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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Stuff for Saturday
Not feeling well tonight and can't bring myself to write another one of my awesomely insightful (or annoyingly shallow, as you will) blog posts, so enjoy some visuals. The video above is a couple of minutes of images from the Japanese colonial period. The music is good.
This still is from Marinetraffic.com. It offers realtime updated pictures of ships and boats and other nautical stuff in the waters of the world. Way cool.
More nasty Nazi Kitsch. One side says Waffen SS, the other, Das Reich, the name of the SS division responsible for the Orodour-sur-Glane massacre. As one friend on Facebook noted, you can maybe imagine some people don't get it, but this one, he must know what he has there.
Morning at the Confucius Temple in Tainan. This week I did a whirlwind tour of Sandimen, Kaohsiung, Tainan, and Taoyuan.
I went out to Erkunshen bastion with Dom, who did the dull Century ride from Taichung to Tainan this week. It's my favorite of the Tainan forts. Well worth a visit if you haven't been there, but be sure to get the number of a cab company; it is hard to get a cab back from out there.
I'll conclude with more dictator kitsch, this one from the Daxi Artists Villa in Daxi in Taoyuan. The place is actually a restaurant in one of the dictator's more than two dozen residences in Taiwan. It is a memorial in kitsch to the Chiangs; you can drink Soong Mei-ling Tea and browse the souvenirs. Naturally none of the history of the residence's previous use by the Japanese is represented.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
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4 comments:
please put my nazi post here
re
More nasty Nazi Kitsch. One side says Waffen SS, the other, Das Reich, the name of the SS division responsible for the Orodour-sur-Glane massacre. As one friend on Facebook noted, you can maybe imagine some people don't get it, but this one, he must know what he has there.
trevor
then delete this heads up
and look, mate, if you gonna crit the driver for Nazi kiss, then how about why is he driving a H car, from facist Japan, HONDA logo, the nation that was an ally of Germany too......? why don't you crit him for driving a Japan nazi car too...... get over it, mate....the Taiwanese people do not like Hitler, they just think fashion of German words and decals are cool, they have no idea what they mean, forgive them, mate, don't knock them,....you are so unforgiving sir, as if YOU are some kind of proper wesetern god.....please! so your people never did bad things? what about the Crusades?
@anon, the car is Hyundai from South Korea. Don't be a dick.
Using ignorance of history as a way to accept stupidity is not useful either. The Nazi thing has been going on for 15+ years in Taiwan. They know what it means.
This is to both the anon posters on this subject:
1)Constantly bleating ignorance is no excuse. Are the legislators who bandy 'Hitler', 'Nazi' and 'genocide' about in parliament 'cute' and just innocently 'ignorant'?
Even if the people are blissful in their obliviousness, grown, sentient adults should be a bit more circumspect about having symbols and words emblazoned on their T-shirts or cars if they have no idea what they mean.
If I walk around Miami with a Che T-shirt on, will pleading cutesie innocence get me off the hook with an irate anti-Castro Cuban?
'he knows nothing about German history'
Precisely. It would behoth 'him' to know something before slapping these things on his car. It certainly doesn't mean someone can't take exception, does it?
'none of his relatives were ever gassed in Treblinka'
I should think bloody well not. It's hard to see what this risible argument ad absurdum is meant to mean. Firstly, you obviously son't have to have had relatives gassed to know about the holocaust. Second, holocaust victims are hardly more likely to be or justified in displaying Nazi paraphernalia, are they?
Besides, I don't see where MT is saying the guy is a Nazi. Nasty (yup) Nazi kitsch (er, yup).Seems a pretty spot-on description to me.
2) While I agree in most cases that it is ignorance, I think the FB comment is right here. It's not a Swastika or some kind of emblem which can and are routinely incorporated into 'cool' designs.
It's actual words, which seem a very odd thing to have stuck on your car in the positions they are. In what sense do they look cool?
Basically, I've seen people justifying this idiocy time and time again and it doesn't wash.
To the second commenter (a Taiwanese with UK/Oz connections I suspect), I will 'knock them' as I see fit. It doesn't mean I think they are wicked people, just that this ignorance should be pointed out as often as possible.
Oh - a word of advice: try and construct cogent, rational arguments rather than just drawing in any tenuous bit of 'learning' you may have stumbled across, not to mention your own brand of ignorance.
Honda? The Crusades? 'Your' people. Dear me.
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