excellent read on water rights in the western US--I quite highly recommend it!

I recommend to everyone on this thread to read Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

"Whiskey is for drinking, Water is for fighting"

Worth mentioning that Greenland was far more green in the days of Erik the Red.

If you want to read more about how the viking settlers of greenland fared, I would recommend this book called Collapse.

Honestly, if I try to present a comprehensive and detailed explanation, I won't be very convincing (plus I'm too lazy).

Shame is, the two books I usually recommend, so people don't have to rely on my imprecise blabber to decide what they think, are from french speaking authors and haven't been translated yet (don't think they will be, come to think of it).

How everything can collapse: A small manual of collapsology for the use of present generations : Why and how our civilization is prone to collapse. Pretty comprehensive analysis of the current situation.

The age of low tech. Towards a technically sustainable civilization : Focused on resources management and technology consumption. How we can prepare our society to technically adapt to this collapse.

You can still read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (that one I haven't read yet) to better understand the similarities between past fallen civilizations and our own.

That would be news to the Confederates. They explicitly stated that their cause was slavery. Here's what the Mississippi declaration of secession had to say on the matter:
>Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Still not convinced? Read the other slave states' declarations of secession. Or read a good review book on the Civil War, like McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.


P.S.: It's actually interesting to note that the slave states didn't support states' rights in their declarations, beyond the right of secession. They actually cite the refusal of certain Northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act as a major cause of secession. Some Northern states had passed laws forbidding state officials from aiding in the capture and return of runaway slaves. South Carolina argued in its declaration of secession that by refusing to enforce federal laws, these Northern states were subverting the Union. They argued that this breach freed South Carolina of its obligations to the Union and justified secession.

Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer

Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris

Did you just try to cite Jonah Goldberg on fascism/nazism, someone that has been ripped to shreds by actual experts, a man with no clue what he's talking about?

Paxton shreds him here:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122231

> The best description of how Nazism fits on the Left-Right spectrum is probably that given by Jonah Goldberg: Nazism, like Italian Fascism, Spanish Francoism and Soviet Communism, is a heresy of Socialism.

Nazism was an extreme form of ANTI-socialism. Why exactly is it you think the only 2 fascist movements that came into power were put there by conservatives.

From the third Reich trilogy:

> To many readers of the newspapers that reported Hitler’s appointment, the jubilation of the brownshirts must have appeared exaggerated. The key feature of the new government, symbolized by the participation of the Steel Helmets in the march-past, was surely the heavy numerical domination of the conservatives. ‘No nationalistic, no revolutionary government, although it carries Hitler’s name’, confided a Czech diplomat based in Berlin to his diary: ‘No Third Reich, hardly even a 2½.’25 A more alarmist note was sounded by the French ambassador, André François-Poncet. The perceptive diplomat noted that the conservatives were right to expect Hitler to agree to their programme of ‘the crushing of the left, the purging of the bureaucracy, the assimilation of Prussia and the Reich, the reorganization of the army, the re-establishment of military service’. They had put Hitler into the Chancellery in order to discredit him, he observed; ‘they have believed themselves to be very ingenious, ridding themselves of the wolf by introducing him into the sheepfold.’

Or:

> Many other middle-class occupations felt their economic and social position was under threat during the Weimar Republic. White-collar workers lost their jobs, or feared that they might, as banks and finance houses got into difficulties. Tourist agents, restaurants, retailing, mail-order firms, a huge variety of employers in the service sector ran into trouble as people’s purchasing power declined. The Nazi Party, now equipped with its elaborate structure of specialist subdivisions, saw this, and began to direct its appeal to the professional and propertied middle classes. All of this was anathema to those Nazis who, like Otto Strasser, brother of the Party organizer Gregor, continued to emphasize the ‘socialist’ aspect of National Socialism and felt that Hitler was betraying their ideals. Angered by the support given by Otto Strasser and his publishing house to left-wing causes such as strikes, Hitler summoned the leading men in the Party to a meeting in April 1930 and ranted against Strasser’s views. As a way of trying to neutralize Otto Strasser’s influence, he now appointed Goebbels Reich Propaganda Leader of the Party. But, to Goebbels’s annoyance, Hitler repeatedly postponed decisive action, hoping that Otto Strasser’s propaganda apparatus would still be of some use in the regional elections that took place in June 1930. Only after this, and Strasser’s publication of an unflattering account of his row with Hitler earlier in the year, did he decide to purge the party of Otto Strasser and his supporters, who pre-empted this move by resigning on 4 July 1930. The split was a serious one. Observers held their breath to see if the Party would survive this exodus of its left wing. But things had changed markedly from the days when Goebbels and his friends had revived the Party in the Ruhr with socialist slogans. The dissidents’ departure revealed that Strasser and his ideas had little support within the Party; even his brother Gregor disowned him. Otto Strasser vanished from serious politics, to spend the rest of his life in Germany, and, later, in exile, dreaming up small, sectarian organizations to propagate his views to tiny audiences of the like-minded.

> Having shed the last vestiges of ‘socialism’, Hitler now moved to build more bridges to the conservative right. In the autumn of 1931 he joined with the Nationalists in the so-called ‘Harzburg Front’, producing a joint declaration with Hugenberg at Bad Harzburg on 11 October stating their readiness to join together in ruling Prussia and the Reich.

I'd highly suggest you avoid reading anything written by Goldberg, the man is historically illiterate and is laughed at by actual experts.

I'd suggest the third reich trilogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

Anatomy of fascism by paxton:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Or Gregors nazism:

https://www.amazon.com/Nazism-Oxford-Readers-Neil-Gregor/dp/0192892819

And a bit more, from the end of the third reich trilogy:

> The Nazi propaganda effort, therefore, mainly won over people who were already inclined to identify with the values the Party claimed to represent, and who simply saw the Nazis as a more effective and more energetic vehicle than the bourgeois parties for putting them into effect. Many historians have argued that these values were essentially pre-industrial, or pre-modern. Yet this argument rests on a simplistic equation of democracy with modernity. The voters who flocked to the polls in support of Hitler, the stormtroopers who gave up their evenings to beat up Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews, the Party activists who spent their free time at rallies and demonstrations - none of these were sacrificing themselves to restore a lost past. On the contrary, they were inspired by a vague yet powerful vision of the future, a future in which class antagonisms and party-political squabbles would be overcome, aristocratic privilege of the kind represented by the hated figure of Papen removed, technology, communications media and every modern invention harnessed in the cause of the ‘people’, and a resurgent national will expressed through the sovereignty not of a traditional hereditary monarch or an entrenched social elite but of a charismatic leader who had come from nowhere, served as a lowly corporal in the First World War and constantly harped upon his populist credentials as a man of the people. The Nazis declared that they would scrape away foreign and alien encrustations on the German body politic, ridding the country of Communism, Marxism, ‘Jewish’ liberalism, cultural Bolshevism, feminism, sexual libertinism, cosmopolitanism, the economic and power-political burdens imposed by Britain and France in 1919, ‘Western’ democracy and much else. They would lay bare the true Germany. This was not a specific historical Germany of any particular date or constitution, but a mythical Germany that would recover its timeless racial soul from the alienation it had suffered under the Weimar Republic. Such a vision did not involve just looking back, or forward, but both.

> The conservatives who levered Hitler into power shared a good deal of this vision. They really did look back with nostalgia to the past, and yearn for the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy and the Bismarckian Reich. But these were to be restored in a form purged of what they saw as the unwise concessions that had been made to democracy. In their vision of the future, everyone was to know their place, and the working classes especially were to be kept where they belonged, out of the political decision-making process altogether. But this vision cannot really be seen as pre-industrial or pre-modern, either. It was shared in large measure, for one thing, by many of the big industrialists who did so much to undermine Weimar democracy, and by many modern, technocratic military officers whose ambition was to launch a modern war with the kind of advanced military equipment that the Treaty of Versailles forbade them to deploy. Like other people at other times and in other places, the conservatives, as much as Hitler, manipulated and rearranged the past to suit their own present purposes. They cannot be reduced to expressions of ‘pre-industrial’ social groups. Many of them, from capitalist Junker landlords looking for new markets, to small retailers and white-collar workers whose means of support had not even existed before industrialization, were as much modern as they were traditional.123 It was these congruities in vision that persuaded men like Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg that it would be worth legitimizing their rule by co-opting the mass movement of the Nazi Party into a coalition government whose aim was to erect an authoritarian state on the ruins of the Weimar Republic.

Everyone should look into CIA complicity in the worlwide drug trade...

I recommend this book but am not sure what internet sources to point to for accurate information...

Did you know that 92% of the worlds heroin comes from Afghanistan?

State sponsored drug trafficking is a well documented fact.

Google:

Air Opium/ Air Laos Commerciale/ Air America/ Mena Airport/ Opium Wars/ Gary Webb/ rising opium production in Afghanistan

Documentaries Online

• CIA Gun Running Drug Smuggling And Money Laundering In Mena Arkansas - CBS Part 1
  
  
• The Mena Connection: Bush, Clinton, and CIA drug smuggling
  
  
• CIA Drug Ops Conspiracy
  
  
• Afghan drug trafficking brings US $50 billion a year
  
  
• CIA Drug Trafficking Exposed by Political Prisoner
  
  
• C.I.A (Cocaine.Import.Agency) ...The Drug Affair
  
  
• The CIA, Drug Trafficking and American Politics: The Political Economy of War
  
  
• How The CIA Supply, Control, Operate The Drug Business
  
  
• How Can We Reduce Drug Trafficking? The CIA, Trade & Finance in Panama Day 1
  
  
• An Unholy Alliance
  
  Books:
  
  
• The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
  
  
• Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press
  
  
• Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
  
  
  Evidence for continuity:
  
  
• U.S. Marines Guard Afghanistan Poppy Fields
  
  
• CIA Torture Jet crashed with 4 Tons of COCAINE
  
  
• The CIA Drug Plane Scandal: Narco News' Bill Conroy Radio Interview
  
  
• Afghan opium production explodes despite billions spent, says US report
  
  
• THE CIA IS WALL STREET, AND DRUG MONEY IS KING -- CHAPTER 3 FROM "CROSSING THE RUBICON"

>The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Columbia

>The Politics of Heroin includes meticulous documentation of dishonesty and dirty dealings at the highest levels from the Cold War until today. Maintaining a global perspective, this groundbreaking study details the mechanics of drug trafficking in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Central America. New chapters detail U.S. involvement in the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan before and after the fall of the Taliban, and how U.S. drug policy in Central America and Colombia has increased the global supply of illicit drugs.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Afghanistan-Southeast/dp/1556524838

Unfortunately these stories are nothing new. It's odd to have a lot of stupid people this early, but the whole history of Yellowstone has people dying due to their own stupidity.

One of my favorite books is Death in Yellowstone. Glad to know they're getting plenty of material for Volume 2.

have you ever read Deaths in Yellowstone? I spent a week there years ago and read that book during my stay. it made for some very interesting talking points at various sites.

Probably this.

https://www.amazon.de/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217


Edit: Here is a small interview, topic related.

http://www.yellowstonepark.com/unnatural-deaths-yellowstone-national-park-avoid/

ThE AnTI-fASciTs ArE tHe ReAl FasCiStS!

Your comment is the height of ignorance. Honestly, I'm not even sure how someone on this sub could hold that opinion unless you stumbled upon it by mistake. Antifa groups do not target anyone except fascists. When fascist activity dies down, the anti fascist activity dies down with it. They don't turn on the next group of people as fascists would. There is no ANTIFA group. There are antifa groups like the Rose City Antifa, Anti-Racist Action, Redneck Revolt... and many, many others, but ANTIFA is a just shorthand for anti-fascism.

"The queer quest is to survive, the fascist quest is to be the only survivor." - Natalie herself said that. Replace queer with any oppressed group and the fascists are coming for them. And when the fascists do come you can't change who you are. You're fucked. You can't stop being a Jew or black or etc... but, if you are fascist and the anti-fascists come for you, then you can just say you're going to change and they will let you change. A large amount of anti-fascists are converted fascists. That makes antifa groups very not fascist. Trying to draw an equivalence is either buying into right wing propaganda or just plain dumb.

Olly really goes in depth about this and Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook lays out a pretty good picture of what antifa is and what antifa groups do. I suggest you educate yourself about the people who are sacrificing so much to fight real fascism.

Not that you're asking the question in good faith, but the answer depends on who you ask.

The problem is that people's beliefs aren't interested in facts. For example, I can show you research that shows that there are around 11 million white nationalists in the US, and you won't be able to find any reputable research that disagrees or challenges thst estimate, but you won't actually believe it because you have FEELINGS.

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035?SubscriptionId=0EP44N4Z8Y93MBZ1ZC82&tag=wamu-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1612197035

Sadly it seems to only be on Amazon

Which is to miss the point, entirely...

Seriously, read that Mark Bray article. If it seems disingenuous, that's because it is. Mark Bray is the author of the Antifa Handbook. Why is he the one The Washington Post permits to give a presumably objective look at the organization?

Imagine if months ago, when the term "alt-right" was first being discussed nationally, WaPo posted an article titled, "Who are the Alt-Right?" written by, perhaps, Richard Spencer?

> Re the comments on this tweet: Does Bernie get reparations for the fact that his father came to the US without a cent to his name because his relatives were destined to be slaughtered by the Nazis?

Why would the U.S. be responsible for restitution? Or is this yet another demonstration of your willing, abject ignorance and deliberate blindness with respect to the documented facts and nuance associated with this issue?

To this day, Jewish families in Germany that survived the Holocaust are receiving reparations. And it looks like others may not be done collecting yet:

Poles look to charge Germans $850 billion to mark 80 years since Nazi invasion

>A Polish lawmaker said Friday that a committee examining potential German reparations to Poland hoped to complete its report by September 1, the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion, and would likely demand up to $850 billion for the damage inflicted during World War II.

It's interesting to see which groups can push for (and have been successful at obtaining) reparations without catching predictable, often nonsensical flak/closed-minded idiocy that obscures discussion on the merits and who cannot.

Some are even offered an extra boost! Like Joe Biden proposing $30 million for Holocaust survivors in 2013. Forget the American citizens whose lives were continually destroyed for centuries and their descendants' futures harmed with the help of the U.S. government, let's try to take on the moral obligations of other countries first!

Slavery, Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration, The War on Drugs, Redlining, race rioting targeting black businesses, VA home loans that shut out Black WW2 vets, etc. are extremely consequential uncompensated crimes. As late as the 1960s, blacks were still separated in public and prisons from most all other races. Just blacks. Not latino, not Jewish, not Irish. Just black! Not even a lifetime ago. If your sense of justice leads you to believe no form of compensation should ever be provided, or even explored, and that a large percentage of black Americans should just shut their faces after absorbing the enormity of the generational injury visited upon them (starkly illustrated by the racial wealth gap, imprisonment statistics, etc.), that's completely on you.

Just don't be surprised when others make inroads with affected populations who know full well just how thoroughly they've been fucked with for hundreds of years (regardless of how effectively this dark history has been suppressed).

>"Tepid solutions are not enough for the times in which we live; we need huge, strategized acts of righteousness, now. Just as Germany has paid $89 Billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since WW2, the United States should pay reparations for slavery." -@marwilliamson

-

Cornel West gets it, why don't you:

https://theintercept.com/2019/03/07/cornel-west-on-bernie-trump-and-racism/

> MH: And that’s to do with the man himself. You’re endorsing him as a person, as your brother. In terms of policies, is there a particular policy that you think is crucial to his campaign that makes him stand out from the rest?
>
>
CW: No, the policies have to do — policies against militarism, policies against poverty, the critiques of Wall Street, the consistency of his call for Democratic accountability of corporate elites and financial elites and basically the greed that we see among so many of those elites. And the same is true about racism. I want to hit this issue head-on because there’s been some talk about reparations and it’s true. I’ve supported reparations. I’ve been struggling for reparations for over 40 years, but I don’t see an endorsement of reparations as the only precondition of fighting against white supremacy. There’s no doubt that his policies will benefit poor and working people and poor and working black people and brown people more than any other candidate. And so, yes, when it comes to just reparations as a whole and larger dialogue certainly, I’m for it, but I hope that a lot of black folk don’t get confused and sit back on this issue of reparations.
>
> MH: You think you can get him to move on reparations? Because he was asked on ABC’s The View about whether he backed it and he said well, you know, we’ve got crises in our communities and there’s other better ways to address that than by “just writing out a check.” A lot of people criticized him for that as you say, do you think he can move on that like he’s moved on other issues? That people like you persuade him to a different position?
>
> CW: No doubt about that, but the core is ensuring that there’s fundamental transformation in the racist system under which we live so that the lives of black and brown and yellow peoples are much better. And so, that’s the real issue. And so, it seems to me I don’t want reparations to be an issue that gets us away from him taking a stand on those issues so much better than any other of the other candidates.
>
> MH: So you say he takes a takes a better position on those issues than other candidates.
>
> CW: Oh, no doubt about it.
>
> MH: A lot of those liberal critics, as you know, have said for a long time, especially in recent days that he’s not good on race issues. They say he has a blind spot when it comes to race both in terms of his rhetoric, in terms of the people he surrounded himself with in the past. What do you say to those liberal critics as someone who has been writing and thinking about race and racism your whole life and yet is a Bernie supporter?
>
> CW: Well, one, it’s a matter of his heart. He’s an anti-racist in his heart. Two, he’s old-school. He’s like me. He doesn’t know the buzzwords. He doesn’t endorse reparations, one moment in the last 30 years, silent on it. He has the consistency over the years decade after decade and therefore it’s true in his language, in his rhetoric. There are times in which he doesn’t, he doesn’t say the right thing. He doesn’t use the same kind of buzzwords. But when it comes to his fight against racism, going to jail in Chicago as a younger brother and he would go to jail again. He and I would go to jail together again in terms of fighting against police brutality. So in that sense, I would just tell my brothers and sisters, but especially my chocolate ones that they shouldn’t be blinded by certain kinds of words they’re looking for, that in the end, he is a long distance runner in the struggle against white supremacy.

-

Even Trevor Noah, owned by the PTB and regardless of the motivations, gets it and sums it up concisely:

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1110293987536093184

-

And one of the many great posters here, /u/jlalbrecht, eventually saw the light:

>Note I should have had a h/t regarding my reparations stance to both /u/ikissthisguy
and my wife.

-

>cheers. Credit where it is due. You helped me see the issue from outside my personal experience, similar to how Killer Mike changed my opinion about US gun control.

Bolding mine. Try it sometime.

highly recommended book.



edit ok the free market decided

Might I suggest McCoy's The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade?

>“Terrified by the 1917 Russian revolution, government officials came to believe that communism could be defeated in the United States by getting as many white Americans as possible to become homeowners—the idea being that those who owned property would be invested in the capitalist system. So in 1918 the Department of Labor promoted an “Own-Your-Own-Home” campaign, handing out “We Own Our Own Home” buttons to schoolchildren and distributing pamphlets saying that it was a ‘patriotic duty’ to cease renting and to build a single-family unit.”

From The Color of Law

Exactly. Most people still think that FDR had nothing to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor for example [1]. Since no one reads anymore (especially history), everyone still thinks FDR had no prior knowledge of the attack and are blissfully unaware that in fact he intentionally provoked the attack.
-----------------
[1] "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert Stinnett

More inconvenient information for the SJW/Marxists: http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/

Yes. Mainly from Ireland. It's not talked about often, and they're mainly refered to as "indentured servants" when talked about but... Yeah. Basically white slaves. There is a very good book about it called White Cargo.

The book is Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon and it was written by the former head of the clinic at the South Rim and a biologist who leads river trips, in the hope of educating people about the fact that the Canyon is not an amusement park but a dangerous and demanding wild place. The book turned out to be an incredibly entertaining read, but whether it has prevented any deaths is hard to tell. There seems to be an unlimited supply of the sort of people most likely to act like jerks near the rim: 18-29 year old males.

As someone who is still in shock about the genuinely accidental fall and death of another expert hiker earlier this week, I'm having a lot of trouble finding this photo amusing.

Prove it, Benito.

Here's an actual writer and author, not a propagandist.

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Dr Suess also instructed me otherwise.

• Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett
  
• Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
  
• The End of Faith by Sam Harris
  
• The Elegant Universe by Briane Greene (about string theory)
  
• Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees
  
• Before The Beginning by Martin Rees
  
• Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  
• The Demon-Haunted World by Sagan
  

Said's Orientalism.

You aren't going to change his mind, but for your own peace of mind, here is a start off the top of my head:

> He didn't even know about it...

Then tell him he is literally living under a rock. It is listed in 10,000+ plus articles via Google news at the moment. While it is not likely to receive proper treatment in the conventional media, it has reached critical mass, they can no longer ignore it. And for the people who are there, they can verify that it is people from all walks of life, and now in cities all around the country. This just in as an example of senior protesters

> He says all the protesters don't have jobs because they made poor career choices with their lives.

Ask him to prove this (hint: he can't). Don't let him slide on sweeping generalization. There are people protesting across the spectrum including those who have jobs. They aren't protesting unemployment, but rather greed and corruption. While the unemployed might have more time to occupy, its not simply the unemployed who are there.

Edit: In fact, you can meet some of them in this article

Ask him if people in the Tea Party had jobs. Because while they aren't identical people, both movements have some similar populist origins. Also ask him if he smeared the Tea Party in the same way he is OWS. Because before they were corrupted by corporate interests, while I didn't agree with part of their message, at the time I could applaud their original effort. Look up various populist movements through US history and quiz him on them and draw parallels.

Also ask him why people are allowed or even celebrated in making poor choices when they are rich, but are condemned if they actually don't make bad choices (or even if they are human and make some) but get screwed by the system. Ask him if it is right that the class you are born into is a stronger indicator of upward mobility than education. (I can't find the link right now, but here is one and here is another one that can perhaps point you in the right direction.

> He says they're all to lazy to go find jobs.

Really? Then ask him about the number of places that make HAVING A JOB a REQUIREMENT for getting a job.

Ask him if he understands the law of supply and demand and can understand that The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies and then ask him if he knows something that a majority of economists don't know (because that's what they said in the survey referenced).

Edit: Also this self post looked pretty good regarding addressing that question

> He says they're all socialists looking for entitlements

Ask him if he likes weekends off, an 8-hour workday, minimum wage, or even just not dying while at his job then he can thank a socialist.

Check out the condensed version of The "S" Word and the book

Also for good measure, check out A People's History of The United States to find a lot of things neither he, nor probably you (no offense, just sayin'), would have learned in school.

Even though he may not like it, the current quality of life he enjoys was fought for by progressives, socialists, even anarchists and him denying that fact doesn't make it not true.

> He says they do not represent the 99% but the deadbeat 5% who can't do anything with their lives.

Tell him that both they, and he, whether he likes it or not, ARE part of the 99% percent unless he is tucking away millions that he hasn't told you about because this is what inequity looks like in numbers Also via NPR and this explains a lot in 11 graphs. You can also take a peek at 2012

> Talking to him is like talking to O'Reily...

But remember that there are people who can stand their ground with him, like Jon Stewart, or even Marylin Manson.

If Marylin Manson can do it, so can you. Don't sell yourself short, stand your ground! (I know it makes Thanksgiving and Christmas difficult, but if he is not an idiot, it still can be worth it in the long run).

> OH and he said that I'm messed up in the head cause I go on socialist websites...like Reddit

Ask him to define the word socialist. If he gets it wrong, ask him how his education failed him. Ask him if he thinks most of the other industrialized countries in the world are "socialist" too, and if so why are the leading in many quality of life metrics, health care, and general happiness? Ask him why our life expectancy is shorter or why we are working ourselves to death with other countries being able to have several weeks of vacation with people here who may not take any.

> OH OH and then he and my little brother then come in and say, "Is that gonna be your excuse when you can't find a job?" (I'm a college sophmore.)

Tell him that perhaps someone sold you and your brother a bill of goods
that "working hard" is the key to the American Dream while the banksters are offloading it out the backdoor. Ask him if it is called the American dream because you must be asleep to believe it

Ask him why your education costs 1000's and others abroad may not cost anything at all.

Ask him why teachers are treated as scum in recent sentiments when they agree to concessions but want to preserve their right to assemble and bargain as a group yet CEO's get paid for failure based on a peer system and half the country is lead to believe that the richest group of all are the "victims".

Ask him why foreign companies like Toyota can make products in America, but "Made in America" brands like Ford may be made in Mexico.

Ask him if he knows what NAFTA is and why it was bad (and do your homework to learn more, and surprise him by suggesting that Clinton was wrong to support it -- so he can't say you just cheerlead for one party -- but tell him that both he AND a Republican congress are at fault for screwing up our banking sector by repealing Glass-Stegall under Republican pressure, but at least Clinton at least is man enough to open regret the decision)

Ask him why it is right for people to do all these things, to make inequity on par with the 20's before the stock market crash, yet when people stand up to fight that he has nothing but ridicule.

> Edit: As for what to discuss, can anyone put together a clear and irrefutable counterargument? I'm sick of his condescending attitude.

There is not magic bullet. Even this list here is simply a stream of consciousness off the top of my head. But your best friend is true education and enlightenment. It means not accepting the status quo, not relying on only domestic, conventional sources for news and information. It means digging into history with true historians.

In the long run you may not win the battle, but you will be more prepared to try and win the war, even if its not with him. (P.S. I may add more links later if I have the time.)

Good Luck!

Added a new chapter to Five for Iron, set five years before canon. (Here's the ff.net link, for anyone who prefers that site.) Anywho, this chapter is my first from Winter's POV, and I'm hoping I did an OK job with that, while still keeping the premise engaging.

Reading:
I finished Cadillac Desert this week, and I've gotten about 100 pages into Animal, Vegetable, Miracle since then. Both are brilliantly written and wonderfully subversive, but considering my line of work I may be a smidge biased.

I'm surprised these haven't been mentioned yet:
In The Heart Of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick - The true story behind Moby Dick (and much easier to read).
Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons - Insane true story of a shipwreck, then it gets worse...

Also for fans of non-fiction novels try Longitude by Dava Sobel and Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson - both involve the sea. *edit for some obvious typo's

Not all of these have cannibalism, but most:

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe, The Boat, In The Heart of The Sea (this is a really awesome book, as are the authors other works), Endurance, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, The Wreck of the Medusa, The Wreck of the Dumaru, Life of Pi

A couple non-fiction (with a legal focus) books about the Mignonette incident and the resulting famous case of Regina v Dudley and Stevens: Is Eating People Wrong?, and The Custom of the Sea

> some people may have looked for someone who had a bit more experience writing or negotiating treaties specifically

Fellow liberal here. To help ease some of these concerns I'd point out that most of what an oil CEO does is negotiate with foreign governments for complicated agreements.

Also the oil industry is actually far ahead of other industries in terms of environmental protection in spite of what you might assume. Two books on the subject I highly recommend are The Quest (which is on Bill Gate's reading list and probably one of the single best books I've ever read) and Collapse.

I recommend the book Collapse by Jared Diamond if you are into lost civilizations and why they did not survive.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a great book by Jared Diamond (follow up to Guns Germs and Steel) dedicated to this subject of collapse, but it is based on older societies.

Part 1 of a video series on it

And here is the author's version

You may not get far trying the argument route with your parents, but the fact that they’re willing to listen is a very good sign.

I strongly recommend Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation. It’s a great introduction to the idea that atheists aren’t evil. It’s a non-confrontational hugs-all-around sort of book, perfect for this sort of situation (assuming your parents are American).

For Christians,

Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

I keep hearing good things about this... it'll get you thinking outside the box.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States

1. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
   
   
2. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
   
   
3. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
   
   
4. Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber

I read this book years ago and it talks all about the water shortage in the west. It has always been a problem and we've been slowly depleting underground stores for generation.

Relevant: I recently started reading Cadillac Desert, which is a really interesting treatise on the irrigation of the American West.

Well, one can like getting carrots for $0.99 a bag and still recognize that they're being delivered by a very suboptimal, screwed-up system of production that really needs to change. Problem is, not a lot of people seem to recognize that.

If you find this sort of subject interesting, and you've not read it before, you ought to pick up a copy of Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.

It gets a little dry sometimes when he gets into the nuts-and-bolts details, but overall it's a great, incisive look at how utterly FUBAR water policy in the West actually is.

Michael Pollan's [The Omnivore's Dilemma] (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324994963&sr=8-4)
[Freakonomics] (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324995084&sr=1-1)
Nathaniel Philbrick In the Heart of the Sea

Agree with others on Erik Larson, Mary Roach and Bill Bryson.

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is my all time favorite survival book. Read it before the movie comes out! It's absolutely crazytown.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

If you like non fiction (and lots of detail), In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick about the sinking of the whaleship the Essex and the crew surviving (or not) at sea.

In the heart of the sea is a great book on the true account of a group of sailors this happened to in the 1700's...adrift in the pacific for like 69 days i think...it was the influence for Moby Dick because a whale sunk their ship...never has a nonfiction book read like such an action novel for me

I personally think it's not religion that invoke people to kill Ahmadis or any other minority of the world. Just study any persecution in the world whether it's Rwanda, Sudan or North Korea. The main motive to kill is not religion. It's either economic or political reasons. I would highly recommend Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. We as a nation are either angry at our poverty or social conditions and then we try to blame it on the minorities.

Jared Diamond wrote a terrific book about this subject called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed in which he outlines the various times in history civilizations have completely collapsed and why. Societies such as the Maya, the Anasazi, the Vikings in Greenland and the people of Easter island. He also has some thoughts about the likelihood of a modern societal collapse and what we can do to prevent it. It's a fascinating book and I highly recommend it.

This book is awesome.

http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-Edition/dp/0143117009

This really depends on what aspects of the Civil War you are looking to learn about. If you're just looking for a general overview of the entire war it's hard to go wrong with James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. If you're looking for a shorter read I would recommend Bruce Catton's single volume history called The Civil War. These are common recommendations, but for good reason.

If you're interested in specific battles or topics, let me know and I may be able to recommend something.

The hard part for majority of people is that Historically events and the motives of individual's actions in those events are never "Black&White". Take the Civil War since that is the crux of this issue. In the book What They Fought For, 1861–1865 by James McPherson reported on his reading of hundreds of letters and diaries written by soldiers on both sides of the war on the question of what they believed they were fighting for. Not all Northerns cared for blacks in fact many were super racist they just didn't like slavery and in every major battle there were slave owning union soldiers fighting for the north, and non slave owning southern soldiers fighting for the south. On the other hand 80% of the Southern soldiers didn't own slaves and many felt that if slavery was to be ended it should like everyone born after 1/1/1861 are set free but given and education before hand.

“I was fighting for my home, and he had no business being there”
-Virginia confederate Solider Frank Potts

“We are fighting for the Union . . . a high and noble sentiment, but after all a sentiment. They are fighting for independence, and are animated by passion and hatred against invaders” - A Illinois officer.

“Believe me no solider on either side gave a **** about slaves, they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds. Southerns thought they were fighting the second American revolution norther's thought they were fighting to hold the union together [With a few abolitionist and fire eaters on both sides].”

• Shelby Foote
  
  Robert E. Lee is the biggest and the greatest paradox. He was against Virginia leaving the Union but felt his loyalty and duty, like many, was to his home state above the country: “If Virginia stands by the old Union,” Lee told a friend, “so will I. But if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for revolution), then I will follow my native State with my sword, and, if need be, with my life.” While Lee never publicly came out on one side or the other of Slavery. In a letter to his Wife in 1856 he said “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.” But Lee's wife and daughters taught the slaves to read and write which was against Virginia law and Lee officially freed his inherited slaves, he had no other slaves, on December 29, 1862 five years after his father-in-law Georgie Washington Custis' death as stated in his will. And yes Georgie Washington Custis is a descendant of President Georgie Washington.
  
  Besides once universal conscription was instituted by the Confederacy in 1862, it didn't matter what they fought for, whether they wanted to fight, or even if they supported the Confederacy they fought or become deserters and risk execution. The Union started conscription in 1863. One could argue those who were conscripted didn't care about slavery since if they did they would've volunteered earlier. Many were concerned more about their farms and family. One Confederate officer at the time noted, "The deserters belong almost entirely to the poorest class of non slave-holders whose labor is indispensable to the daily support of their families" and that "When the father, husband or son is forced into the service, the suffering at home with them is inevitable. It is not in the nature of these men to remain quiet in the ranks under such circumstances." Which was used by both sides trying to get them on their side the Union offered pardons and the Confederacy offered jobs or land in some cases.
  
  Now those caught deserted in the Union 147 were executed for desertion out of 200,000 deserters. In the Confederacy 229 were executed out of the 100,000 deserters. But since you can't kill off all the 300,000 men that deserted from both sides many were branded with a "D" on their hip. Many were just purely tortured:
  
  "One punishment much affected in the light artillery was called 'tying on the spare wheel.' Springing upward and rearward from the center rail of every cassion was a fifth axel and on it was a spare wheel. A soldier who had been insubordinate was taken to the spare wheel and made to step upon it. His legs were drawn apart until they spanned three spokes. His arms were stretched until there were three or four spokes between his hands. Then the feet and hands were firmly bound to the felloes of the wheel. If the soldier was to be punished moderately then he was left, bound in an upright position on the wheel for five or six hours. If the punishment was to be severe, the ponderous wheel was given a quarter turn after the soldier had been lashed to it, which changed the position of the man from upright to horizontal. Then the prisoner had to exert all his strength to keep his weight from pulling heavily and cuttingly on the cords that bound his upper arm and leg to the wheel." -- Frank Wilkeson, Army of the Potomac in the Union Army.
  
  In the end it is just easier for people paint with broad strokes the "good people"/The Union as saints and "bad guys"/The Confederacy as sinners. It is the same with all of those leaders/people we have had in History. In reality the Slavery had many shades of blue and grey and should be treated as such. There was good and bad in both the Union and the Confederacy.
  
  Sources and other reading material:
  
  http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a25915/punishment-and-torture-in-the-civil-war-111413/
  
  https://web.archive.org/web/20170422015315/http://www.americanheritage.com/content/south%E2%80%99s-inner-civil-war-0
  
  http://uncw.edu/csurf/explorations/documents/volume%209%202014/franch.pdf
  
  https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm
  
  https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/David%20Carr_0.pdf
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Know-Much-About-Civil/dp/0380719088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493924562&sr=8-1&keywords=Don%27t+Know+much+about+the+Civil+War
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493924743&sr=1-1&keywords=Battle+Cry+of+Freedom
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Volumes-1-3-Box/dp/0394749138/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493924920&sr=1-1&keywords=Shelby+Foote
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

i would direct you to the fine book, battle cry of freedom.

two important things. one, many in the south realized that the slavery situation was not sustainable, and required expansion to survive. this meant slavery in new states was a necessity. northerners opposed this. two, it can be imagined that this is the time that states' rights and federal authority diverged. this is actually an illusion. the south wanted states' rights for slavery, but also demanded federal assistance to return escaped slaves from free territories. in my mind, the conflict is between an industrial, democratic society and a feudal one.

Well, actually they did. Manifest Destiny. It wasn't always sea to shining sea, it was by some , pole to pole. USA has no peasant population. Some saw Mexico, Central America and South America as a vast labor pool. There was even an incident where American adventures tried to invade Mexico but their ship was sunk by the British. It's mentioned in 'Battle Cry of Freedom'
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Civil-War/dp/019516895X/ref%3Dsr_1_2?tag=offersamzn-20&ascsubtag=bst-13-1578750855127041134

Those adventures btw were Democrats

Read McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.

It's brilliantly written, engaging, authoritative, and generally accepted as "the book" for the Civil War in the minds of most historians.

You note you're a Tennessee boy. You may be interested in the older "New South" school vis-a-vis the War. Wm Dunning led a major push to view the War as one of Northern aggression. The Dunning School was quite influential until (roughly) the early Civil Rights Era.

There are also occasional, but lively debates on H-Net, South about how to view the Civil War.

As a side note, the whole Oxford History of the US series is worth reading. Some of the titles are dated, but they are all very good reads. (well, at least the ones I've read ;-) )

"I wish our wars could all be as clear as WWII was- an almost good vs. evil type conflict"

Two things you should know about WW2 ( my father was in it so I know a few things becuase I have asked him).

1. the media was completely controlled then so when the US was gearing up for war things were presented in a very clear fashion so it seemed then more clear cut- there was a movie censorship board which only allowed the official black and white depictions of war issues.
   
   2.Until that time it was not clear cut at all about whether or not the new forms of government known as "Fascist" were good or not.
   Time magazine made Hitler man of the year
   in 1939
   see it for yourself:
   
   http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19390102,00.html
   read the actual article here
   
   http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html
   
   and the whole world envied the rapid German economic recovery under his lead and many in the US openly wanted the US government to move toward a "streamlined" form of government with a stronger central leader to more quickly replicate the miracle of the German recovery from the economic ruin that gripped the world.
   
   There were many famous US supporters of Fascism.
   
   Charles Lindbergh for example openly said the US should move toward that type of government.
   
   So WW2 was NOT clear cut. It is only told to us that it was clear cut.
   You are judging by movies not reality.
   
   Never learn history by reading anything written after history.
   Read only the things written during the times to understand history. Today with internet archives of old newspapers it's easy.
   
   By the way I am merely relaying a historical fact and I in NO WAY support fascisms or Hitler etc etc. I just believe it is important for people considering war today to learn from how decisions were made in the past so mistakes are not repeated and successes are repeated. It's important to know it was NEVER CLEAR whether the US should enter WW2.
   
   In fact historical research has now proven conclusively FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen to motivate the country to get behind his decision to enter WW2.
   Best book on that which you would probably really be interested in reading is
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743201299?ie=UTF8&tag=reddit0e-20
   
   By the way many suspected FDR allowed Pearl harbor to happen to get us into the war AT THAT TIME. There were articles openly written about it just a week after Pearl Harbor happened.
   
   
   
   

Dude, just finished The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test yesterday. It was awesome how much it really put you "in the pudding". Will definitely check it out. Another book on the subject is Acid Dreams: A Complete Social History of LSD. Erowid Review.

There's a great book called Acid Dreams:
http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

Start with: How to Change Your Mind (start with this detailed annotated summary). The pop culture starting point these days. The summary is all you need to read to understand the entire book but the book is well worth the time.

After that you'll have more ideas where to do. Below is a lot of stuff. I've watched/read all of them, so happy to answer any questions/give more guidance.

​

Study the "classics" by taking a look at these (skim the long ones to start):

Seeking the Magic Mushroom (first western trip report on mushrooms)

My 12 Hours As A Madman (another historically important trip report)

The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based On The TIbetan Book of the Dead (classic book on guided trips)

LSD My Problem Child by Albert Hoffman

Al Hubbard: The Original Captian Trips

​

Docs to Watch:

The Sunshine Makers (documentary)

Orange Sunshine (documentary)

Aya: Awakenings (documentary)

Dirty Pictures (documentary)

A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin (documentary)

Hoffmans Potion (documentary): r/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFfblVjCwOU"

​

And a whole lot of others:

​

Books

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide – James Fadiman
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction – Gabor Mate
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream – Jay Stevens
Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from clinic to campus – Erika Dyck
The Natural Mind: A Revolutionary Approach to the Drug Problem – Andrew Weil
Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience – Stephen Siff
Acid Dreams: The complete social history of LSD – Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain
Drugs: Without the Hot Air – David Nutt
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life – Ayelet Waldman
Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain – Nicolas Langlitz
The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America – Don Lattin

Videos

Terence McKenna discusses the stoned ape theory

A Conversation on LSD – In a video from the late 1970s, Al Hubbard, Timothy Leary, Humphry Osmond, Sidney Cohen and others reflect on LSD’s heyday

Alison Gopnik and Robin Carhart-Harris at the 2016 Science of Consciousness Conference

The Future of Psychedelic Psychiatry – a discussion between Thomas Insel and Paul Summergrad

Documents, Articles & Artifacts

Al Hubbard’s FBI file

Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past – Betty Grover Eisner’s unpublished memoir about her role in developing psychedelic therapy

LSD, Insight or Insanity – Transcript of excerpts from hearings of the Subcommittee
on the Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations [concerning federal research and regulation of LSD-25] May 24, 1966

The Brutal Mirror: What an ayahuasca retreat showed me about my life —A Vox writer’s first-person account

​

Forums

Ayahuasca.com: Includes experience reports, discussion of spirituality, ecology, healing, and recovery by means of the vine are collected here. A place to learn from members of ayahuasca churches, as well as a few foreign language channels.

