Well, I already looked at the famous generals of both Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin. Now it’s time to take a look at the men who could count themselves among the elite of Oda Nobunaga’s army. Now, Nobunaga waged war for so long and on a much grander scale than anyone before him, so the list of men who served him were ever changing and constantly growing. Despite this, I have...

The World Trade Organisation was set up as a replacement to the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs in 1994 during the latter's Uruguay round of trade talks. It was conceived as both a permanent forum for trade negotiations and as an arena within which the mediation of multilateral dispute resolutions could take place. Lori Wallach, trade lawyer for Public Citizen Watch, in her ground-breaking book "Whose Trade Organisation" is less charitable, describing it as a "neoliberal trojan...

Commitments from the North were also made to reduce their peak tariffs on heavily processed or industrial goods such as textiles. This was a key concession as Lesser Developed Countries (LDC's) were hitherto obliged to specialise in the export of primary commodities because of the lower import tariffs. This had the effect of help driving the overall price for commodities down as they were competing against other LDCs who were likewise taking advantage of the lower tariff band. It also addressed...

Karl Friday is one of the few historians out there who has a real "hands on" experience with the subject material that he writes about. He has lived in Japan and trained with the famed Kashima Shinryu.

I admit I had never read a Friday book until fairly recently. Friday was kind enough to help me through my graduate school application process. I figured I owed it to the guy to read at least one of his books. The first book I purchased was Legacies of the Sword: The Kashima-Shinryu...

The Great Bengal famine of 1770 is destined to become the text-book example of how corporate governance and the headlong pursuit of profits can cause mass starvation amongst a peasantry. For it is one of the earliest and most devastating examples of the dangers inherent in concentrating land resources for the export of cash-crops without first insuring the primacy of the producers own food sovereignty. It is moreover an apt starting point as it also marks the beginning of the integration of local...