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I want this as a video game.
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Jan 10, 2015 20:29
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Fangz posted:There's also a museum filled with revisionist history. It's not just a graveyard. That's atrocious, but doesn't go very far to making the shrine "a place of worship", which is the actual literal-minded definition that I was contending. Revisionism in Japan is spearheaded by leading cabinet ministers and the nationalist groups they're associated with, not a trashy museum.
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Jan 10, 2015 20:54
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Disinterested posted:London is full of statutes to colonial generals, for example. I mean yes and no. I think there's... less blatant white-washing fascism in most of those. Imagine a shrine to, say, the British Raj run by the BNP with a BNP spin on everything. Indian politicians might object if the UK PM paid that a visit. That's the difference. There are museums and places of commemoration (Hiroshima, for instance) that are a lot more honest and open about the nasty poo poo that Japan did in the run up to getting nuked. OTOH Japan does kind of have this sense that, hey, Belgium doesn't kowtow in front of Congo and India isn't a world superpower making claims to the Channel Islands, so maybe they should get some leeway, or at least enough to let the whole thing go as something that happened generations ago. Plus, lots of peoples dead grandparents and stuff died and are memorialized there. So there's that element to it. I think it's kind of analogous to the southern use of the Confederate flag, to some people it represents horrific slavery, to some people it represents heritage. BUUUUUT if someone's getting super defensive about that particular bit of heritage you can bet pretty good odds on them being an rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 10, 2015 21:02
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the JJ posted:I mean yes and no. I think there's... less blatant white-washing fascism in most of those. Imagine a shrine to, say, the British Raj run by the BNP with a BNP spin on everything. Indian politicians might object if the UK PM paid that a visit. That's the difference. There are museums and places of commemoration (Hiroshima, for instance) that are a lot more honest and open about the nasty poo poo that Japan did in the run up to getting nuked. I think that's a reasonable view, and a reasonable characterisation of the view of a lot of establishment Japanese. Japan wants to be treated like a great power, it really still does scratch its head sometimes as to why it isn't allowed. Having said that, and I must emphasise this, a lot of Japanese people do still have a very strong pacifist streak. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 21:12
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Ensign Expendable posted:Proper Orthodox Christian Communists
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Jan 10, 2015 21:21
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Isn't that cover basically RussianCivilWar.jpg, without time travel?
Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 22:00
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Ensign Expendable posted:Vlasov's army goes back in time and wins the Russian Civil War. Ha, nice! I think that those were mentioned in some worst fantasy books thread. One series was about a plane shifting Russian marine iirc.
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Jan 10, 2015 22:09
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the JJ posted:I mean yes and no. I think there's... less blatant white-washing fascism in most of those. Imagine a shrine to, say, the British Raj run by the BNP with a BNP spin on everything. Indian politicians might object if the UK PM paid that a visit. That's the difference. There are museums and places of commemoration (Hiroshima, for instance) that are a lot more honest and open about the nasty poo poo that Japan did in the run up to getting nuked. In general I think people keep pointing to the Shrine and the "They have A class war criminals there!" as a sort of canard, I think its fair that they, because of the specifics of their culture and religion, that it is reasonable for them to honor their war dead; the war criminals have (mostly because geopolitics) already been punished, why punish their afterlife? Now the Museum and all that revisionism, now that's lovely and that's a real thing and a problem. But the idea of the Shrine itself is something I don't have a problem with.
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Jan 10, 2015 22:52
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So, I read The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne. It was fun - Horne is a good writer, with a lively style, and he gets to the heart of a lot of what is going wrong in Verdun. On the other hand, the book is really quite dated. You can tell that Horne is a bit too old school, and he makes arguments that would now widely be ridiculed in the historical community. That very old school English academic style from the 50's, before everyone had to worry about theory and how to do history as much, does make for a good war history though.