Bluelight: A 20 year old online harm reduction forum that fosters open and factual discussion of drugs and provides support for those seeking recovery from addiction.

DMT Nexus: A hub for underground psychedelic research on botanical sources of tryptamines and other psychedelic compounds.

5Hive: A newer forum devoted specifically to 5-MeO-DMT — synthetic, botanical or toad-derived.

Mycotopia: All things mycological — discussions of edible, wild, and psychoactive fungi.

The Shroomery: A forum  devoted to cultivating psilocybin-containing mushrooms and sharing trip reports.

TRIPSIT: A 24/7 online harm reduction resource.  Users can chat instantly with someone about their drug experience, or questions they may have about about the safe(r) use of a wide variety of controlled substances.

This one is awesome: acid dreams

>I see your point, and it makes sense, but belies the logic of your post in saying he is trying to be a dictator because he is opposing the other two forces. Isn't the tug just part of the balancing that takes place for those three bodies?

A little bit, sure. I would freely agree that the executive branch has probably become quite a bit more powerful than "intended" by the founding fathers (though I'm not a constitutional scholar). But I think there's a difference between tugging a little on the chains and trying to find a big enough sledgehammer to free yourself entirely.

President's implementing policies that are eventually struck down in court, or trying to convince Congress to do what they want Congress to do, or trying to dodge the media when they've done something unpopular, are common. But it's a question of extents - can you name another president who publicly sought to undermine confidence in something as important as the intelligence community or FBI? Or who labeled everyone who didn't stand and clap for him as traitors?


> Maybe you're right, though, you seem to know more about this than I do.

If you have a couple hours to burn I'd highly recommend you read the book [On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804190119?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf). It's a quick read, and is essentially a list of warning signs governments have given along the path to tyranny. While not specifically about Trump, the commonalities between his behaviour and various tyrannical governments from the 20th century are shocking. I went into the book convinced he was little more than a xenophobic moron and finished it completely convinced that the only thing standing between him and total authoritarianism is the robustness of American institutions.

One thing I do agree with you in terms of the balancing act, however, is that the system only works if the other branches actually use their powers. I think Congress and the Senate have massively failed in their duties to stop the President given how early and how often he's crossed the line, but even that is due in large part to Trump appointing people loyal to him to the roles that normally would oversee him. Devin Nunes, for example, should not be on the intelligence council, and has sabotaged it from day one.

>When I was talking about the Iraq etc war, I meant the military-industrial complex and corporate dictatorship and other special interest groups at play, from which Trump is seen by some as an outer entity

Is he though? His tax cut was a giant handout to rich corporations, the FCC under Ajit Pai is pretty much the definition of regulatory capture, he's always talking about how many more nukes the country needs and he's done nothing to cut back on some of the negative things the US does. I think he played up the outsider role during the election but the agenda he's actually followed is exactly what mega-corporations want.

That's apathy talking. If you have an hour or two to spare, I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

It absolutely is. Yes norm breaking is bad. But this specific aspect of departing from norms is how tyranny takes over a democracy.
Take an hour and read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny.

> But then again the Irish earned their whiteness.

Exactly. Gotta earn your stars and stripes!

White Cargo

It’s a desert, it’s always very dry – and if you’re not from a super dry place, you’ll feel awful if you don’t stay on top of keeping moisture in.
Take/drink plenty of water. Take lotion for your hands and chap stick for your lips.

The Grand Canyon is different from every other hike on Earth, because you start by walking down. So when you get to the bottom, you haven’t really done any of the work yet.
Stay on trails. Please take a map and a compass. Please take twice as much water on hikes as you think you need.

Take plenty of stuff to keep you warm. It gets down to freezing regularly at the Grand Canyon in April.
A pad to get you off the ground, a sleeping bag, and two good blankets. And even then you might be wearing sweats in bed to keep warm.

And if you’ve got $10 to spare, get this book used.

http://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

Recommended reading.

The Grand Canyon is one of my favorite places to hike. Just make sure you have an idea of the weather above and below the rim, and be sure to pick up and read Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri. Armed with the stories and knowledge shared by the ranger(s) that wrote that book, you should be fully prepared when it's time to head out.

NSDAP was a rightist/reactionary/veterans movement partially funded by businessmen and was way more popular among the middle class than the working classes (just look at voting statistics). the nsdap didn't kill businessmen, it killed workers who tried to unionize against the corporatist state the nazis created. the national union was not a union concerned with workers rights, it was concerned with maintaining industry to feed the war machine. the Nazi state never owned all the businesses and was only able to control a select few industries.

I'd suggest you read the Nazi sections in this book, in order to better understand the relationships better business, workers, and the NSDAP

The following book is also worth looking at:

Paxton, Robert: The Anatomy of Fascism (2005)

>Antifa is an organized group of people with a singular common purpose. Sure, they may claim that "they aren't an organization," but they literally are. They are a loosely governed organization, but still an organization, regardless.

Local antifa groups might be organized, but antifa as a whole is not. There is no consistent "antifa policy" on how to approach things like violence, protests, etc because antifa is not an organization. You could have a group of people calling themselves antifa in City A who do nothing but tear down fascist posters, and a group of people calling themselves antifa in City B who do nothing but milkshake fascists, and that isn't a contradiction because the groups are not part of any organized movement in any more specific sense than ideologically (people who dislike fascism and want to do something about it) and probably don't even talk to each other other than in the very vague sense that they may both use social media.

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

What are all of these "authoritarian" and "dictatorial" things that antifa does which are so horrible?

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

The rest of your post argues that since antifa is authoritarian and dictatorial (????????) it's somehow fascist by stubbornly refusing to use anything but a woefully inadequate dictionary definition that nobody actually takes seriously, as evidenced by the fact that nobody unironically calls most authoritarian countries in the world fascist. You should consider looking into some actual attempts to define fascism by credible people if you want to throw the term around.

> When I say that Antifa is fascist, I don't mean that they are literal fascists like Mussolini.

"When I say that antifa is fascist, I don't mean like, you know, fascist fascists. I mean the other kind of fascists: people I don't like."

He gave you the textbook definition of fascism. That is what “fascism” is. It was YOU who argued that Nationalism is non-violent. I did not back up your argument: Trump has been “violently taking out” people he perceives as enemies (undocumented immigrants) by using a paramilitary force (ICE) to arrest them in and lock them in cages. Does that sound familiar?

Here’s something you can do that might be a better use of your time: read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

> You are posting bullshit written by people with an agenda.

Yes, of course, the hand-waving of all experts on any given subject by simply declaring they have an agenda. Serious question, in your head, do you think this is a valid refutation of academic works in relation to fascism?

Do you think this works anywhere outside of the Donald?


> You have never read a history book that was written after 1960 is my guess. You are an amazingly stupid person.

Let's take a look.

I quoted the 3rd reich trilogy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

> The Third Reich Trilogy is a series of three narrative history books by the British historian Richard J. Evans covering the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail, with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process.[1] According to Ian Kershaw, it is "the most comprehensive history in any language of the disastrous epoch of the Third Reich",[2] which has been hailed as a "masterpiece of historical scholarship."[3] The three volumes of the trilogy were published between 2003 and 2008.

So that's after 1960.


I quoted the anatomy of fascism:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Which was written in 2005.

Which is again, after 1960 last time I checked. Next time you start throwing wild punches in an effort to save face after getting dismantled, make sure you can't be made to look like an idiot in 30 seconds.

You're right about the fact that high rates of heroin consumption isn't a recent phenomenon in America. The current heroin epidemic is only a spike in a long history of heroin consumption in the U.S. My personal theory is that it's more mediatized because it is perceived as mainly affecting former users of prescribed opiates, i.e normal white tax-paying Americans, a demographic which (from a foreign perspective) seems to strike a chord a bit more in the media. This has caused a shift in policy, and a higher targeting of heroin trade, but drug agencies must adapt to completely different criminal organisations and trade methods.

/u/mcyn66 is definitely onto something. There is enough evidence of CIA interference in the Asian opiate market to take it out of conspiracy theory territory. Perhaps the most authoritative book on the issue is The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, by Alfred McCoy, which is fairly well documented. Its impact was sufficient for the CIA to issue a formal response (they obviously rarely do that), and the latest edition of the book addresses the CIA's arguments (which were apparently quite weak).


As for the cocaine, american policy is clearly dictated by political motivations. Cocaine production and trade is tolerated as long as it's done by enemies of the CIA's current enemies. Consider Colombia for example: the American attitude toward cocaine production by right-wing paramilitaries (which still control most of the market) shifted once the FARCs and Medellin cartel stopped being effective factors of instability for the Colombian government.

Finally, another factor favoring action against cocaine production and trade is the fact that the main cocaine market axis (Colombia, Mexico, etc.) is more centrally located within the U.S' sphere of influence (this is more debatable though). The opiate production and refinement market (the so-called golden triangle) is located in East Asian countries where the CIA and other American agencies' power has been lessened recently. Afghanistan is of course a clear exception to this, but disruption of opium production is often considered less important than other objectives in the region.

> What bothers me the most about this is that the adults seem to either not care, or are clueless to the danger that this group, of mostly kids, is in.

I used to work as a Ranger in the park. This is, unfortunately, not uncommon. For some reason, otherwise normal, reasonably intelligent people just leave their brains behind when they go on vacation. I don't know if they think Yellowstone is like Disneyland, or a zoo, or what, but they just lose all sense of fear when it comes to the dangers around them.

One day, I was gassing up a Suburban in a clearly marked Rangers-only restricted area. A moose walked by. Okay, cool. This is awesome. This is why I'm here. I love nature. Nature is awesome.

But then...

Not ten yards behind the moose comes this group of 20-30 people, just completely ignoring all the signs telling them not to enter this area and completely ignoring any common sense that says you should not be anywhere near that close to a wild animal that could turn and charge them at any moment.

When I stopped them and asked them what they were doing, one guy finally said "We're trying to take pictures of the moose."

Sigh. Sigh. Fucking sigh. Now I have to be the asshole and tell them that they shouldn't be anywhere near that close to a dangerous wild animal in the first place, and second they should not have ignored the multiple signs telling them that they shouldn't be in a restricted area. And, that they need to go back and watch the moose from a safe distance.

Now, repeat this similar encounter nearly every single day. Sure, the specifics are different, but the same thing happens all the time, and I really don't get it. In spite of all the warnings people are given not to approach the wildlife, they still keep doing it.

As a side note, if you want some morbid but fascinating reading, check out Lee Whittlesey's book Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. It's a fascinating book on all the various grisly ways people have managed to off themselves in the park, often through their own idiocy, and often ignoring many warnings in the process.

I have this book my pa gave me called Death in Yellowstone, which talks about Miss Weeks and others. The part this article does not kindly mention is the fact that all of the skin on her lower half slid off when she was pulled out. It happens to almost everyone who falls in a geyser in Yellowstone.

I felt the true meaning of the word "ambivalence" when visiting Yellowstone. Deadly, beautiful thermal features...

Anyone else ever read the book "Death in Yellowstone" while visiting/camping in Yellowstone? For true "trippyness", do it!

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

That's the one! It has some great stories in there, and yes, a lot of people have been scalded to death in the geysers. You can frequently witness tourists going off the boardwalks, illegally, to get closer to the geysers. Darwin was really on to something.

My mom read these books to me... they scared me a little. The trauma came from camping trips in Yellowstone National Park when she put those books away, then pulled out A Grizzly Death in Yellowstone and Death in Yellowstone so that she could read graphic stories of campers and hikers being mauled to death by bears in the same fucking place we were going to sleep.

I, to date, have a completely totally rational fear of bears.

Bear spray. And read the instructions on it, and wear bells or sing the whole time you're out.

I know, silly - but I just finished reading Death in Yellowstone and damn.

Bear spray, bro.

Also, ensure you're not camping with any food smells - or any other strong smells - in your tent.

A friend of mine who reads a lot about politics tells me that Antifa is poorly represented and she recommended that I read the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook to get a better idea of what Antifa is about.

Apparently they have been around for the better part of a century, having started up with the start of the first fascist regimes.

I'm still undecided on what I think of them.

It doesn't matter as I don't go on marchers with neo-nazis or white supremacists.

It's been around since before WW2 in a great many forms. Sometimes it's more formally organized than others, sometimes less so.

The current American iteration of antifa can be traced to Anti Racist Action, which came out of Minneapolis in the 80s, itself inspired by French, German, and Italian Anti Fascist Action. They formalized the long-standing tradition of forcibly deterring neo-Nazis from infiltrating music scenes, bars, and working class/PoC neighborhoods. They went through various iterations themselves, falling apart when there wasn't much fascist activity to oppose, coming back when there was, spreading the movement around the continent, etc.

Antifa actions and groups take a lot of forms. Not every antifascist partakes in the black bloc or other immediate and dangerous activity either. Some provide medical services, some provide childcare, some provide food or a place to stay. But pretty universally and almost by definition, they're not especially organized.

Antifascist actions are for one thing: opposing fascists. Historically, most antifascists have been anarchists and autonomists, though you'll find plenty of communists and even some left-liberals in there too. By nature of these differences, they really only come together for these kind of bigger things upon which they all agree, and which they all also agree form a more immediate threat to their community than their (sometimes significant) disagreements.

Some of the misconceptions ITT are these:

-"Antifa is an attitude." I'll commend your principled opposition to fascism as a sign of your basic human decency, but if that attitude doesn't translate to action, it isn't antifa in the historical sense of that term.

-"Black bloc and antifa are separate things." No, black bloc is a protest tactic widely associated with antifa. The idea is, if you get enough folks together dressed identically, the folks who are there to wreck shit can do so without being easily identified by law enforcement or fascists.

-"Anarchists aren't real antifa, they're hijacking it." This is the worst of these misconceptions. The history of antifa as we think of it is associated with nothing more so than anarchism. Like I said, you'll find a lot of political stripes will participate, but it's the anarchists that have carried the load historically. The red and black double flag logo does, in fact, represent communism and anarchism. It's probably a reference to Otto von Bismarck, who once said of anarchists and communists: “Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"

If you're interested in a quick and dirty (and pretty damn good) history of antifascism, allow me to recommend Mark Bray's [Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook] (https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035). It's a quick read, and it's got a lot more information than you'll ever get from most news sources trying to stumble through speculation.

I can’t find the Biden video on anything but Neo Nazi websites and having been stalked by a Neo Nazi group is rather not risk my safety. I couldn’t find anything reputable at all.

So, we’re down to one attorney general with one tweet. With an attention grabbing book cover that you can buy on Amazon about the history of fascism.

“Many Democrats support the Antifa movement” is s stretch. I haven’t even found an instance where someone was actually harmed by the Antifa movement.

But bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe, am I right?

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Antifascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

not available yet, but i found it at my local book store last night which you should buy it at if you do

If you really want to learn why people disagree with you, I recommend you read this book: The Color of Law. Brown folks (and many white folks too, who weren't 'anglo' enough) were systemically excluded from homeownership during the post-WWII boom.

Some people absolutely left for racist reasons, but others were responding to strong incentives, and even non-racists were right in recognizing that property values were falling in demographically changing neighborhoods.

The other, sometimes overlooked factor that explains a lot of that map are the institutions that encoded segregation into wide areas of the law. The book to read about that is The Color of Law.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1631492853/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

only $20 if you have prime

edit: oh this is only 15 -- https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Michelle-Alexander-ebook/dp/B0067NCQVU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510953399&sr=1-1&keywords=the+new+jim+crow

> please read a book (like Spirit Level)

please read a book like https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

Your arguments are ahistorical. I don't know if that's because you're not from the US or not aware of the economic history of 20th century racism here. But at a certain point it's less that you don't know than that you refuse to, and if you're not over that line you're certainly flirting with it.

[This guy is correct folks. Read this book if you don't believe him.] (https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853)

Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation is probably the simplest, most concise atheist treatise directed towards christians. It's short, to the point, and very convincing in its arguments (and definitely not inflammatory).

Letter to a Christian Nation is a fun, light read. It's also fun to lend it to your religious/christian friends.

It's been mentioned at least once here in this thread, but I'll second Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. It's an excellent manual for developing critical-thinking skills that is great for anyone, not just people interested in god claims. The book touches on religion a bit but mostly deals with pseudoscience and magical thinking in general - it covers a lot of ground.

A few books I've read that I'll recommend specifically:

• Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
  
• Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus (an excellent introduction to textual analysis)
  
• Karen Armstrong's A History of God
  
  The last one has a video summary you can watch here which is one video in a series titled Why I am No Longer a Christian. The series itself is often cited as the most comprehensive video series on what it's like to go through the deconversion process.

It seems to me that the two strengths of the series are world-building and character depth. If this is your favorite series, you probably like it for one or both of those things.

If you like it for the world building, I recommend history books such as the History of the Peloponnesian War or A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.

If you like complex characters, then the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Another strength of asoiaf is that it isn't too heavy handed regarding magic in the story, and this is a strength of the Mistborn series too.

I see. I lost track of the thread. I'm currently reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Amazing read. Quick thumbnail: the Black Death wasn't the only, and may not have even been the worst thing that happened during what sounds like an unusually crappy time to have been alive (in Europe at least). War, famine, rape, pillage, robbery, bandits, a stark contrast between the ideals of courtesy and the actual behavior of mounted knights. Seemingly small value placed on life at all levels of society, but of course especially for the regular people.

Possibly this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404330328&sr=1-2

Without having read it, it doesn't look like what I would call "summer reading" but YMMV

I'm assuming by medieval/renaissance you mean the traditional European inspired fantasy. Here's a brain dump:

Feudalism:
I feel like I see a lot of fantasy where heroes turn up at some village and get asked to fight someone or other because the villagers have nowhere else to turn to. What I don't often see is the local knight living in the manor across the field whose responsibility it is to be a warrior and protect his fief and who probably doesn't appreciate strangers turning up and undermining his authority by doing his job for him.

There would probably also be a lot of small wars going on at any given time between knights and barons and earls that provide lots of work for dangerous people but have nothing to do with the greater battle battle between good and evil.

Knighthood:
Speaking of knights a knight isn't "someone who fights with plate armour and a sword," that's what they were IRL because that was the most effective way to fight and you needed a certain amount of wealth and status to afford the huge investment in training and equipment. If you have a fantasy world where with enough training and expensive equipment people can learn to shoot fire and call down lightning that will break a cavalry charge then that world's knights will almost certainly all be wizards. And very few other people will be allowed to be.

Era-appropriate firearms:

• https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/538672805409922868
  
• https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/511721576383944160
  
  That aesthetic of people in plate armour with cannons is something you almost never see depicted.
  
  Renaissance fashion:
  
• https://i-h1.pinimg.com/564x/67/7c/4d/677c4de51094fe521abab26318dc5f19.jpg
  
• http://blog.sunandswords.com/post/143679221560/some-awesome-photos-taken-last-week-of-my-kit
  
• https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ae/56/85/ae5685d3f34f0a1a777ca2a587d8cf54.jpg
  
  Speaks for itself.
  
  Medieval medicine and science:
  A physician diagnosing you by cross referencing your symptoms with the alignment of the stars to decide how to properly balance your humors isn't something I've seen a lot of in fantasy. That element of earnestly applying the scientific method to things you don't understand based on what seem to us like completely ridiculous variables and assumptions. Also more folk medicine like plants that only had medicinal properties if you found them by accident or sympathetic magic like curing a rabid dog bite using the literal hair of the dog that bit you.
  
  On a similar note you don't see a lot of importance put on folk superstition like hanging horseshoes above doors to keep out evil spirits/the devil/elves trying to steal your children. I feel like basing a fantasy world's idea of magic around the small everyday things might make a change from the usual Big Magic stuff.
  
  
  The equator:
  Not really something that will affect the day-to-day feel of a world but I read once that some people believed that the equator was hotter because it was closer to the sun and that right on the equator it would be too hot for anything to survive or cross. So they thought the entire southern hemisphere was inaccessible due to this deadly heat barrier. Not sure what you could do with it but I thought it was a neat idea. Maybe the discovery or creation of a tunnel under the equator would be an interesting way to introducing a "new world" to explore that developed totally independently.
  
