Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 April 9

= April 9 =

Films / games of what would happen in a new Korean War?
Given that tensions have been heightening between the Koreas and the South's defenders in recent days, I am quite interested to find films about what would happen if a new Korean War were to erupt in contemporary times or the near-future.

Besides speculative-fiction films and TV episodes, are there documentaries detailing how such a "what-if" scenario would play out?

Moreover, what video games involve fighting a new war on the Korean peninsula in the contemporary period / near-future? Thanks. --70.179.161.230 (talk) 07:51, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Talk about it when and if this "Korean War" breaks out. Is what I say. But since you asked I might as well answer. I haven't seen any documentaries about "what-if" scenarios and I couldn't find any. Though there are a few videos on YouTube, though they all just hogwash. If a war does break out (which I hope it will not) some companies may create games based on it but I doubt it because it would be rude and, could damage countries relationships, and well you don't see games about 9/11 do you now (Pardon me if there is)?  RunningUranium   08:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * There is very little cultural penalty for the US being rude to North Korea; indeed, mocking its current and past "dear leaders" has become something of a national pastime. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * As for games, you might peruse Category:Video_games_set_in_Korea, which includes some in a modern idiom. Whether they are whatsoever accurate is highly unlikely. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:06, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Question regarding the administration of Ajmer Subah during the reign of Akbar?
Who was the Mughal Governor of Ajmer Subah during Akbar's reign? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sauravmitra (talk • contribs) 09:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This is a bit roundabout, but according to Medieval India: From Sultanate To The Mughals: Part I: Delhi Sultanate by Satish Chandra, page 142, Akbar conquered Ajmer in 1556, but did not create the 12 subahs until 1580, when he appointed a sipahsalar (later called a subahdar) to head each. In 1586, he gave joint command of Ajmer Subah to two Rajput rajas. Using these search terms and these dates (sipahsalar/subahdar and 1580 and 1586), I'm finding this:
 * Ajmer and the Mughal Emperors by Neha Vikas Prakashan: "However, we came to know that Abdur Rahim Khan Khana was appointed governor of Ajmer in the year 1580 A.D. Abul Fazl mentions that in year 1586 A.D., Jagannath was appointed Subahdar of Ajmer and with him Rai Durga Mujahid..."
 * We have an article on Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khana, but it does not mention being sabahdar of Ajmer. The names of the rajas are so common; I'm not finding Wikipedia articles on them. To confirm, you could look through the Abul Fazl work mentioned by Prakashan, Akbarnama. There are translations here and here. 184.147.116.201 (talk) 12:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Left wing Alternative parties Spain Portugal Italy Belgium Netherlands
Is there an alternative party in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands and Belgium like Respect party in United Kingdom, Quebec solidaire in Quebec, Meretz in Israel and MRC (Citizen and Republican Movement) in France?--Donmust90 (talk) 16:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Donmust90
 * Respect Party is but one of the Socialist alternative parties in the UK. There is also Socialist Workers Party and TUSC to name but two. Can you clarify whether you just mean "socialist alternative" party, which is where Respect places itself, or maybe "alternative" parties such as Monster Raving Loony Party or British National Party? --TammyMoet (talk) 19:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * No, only left wing parties, regardless left-wing liberal, social democrat or other left wing ideologies-based. --65.92.153.108 (talk) 23:18, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Donmust90
 * I don't know your criteria. Countries tend to have lots of small parties, including several left-wing, which may be described as alternatives to the larger parties. You can start here:
 * List of political parties in Spain
 * List of political parties in Portugal
 * List of political parties in Italy
 * List of political parties in Belgium
 * List of political parties in the Netherlands
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 23:51, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Just for the record, Respect+QS+Meretz+MRC are quite diverse. --Soman (talk) 00:07, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Respect is a member of European Anti-Capitalist Left, so the other member parties have something in common with it (but Respect is quite unusual in many ways). As Soman says, the other parties you name are quite different again. Warofdreams talk 11:05, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