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Jan 10, 2015 23:13
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Raenir Salazar posted:In general I think people keep pointing to the Shrine and the "They have A class war criminals there!" as a sort of canard, I think its fair that they, because of the specifics of their culture and religion, that it is reasonable for them to honor their war dead; the war criminals have (mostly because geopolitics) already been punished, why punish their afterlife? Yeah, I mean, no one is going to the Vietnam Memorial and scratching out anyone who ever called an airstrike in on a village or dropped a few tons of ordnance over Laos. The problem is that the shine and the museum are linked. Again, it's this weird situation where you've got a sincere memorial being run by kinda racist nutheads.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:52
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:That's atrocious, but doesn't go very far to making the shrine "a place of worship", which is the actual literal-minded definition that I was contending. Revisionism in Japan is spearheaded by leading cabinet ministers and the nationalist groups they're associated with, not a trashy museum. Yes, but it's *symbolic*. Going to that museum symbolizes identification with an ideology. It'd be as bad as senior German politicians going to neo-nazi meetups, or something. Also, the 'The West did bad things tooo' is a pathetic distraction. There is a world of difference between "... and therefore the West should also seek to recognize its own past crimes", and the way it is normally used, which is "... and therefore people should stop criticizing and consider atrocities to be A-ok." Fangz fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 03:13
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Fangz posted:Yes, but it's *symbolic*. Going to that museum symbolizes identification with an ideology. It'd be as bad as senior German politicians going to neo-nazi meetups, or something. Especially since we're talking Imperial Japan, who can give any Western great power you care to name a run in the atrocities department.
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Jan 11, 2015 03:16
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the JJ posted:Yeah, I mean, no one is going to the Vietnam Memorial and scratching out anyone who ever called an airstrike in on a village or dropped a few tons of ordnance over Laos. The problem is that the shine and the museum are linked. Again, it's this weird situation where you've got a sincere memorial being run by kinda racist nutheads. Whenever I read about Yasukuni Jinja, I alwats imagined this huge black marble buildings, with pyres and everything, and names of every soldier written in gold... and then I found out they had a museum there, so I had to go. On the first day of the New Year, because that's how you spend your New Year in Tokyo. You drag your girlfriend to a museum to maybe get a look at a tank. Yasukuni Jinja is very much centrally located in Tokyo. And as Japanese go to visit shrines on the first day of the New Year, a lot of them are going to Yasukuni. It looks like a shrine (and not that monstrosity that I imagined), so it's kind of a letdown, once you consider all the shitstorms surrounding it. Shinso Abe visits it sometimes because he's a poo poo, and Chinese get up in arms all about it, because it's very much convenient for it. I've read some stuff that states that Japan has made no less than 26 official apologies for their stuff in WWII. It used to be all OK and well, but eventually China got prosperous to throw their weight around and saying that Japan never apologized is a good way to rile people up. Abe is just a nationalist twat, so of course he won't apologize. As with every temple and celebration in Japan, there's a poo poo ton of food stalls outside. We ate a kebab, because you can find a surprising number of Turkish people in Tokyo. Now, the museum is the real deal. The early history part isn't that interesting, but once you get to the Fifteen Years War/WWII, you can read some bizzaro poo poo. I can personally attest for that rape of Nanking bit myself.  You can also get a pick with a Zero (I think). For 2015, I promise to talk less about going to Yasukuni Jinja, Hiroshima or Nagasaki memorials.
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Jan 11, 2015 03:23
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Fangz posted:Yes, but it's *symbolic*. Going to that museum symbolizes identification with an ideology. It'd be as bad as senior German politicians going to neo-nazi meetups, or something. I feel like I keep going back and forth on this. Going to the shrine is not really more symbolic of identification with an ideology than like, going to the Vietnam Memorial means you're tacitly in favor of napalming little kids. A lot of the nationalist dickwaving these days is less 'we did nothing wrong' and more 'shut up about it you're [still occupying Tibet/killed way more of your own people through sheer incompetence/the ones who invaded us in 1274] and most of all [currently muscling all your neighbors, including us, over tiny little rocks so you can distract your populace].' So going to the shrine is less about denying evil things in the past more about cocking a snook at China (or appearing to do so for the sake of the voters, which in turn the Chinese govt. secretly kinda likes because it gets people pissed at foreigners.) Just in the wa Confederate memorabilia is, at this point, less of a (direct) statement about racism and more a vent for generations of (misplaced) white lower class ennui and frustration. I think it's less a reaction of 'we shouldn't have to talk about this' as I know specific Japanese people whose family on one side went through Manzanar and on the other went and brawled on university campuses to keep the country pacifistic and avoid getting entangled in more wars be told by very well meaning white people that they ought to apologize for WWII, while at the same time those same people wonder what the big deal is about Columbus Day and think this whole Redskins controversy is a bit over blown.