  The devil:
  You know where medieval people got magic powers? By serving the devil. You know how they became werewolves? Made a deal with the devil. You know how women learned arithmetic? You better believe that's the devil. A lot of fantasy treats the monsters and magic and whatnot as just the natural flora and fauna of the world but these days I don't feel like I've seen much that filters the world through that lens of everything comes from one or two sources that have strong moral stances associated with them and, therefore, everything that comes from them does too.
  
  Pilgrimages:
  I don't know, you just never see them in fantasy but in the middle ages they were quite the thing from the noble woman who spends ten years of her life travelling constantly between holy sites to the common folk for whom the trip to visit the bones of St Whoever is basically the closest they ever have to a holiday.
  
  Ships:
  Don't have your medieval knights cross the sea on what amounts to a 17th century galleon like I feel like I keep seeing. Not when there are cool medieval and renaissance ships you could use:
  
• Byzantine Dromon: https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/tag/dromon/
  
• Venetian Galleass: https://www.deviantart.com/radojavor/art/Battle-Of-Lepanto-41693977
  
• Look, we built towers on it and now it's a war ship: http://users.trytel.com/tristan/towns/florilegium/images2/def14b.jpg
  
  Level of material wealth/standard of living:
  When you turn up in a sleepy little farming village there probably won't be a big inn with a roaring fire, a dinner menu and a dozen rentable rooms. There will be a family that'll let you sleep on the floor of their one-room cottage for a few coins and might even share some of their latest batch of beer with you. Even the lord of the castle may very well sleep in the same room as their whole family and several servants. When you try to sell your stack of looted swords to the local blacksmith they aren't going to have cash sitting around to pay you. But they could offer you a box of nails and some of the loaves of bread the baker owes them.
  
  Little things:
  I feel like a lot of the reason "medieval" fantasy tends to feel stale is that it's mostly made up of just all the bits and pieces of history that people are familiar with smooshed together. Good for acccessibility, bad for originality. Often just adding little details or taking away familiar things can make a difference. Look up the things they had in place of anything resembling modern law enforcement like Tithings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing) and the Hue and Cry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry) or people bringing their own mugs to taverns because the taverns couldn't just buy bulk mugs off the shelf or the fact that it could take members of ten different guilds to make a suit of armour and anyone trying to do the bits that are covered by another guild will find themselves out of work pretty quick. Maybe read something like https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571. Look up medieval bestiaries to learn how lions are born dead and brought to life by their mothers or how vultures can see the future.

A fantastic book, A Distant Mirror is a detailed glimpse of medieval 1300's French and English life, from royalty to peasantry.

There are some sections in the book that describe mercenary groups, including some interesting bits about groups that don't get paid, and essentially leaderless bands that pillaged 'friendly' countrysides just to survive. Some were as big as standing armies, but without a war to fight, bank to fund them, or often even a purpose just hardend soldiers - and how they roamed pilliaging summer seasons and forcefully occupied random towns for winters .

For anyone interested in this area in the previous century, this book is just great.

Well, this book covers much of the 14th century, but it’s not as recent as the Thirty Years War. Nevertheless, it’s regularly mentioned in this sub as one of the best historical books altogether.

Honestly, "The Greatest Show on Earth" is WAY better. Dawkins on religion isn't nearly as good as Dawkins on biology.

You want to read a devastating book on religion, try "The End of Faith". Or better yet, this.

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great & The Portable Atheist
  
  
• Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design & A Briefer History of Time
  
  
• Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth
  
  
• Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World
  
  
• Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape & The End of Faith
  
  
• Richard Panek - The 4 Percent Universe
  
  
• Robert Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
  
  
• Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
  
  
• Sean Caroll - The Making of the Fittest
  
  
• Spencer Wells - Deep Ancestry
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
  
  
• Alan Watts - The Way of Zen
  
  Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
  
  The more you know, the more confident you will be.

Recommended reading material:

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

The End of Faith

If Christians were closeted, if they kept their morality judgments to themselves, if they did not push for laws to enforce this version of morality, if they did not actively seek to disparage atheists for no other reason than for refusing to believe in the invisible thing in the sky that they believe in, then I'd have no reason to give a shit about what Christians believe. What does or does not happen to my consciousness after I die is absolutely immaterial.

>I know asian music = pentatonic scale

I would direct you to Edward Said's Orientalism.

The 10,000 Year Explosion answers your exact question.

> Scientists have long believed that the “great leap forward” that occurred some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago in Europe marked the end of significant biological evolution in humans. In this stunningly original account of our evolutionary history, top scholars Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending reject this conventional wisdom and reveal that the human species has undergone a storm of genetic change much more recently. Human evolution in fact accelerated after civilization arose, they contend, and these ongoing changes have played a pivotal role in human history. They argue that biology explains the expansion of the Indo-Europeans, the European conquest of the Americas, and European Jews' rise to intellectual prominence. In each of these cases, the key was recent genetic change: adult milk tolerance in the early Indo-Europeans that allowed for a new way of life, increased disease resistance among the Europeans settling America, and new versions of neurological genes among European Jews. Ranging across subjects as diverse as human domestication, Neanderthal hybridization, and IQ tests, Cochran and Harpending's analysis demonstrates convincingly that human genetics have changed and can continue to change much more rapidly than scientists have previously believed. A provocative and fascinating new look at human evolution that turns conventional wisdom on its head, The 10,000 Year Explosion reveals the ongoing interplay between culture and biology in the making of the human race.

Since it hasn't been mentioned, Cochran has a blog called "West Hunter", which I consider recommended reading -- although many posts are sadly a bit low effort, compared to e.g. SSC, Overcoming Bias, or other favourites among the rationalist crowd. Still definitely worth adding to your blog roll.

And his book with Henry Harpending, "The 10'000 Year Explosion", is required reading for anyone curious about the HBD debate, of course. :)

> (2:07:00) A few people bet on Trump winning after Greg wrote predicting the “shy Trump voter” would put him over the top despite the polls, and then tipped him for it.

Just to pat my own back here: I made about $4000, betting on Trump winning. Not because of Cochran, I hadn't read his post, but because I noticed there was a huge gap between the bookmakers and the exit polls reported at Nate Silver's 538. So betting big on Trump late on election day seemed like a no brainer. In particular so because exit polls usually underestimate the most controversial pick, due to social desirability bias.

Also, I've never seen such an edge at a bookmaker before, compared to an "expert opinion", and I bet professionally on sports for about a year (until I quit when it became too much effort to work around the bookmakers' restrictions on winning players). IIRC, bookmaker odds had Trump at about 16-17% of winning, late on election day, while the exit polls indicated about a 28% chance of winning.

By the Kelly criterion I should have bet way more on the outcome than I did, btw. Assuming the exit polls were right, I should have gone in for about 13% of my betting bankroll. Considering the known bias of exit polls, I should probably have pushed for more like ~25% of my bankroll. But I chickened out, for personal reasons. Being a father of 3 young kids combines badly with being a gambler, so I just played my scared money and bet the $600ish I happened to have sitting around in an online bookie account from old.

NOT true

FDR goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. Read Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit". And it was only b/c of America's imperial policies that Hawaii and the Philippines were ultimately targeted by the Japanese.

If you read the book "Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" and ponder the evidence presented in it, you'll be either more terrified or reassured that our government has done similar crimes before.

The book is definitely recommended. In short, it'll shed new light on both the "good war" and the way the US government practices realpolitik and propaganda.

If you're curious, I strongly recommend the above-mentioned book.

The author is a WWII vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as George Bush, and then went onto become a journalist and author.

He researched Pearl Harbor for decades, getting many first-hand testimonials, and a lot of key US gov't documents via Freedom of Information Act requests.

The most famous document, perhaps, is the so-called McCollum memo. This was written by a mid-level Navy intelligence officer who, the son of an American diplomat, was raised in Japan. McCollum was the Naval liaison officer to the White House and met with FDR once a week or more.

The memo outlined 8 steps that the US would have to do in order to provoke the Japanese to attack the US. The book details those 8 steps and supports them with evidence.

The overall idea of provoking Japan to attack was due to the collapse of France in the spring of 1940. That shocked the world.

The US, being unsuccessful at provoking the Germans into responding to our sinking of German U-boats in the Atlantic, thus opted to provoke Japan into attacking and to use that event to enter the war in a united fashion to keep Europe from falling to the Nazis.

Edit: Typos, added link.

The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 24 years of my life. Very devout.

It's hard for me to know what these particular folks' motivation for being in the JWs is.

Here is what helped me:

Problems With a Global Flood, 2nd Edition: Witnesses are very literal about their interpretation of the bible. If they actually read this page it will go a long way toward dislodging the cornerstones of their faith.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Finding Darwin's God by Ken Miller: A book about evolution that is not directly threatening to religion. It's written by the head of biology at Brown University. The science is solid. The theology is unsurprisingly weak. This book changed my life.

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497

If they make it that far, give them this one: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Not all of it applies to witnesses directly (they're not young-earth creationists, for example), but a lot of it still applies. This will supply many final nails for the coffin.

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291101892&sr=1-1

One thing to keep in mind is that they're very unlikely to seek any of this out on their own. They'll view it as a sin. Your best bet is to print these texts out or buy them. Both books can be purchased on Amazon in used condition for almost nothing. Tell them you'll read their books if they read yours and hold them to it. That culture has a very strong intellectual conscience. Most witnesses are really decent people. They're just stuck in a totally stupid mind-trap.

Good luck! You're doing a great thing by trying to help these people.

Barbra Tuchman's The Guns of August is a personal favorite of mine. Her A Distant Mirror is also supposed to be very good, though I haven't managed to get to it yet.

Carl Sagan is also a great choice if you are interested in space.

I that case you might be interested in the following books:

• Barbard Tuchman's A distant mirror. The best book on medieval history I think I've ever read.
  
• A time traveller's guide to medieval England by Ian Mortimer
  
• Agincourt by Juliet Barker
  
  

I'd suggest the 14th Century. Black plague, 100-years war, massive social unrest. See A Distant Mirror and more info here.

This is a classic that I remember enjoying greatly. https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman

absolutely enthralling. i've never read something so informative and entertaining...she teleports you to a different world: ours, 700 years ago.

next on the list is Immanuel Wallerstein's 4 volume World Systems Series. it's been on my bucket list since i took a course in undergrad on the subject.


then, marx's capital.

History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer. I'm reading this now and I've really enjoyed it, very clear writing and introductory overviews to cultures all over the world - Europe, North Africa, China, Korea, India, you name it.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. This one was highly recommended on /r/medievalhistory

I'll give you two that I've enjoyed lately:

Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations talks about some states that you see in Eu4 like Aragon, Burgundy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century takes you into the life of a French nobleman during the Hundred Years War. I'd check out pretty much anything else by Tuchman while you're at it.

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

Thanks for responding!

I think that there are a few books which have influenced me greatly, but I have a much more expansive list of books I want to read than ones I have already consumed.

To start, you should try the greats:

• The God Delusion
  
• God Is Not Great
  
• The End of Faith
  
  For a historical perspective, try: The Barbarian Conversion
  
  Evolutionary perspective: The Selfish Gene
  
  And, if you have a sense of wonder:
  
• A Brief History of Time
  
• Cosmos
  
  But this is such a small selection... Try them out and let them guide you to many more works.

Book [The End of Faith] (https://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393327655) By Sam Harris
-This book was the support I needed to feel comfortable saying I do not believe in organized religion. (I felt guilty for never being a believer but this book helped me find my voice to explain why.)
-He also has a fascinating podcast on the topic along with youtube videos, just type in Sam Harris and you will easily find it.

[Stephen Fry Annihilates God] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-d4otHE-YI) Short video but fantastic.
EDIT: The link I posted for this all you need to watch is the first two minutes.

Other than those two sources that is pretty much all I have. I am fairly new to giving a voice to my lack of belief in organized religion so I do not have many sources yet.

Hope this provides some use to you.

For starters, what's your time limit? This is a topic that would take a while to unpack and make a convincing case for. If you decide to go through with it, read Hitchen's book, Harris' two books, and watch some debates to determine how you want to deliver your speech. Make a list of different arguments that the religious use for when your audience asks the standard questions and have a response for them. Have a list of examples of problems that different religions have caused and the source for that information.

I was raised Catholic, became an agnostic before IF, and am now an atheist. I believe in physics, evolution, and maybe random chance grounded in chaos theory, but I haven't explored that last one deeply. It doesn't matter much to me. But not believing in god matters is a core value of mine. At best, the idea of an all knowing, all loving, all powerful god is just impossible. Look at the world, all the suffering. People starving to death, families being ripped apart, kids and others suffering from abuse. Life can be nasty, brutal, and short. If god is all knowing, he knows about all those horrors. If he's all powerful, he could prevent them. If he's all loving, he would. But... he hasn't. So yeah, at least one of those isn't true.

I believe there is no god. It's no coincidence that "miracles" have become scarce with scientific knowledge. That demonic possessions are essentially over now that we know about mental illness. God just seems like an outdated fable for understanding a confusing world. Science has replaced that fable with truth.

If there is a god, I think he's either extraordinarily limited in power (which makes no sense given the definition of god) or he's indifferent to us or he's actually just an asshole. I've seen too much suffering in the world to believe otherwise. Just look at the sadistic people who get kids easily compared to all of us in this community. Or go to the pediatric ICU and see some of the kids there who have no quality of life due to horrible congenital illnesses, and never will have any. It's worse than any horror show.

I get SO much peace and happiness out of not believing in god. When bad shit happens, I don't have to wonder why or what lesson I'm supposed to be learning. I don't have to feel like the god who "loves" me is also putting me through horrible experiences, like some sadomasochistic father figure. Some religious/spiritual people rationalize suffering by saying we grow from it. I think that's twisted. If we analogize to parenthood, good parents don't beat up their kids, starve them, give them horrible diseases, etc. God does all of those things. YES, challenges bring growth. But there's a fucking limit to the horror. Giving your kids chores to do is one thing. Giving them horrible painful illnesses is another. Just look at shit like Tay Sachs, osteogenesis imperfecta, etc.

Some people say that God isn't responsible for horrible things, but "man's sin" brought evil into the world. To them, I say that if you believe god created the universe, then he created a universe that allows for one person to be punished for the actions of another. Where is the justice and love in that?

As for finding meaning in life, I've never felt compelled to find some grand plan in why I'm here or what my life is about. More important is that I'm here and it's up to me to make the most of it. And if there's no god, then we can only count on each other for help and kindness. I think that's a better motivation to be a good person, and a more altruistic motivation, than being a good person out of fear of god's wrath.

I think I've missed out on very little by not believing. Maybe the only thing is a church community, but even that is a double edged sword - so much gossip and judgment in most of them. Other than that, I can't think of anything that I've missed. I've never longed for god's "love." I've never wanted an indefinite afterlife. When I was five, I asked my mom if I could have god make me disappear when I'd had enough of all that heaven had to offer. It's not that I was depressed, I just didn't and don't want ANYTHING forever, except maybe to be with any future kids. I love my husband buckets, but I'm sure that eventually we'd want to disappear together, too. The idea of eternity is daunting, not particularly appealing. And the idea that the afterlife matters more than the present just seems like a tool to maintain a shitty status quo in this world - wealth inequalities, social inequalities, etc.

I just want to say that a life without god is not necessarily something to be afraid of. It can be so liberating and fulfilling. If you're looking for books on the subject, I'd recommend The End of Faith by Sam Harris. It's an eye opener. All the best to you.

This is true. Based on your comment, you might like a book called "The End of Faith".

https://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393327655

"In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs―even when these beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic. Winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction."

When it comes to understanding evolution, Why Evolution is True is a very entertaining, easily read introduction. I would also recommend The End of Faith by Sam Harris.

If you enjoyed the God Delusion you would probably enjoy either God Is Not Great by Hitchens or The End of Faith by Sam Harris

I am as ardent an anti-theist as you'll find, however, few points

>I am not trying to offend anyone who is religious

Not up to you, they're going to get offended anyway.

>I know religion is responsible for many of our moral values

Is it though? Morality is still an incredibly rich area of study and thought (along with consciousness.) There are many competing theories such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_morality

In any case- religion certainly teaches that some things are bad and other things are good. I reject the claim that it is responsible for "many of our moral values." (Reference the Old Testament- morality isn't the word I would use to describe stoning people to death for transgressions.)

>Religion is responsible for some of the worst atrocities in human history.

I would say that close-minded adherence to bad ideas are the root of the worst atrocities in human history. Religions are among the worst ideas and the most deeply held convictions people have and have contributed mightily (and have been the primary factor for a lot of the atrocities) however, people are responsible for the worst atrocities in human history.

>I don't understand how people are willing to die for something that they have been told and never actually seen.

Philosophy Psychology of` religion is pretty useful here. You may find the following concepts interesting:

• The Backfire Effect
  
• Cognitive Dissonance
  
• Confirmation Bias
  
  It is important to note that religious adherents often grow up being taught these dogmatic systems as truth. To them it is common sense and they attribute their good feelings and positive experiences to the religion.
  
  >We are not born believing in religion it is taught to us.
  
  Someone along the way came up with the idea. Generally these days we cannot tell because not many people can get to age 18 without being subject to religious ideas. Although, I tend to agree with this hypothesis in a modern sense.
  
  >I believe that any religion, whethever it's monotheistic (one god) or polytheistic (many gods) that believes in a divine creator is a plague and gives evil people justification for committing awful crimes againist others (molesting children, terroist attacks, etc).
  
  Well, polytheistic religions have a history of being tolerant and intolerant of other gods/faiths. Monotheism has a horrific track record here.
  
  Jainism is non-violent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
  
  >I think social philosophies like confucianism which are built on more ethical and natural principles should replace religion.
  
  Secular Humanism sounds like it would float your boat: https://secularhumanism.org/index.php/3260
  
  What people find irreplaceable about religion is its answers to big questions, comfort, and "spiritual fulfillment."
  
  Whether you believe in spirituality or not, there have been many hypotheses about what spiritual experience is, or where exactly it comes from. Personally, I think religions are middle men between you and whatever those experiences are. Meditation and other methods have been suggested.
  
  >Religion is an evil plague apon society CMV.
  
  Ultimately, I agree with you. Although, I do think that some people get things from religion that are good or benign (things that could be gotten from other sources IMO.) Your view just needs a bit more nuance, respectfully. The following sources would be interesting to you:
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Essays-Religion-Related-Subjects/dp/0671203231
  
  https://www.amazon.ca/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393327655
  
  https://www.amazon.ca/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0771041438

My only experience is in Nepal, where Buddhism is just one of the unorthodox streams within the spectrum of ordinary spirituality. Nepali people think it's kind of funny how westerners feel the need to organize and label religion into a bunch of -Isms. (This is the sort of western bossiness Edward Said described in his classic book Orientalism.)

I can suggest some books that are really helpful in filling in the blanks.

For a basic overview of Islam's history and the reality of Islamic countries in the modern world I'd recommend "Introducing Islam."

For a seriously compelling look at the Sunni/Shia split and the conflict between the two sects I highly recommend "After the Prophet". Not only is this good history, it's a very well written.

And for a really excellent look at the misconceptions westerners have about Islam, and the ways in which those misconceptions are transmitted and perpetuated, you can't beat the works of Edward Said. He wrote three books on the subject that he considered a trilogy. They are:

Orientalism

The Question of Palestine

and

Covering Islam

Also, here's a documentary that is largely an interview with Said on the topic of Orientalism.

And a documentary called "Reel Bad Arabs" that examines the way the middle east is portrayed by western media.

It is indeed a complex situation, but these would be a good start:

• “State of Terror: How terrorism Created Modern Israel” by Thomas Suárez
  
• “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappé
  
• “Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said” by David Barsamian
  
• “The Battle for Justice in Palestine” by Ali Abunimah
  
• “Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy” by Ben White
  
• “The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza” by Max Blumenthal
  
  Earlier history:
  
  
• “All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948” and “Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of The Palestinians 1876-1948” by Walid Khalidi
  
  For more contextual books, I would recommend:
  
  
• “Orientalism” by Edward Said
  
• “The Holocaust Industry” and “Beyond Chutzpah” by Norman Finkelstein
  
• “Not by Might, nor by Power: The Zionist Betrayal of Judaism” By Moshe Menuhin

We don't really proselytize, so you wouldn't be "sold" necessarily. Also, are you thinking of an academic primer or something more basic?