hitler vs stalin
while hitler is widely equated with evil, stalin holds a more positive cultural image. if asked "who is the most evil person on the last century". most people will say hitler, not stalin. why? --Yoglti (talk) 17:04, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Probably because the Soviet Union was on the side of the Allies. Rojomoke (talk) 17:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I would not say that Stalin "holds a more positive cultural image". They are both equally viewed in the culturally negative. However, because the Soviet Union was an ally of the US and Britain during WWII, the West was more willing to ignore (or at least not make a fuss about) Stalin's negatives... at least while the war lasted. Blueboar (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * In summer 1941, Churchill said something like "If Hitler invaded hell, I would find something nice to say about the devil". In United States public opinion, a slightly naive "Uncle Joe" / "Mission to Moscow" / Walter Duranty and/or Popular Front influenced period gave way to bitter disillusionment due to events beginning basically in 1947, with Stalin's failure to hold promised democratic elections in Poland, the Czech Coup of 1948, the Greek civil war, the Berlin blockade, the Soviet A-bomb, the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, etc.  The outbreak of the Korean war in 1950 set the final seal on bitter U.S.-Soviet hostility, and the drastic swing in U.S. public opinion resulted in the rise of McCarthyism... AnonMoos (talk) 17:47, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This is my guess, but there's something so coldly calculated about the Holocaust that it shocks people more than numbers. No doubt the purges were calculated, and Stalin, and to a different degree communism, is responsible for as many if not more deaths, but the holocaust is of a different character. Also, there's been a concerted effort to educate about the holocaust. There's less awareness of the details of Stalin's crimes. Shadowjams (talk) 17:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * First, I would not overstate Stalin's popularity. He's considered better than Hitler, but pretty much everyone is considered better than Hitler. Hitler started one of the most awful wars in history and at the same time came up with uniquely sadistic ways to try and exterminate entire groups of people in the name of ideology. That's a hard act to follow.
 * Stalin's crimes are by now very well known and accepted. 50 years ago it was a somewhat different situation and many people still gave him a lot of credit for fighting the Germans and for industrializing Russia. But today I think you'd find that most people know him by his gulag and his purges. Which people don't rate very highly.
 * Is there a difference, we might ask, between the kind of system Hitler ran and the kind of system Stalin ran? We seem, implicitly, to regard genocide as a particularly ugly crime, much worse than Stalin's terrors which were fairly arbitrary in who they targeted. (Ostensibly they were targeting people with bad politics, but you didn't have to actually do anything to get thrown in the gulag.) I wonder if much of this is because of the type of propaganda (and I don't use this in a necessarily pejorative sense) that emerged at the time and in the wake of Hitler, which argued fairly explicitly that there was no baser thing than genocide and institutionalized racism. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:03, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it's natural to believe (at least at first glance) that an incidental or heat-of-passion crime is less dire than a premeditated and cold-blooded one. That coupled with the necessity of the USSR to the Allied war plan means a brutal dictatorship which committed incidental mass murders of those who resisted (or whom it imagined resisted) its ideology and the programs accompanying it; is less reviled than a brutal dictatorship which committed mass murders on a premeditated basis of a predefined set of people who had the wrong blood.  Also, I think most people, if they had to choose, would rather be shot than gassed. So while you can't at all justify or ignore Stalin's crimes, he's not the elephant in the room of human enormity (he's more hippopotamus-sized).  ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  20:02, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I also wonder if there's something to be said for charisma here. Stalin could not be accused of being a Great Communicator. Part of the chronic mass corruption of the Soviet system was due to the Russian (& Ukrainian, Belorussian, etc.) people not being communists. There are stories of Ukrainian peasants in the early days of the war enthusiastically surrendering to Wehrmacht troops on the theory that no government could possibly treat them worse than the USSR had (they were quickly disillusioned, of course). By great contrast, the Nazi Party was democratically elected to the Weimar parliament, and Hitler, a powerful public speaker, well and truly convinced ordinary people to believe in him and his agenda. Informing to the NKVD was an opportunity for payment and advancement; informing to the Gestapo was a patriotic duty and a matter of pride. I think it's that earnest elevation of such an inherently murderous belief system to the civic pantheon of "God and country" that is uniquely horrifying. Anyone can terrorize people by using guns; it takes something different (or at least we sure as hell hope it does) to terrorize that many people by using words. ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  20:22, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hitler's plan, spelled out in Mein Kampf, required exterminating the Jews and exterminating the Slavic population of eastern Europe so that their lebensraum could be filled by Germans. Stalin was utterly ruthless but his goals did not include the extermination of large masses of people. Looie496 (talk) 01:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Many users said above that Stalin didn't exterminate large masses of people based on ethnicity, but that's absolutely false. See Decossackization and Population transfer in the Soviet Union, especially the section on "Ethnic operations".  Entire ethnic minorities within Russia were deported to Siberia, with death rates due to starvation and disease of 43%.  --140.180.242.70 (talk) 05:52, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Sometimes I like to joke that Stalin was an equal opportunity homicidal maniac, but that's not entirely true.--Wikimedes (talk) 06:54, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * IMHO both Stalin and Hitler were plenty evil, but here are a few more reasons for Stalin being less unpopular: Germany is closer to Britain and France than Russia. Stalin won the war.  Nazi propaganda died down considerably after WWII, but Communist propaganda continued in force for another half century. (BTW, Stalin's mass murders were not "incidental", were premeditated, and had reached into the millions before war had broken out.)--Wikimedes (talk) 06:54, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * One factor is that Stalin actually improved his nation, in many ways, while Hitler did not. Industrialization, education, military and political power all increased under Stalin.  While they may have initially increased under Hitler, all were in a sad state by the end of his reign, which comes down to losing the war.  Had Hitler won, then he would probably be more popular, at least with his allies. StuRat (talk) 16:35, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Both men were absolutely evil. Stalin killed more than did Hitler--he just gets better press in the West.  Of course Mao outdid them both. μηδείς (talk) 18:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

There's the article "Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism", which no one seems to have linked yet. Gabbe (talk) 21:19, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

North Korea's justification
I'm familiar with North Korea's modus operandi when it comes to these things, but I wondered if I'd missed it... has North Korea given a supposed reason for their recent provocations? I understand the real reason is transition of power, both with the new Kim Jong and the new South Korean president, but has the NK media given any excuses other than the usual stuff? Shadowjams (talk) 17:28, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * "counter{ing} U.S. 'aggression'" - pretty much the usual stuff. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 17:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You may find The Pyongyang Times - the official website of the national newspaper (in English) - fascinating reading (don't click on the randomly hyperlinked words within each story, because they just produce a pop-up telling you that you can win an iPad2 if you 'answer the following question'.) I think all of the information you are looking for will be in there.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  10:58, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * [Edit] - Sorry, those popups have nothing to do with the site - they are from one of the addons for Chrome I got from the Google Store. Google doesn't like to spam by email, yet it allows it via addons.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:44, 10 April 2013 (UTC)


 * If Juche propaganda is your bag and you don't speak Korean, go to the Korean Central News Agency's English site at http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm. Sam Blacketer (talk) 19:07, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * For some reason, I find myself thinking of "douche bag". --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The more I read this style of writing, I keep expecting to see 'All your base are belong to us.' Seriously.

KägeTorä - (影虎) ( TALK )  16:19, 14 April 2013 (UTC)