There's the [Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture] (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-History-Culture-Edition/dp/1592572405/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341422012&sr=1-2&keywords=Idiot%27s+guide+to+judaism) and Essential Judaism. Those are both pretty good books. Also, Chabad has an excellent and very informative website, though in person they're a bit too much for me.

On a tangential note, I highly recommend From Beirut to Jerusalem and Orientalism if you're interested in the Middle East.

NB: While I'm expecting to catch some flack for the idiot's guide link, it is basically an "Explain Like I'm Five" book series.

Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven

Orientalism by Edward Said

The second one is not South Asia specific but rather how we are viewed in occidental intellectual traditions.

Words such as "race" are used to draw dividing lines between genetically dissimilar populations. How dissimilar varies over time. Europeans and Africans are clearly of different races, for example. Nor would Europeans and Arabs ever be mistaken. When you compare West Europeans (core Europeans) and Eastern Europeans (Slavs, mostly), the water gets a little murkier. They certainly fall under the "white" umbrella, but how much? For instance, I have a good eye for this, and can tell them apart with ease. The average white person cannot. So is there a grand unified White Race™? Probably not. But there are white races, of which the label "white" can be reasonably applied to all of them.

What seems to have happened to most of the ancient world—through Europe, Asia, the Middle East—is that the Indo-European people(s) swooped down and conquered, established civilizations, and then gradually, over many generations, "melted" into the conquered peoples. The white phenotype was probably as fragile to intermixing then as now, and besides, though most similar to Europeans (or "whites") they were forerunners, "prototypes".

Historical genetic overlap, though important, is not the whole story, as evidenced by convergent evolution, which can form nearly the same structure from totally unlike ancestries; see sharks, which once were fish, and dolphins, which once were deer-like ungulates. Not the same, but remarkably similar in some important ways. Put differently, a group of stone-age Europeans living in Africa would lose their essential European characteristics over time, slowly becoming more and more like Africans.

And the ancient Romans were right: the tribes that inhabited the island of Brittania were incapable of being civilized. They are the ancestors of modern Britons, yes, but not the same. They have changed—genetically; they literally evolved—rather substantially in the past two millennia. Read The 10,000 Year Explosion for a better idea, it's quick and easy.

Re: Iraqi vs Iranian. I can tell them apart, but again, convergent evolution.

Yes. Do you have two thousand years to wait while the harsh European environment civilizes the Semitic tribes currently colonizing it? I don't. (And even then they'll still be largely Semitic in nature and temperament, just see the Ashkenazi jews.)

The Japanese are indeed distinct from all other Asian races. They alone were subject to similar environmental conditions as Europeans over the millennia. The small island of Japan just off the Asian continent is remarkably similar to the small island of Britain just off the European continent.

It's not really likely that either modern day or ancient peoples would be ravaged by diseases in the same way that native americans were by the sicknesses introduced by european colonists.

The book "The 10,000 Year Explosion" goes into detail on how the native american populations had uniquely specialized and homogenous genetic approach to fighting illness that was totally overwhelmed when the europeans introduced new sicknesses into the environment. It's a very good and easy-to-read book for dealing with such technical matter, highly recommended.

Although back on the subject, the marines would probably suffer much more due to illness simply because their unit is much smaller.

There are lot of popular books that venture into these type of topics. I recommend The 10,000 Year Explosion, which is about how civilization and agriculture shaped recent human evolution. It's very interesting, though at the same time it sometimes creeps me out thinking to much about human biology in this way. I might add that they have a chapter on human intelligence which is controversial because of the nature of the topic. Anyway it's a good read, just don't turn into an eugenicist. ;)

I also the often recommended Guns, Germs and Steel on my reading list, which looks on how biology and illness shaped human civilizations.

I suggest, if you have an interest in human evolution from an anthropological or biological perspective, that you check out The 10,000 Year Explosion.

I don't know that it discusses human love or relationships, but it does focus on variations in populations in build, problem-solving ability, etc., and hypothesizes on how they might have arisen. If you have more of an interest in looking at the biology or evolutionary side of things, you could always take a look at The Selfish Gene by Dawkins (depending on how you feel about him).

Mostly just googling, combined with half-remembered facts from reading.

The 10,000 year explosion was good for info on this IIRC. Though mostly focused on the European evolution of lactose tolerance.

Everything is educated guesses. The known fact is that Africans have more genetic diversity than Europeans. Simplest explanation for that would be that humans started in Africa and left.

I guess it depends how deep down the proverbial rabbit hole you're willing to go. If you entertain the idea that the entire war was (at least partially) theater in order to justify extravagant military budgets and broad, sweeping societal/industrial changes, then it makes sense that nothing of strategic value was attacked by the Japanese. In a scenario like that, Japan and the US technically aren't "enemies" at all in the traditional sense. Japan would have been told what to bomb and how to bomb it so that nothing truly valuable was lost. The US would be willing to sack a few old battleships if they knew it could/would be used as the justification to enter the war and change the course of the country's and world's history forever (with the US at or near the top of the food chain, of course).

This is one of the only scenarios that makes any sense to me considering that nothing Japan did at Pearl Harbor really made sense from a military strategy perspective. They had every opportunity to do real damage to the US war effort by destroying a substantial amount of the Pacific fleet and infrastructure, and yet all they did was sink a few old battleships and "damage" some others. If you truly look at the alleged damage from Pearl Harbor compared to the amount of equipment, ships, infrastructure, etc. that was typically docked there, the level of Japan's failure is pretty unbelievable (literally).

It all reminds me a bit of how Hitler let the British escape at Dunkirk or how Hitler allegedly canceled all weapons research for a couple years during the war because he thought he could "win with what he had". None of it makes any tactical sense whatsoever, despite how all the mainstream historians try to spin us.

> Do you have any good reads or docs on this?

Most of this is just the overall information I've gleaned from lots of different sources. It's basically my theory of WWII based on everything I've learned with my own speculations peppered in. I just see a lot of details and "facts" surrounding the war that make no sense at all except from the perspective that both sides were ultimately working together.

One more significant detail of that era that I think sheds some light as well: the BIS was crawling with Germans/Nazis all through the late 1930's and '40's - so basically the entire time the war was going on. There was a clause in the BIS charter saying it was immune from seizure, closure, and censure, regardless of what happened and even if its members were at war. Some of the members of the charter were First National of NY, Bank of England, Reichsbank, Bank of Italy, Bank of France, etc. Basically all of the major players and "enemies" of the war. The BIS funneled money to Germany throughout the war with the obvious consent of its member banks. Ultimately, as with everything else, it all comes back to money and power in the end imo.

If you want a book specifically about Pearl Harbor, this one is pretty decent.. The author of the book appears to be a spook and the book itself is likely a limited hangout in my opinion, but it's still a good entry-point and I think a lot of the evidence it compiles actually supports my theory that Pearl Harbor was one act in the Grand Play that is WWII, with Japan "in on it", despite that not being the author's intention.

It's more than that it "never stopped" -- the US callously broke the agreement it made with Gorbachev not to expand NATO to the east.

In the so-called Cold War, the USSR surrendered. It withdrew from eastern Europe and allowed itself to be broken up into over a dozen different countries -- but the US gov't acted treacherously and has never ended US aggression against Russia.

The entire Cold War strategy of provoking Russia and encircling it with military bases continued. The US pushed NATO east, and it tore up the ABM treaty placing an anti-missile base in Poland using the laughable excuse that we did that "because of Iran." Clearly the US wants to negate Russia's nuclear deterrence.

Twice in one decade the US has funded the overthrow of Ukraine's -- the historic birthplace of all of Russia -- government, with this last coup d'etat being a blatant violent and bloody affair.

Is it any wonder Russia is responding? We certainly have tried hard enough to provoke them!

> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.

I haven't read Shirley's book, but it seems obsolete, given the evidence that Robert Stinnett uncovered.

In his book "Day of Deceit" Stinnett documents that the Roosevelt administration definitely knew of the attack before Dec. 7th, but more than that, had a policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US. Prior knowledge of the attack has been a theory for many years, and many people talked about it immediately after Pearl Harbor, but Stinnett unearthed much new evidence from the US gov't itself using Freedom of Information Act requests.

The most startling evidence is a US gov't document written by a Naval officer who proposed provoking Japan into attacking the US. This officer was in contact with FDR and the highest Navy admirals on a daily basis. The memo proposed 8 steps which would provoke Japan to attack the US, and the US gov't then enacted all 8 steps and Stinnett documents these.

Stinnett also offers evidence and testimony that the US gov't had broken the Japanese naval codes (the US gov't only claims to have broken Japanese diplomatic codes) before Pearl Harbor and not afterward like the US gov't and our history books claim.

Stinnett's theory is that with the fall of France in the spring of 1940, the US was shocked and feared that Britain might fall to Germany; the administration then enacted a policy of provoking Japan into attacking the US so that the US could enter the war in Europe in a "backdoor" fashion and have the country united in the war effort as a result of the attack.

Edit: Clarity.

As documented by this author's discovery of the so-called "McCollum memo" (and other research), after the fall of France, the US gov't had an actual policy of provoking Japan so we enter WWII against Germany via the German-Japanese alliance.

Day of Deceit

You should check out Day of Deceit

The review reads, "Historians have long debated whether President Roosevelt had advance knowledge of Japan's December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Using documents pried loose through the Freedom of Information Act during 17 years of research, Stinnett provides overwhelming evidence that FDR and his top advisers knew that Japanese warships were heading toward Hawaii. The heart of his argument is even more inflammatory: Stinnett argues that FDR, who desired to sway public opinion in support of U.S. entry into WWII, instigated a policy intended to provoke a Japanese attack. The plan was outlined in a U.S. Naval Intelligence secret strategy memo of October 1940; Roosevelt immediately began implementing its eight steps (which included deploying U.S. warships in Japanese territorial waters and imposing a total embargo intended to strangle Japan's economy), all of which, according to Stinnett, climaxed in the Japanese attack."

The truth about Pearl Harbor was already uncovered by Robert Stinnett, who discovered the McCollum Memo and also wrote an extensive book about it. People tried to defame him, but it's ultimately up to the reader/researcher to decide truth from falsehood.

You have obviously not read Day of Deceit by R. Stinnett because your statement was proven false back in '01. Seriously, look it up then read it.

The argument over this issue has been settled via FIOA requests of US government documents that prove, at the very least, foreknowledge.

Acid Dreams -- www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/

This is a great book on the history of LSD and the personalities (and government agencies like the CIA) that led to the acid explosion of the 60s. Well sourced and well written.

> “An engrossing account of a period . . . when a tiny psychoactive molecule affected almost every aspect of Western life.”—William S. Burroughs

I repeat: This poster is trolling you guys. He has no evidence, and none exists, that LSD is still in use as a mind control drug. Its early history, including attempts by the CIA and military to use it in a wide range of applications, is well-documented in the book "Acid Dreams" by Martin Lee et al.

https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540754803&sr=8-1&keywords=Acid+Dreams

It was very accepted and practiced in the 50s. The book Acid Dreams goes into in depth.

You should read this book if you're interested:
http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

BZ bombs for sure. Except those of us who know how to handle psychedelics will be fighting against the Enlightened Operatives.

Acid Dreams covers the history of LSD and the CIA's involvement. Lots of time, money and reckless experimentation went into finding a substance that would consistently allow interrogators to influence the minds of captured spies.

Definitely worth a read - some very, very interesting stuff.

http://www.amazon.ca/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

just googled "the complete acid book"

Well it's definitely a firehose but it's also scary because unless you're talking to a rabid anti-Trump kinda person, you get told to shut up.

The pro-Trump people tell you to shut up because you're wrong and a stupid librul.

The formerly pro-Trump people tell you to shut up because "they're tired of all this" and "both parties are the same."

The "apolitical" people say that you're just annoying them with all these stories and you sound insane, don't you know that?

And so on. So if you're like me and you glom onto every Trump story because nearly EVERY Trump story is insane and a violation of our political and ethical norms and because it seems like EVERY Trump story is worth following so that we don't become some kind of disgusting authoritarian shithole.... well.... you "sound crazy."

Which... well we were told would happen over a year ago. Timothy Snyder taught me this. Masha Gessen taught me this.

But those of us who take the current admin both seriously and literally and take this whole horrific shitshow for what it is.... we're the assholes. And me personally I'm sick of it. If and when my madness for the past year is proven correct, I'm going to rub it in everyone's faces for years. Fuck 'em.

What is crazy is that a lot of folks do not care if the RNC is working directly with Fox News. State run media is something they welcome.

There are a shocking number of people out there who welcome authoritarian rule if they think it aligns with their beliefs.

This short book digs into this concept a bit. Every American should read this: https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

Along those lines, I also recommend Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny", a small but significant book. It gets down to basics and points out what we can actually do to stave off dictatorship and tyranny.

Here’s some great books I’m reading/have read recently that I recommend:

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Columbine

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

And here’s my favorite book about writing ever:

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories That Resonate

Very interesting. I'll give this a read later, thank you.

If you haven't already read it, the mini-book "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder is eerie.

Everyone left or right please read this book. It's cheap and a very short read. I'm begging you

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, written by a very respected history professor at Yale who is specialized on the Holocaust.

That being said, I'm not sure I want to spend any time on this converastion with a /r/the_donald leak.

i think the argument "be extra vigilant, because Trump is a wanna-be dictator" is a cogent and effective one. i recommend on tyranny by timothy snyder for a more in-depth look at this argument

I came here to suggest the same; I'm glad to see someone else recommend it. White Cargo is a pretty good read on the subject.

It's a good read

The Irish most likely.

Edit: There's this book

http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963
HEre's a good place to start

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/27/1265498/-The-slaves-that-time-forgot Here's another

Relevant

Relevant.

There is a book about this.
https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X/ref=nodl_

I will check it out.

Currently finishing Anotomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

And the similarities make me wake up screaming daily. Seriously we are goose-stepping to plan.

Hate on news
Demonization on religion
Blame immigration
Sprinkle apathy and complacency of public and leaders

What gives me hope is the judges who put a stay. That didn't happen in either Italy or Germany.

> So we should wage war against everyone who has bad ideas?

If that bad idea involves the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, then yes, I'd say we should try and stop them, forcefully if necessary

> And how would one tell the difference between nazis and non-nazis?

You just need to know the signs to look for. If you want to learn more about them, I'd suggest reading Anatomy of Fascism or The Origins of Totalitarianism, both of which give you a good understanding of how to identify actual fascism. Also, while I'm linking to Amazon, I'd also like to recommend It Can't Happen Here, which is a novel written in the 1930s about how the rise in Fascism would look in America

http://theleder.com/docs/Misc/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

According to Robert Paxton (author of Anatomy of Fascism), fascism in United States would likely be religious

>For example, while a new fascism would necessarily diabolize some enemy, both internal and external, the enemy would not necessarily be Jews. An authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well;

I think Christian Theocratic Republic would manifest itself trough the five stages of fascism as described in the book and article above:

1. Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
   
2. Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
   
3. Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
   
4. Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
   
5. Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy
   
   >The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.
   
   ps. I like Paxton's take on fascism. He sees fascism as strategy to achieve power. Fascist movements can
   have very opportunistic turns in their ideology and policies.

>essentially fascist

Stop using that word like it has no historical definition. There are a lot of things you could critique about the current Turkish state but the idea that it's equivalent to some kind of mid-20th century form of militaristic nationalism is absurd.

Hitler also stated quite clearly:
>Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not.' - Adolf Hitler, Sunday Express, 28 September 1930

That's basically the underlying point of marxism/socialism/communism. That private property (not to be confused with personal property in the minds of most leftists) has to be eliminated. If fascists are against it, then they cannot be real socialists by definition.

Fascism is not anti-capitalist. It borrowed imagery and language from socialism because that is the idea that dominated mass politics at the time. Without doing that it would have failed as a popular movement. That would be like saying you are against affordable healthcare (I don't mean the controversial ACA here) in American politics today. Everyone wants healthcare to be cheaper and it would be political suicide to say you didn't want that. Likewise, Europe just before and after WW1 only wanted social programs. Some more socialist than others.

Additionally, when Fascism was being created, there was no revolutionary popular movement on the right. The revolutionary right-wing had to borrow key ideas from socialists in order to define their own movement. They had no intention of keeping bona fide socialist ideas, but rather corrupting these ideas for their own purposes.

I'll quote from The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what fascism is and the danger it poses.

>Whenever fascist parties acquired power, however, they did nothing to carry out these anticapitalist threats. By contrast, they enforced with the utmost violence and thoroughness their threats against socialism. Street over turf with young communists were among their most powerful propaganda images.

Libertarians of all people should be especially sensitive to politicians who say one thing but do another. If a politician says they are libertarian, but does not act like it, then they are actually a sympathizer with the political actions they take, not the words.

Wait what? Since when are we doing the "guilty until proven innocent" shit? I thought first you'd need evidence for her being a fascist,... oh right she's a right winger, normal rules don't apply to her.

Idk man, I just go with the stuff 5 experts on fascism said because, you know they studied that crap their whole life.

here a paragraph from an article about fascism and which current politicians fit the description:

>Robert Paxton (author of: The Anatomy of Fascism) agrees: "I don't think it helps very much to use this inflammatory term [fascism] about Trump. 'Populist demagogue' works fine." So does Payne: "The Sweden Democrats and Le Pen movement in France really are just right-wing movements, in the sense of being conservative movements. There's nothing categorically fascist about them. They are outside the general consensus of center-left politics in these countries, and people want to find special pejoratives to apply to them."

I have a book called From Sea to Shining Sea I haven't erad it but it looks like something you're after.

I know you said fiction/pleasure, but I read A People's History of the USA. It's certainly not fictional, yet it is gripping.

• Look through a few political science books
  
  
• Read from a few well respected publications:
  
  -The Economist
  
  -Slate
  
  -The Atlantic
  
  -Foreign Policy Magazine
  
  (Just to name a few well rounded publications.)
  
  
• Read an enormous amount of History Books.
  
  A People's History of the United States By Howard Zinn is a great primer, but I'm sure some people will say that it leans too far to the left. Either way I thought it was great, regardless of your political view.
  
  
• Debate with people. Seek out (constructive) debate with those that disagree with you. Constantly challenge your own ideas and preconceived notions.
  
  
• Rinse and Repeat.
  
  EDIT:
  
  
• Also, I forgot the most important thing: Constantly study and improve your skills in this subject. Without it, everything else is useless.
  
  

Start reading

Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

Suggested reading [fixed]

My source is largely Who Built America? and A Peoples' History of the United States. What are yours?

I don't have a thorough knowledge of 19th century international property law, but a lot of it has carried by principle from then until now.

If you really don't know any physics I guess I can see how it could be a difficult read. I think you should push through it slowly and try to understand it. That kind of understanding can blow your world up so large it's beyond description. I found it to be leisurely but I've had an interest in physics for at least five years. If you want to learn more about physics after this I recommend Brian Greene.

But if you want to move on to something else that won't make you feel stupid maybe try A Short History of Nearly Everything which tells of the scientists lives as they discovered important things through history. A People's History of the United States, on a different track, gives you American history through the eyes of the common people. Just thought I'd throw that in.

Don't abandon every hard book - we're all guilty of it but pushing your mind through some tough ones is never something you will regret on your deathbed. Know what I mean?

Read http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370

Clown, read your history, while you are at it look up the words corporatist and oligarchy. No taxation without representation, live free or die. Liberty was the foundation, not socialist nanny state horse shit. You are very obviously bereft of any historical context.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html

http://www.reddit.com/domain/tenthamendmentcenter.com

Your inability to understand your mom is a side effect of no education.

The Reluctant Metropolis by William Fulton. Not only does he talk about development and history of Los Angeles, but also how it relates to Orange County, the San Fernando Valley, and Las Vegas.

If you're interested in water and politics of the American west including Los Angeles, I also recommend Cadillac Desert -- pretty relevant in this multiyear drought

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is about water infrastructure in the American West and its politics.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is fiction but talks about human-nature relations.

That was anything but a free market purchase of water rights. LA used massive amounts of political muscle to get those water rights. Cadillac Desert has a really detailed account of this, but wikipedia has a decent summary

Some pretty shady shit went down to build the LA Aqueduct.

The book list just keeps growing in so many different directions that it's hard to identify which I want to tackle next (I also have a tendency to take meticulous notes while I read and that slows the process down even further!). Some of the topics I intend to read about once I'm done with the books mentioned:

• God: A Human History
  
• Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith
  
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
  
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
  
• Occult America
  
• When Prophecy Fails
  
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
  
• Cosmos
  
• Norse Mythology
  
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
  
• Misquoting Jesus
  
• On Bullshit
  
• The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
  
• Why People Believe Weird Things
  
  Plus a bunch of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, and others. There are way too many. And all the fiction books I want to read too! It's not that I didn't read books before, but my faith transition has sparked an intense desire to study and learn far greater than I ever experienced before.

Here are half-a-dozen good ones for you:

• The Axemaker's Gift: Technology's Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture, by James Burke and Robert Ornstein
  
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner
  
• Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, by Cathy Young
  
• The Essential William H. Whyte, ed. Albert LaFarge
  
• No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, by Naomi Klein
  
• Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, by John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton

I'd suggest taking a look at Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner. It's an excellent read in my opinion, more of an ecology book with it's central focus of water availability in the west. Having said that, the history, economics, and conflicts water policy/availability has created has had a huge impact on planning policy and how the western US developed.

In Cadillac Desert (I believe, I read it a while ago and could be mistaken on my source), there was a suggestion that the American west be divided along watersheds. That seems like a geographical feature that is not used very often, but causes quite a few problems between countries.

non-fiction:

I liked Eddie' Huang's Fresh Off The Boat. Don't let the shitty TV show (which the dude doesn't like) scare you off. It's an interesting book that covers a wide range of shit. Not just cooking or being Asian.

If you know who Eddie Huang is and you aren't a fan/don't want to give it a shot, maybe alternatively try one of Anthony Bourdain's books. I personally haven't ready them though.

The Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whale ship Essex again, ignore the shitty movie. Well, I haven't seen it but I assume so. Very interesting true story about a whaling ship in 1800 something that's destroyed by a sperm whale and the shipwrecked crew tries to survive. Basically a real life Moby Dick - Herman Melville based his story on the Essex.
Fiction:

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is an easy entertaining easy read. I'm now realizing all of recommendations all seem to have movies but that's coincidence. I was also gonna say American Psycho.

Books are cool. I don't read enough anymore.

If you are not a land lubber you might try In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick or Wreck of the Medusa: The Tragic Story of the Death Raft by Alexander McKee.

Until just last night I had never heard of the Essex. I was talking with a guy at my local bar and he recommended I read this book.

Two naval books that are great reads:

http://www.amazon.com/To-Rule-Waves-British-Shaped/dp/0060534257

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship-Essex/dp/0141001828/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382822400&sr=1-1&keywords=whaleship+essex

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex Link

This is a nice, easy reading book about the story Moby Dick is based on. The Essex was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale and her crew had to navigate home in whaleboats. It definitely falls more on the popular history side of the fence.

Don't know if this helps at all, but for historical context the story of the whalingship Essex was purportedly part of the inspiration for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book written from the perspective of a cabin boy on the Essex. It is one of the most riveting and haunting books I have ever read. This background stuff won't help too much on the literary criticism side of things, but helps put the story into a bit of historical context.

This book is exactly $12.34.

http://www.amazon.com/In-Heart-Sea-Tragedy-Whaleship/dp/0141001828

Jewish stuff aside, I'm currently in the middle of The Alchemy of Air about the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, about the Essex disaster, which inspired Moby Dick.

Personally, I think the American Empire is declining. Sir John Glubb had a wonderful write up of this, and I have copied his conclusion below. The full PDF can be found here and it is only 27 pages long.

Glubb looked at eleven empires over the course of history. I copied a relevant summary from the end. The pdf is online here.

> As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.

> (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.

> (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.

> (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations?

> (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great
nations seem to be:

> The Age of Pioneers (outburst)

> The Age of Conquests

> The Age of Commerce

> The Age of Affluence

> The Age of Intellect

> The Age of Decadence.

> (e) Decadence is marked by:

> Defensiveness

> Pessimism

> Materialism

> Frivolity

> An influx of foreigners

> The Welfare State

> A weakening of religion.

> (f) Decadence is due to:

> Too long a period of wealth and power

> Selfishness

> Love of money

> The loss of a sense of duty.

> (g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.

> (h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.

> (i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.

The real question is how technology will either speed up, slow down. or prevent the same thing from happening to America.

I also recommend the following books:

The Collapse of Complex Societies, By Joseph Tainter

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, By Jared Diamond

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change

Finally, when it comes to survival information, I highly recommend www.survivalblog.com. To me, they are the best of the best.

I also would like to plug Radio Free Redoubt (podcast) as well as AmRRON (American Redoubt Radio Operator's Network).

Did you not notice that I said what the source is? Jared Diamond's Collapse?


You want chapter 15, starting on page 441, but it is a good idea to read the whole book.

http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-Edition/dp/0143117009

Battle Cry of Freedom is widely regarded as one of the best SINGLE VOLUME treatments of the US Civil war. There are better multi volume sets, and better treatments of specific events, but as a general knowledge base, this is top shelf material.

The Idea of America Is a great, short read discussing the formative years of the United States.

Older editions of Western Civilizations are quite good and informative. Yes, they're actual college textbooks, but they're easy to follow and surprisingly concise. Pick up a used copy for under $20, ignore the full retail price.

I'd actually take that as advice for just about any book on history. Many university level courses use the sorts of books recommended on this thread, and any used copies Amazon sells through its Marketplace are more likely than not copies read through once for a college course, and sold back for a few extra dollars. I have a substantial collection of used non fiction purchased at a discount for this exact reason, and there's nothing wrong with a few marks in the book, or a crease in the cover. The content is what matters.

So your position is that we should have monuments to monsters in places of high regard like the state house and public parks in order to remind us not to become monsters?

If that's the logic. It sure ain't working.

See the example of the klan standing with the bedford bust in the state house. Or the rally around the Robert E Lee monument in Charlottesville where they marched with torches shouting that the jews "will not replace us" and then murdered a woman.

The monuments aren't a deterrence to monsters, they are an incitement.

Should there be a monument to Osama bin Laden in order to remind us not to commit mass murder in the name of religious insanity? We consigned his corpse to the bottom of the ocean because we knew that was a bad idea.

> It was a different time which required different actions.

No, it wasn't a different time. There have always been people condemning white supremacy. The only difference now is that the white supremacists don't have quite as much power to muffle their critics as they used to.

ETA:

> The common man fought that war and died never knowing what they were really fighting over.

No, they absolutely knew what they were fighting for. They weren't dummies. The average foot soldier was well aware they were fighting for white supremacy. The declarations of secession explicitly spelled out they were fighting for white supremacy and they used that to recruit the cannon fodder - if black people were equal to white people, then poor whites would no longer have anyone below them in the social hierarchy.

Here's a quote from The Battlecry of Freedom: Civil War Era by James McPherson:

> So they undertook a campaign to convince nonslaveholders that they too had a stake in disunion. The stake was white supremacy. In this view, the Black Republican program of abolition was the first step toward racial equality and amalgamation. Georgia’s Governor Brown carried this message to his native uplands of north Georgia whose voters idolized him. Slavery “is the poor man’s best Government,” said Brown. “Among us the poor white laborer . . . does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. ... He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men” Thus yeoman farmers “will never consent to submit to abolition rule,” for they “know that in the event of the abolition of slavery, they would be greater sufferers than the rich, who would be able to protect themselves. . . . When it becomes necessary to defend our rights against so foul a domination, I would call upon the mountain boys as well as the people of the lowlands, and they would come down like an avalanche and swarm around the flag of Georgia.

> what I've come to realize is the North also was a beneficiary or at least opportunistically benefitted from the assistance of the Slave states

Yes, any book on Civil War history would address that. I recommend McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom for a good one-volume treatment of the war. No one said the North was pure as the driven snow, enlightened, embraced racial equality, etc. To "realize" that a caricature is false isn't that great of a leap. It's like "realizing" Lincoln wasn't an angel crusading since birth to free the slaves. It's true, but also rebuts only a cartoon version of history that no one really believes in.

>but the CSA was kind of caught holding the historical hot potato here that most western European powers previously benefited from while it was convenient.

Let's not act like they lacked agency. Those European powers had abolished slavery. The South was not in the process of moving away from slavery, rather they more of their wealth was tied up in slaves as we get closer to the Civil War. Their ideology and religion both celebrated slavery as a virtuous and enlightened structure of society.

>(in a southern state that never economically recovered 100%

Never recovered from having the slaves freed, but there are other issues too. The South rejected industrialization, rejected higher rates of education, rejected urbanization, etc. The South made cultural decisions regarding a rural, slow, relaxed existence, and decisions have consequences. The North's choices regarding urbanization, industrialization, automation, education, commerce etc also had consequences. These consequences are still playing out, because one set of choices creates wealth and the other does not, at least not nearly as well.

>This isn't really better than racism in a lot of ways.

This isn't about racism, though. It's about admitting what the Rebel flag actually stands for. We need to have the honesty of admitting that the flag was explicitly created as the national flag of a slave empire. Not a "fight the power" middle finger to "the man," but a confederacy of states dedicated explicitly to white supremacy and slavery, forever.

If I festoon my apartment with Nazi regalia, no one would be stupid enough to think maybe I was using the symbols in a value-neutral way. The swastika existed before Hitler, but the Rebel Flag did not exist before the Confederacy. It is not a value-neutral symbol, no more than this is a value-neutral symbol. We're not kids flipping people off at a Marilyn Manson or Insane Clown Posse concert.

I'm want to suggest folks looking to read Shelby Foote's Civil War series, consider Battle Cry of Freddom instead. McPherson's book is Pulitzer Prize-winning, included in the Oxford history of the United States, highly praised, and is included (along with Foote's series) in the top books recommended by the Library of Congress on the subject.

Battle Cry of Freedom, your civil war bible.

http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Cry-Freedom-Oxford-History/dp/019516895X

Cracks knuckles. I, as what Tony Horwitz calls, "A Civil War Bore" (But also one for the American War of Independence) can give you some recommendations. You gotta read Gen. Grant's memoirs. Out of all the memoirs by the major players, Grant is the most readable of them all, it is so well written. Ken Burns' famous Documentary introduced me to the memoirs of two common soldiers. "Company Aytch" follows Sam Watkins as he fights in the Western Theater, from Shiloh to Nashville, and "All for the Union" by Elisha Hunt Rhodes follows one Federal soldier as he survives the entire war in the East, from 1st Bull Run to Appomattox. For a general history, "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson is the absolute best. For more detailed studies on the lives of the individual soldiers, the two classic works "The Life of Johnny Reb" and "The Life of Johnny Yank" are fantastic. Similar works and more modern works include "Fighting Means Killing", a detailed study on Civil War combat, and "The War for the Common Soldier", basically a general summary of the life of the common lad during the war. Now, if you want legacy, there is but one place to go: Tony Horwitz's legendary 1998 Magnum Opus "Confederates in the Attic." Over the course of two years, Tony takes you all across the American South, running into everything as varied as the KKK one county over from where I live in Kentucky (Yeah, I apologize on behalf of South-Central Kentucky in advance, but at least they're in Todd County and not Logan!!!), a Scarlet O' Harra impersonator in Atlanta, and a massive Civil War road trip in Virginia with a reactor buddy. Well written, Mr. Horwitz can make you feel whatever he wants. Tony is was of the best writers out there, and it is a shame we lost him in May. May he rest in peace.

Edit: Amazon Links

The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Company Aytch

All For the Union

Battle Cry of Freedom

The Life of Johnny Reb

The Life of Billy Yank

Fighting Means Killing

The War for the Common Soldier

Confederates in the Attic (If you buy no other book from this list, buy Confederates in the Attic)

For the Revolutionary War

• This Glorious Cause. One volume book, so it's not going to cover everything but for a general overview of the Revolutionary War it's great.
  
  
• Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy I'm partial to this one because of the focus on the Navy.
  
  
• Paul Revere's Ride Fischer does a great job in explaining the build up to the Revolution using Revere as a central figure.
  
  
• The First Salute. Barbara Truchman writes here about the vital role the Dutch played in keeping the Revolution alive via trade, and the consequences of that trade for the Dutch. It can sometime lose focus as Truchman goes into great detail about things that probably would be better left to footnotes, but it's still a great read. (Her Guns of August won a Pulitzer, and in my opinion it's a must-read for anyone at all interested in WWI.)
  
  For the Civil War
  
  
• The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. I'm a big fan of this, but it is three volumes so that means it's rather long.
  
  
• Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is also another classic in the field.
  
  
• Grant's Memoirs and Sherman's Memoirs are both must-reads.
  
  I have to recommend Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, both fantastic military fiction.
  
  
  
  

I did some research and this is supposed to be one of the better comprehensive American Civil War books out there.

Letter to a Christian Nation (Amazon, more quotes)

I'm not sure if Jerry's gotten to this one yet, but I'll post also just in case.

1. The God Virus
   
2. Godless
   
3. The Magic of Reality
   
4. Letter To A Christian Nation
   
   Also there are great podcasts, of course we are partial to Living After Faith (our official Podcast with Deanna and Rich Lyons), and there are many others as well. For blogs there is always Hemant Mehta's Friendly Atheist, and we're starting our blog this weekend as well, but there are tons of just quality folks out there who have so much to share and offer to the secular world.

> 1) He initially states that his issue is specific with the Islamic ideology itself, not Muslim people. Okay, following so far...

> 2) But then he supports his argument by referencing polls. Polls have to do with people; You can't poll an ideology. He references a few poll results that show a significant number of Muslims believe in oppression or violent acts.

> So, already he's stuck. You can't make the argument that an ideology is dangerous and that we need to do something about it without bringing Muslims into it.

He isn't saying Muslims don't need to change. However, there's a difference between being against people for who they are and being against the things they believe and do. He wants those Muslims who hold extreme views to change those views. This comes from a stance of well wishing, not ill wishing, so to speak.

According to Affleck it seems that any criticism of the beliefs of Muslims automatically falls under Islamophobia and thus racism. Yes, you can make a case that by its effects, such criticism predominantly happens to target non-white people. That however, would only be hypocritical if Harris refused to criticize white people for holding equivalent beliefs, which is definitely not the case. He is known to criticize all unreasonable religious beliefs, e.g. Christian beliefs and others. His frequent comparison to Jainism (which arguably lacks fundamentals that could lead to violence) shows that he really cares about the things people actually believe, and the consequences he presumes those beliefs to have on the world.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

If you are uncomfortable with the Larouche angle, there is The Big White Lie and The Politics of Heroin.

You'll need to educate yourself.

http://www.amazon.com/Powderburns-Cocaine-Contras-Drug-War/dp/0889625786

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1888363932

http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global/dp/1556524838

http://www.amazon.com/Big-White-Lie-Operation-Sabotage-ebook/dp/B008G5C74I

Since all people seem to be giving are Wikipedia articles and YouTube videos, why don't I suggest a well-written, dense, informative book on the subject.

Anyone interested in this topic should check out The Politics of Heroin by Alfred McCoy.
It's not an easy read but it's very interesting.

Lol, CIA troll boy want to talk about the supply of heroin by hezbollah! "Before you start pointing fingers...make sure your hands are clean! ;)
1.https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global-Trade/dp/1556524838

2.https://www.pressreader.com/usa/traveling-minds/20170915/281736974626728

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

>Yeah, you're wrong and u/PrickleyPearTaco knows what he's talking about. Since 2000, up until recently, Afghanistan opium production accounted for nearly 80% of the worlds opioid production.
>
>\^\^\^\^\^\^I was actually saying 90 percent or more. Since the rise of fentanyl the mexico harvests are declining and selling for a percentage of what the did a few years ago.
>
>Since the war there kicked off in 2001, all Taliban operations stop for two weeks while it is harvested. It's a cash crop. While you make the claim that Afghanistan is too rocky, you might pull up a map of the country. Admittedly, it is only really grown in the west, but is heavily water dependent and the government goes in and out on allowing it legally to grow.

\^\^\^\^The person who claimed that the Taliban controlled area was inferior for opium growth is an expert in the area and is correct. the US disproportionately blames the Taliban when infact it is more the US allies running drugs

>Afghanistan opium doesn't go to Asia, like you alluded two with your links. It goes up north and then into Europe, mostly Germany, Kazakhstan, and Azberizjan
>
>\^\^\^\^Î never said that it did. the Russians are pissed off and complaining . some does go to europe also. stop putting words in my mouth. You are a internet fake probably posting under 2nd name.,

http://docshare.tips/lt-col-bo-gritz-discovery-of-us-involvement-in-golden-triangle-opium-trade_58c2bbacb6d87fa7418b5828.html TELL THat to Bo Gritz about the opium.

>. The CIA has no play in the trade, although Afghanistan government officials have been known to pay the Taliban to move shipments. There's even a neighborhood in Kabul called the "Opium Highway" where a bunch of 'mansions' are all paid for by the opium trade. (All the owners get bags of cash from cia)
>
>\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^Your a liar. this is entirely a CIA game to make money https://www.businessinsider.com/hacked-stratfor-emails-dea-told-to-back-off-from-the-brother-of-afghan-president-hamid-karzai-2012-9#

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www&_r=0

​

19 October 2009 Classified Embassy Cable: Afghan Vice-President Ahmad Zia Masood was stopped by DEA with $52 million he was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-elite-afghans-millions-cash

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/230265

​

​

>The US is not protecting the opium fields in Afghanistan, and all the pictures of soldiers there are them just patrolling the area. It's not illegal (most years) although we will burn raw opium on objectives if found because of the claim that it's "funding terrorism". The matter of the fact is, it's not illegal to grow in Afghanistan and makes the most money per acre by far of anything else there.
>
>\^\^\^\^Never said it was illegal. that is you making stuff up. The afgahns did fine with reguler crops beofre the 1990s but because of war and the fact that it requires less water and the crop does not rot, they are more inclined and paid to do opium
>
>This is set forth in the book POlitics of Heroin in SE asia
>
>Just for fun, I saw the first DEA agent slowly turn toward depression when he came to Afghanistan in 2002. Dude thought he would win the war on drugs, then finally realize that growing opium wasn't illegal.
>
>\^\^îf you export to the USA it IS illegal and you will be indicted in US court like many already have,

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Afghanistan-Southeast/dp/1556524838

I got this book a while back: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

You'd be surprised how many morons die by falling into hot springs and the like.

I picked up a copy of Death in Yellowstone during a trip there a couple of years ago. Highly recommended.

The chapter on bears had many anecdotes about dog / bear interactions. Also people / bear interactions.

People can be really stupid.

Love Shoshone Geyser Basin. I've been there 3 times! Finally got to see Minute Man go off on the 3rd trip!

Ever read Death in Yellowstone? You'll never look at Shoshone Geyser Basin the same...

I worked a summer in Yellowstone a couple years ago. It's amazing how many people just lost their minds when they got near these large wild animals. The bison harmed FAR more people every year that bears ever do. Not because the bison are that aggressive, these people have never been around wild animals and think they are tame.

I was surprised how many times I was asked if they could swim in the hot springs. "I would not recommend it, since most of the springs are boiling or almost boiling. It would most likely be lethal"

FYI: the vast majority of deaths in Yellowstone are car accidents.

Check out Death in Yellowstone it's a great read

If you like spending money on something that wikipedia rendered obsolete-ish, I recommend

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

Picked it up as a young morbid person in the park. Fantastic.

> (and I suspect that West probably doesn't personally know that everyone in that group was identified with Antifa but still spread this talking point anyway).

And yet here you are, who have never spoken with anyone engaged in anti-fascist organizing, who have probably never marched in a street, spreading all kinds of Fox News talking points about "the ANTIFA."

You haven't the faintest idea what antifa is about. But you should. I strongly recommend talking to someone engaged in that work (which is 99% non-violent). Or read this book by scholar Mark Bray: https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

Here's a start:

Antifa Handbook

Militant Anti-Fascism

Combined with actually doing the things the far left calls for. Fascism doesn't come up in times of equal prosperity. It gains momentum when people are hopeless, when the system has failed them, when they feel threatened and fearful. If you want to defeat fascism you have to address the root causes - the racial ones and the economic/political ones.

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

​

Is a sort of history of Antifa, as least as the author sees it.

​

I bought a copy so.... as if I'm not already on a list! I haven't studied it yet, though. And I'm not sure how the author's version of antifa squares with antifa groups going around, which seem to have extended things from not just being anti-fascist to wanting to eliminate borders completely. Like, huh?

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> Maybe, but beating them in the streets only creates more Nazi's,

citation needed

For plenty of examples that explicitly contradict your claim, collected by a historian of political radicalism & human rights, read this.

For America, you definitely need to read "Color of Law". And it should be mandatory reading by Blue City residents and planners because most of the most racist systems like zoning and red-lining started in Blue Cities. Zoning is straight out of San Francisco and intended to limit, displace and steal the real estate of Chinese-Americans! It's a matter of public record! And yet zoning and very similar types of arbitrary and capricious planning is still practiced today.

Having been raised in the SF Bay Area, this doesn't surprise me because "Blue" value people are usually the most racist people I've met. They think they aren't but if you listen to their words and watch their deeds (e.g. the NIMBYism that has caused the current housing crisis in the SF Bay Area), you see it's primarily about racism, sometimes hidden by classicism, which is hidden by "preserving the community norms/feel".

Thank you for your reply.

Sensing that you are level headed and fair minded, I'd like to recommend a book for you to read. Maybe glance at the pages available on Amazon and see if you'd be interested...

The Color of Law..... by Richard Rothstein

Just a nitpick - "Dr" Lawrence Britt doesn't really exist. This is a chain email that was popularized during the Bush administration. Robert Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism is a much better definition.

Anyway, yes, he's a fascist, fascism is inherently populist.

Like others have mentioned, the Hindu Caste system is closer to a traditional land-based feudalism seen in Medieval Europe and pre-Imperial Japan.

It's important to emphasize that fascism is very different from feudalism/the Hindu Caste system, because it involves the mass participation in politics. While defining fascism has been very difficult, Columbia Univ. WWII historian Robert Paxton has defined it as:

>a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline ... and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence ... [the] goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

You can read more about fascism in Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism.

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

Give it a read. It's a pretty interesting book about what fascism is,what is isn't, and how fascist governments come to power.

I'm a historian of Latin America, so I really only know about the US-Latin American cases or the US/Canadian/European - Caribbean cases. Peter Kornbluh has published a lot of declassified US primary source documents that relate to US interventionism abroad.

The Pinochet File, about Chile
Bay of Pigs Declassified, about Cuba

A really good secondary source is Greg Grandin's book Empire's Workshop.

A great secondary source on this sort of stuff occurring during the 1970s in Southeast Asia, by Alfred McCoy, is The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Meticulously researched (the book is over 1000 pages, the footnotes are endless). McCoy is a pretty tremendous historian, out of U of Wisconsin. His area of expertise is Southeast Asia, not the US, and like me, he stumbled into a much darker story than he ever expected to find.

How strong do you think the evidence is that the CIA sells drugs?

Note: Some people will think this is just outrageous conspiracy theory but there have been serious scholars, journalists and politicians that have made this claim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y0fLa2y48g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ9fgi7IZSk

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7423206n

http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global-Trade/dp/1556524838/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372697694&sr=1-2&keywords=cia+drugs

Et voilà:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global/dp/1556524838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380747110&sr=8-1&keywords=the+politics+of+CIA+heroin

my bad, bad reading skills on my part. and we have been involved in that market and that region since the cold war. this is a great book on the history of the french and mainly american intelligence services using the drug trade, heroin in particular, to finance their operations. great book.

I had a hard time finding some old reports and documentation I had from the CIA regarding opium cultivation, extraction, and converting it into heroin or painkilling pharmaceuticals. There is tons of evidence out there, though naturally, the US government won't admit or deny any involvement. Here is just one peer reviewed book http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global/dp/1556524838

Though this is not at all what I had intended to post here. I'll just say this one thing and be on my way. Over and over through out history there was been a pattern of repeated abuses of power by those who hold it. Very few are capable of holding a position of great power without using that power to benefit themselves in one way or another. Why is it that most americans like the think that there isn't still a huge amount of corruption and exploitation within our government, just as it still exists throughout the world.

The CIA literally has been bribing officials/polititions/police in governments all around the world for decades. That's why they are so secretive, that's why an INTELLIGENCE agency is operating drones of such destructive power. Its very difficult to know for sure what all the CIA and many other unnamed agencies have had their hands in. Ever wonder why the FBI is always pushing for more and more power as if they're being left out of the party that all the big kids get to attend?

Its not our job to prove the corruption that continues to happen in this country day after day. It should be the job of every person in whatever country they live in to question authority when they do not agree, to voice opposition if they feel cheated, to not forget the mistakes we have made in the past by putting too much trust in man's ability to control his desires and to ALWAYS demand more transparency inside and outside of government.

Of all who have seen the video's released by Brad Manning, who still thinks he should be in jail. Who honestly can watch US forces gunning down civilians and even two reporters and think that we are doing anything just or honorable anymore.

/End rant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US
http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global/dp/1556524838

It's been happening for decades, it's not a conspiracy theory it's been proven again and again.

If you are in a campground as big as that one, there is zero chance of bear attack. But, if you want to suitably freak yourself out about the ways Yellowstone is trying to kill you besides bears read this book while there, (in every gift shop) http://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Yellowstone-Accidents-Foolhardiness-National/dp/1570980217

Loved this as a kid

I think I read it in this book actually.

I could be wrong though

Death in Yellowstone changed my opinion on kid-leashes. Of course, taking a toddler to a massive caldera/wildlife preserve is a bit of a risky idea in the first place. But leashing them up could mitigate most of that risk.

Oh - yeah, like BeTee said, tourists (or tourons as the staff called them [moron tourists]) are notorious for their naivete. There is an entire book dedicated to the dumb ways tourons have gotten themselves killed in Yellowstone over the years.

After reading this I know how easily that could have turned into Thai Soup

They have graphic fliers and signs which I am positive they saw. Especially since the lady was joking about the danger. There is a good book called Death in Yellowstone that has many good stories about what dumbasses people can be.

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

> the very nature of addressing the privileged upper class is addressing the power and privilege that their money and status grants them. It's inherently critical of neoliberal capitalism because of this.

Bullshit; money and power never enter into any approved privilege dynamic. If the did, Warren wouldn’t constantly be on the defensive from neolibs like Harris accusing her of pandering to racism by not mentioning race enough.

> You specifically left out the "class war" shit that gets the right so assblasted.

If you’re talking about conservatives, they’re the other side of the neolib coin. And again, neoliberalism loves to get proles fighting and then have the left hail it as the coming of the class war, this is what happens all the time, and it’s why Antifa believes they’re fighting the power by breaking a Starbucks window.

> another leftist movement in America sabotaged. Better uncritically blame people being mean

Yeah, the people being mean were the neolibs. They destroyed it with woke social progressivism. You subscribe to a morality that was invented to undermine genuine anger at elites and turn it into a squabble over race. That’s your side that did that.

> Trump voters are older fat fucks who make money as landlords or pool cleaning businesses.

Absolute bullshit; he won on the backs of angry disenfranchised laborers who were being displaced by literal slave labor from the south. The fat fucks vote GOP no matter what, not the people who came out to vote for him in ‘16.

> The real hard workers? The ones who know that shit is stupid and just want what's best for their family? We can work with that.

“We can work with the proles as long as they just shut up and admit that we’re morally better than them because we went to college and learned how privilege actually works, the dumb fucks.”

> how people being mean made everyone a Nazi

“Less and less attention was paid to defending the real needs of the working class, and finally political expediency made it seem undesirable to relieve the social or cultural miseries of the broad masses at all, for otherwise there was a risk that these masses, satisfied in their desires could no longer be used forever as docile shock troops.” -Hitler on nominally pro-labor progressives

He says, multiple times, in his book, that he would not have been able to get people to vote for him if the socdems hadn’t embraced this sort of unhelpful proletarian infighting. He literally brags about how lefty parties scorning the working class left a giant door for him to walk through. He says that if the bourgeoise wanted to defang the socdems, they’d treat the workers better, and laughs at them for being unable to realize that.

> Why weren't the small government conservatives put into camps?

They were. The Center party, a spineless nominally center-right party, was outlawed and its members forced to join the NSDAP on pain of prison, just like the socialists who were told it was the SA or jail.

Oh, and attempting to co-opt actual pro-worker movements as “SJW’s”, who are authoritarian neolibs, is sickening.

> a failure of the left is not justification to become a Nazi

I didn’t say it justified anything, I said it was a cause. No, it isn’t justified, but when people are treated badly, they lash out and run to the other end of the spectrum. This is just human nature; you have to deal with it.

> what the fuck is up with you guys acting like antifa is an organization or something?

Their official, designated handbook is literally given away by Amazon, they have cell leaders like Felarca, they have fucking sponsors. Just because a group is organized by cells to be harder to track doesn’t mean it isn’t unified or doesn’t follow an organizational philosophy.

> Where is their mission statement? How do they coordinate?

Read their book for details. I found it very interesting.

> Who is the Al-Baghdadi of antifa?

Movements don’t need singular leaders. Baghdadi dies tomorrow, ISIS will still exist. Their aims are set by the people who pay them, so that’s NGO’s, universities, other lefty groups, corporate sponsors like BK, etc.

> who's side were the "Jews will not replace us!" protesters on?

The Nazi side, I’d guess.

> 'm becoming a little concerned with the fact that you guys seem to think that white people like me becoming Nazi's is a natural reaction to anti-racism and progressive politics?

When people are treated badly, they respond by lashing out. Neoliberalism has fucked them. The left has hung them out to dry. They’re naturally gonna embrace nasty shit on the other side of the spectrum; I’m not saying this is good, but I’m saying it is happening.

Are you seriously using a dictionary to define "uniform"? You are aware that your definition is the adjective form of Uniform and not the Noun, right? Here, let me help you

> dress of a distinctive design or fashion worn by members of a particular group and serving as a means of identification

That's the one. But as it's been said over and over, this is not a uniform to identify themselves, it's a tactic to avoid identification. For more information on similar tactics, see Black Bloc.

As for a literal history book (have you read your article?), that's not an official handbook or anything like that. Here's the Amazon link to the book, because aparently, an anarchist "terrorist group" sells their super-secret books on fucking Amazon.

Maybe because it was written by a historian that's sympathetic with the movement, and that's it. As you may or may not have read on your own article, that book is from 2017, and the Antifascist movement exists since 1920.


But i find it interesting that you feel that Fascists "should not be poked", and that you are happy to outarm and outnumber others to defend them.

Here you go.

Seriously though, if you want to understand us, our history, and our motivation, then read that. It's written by an insider -a member of an anarchist federation- who's been involved in leftist struggle for decades. It is the best single source of information you will find on anti-fascism. It might even be in your local library.

You clearly have no interest in facts or reality or debating in good faith and just want to make wildly inaccurate claims and paint your opponents with emotionally loaded terms.

I changed my tune because I took the time to actually read up on Antifa and refresh myself. You should probably do the same so you stop sounding like a poorly informed idiot. If you did that you might actually know that they do have a clear plan of action and clear agenda. For Antifa, direct confrontation is a key strategy intended to shut down far-right demonstrations and block platforms for hate speech.



You'd also know they aren't a single unified group, but a patchwork of affiliated groups, and various local and regional affiliated groups are going to have a slightly different method of approaching the work. Despite that they have clearly defined rules of engagement and manuals for organizing and action.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/23/what-antifa-and-what-does-movement-want/593867001/
https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035



If you bothered to actually learn something about them you'd also know they have actually been successful quite a few times, despite your false claims (presumably pulled straight out of your ass) to the contrary.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2018/03/how-antifa-uses-no-platforming-successfully-fight-white-supremacy

Directly from one of their own sites:

"Antifa action against fascist organizing has proven to be effective. Direct confrontation in Charlottesville ended the ‘Unite the Right’ rally before it even began, and a timely intervention the previous evening thwarted the far right’s ominous attempt to attack a community meeting in a black church. Antifa action succeeded in halting a far right demonstration in Boston. Anarchists also prevailed definitively against the far right in Berkeley, pushing back their police protection and chasing them out of Martin Luther King Jr Park. The success of these battles will be remembered as pivotal moments in what is sure to be an enduring struggle against government supported white supremacist violence."

That sounds like a lot of success to me. They even drove Richard Spencer to quit his college speaking tour, and ended rallies in Houston and Tennessee.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/03/12/antifa-is-winning-richard-spencer-rethinks-his-college-tour-after-violent-protests/?utm_term=.ef366dc462ab

https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-claims-victory-after-alt-right-pulls-out-second-half-white-lives-matter-695634

https://antiracistaction.org/nazis-not-welcome-antifascist-victory-in-houston/


As far as violence being all they do, you continue to be incredibly and totally wrong.

"But at a moment when Trump’s “violence on many sides” rhetoric has installed a one-dimensional image of antifa in the wider imagination, Jenkins insists that large-scale standoffs are only part of what the movement does—and not the most important part. Antifa also aims to shame white supremacists, heightening the social cost of involvement with racist organizations. “You’ve got to be proactive against them when they’re not rolling 500 deep,” he said. That’s where doxing comes in. In the wake of Charlottesville, he points out, Unite the Right rallygoers are being identified online, with lasting consequences. One has left college, another has been fired from his job at a Berkeley, California, hot dog stand. “These are kids who thought it was funny hassling people online and think they can get away with it in real life,” said Jenkins. “And then they learn the hard way: Real life is different than online.”



from

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/daryle-jenkins-has-stepped-up-to-explain-the-shadowy-groups-violent-tactics-to-the-world.html

Antifa does defend protestors. For example from one person who was at Charlottesville: "in Charlottesville, the counterprotestors “nonviolent” stance was met with heavily armed men on the right. They came with bats, clubs, plywood shields painted with swastikas, brass knuckles, tear gas canisters, and wooden sticks. Not to mention the guns. The heavily armed militia were everywhere. They liked that they made you feel nervous. It was fun for them. Those are the people Antifa stepped up to defend against...
...I never felt safer than when I was near antifa. They came to defend people, to put their bodies between these armed white supremacists and those of us who could not or would not fight. They protected a lot of people that day, including groups of clergy. My safety (and safety is relative in these situations) was dependent upon their willingness to commit violence. " LINK


Who are these innocent people you claim they attacked? Protestors at a white supremacist rally? That isn't innocent, it's complicit.

You're a racist and a fascist if you support racism and fascism. This isn't a difficult concept. The whole claim that they just call anyone they don't like those terms is utterly false and just a tactic the right uses to try and hide their shitty behaviour. You aren't a racist and a fascist because you don't believe what I believe, you are a racist and a fascist because you believe in racism and fascism and support racist fascist leaders. To be clear, this is a rhetorical you.

You clearly don't have the slightest shred of self awareness. You are whining about antifa supposedly playing victim when faced with violence, while repeatedly playing victim and whining about all the supposed violence antifa directs against fascists. This is a common tactic. Some have claimed Antifa are a "gift to the alt-right," letting them play victim and validating their paranoid fantasies about the persecution of white dudes

There is nothing weak about people standing up to fascists and banding together to smash them. The fact that they are smart enough not to fight when they are outnumbered doesn't make them stupid or cowardly, it means they have a grasp on good tactics and when not to fight. Only a total moron would take on a mob of nazi pigs by themselves when they could instead regroup and present a united front.

Antifa has been successful, white supremacist rally attendance is way down lately. Clearly they are doing something right.


You haven't provided an argument at all, just a bunch of serious misconceptions and baseless insults. Again, you severely overestimate yourself.

From the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray 
According to Bray, Antifa “can variously be described as a kind of ideology, an identity, a tendency or milieu, or an activity of self-defense.” It’s a leaderless, horizontal movement whose roots lie in various leftist causes—Communism, anarchism, Socialism, anti-racism. Antifa activists believe that Fascists forfeit their rights to speak and assemble when they deny those same rights to others through violence and intimidation. https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Antifa%3A+The+Anti-Fascist+Handbook&qid=1569685904&sr=8-1

How I see it. To me Antifa reminds me of the organizational semi structure of Anonymous 4chan group. That was in occupy wall street. Where anyone can become a member. As long as they follow the few rules they have. Online there would be meet ups and people show up. 

It is hard for us here in America to comprehend that there are many styles of organization not just Capitalist centralized structure. In fact, many styles have and do exist all throughout history. The benefits of this type of leaderless organization (Because there are different styles of leaderless organization) is that it can be deployed rapidly. Since there is no leader forces have no way of focusing on one member. Since they can claim it and leave it just as fast harder for forces to dismantle it. It can blend within the population. Harder for the ego to grow since everyone is the same. There is no rank and file. There are cons like every style. Antifa then is an organizing strategy, not an actual group of people. They can have members of other groups or individuals. 

Modern Antifa was inspired by the militant anti fascist network that lasted through 1932 to 1933 called Antifaschistische Aktion the abbreviation would be Antifa. Modern Antifa are inspired but are not the same because they were an actual group. 

In the 1970s the far right extreme groups started to rise again. Although always existing in one form or another they picked upped the pace during the 70s. In Britain the skinhead white power groups started infiltrating the punk rock scene. Following the fall of the Berlin wall Neo Nazis started to grow. Eventually the far right spread and woke up the American far right racist groups. The book The Turner Diaries became a call to arms to many American racist. They quickly found out that the new recruiting method would be online. And thus to counter them the Anti-Fascist groups began again. Learning from the past adopting the colors and tactics of the ones before them. 

hell, they sell their literal how-to-riot guides!

Someone whose business has been burned by the rioters over the past few years should launch a class-action suit on them for dealing in that contraband!

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook

In addition to the comment above, check out the book Color of Law

>Any "segregation" which does exist is entirely self-imposed by people choosing of their own free will to live in certain neighborhoods which are populated by people who match their own ethnicity or socio-economic class

"There’s this idea that people self-segregate, but the reality is that there’s never really been self-segregation in Milwaukee"

Segregation was literally the law of the land for 400 entire goddamn years. Not to mention Milwaukee was littered with sundown towns that helped create the racial landscape. If you think Milwaukee's racial demographics are just some happy accident, then you REALLY need to educate yourself, because there's no excuse for being this ignorant in 2019. If you haven't read The Color of Law or Sundown Towns (which very obviously you haven't) then don't bother responding.

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Description|Jordan Peele's 'Us' - Everything Explained and Deeper Meaning⤶⤶Chapter Times:⤶⤶00:13 Intro⤶01:22 Plot Synopsis and Ending Explained⤶03:18 Reading the Twist and Trauma Theory⤶04:00 Foreshadowing the Twist⤶07:41 Sci-Fi Tropes, Postcolonialism and Post-Colonial Guilt⤶08:56 White Savior Archetype⤶11:04 'Us' as 'Black Cinema'⤶13:07 Is Jason a tethered?⤶15:37 Kitty/Dahlia - Why doesn't she kill Adelaide?⤶16:29 Jeremiah 11:11 What's up with that?⤶18:26 Mirroring and the visual motif of the Scissors explained.⤶19:06 Deeper Meaning - What, or who do the tethered represent?⤶ 19:35 Probably the right answer⤶ 20:14 Bad Answer⤶ 20:41 Good Answer⤶22:20 Further Racial Commentary⤶23:08 Problematising Black Masculinity⤶24:28 Reoccurring Motif's in Jordan Peele's work.⤶25:28 Outro⤶⤶⤶Resources: ⤶⤶Ash, Erin -- ‘Emotional Responses to Savior Films: Concealing Privilege or Appealing to Our Better Selves?’⤶⤶https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/projections/11/2/proj110203.xml⤶⤶Caruth, Cathy - Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. ⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unclaimed-Experience-Trauma-Narrative-History/dp/1421421658/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Unclaimed+Experience%3A+Trauma%2C+Narrative%2C+and+History.&qid=1554213916&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmrnull⤶⤶Froude, J.A. -- The English In The West Indies [Remember this is explicitly an example of Colonial Racism and needs to be understood as such.]⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Indies-James-Anthony-Froude/dp/1546922687/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+english+in+the+west+indies&qid=1554211922&s=books&sr=1-1 ⤶⤶Lazarus, Neil (ed) -- The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies.⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Companion-Postcolonial-Companions-Literature/dp/0521534186⤶⤶Le Guin, Ursula – The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas⤶⤶https://www.amazon.com/Ones-Who-Walk-Away-Omelas-ebook/dp/B01N0PZ35J⤶⤶Newman, Stephanie -- Too Afraid To Protest⤶https://www.writingonglass.com/content/too-afraid-to-protest ⤶⤶Rankine, Claudia – Citizen⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Citizen-American-Lyric-Claudia-Rankine/dp/1555976905⤶⤶Rothstein, Richard – The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853⤶⤶Sharf, Zack - Lupita Nyong’o Used Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Inspiration for ‘Us’ Doppelgänger Voice⤶⤶https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/lupita-nyongo-us-voice-robert-f-kennedy-jr-1202052716/⤶⤶Tarrant-Reid, Linda – Discovering Black America: From the Age of Exploration to the Twenty-First Century ⤶⤶https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Black-America-Exploration-Twenty-First/dp/0810970988⤶⤶Touré – Who’s Afraid Of Post-Blackness? : What it Means to be Black Now.⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whos-Afraid-Post-Blackness-Means-Black/dp/1439177562⤶⤶Victims of Crime.org – Black Children Exposed to Violence and Victimization⤶⤶http://victimsofcrime.org/our-programs/other-projects/youth-initiative/interventions-for-black-children's-exposure-to-violence/black-children-exposed-to-violence⤶⤶Vera, Hernan & Gordon, Andrew – Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Screen-Saviors-Hollywood-Fictions-Whiteness/dp/0847699471⤶⤶Wells, H.G. – The Time Machine⤶⤶https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Machine-Penguin-Classics/dp/0141439971/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Wells%2C+H.G.+%E2%80%93+The+Time+Machine&qid=1554213879&s=books&sr=1-1⤶⤶YouGov -- Statistics on Black American’s Fear of Police Violence⤶⤶https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/03/15/black-americans-police⤶⤶⤶Buy our artwork at Displate.com!⤶https://displate.com/displate/942054?art=2291045ae0750b448c3⤶⤶⤶⤶For a tutorial video for our intro effects check out this video:⤶https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH7jZ...⤶And follow @bloomandglare on Instagram.⤶⤶Audio mixing by Christopher Hall.⤶Follow @christopher_thomas_hall on Instagram! ⤶(Message me for contact information.)

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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1631492853/

sanitized

> You seem to be implying that the US government is behind the attacks on mosques.

No, again, I don't know.

But what I'm saying is that such a course of action would not be beyond the US gov't. It is a blatant fact that the US Pentagon -- at the highest levels of our military! -- proposed to fake attacks in "Operation Northwoods" to start a war on Cuba. Thankfully, JFK's administration shot down such an idea, but the Pentagon still kept working on it.

And journalist Robert Stinnett, a WWII Navy veteran who served on the same aircraft carrier as George H.W. Bush, has uncovered multiple sources of evidence that the US gov't, again at the highest levels, had a deliberate policy of provoking Japan into attacking the US in the Pacific to start WWII. Stinnett wrote a book on this called "Day of Deceit". In it he claims FDR's administration planned this after France fell as a desperate way to enter the war with the support of the American people, as a backdoor way of declaring war on Germany through the tri-partite alliance between Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Since 1941 some have claimed that FDR "let Pearl Harbor happen" but there has been only iffy evidence to support such a claim. But Stinnett not only uses first-hand interviews with WWII vets, but also used FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to uncover additional material, including an 8-point plan written by a US Navy intelligence officer who saw FDR on a near-daily basis and was born in Japan, a memo that was routed to high military brass and proposed 8 specific points to cause Japan to attack the US. The US then carried out all 8 points.

Whether Japan was deliberately provoked into attacking or not -- that is a question open to your own interpretation of the facts.

There is so much wrong with this article it'd take a book to explain it.

But wait, one journalist/author who served on the same WWII aircraft carrier as former president George Bush, and who has researched Pearl Harbor for decades, did write a book to explain it.

That author not only dug up key evidence from the federal government via Freedom of Information Act requests, but he also personally interviewed WWII cryptographers who said the US did break the Japanese Navy's code (something the US gov't said was not done until after Pearl Harbor).

Needless to say, there's more to this story than this article, which has a NSA historian as its key source.

> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.

As WWII naval veteran and journalist Robert Stinnett made abundantly clear, using much new evidence ranging from US gov't documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests to personal interviews, in his book Day of Deceit, we do not know the full details about Pearl Harbor and the US entry into WWII.

We openly opposed Japan, sending US pilots to China to fight against Japan (the Flying Tigers), moving the US Pacific Fleet from SF to Pearl Harbor, using economic sanctions to strangle Japan, and more.

After the fall of France in the Spring of 1940 the US was shocked that Britain faced Germany alone and sought to enter the war.

As the McCollum memo, unearthed by Stinnett, clearly illustrated, the US sought to deliberately provoke Japan into attacking the US, to use the German-Japanese treaty as a way of entering the war against Germany.

The provocations the US took were calculated to make Japan attack -- and they worked. Japan attacked and the rest, so they say, is history.

Any history of WWII is not is complete without reading and pondering the evidence presented by Stinnett in his book Day of Deceit.

> Everyone knows Germany attacked the USSR without provocation, to preemptively fuck up the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as you said. And preemptive knowledge of Pearl Harbor has never ever been established. You must cite something. It's basically the same old libel otherwise.

Sure, propaganda is a weapon both sides can wield. I'm more knowlegable in the latter field, so I will constrain myself to that one:

About the Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743201299/ (I would also like to include the diary of the US ambassador to Japan between 1932 and '45, Grey, but it has been out of print for a few years). There is tons of incidental proof, however, such as the order to build an 100 carrier two-ocean navy in September 1940, or the fact that to this date not all japanese decrypted messages have been released to the public record because they are considered a threat to "national security".

Disclaimer: I have majored in Japanese cultural studies and political sciences.

> NATO was designed to militarily defeat the USSR. That's gone and many Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO. I agree NATO doesn't know what NATO's purpose is, but NATO's original purpose is long gone.

NATOs purpose is to stand together if "troops, an aircraft or a ship of one or more of the undersigned nations gets attacked by a third party in the Mediterrean, the Atlantic Ocean north of the tropic of Capricorn or on its own territory." This purpose stands till today. This was not the case in both Bosnia nor Libya.

> I'm not saying Germany isn't still a part of NATO, just it's not still a great part of NATO.

And we are more than proud of not taking part in every military the US wants.

>> If the Libyan people are not strong enough to get rid of their leadership by themselves, what right do we have to interfere?

> I think this is irrelevant to the discussion but NATO is close to arming them and I'm sure it won't be Germany.

It is a sad day when we as a pact were to arm one kind insurgents against a dictatorship (Libya) while other very similar insurgents are ignored (Bahrain) or seen as terrorists (Palestine). It says something about our morality, don't you think?

>> It is likely that Gadhaffi will survive this episode, and we really don't want to be the target of libyan-sponsored state terrorism. Lockerbie anyone?

> this is your weakest argument. If your greatest defense against state-sponsored terrorism is to plea "not me, the other guy!" then I'm at a loss.

My point is you don't troll an aggressive dog. Europe has lived in peace with Gadhaffi for years, that guy even was more than helpful sometimes. No need to get bitten.

>> Excuse me for not honoring the heroes in the Golden Armors the US troops were back then, according to your thesis. The US, however, pledged MAD not for the sake of Germans, but for the sake of Britain, which would have fallen without a continental stronghold. The NATO plans for Germany were to transform it into a nuclear wasteland as soon as the first soviet tank touched our territory. We were to be destroyed by our American friends, not saved.

> Well you're absolutely right, there. No more germans. It's a shame, cause I love Spaten.

Eh, come on, Augustiner is way better. Ever tried their Maximator?

> I understand you're probably german, but you mean affect now. Germany is probably the most vital member of the EU, but now you've got France on your back. They're tired and they want to stop for wine a lot.

Trust me, France is not concerning us. We see other EU members to be a bigger problem, such as - for instance - Portugal. France will do whatever it takes as long as we subsidize their farmers.

It wasn't exactly a false flag. Japan was trying to attack covertly, the U.S. happened to be able to intercept their encoded radio transmissions. There are numerous sources on the USA's knowing provocation but this book has some of the best examples of messages we intercepted that clearly described an attack on Pearl Harbor.

So, if FDR knows its going to happen, and conceals it, because he wants the American people to want revenge. Is that a false flag? I'm going to lump it in with one because it serves the same ends.

It depends on what facet of the government's involvement you're interested in. You might find Acid Dreams interesting.

This book talks about that a bit. It's been a while since I read it but what I remember was studies showed that all people who tripped felt it changed their life for the better, even if the trip itself was a bad one. Almost universally, everyone who has a psychedelic experience feels it changed their life in a good way.

I recommend taking a look at a book called Acid Dreams. This is more or less what happened during the 60s. People began taking LSD and decided they wanted to change the world. One take away from the book though is that because your LSD experience is so heavily influenced by your set and setting, different groups of people can interpret their LSD experiences in very different ways, and so it becomes difficult to organize towards a common goal.

Acid Dreams is another fantastic book which focuses on the connection between the counterculture and the CIA, including how the CIA distributed acid to the masses

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: Acid Dreams


|Country|Link|Charity Links|
|:-----------|:------------|:------------|
|USA|smile.amazon.com|EFF|
|UK|www.amazon.co.uk|Macmillan|
|Spain|www.amazon.es||
|France|www.amazon.fr||
|Germany|www.amazon.de||
|Japan|www.amazon.co.jp||
|Canada|www.amazon.ca||
|Italy|www.amazon.it||
|India|www.amazon.in||
|China|www.amazon.cn||




To help add charity links, please have a look at this thread.

This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.

the most extensive and expansive book I've found is acid dreams , It describes the scene in real detail.

Google is full of links. I haven't read this book, but I might... it seems like a compendium of facts I've pieced together myself:

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

the old hippie dude at my job bought me a copy of Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain. Fascinating read on the history of LSD.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802130623/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_SGIfzb67NYKHT

Acid Dreams is the one that immediately comes to mind for me, mainly because the only reason I ended up knowing about it and picking it up was through a twitter recommendation by Lorin himself. It's quite an account of LSD culture and opened my eyes (pun intended) to some systematic lies that I never knew existed. Highly recommend if the subject matter is at all of interest to you! Cheers!!

If you find these kinds of stories interesting, definitely check out Acid Dreams.

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334110187&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383082241&sr=8-1&keywords=acid+dreams One of the most fascinating books I've read on the movement. Covers LSD from it's discovery to MK Ultra to being used by the counterculture.

Anyone interested in the history of LSD or its therapeutic use should read "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD." Fascinating book. It talks a lot about the CIA's investigations into using it for espionage, the psychiatric uses (and how it was used successfully to treat alcoholism), the hippies and counterculture, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

Read Chasing the Scream http://amzn.to/2hzr4nk and Acid Dreams http://amzn.to/2hkDSlm to get a full picture of why we are where we are now.

What others are saying is right. It's a political move to criminalize minorities and rebellious youth cultures.

Have you read On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder? I bought this book about a decade ago (last year, when it came out). If I remember correctly, he wrote it shortly after Trump was elected as a list of 20 warning signs to look out for to ensure that it doesn't go the fascism route.

Chapter 2 is titled: Defend institutions. The idea of this chapter is that institutions have to be protected or they will fall. My favorite anecdote in the book is in this chapter. He talks about how a german jew newspaper wrote an editorial in 1933 more or less telling it's readers to calm down, there was no way that the Nazis would be able to actually follow through with the horrible things outlined in nazi newspapers. Describing balances of power and such that would keep it from happening. Eerily similar to people today, and this book rings true more and more each day. It is less than 100 pages, everyone should read it.

Timothy Snyder WIKI if you would like to know more about the author

Edit: I made myself want to read it again to see how well it held up over all, a year later. I just wanted to post this from the chapter mentioned above regarding institutions.

“Sometimes institutions are deprived of vitality and function, turned into a simulacrum of what they once were, so that they gird the new order rather than resisting it. This is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung.”

Yes, that is the goal. It happened before, and it's happening again now. Check out On Tyranny

I am of the firm belief that something major is going to happen here by the end of the summer. I don't think it'll be something set up by the government, but I think they will know in advance and they will allow it to happen. Trump wants as much power as he can and after a catastrophic event he will be able to strip us of so many freedoms. I hope I am wrong, but my gut says I am not.

EDIT: From Timothy Snyder's fantatic book On Tyranny
>Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it.

Seriously, if you don't have a copy of this book yet, get one. Even if we are way off about Trump, it is still an important read.

https://twitter.com/1SarahRose/status/826116204301516800

If you want something meatier, I recommend this or you can just read the review for free here.

We're in the middle of a culture war because the President encourages violence at his rallies and encourages chants to lock his political opponents up. We're in the middle of a culture war because the President mocks a woman whose account of sexual assault he says is credible, has dozens of sexual assault allegations against himself, and bragged about committing sexual assault. We're in the middle of a culture war because the President has been implicated in multiple federal crimes. We're in the middle of a culture war because the President finds no difference between fascist neo-Nazis who murder people and the counter-protesters who show up to combat them.

Spare me your incredulity of the left. You're part of the problem, but admitting you're wrong requires an iota of courage and a commitment to the principles of liberal democracy.

You want a book? Maybe read something other than Mein Kempf. Better yet, read it so that you can understand where Trump's coming from, because it's the only book I've ever heard it reported that he's actually read.

https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

Also read On Tyranny by Snyder. A quick read that’s very much worth your time.

https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

Work in the oil patch, and political cesspool is perfectly accurate. Your comment has been my daily life for the last 4 years of Liberal government. I have social anxiety and never used to speak up in the lunchroom, preferring to just bury my face in a book and tune out the nonsense. But I can't not speak out anymore.




After the US election in 2016, a tinder girl I liked but never met up with recommended a book to me that changed my life and how I view my place in society. "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder is the shortest, and most important book that I have read in the last couple of years. I think I've purchased at least 6 copies, giving it away freely to anyone I've thought might be interested in what it has to say.




The world is changing, and certain trends are bringing us closer and closer to a darker and darker version of the adjacent possible. Our politicians are paying close attention to what works on our poor neighbours to the South, and are using those tactics to incite hatred at home and radicalize our friends and family members against their own countrymen, all for their own political gains. They have no intention of bringing this country together. That is left to us, the silent ones keeping our heads down for fear of standing out against the mob. We must speak up, and bridge the divide.




So I've stopped biting my tongue. It's not always pretty. Sometimes people blow-up at you, or insult you directly. Those are usually the ones that can't think outside the box their Facebook memes have them trapped in emotionally. The argument devolves quickly. But I don't lose my patience. I might not get through to the loudest guys in the room, but there are always others who are capable of genuinely listening to what I have to say. They don't even have to agree with me, I just encourage them to listen and think about it, and to educate themselves instead of just parroting memes and talking points. These people are being lied to every day, and they are afraid for their futures. Be understanding and receptive to their complaints, admit when you don't know the answers, and correct them when they are spreading propaganda.

Remember, I'm pulling for ya, we're all in this together.

If you like the article, I definitely recommend you read the full essay (where this was excerpted from). It is a quick read (maybe 1.5 hours) and really contextualizes the reasoning behind each point into lessons learned from the 20th century. I cannot recommend it highly enough: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804190119/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_A0MRCbQK95ME4

You could read a book on the subject and maybe stop arguing from ignorance: https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

My bad, I forgot to list the 5% link.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530134-300-ancient-invaders-transformed-britain-but-not-its-dna/

"Anglo-Saxons, whose influx began around AD 450, account for 10 to 40 per cent of the DNA in half of modern-day Britons."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0719_050719_britishgene.html

"Isotope analysis has begun to be employed to help answer the uncertainties regarding Anglo-Saxon migration. However, the number of studies is small. Strontium data in a 5th–7th-century cemetery in West Heslerston implied the presence of two groups: one of "local" and one of "nonlocal" origin. Although the study suggested that they could not define the limits of local variation and identify immigrants with confidence, they could give a useful account of the issues.[98] Oxygen and strontium isotope data in an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Wally Corner, Berinsfield in the Upper Thames Valley, Oxfordshire, found only 5.3% of the sample originating from continental Europe, supporting the hypothesis of acculturation. Furthermore, they found that there was no change in this pattern over time, except amongst some females." - Wiki

Also on white slavery in the US:

http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

Anti-Irish sentiment. Irish slavery.

Keeping a culture going by participating in it is a choice. It doesn't matter where that culture came from; it matters whether it persists when there is no actual reason for it to persist. Plenty of people have abandoned that culture and done quite well for themselves. So the obvious conclusion is that if you don't act like a thug, make better choices, and stop acting like a whiny, entitled retard, you'll be just fine.

It's not genetics. I don't believe anyone is inherently more or less capable of success based on their ethnic background. It's bad choices and a lack of personal responsibility. If you can't manage those two things, don't fucking live in America. Because this is not a society that shields people from their decisions. If you fuck up, you're going to feel it.

And before you go into the whole, "rich people don't feel the consequences of their fuckups as hard" line, duh. Wealth is power. It just so happens that the people with the most wealth are the people whose cultures aren't based on being a bunch of criminal-worshiping degenerates. Racial superiority isn't a thing, but you can bet your ass cultural superiority is. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking liar.

You're not absolved of your responsibility to make sound life choices just because you don't have as many do-overs as someone else.

All of the pages I can find that talk about this seem to be using this book as their primary source. I havn't been able to find any detailed reviews of this one, nor much about the authors.

For reliable information, you'll have to go to largely offline sources. Don Jordan and Michael Walsh cover a lot of ground regarding Irish (and other) slavery in their book, White Cargo.

In all, there were some 300,000 to 500,000 Irish and poor British that were sent, or in frequent cases "spirited" (aka kidnapped), to the new colonies and Caribbean islands as slaves and indentured servants. A good part of this was the method by which the English combated Irish rebels -- the Tories. As described in White Cargo:

>One way of dealing with them was to hold four people hostage against the captures of any tory committing a crime. If within twenty-eight days the crime went unsolved and the tory had not given himself up, the four would be shipped off the colonies.

Either way, the English were satisfied.

Regarding the early numbers, they provide:

> Over the next ten years, several English privateers reportedly did arrive in the Chesapeake with Africans for sale, and men and women were brought in from the Dutch territory and from the West Indies, but Virginia continued to rely on the white servant trade. By the mid-seventeenth century, Africans numbered only 300 out of a total settler population of 11,000.

...

>Although there was no abrupt surge of Africans, the racial balance in the tobacco fields was changing. In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, white outnumbered black in the Chesapeake by more than twenty to one. By the last quarter of the century, the ratio had narrowed to three to one, with 2,000 black slaves in Virginia and 6,000 white servants.

As they also describe, it was a question of economics. White slaves and indentured servants were frequently cheaper to come by, and had higher survival rates, than African blacks. In time, this changed, and more and more blacks survived both the journey from Africa as well as the labor in the fields. And thus began the shift to African slaves instead of the largely Irish whites.

With regards to the slavery vs. indentured servitude aspect, Publisher's Weekly states:

>High school American history classes present indentured servitude as a benignly paternalistic system whereby colonial immigrants spent a few years working off their passage and went on to better things. Not so, this impassioned history argues: the indentured servitude of whites was comparable in most respects to the slavery endured by blacks.

Though many cases were time-limited (at least at the start), indentured servants were every bit as much treated like those who were bound for life.

oppressed minority is a relative term. A white man in a black ghetto is an oppressed minority. or a white in south africa. Issues such as slavery are rather funny to when you think abotu it. As an Irish American i have just as much of a right to declare myself a member of a formerly oppressed minority.

if you feel like a little light reading.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Irish-Slaves-indenture-Immigrants/dp/145630612X
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335295822&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0814742963

He mentioned the book https://www.amazon.com/Over-Edge-Death-Grand-Canyon/dp/097009731X

Just in case you forgot to check back