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Jan 11, 2015 03:54
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I think it's also important to keep in mind that for reasons beyond me (if they are reasons at all) the Japanese government has a history of being slow to the point of seeming reluctant at acknowledging crimes committed on behalf of the Imperial government. That is to say they're somewhere between Britain and Germany in terms of acknowledgement/apology. US is like "THOSE WERENT EVEN FUCKIN' CRIMES YA GODDAMN <seasonal enemy>" FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 04:47
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Fangz posted:Yes, but it's *symbolic*. Going to that museum symbolizes identification with an ideology. It'd be as bad as senior German politicians going to neo-nazi meetups, or something. What exactly are you missing from my posts, when I say "Shinzo Abe making an official visit to Yasukini is a deliberate act of provocation" but you read it as something else? The museum is not what the politicians are visiting, I suspect they are well aware that it is horseshit, or in Abe's case, too audacious a step. The shrine itself is not comparable to a neo-nazi meeting, it's a public landmark that anybody can visit.The average visitor is there because their they have family enshrined there, so unless they're Hideki Tojo Jr. they're not there to worship war criminals. Alternatively, they don't care at all about the shrine's politics because most Japanese people treat Shinto shrines as tourist stops.
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Jan 11, 2015 05:25
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Alternatively, they don't care at all about the shrine's politics because most Japanese people treat Shinto shrines as tourist stops. But remember, they still call the Emperor the God-King so clearly they're culturally inclined to religious fanaticism and top down leadership.
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Jan 11, 2015 05:30
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:
It would be, if it was just a shrine instead of being a shrine + a museum that blatantly lies about Japan's role in the Second World War. I'm from a country that the Japanese occupied and committed atrocities in during World War Two, and my personal view is that they can honour their war dead, but honouring men who ordered/did some really nasty stuff in neighbouring countries, is a legitimate grievance for these neighbouring countries.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:14
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FAUXTON posted:That is to say they're somewhere between Britain and Germany in terms of acknowledgement/apology. Japan is not comparable to Britain in this respect. Also, Japan has recently got worse with respect to apology. They actually used to be more apologetic 10 years ago. People need to try to get a grip on that. The only thing you could even be thinking about is the area bombing of Dresden et. al. - even if the government has been poor at official apology, these is still much greater awareness of those events in the UK, they are routinely debated openly in the press etc. Talking overly critically about Japanese war crimes in the press is in itself an oddity in Japan. But to think about Japanese pacifism in another way: Ian Buruma posted:The denial of historical discrimination is not just a way to evade guilt. It is intrinsic to pacifism. To even try to distinguish between wars, to accept that some wars are justified, is already an immoral position. What is so convenient in the cases of Germany and Japan is that historical pacifism happens to be a high-minded way to dull the pain of historical guilt. Or, conversely, if one wallows in it, pacifism turns national guilt in to a virtue, almost a mark of superiority, when compared to the complacency of other nations. It can also be the cause of historical myopia. This is in relation to the strength of Japanese disapproval in particular to the First Gulf War, which many Japanese people regarded as equivalent to the early stages of Japanese aggression before WW2. So there is actually a school of thought in Japan that argues that Japan is morally superior to its Western exemplars because of its post-war pacifism, which is of course highly complacent. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 11:32
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I found a lot more pictures of Isabella Clara Eugenia, as well as the information that Phillip II claimed the throne of France on her behalf after Henry III was assassinated (since her mother was Henry III's sister--which is probably why Isabella and Catalina look so good, they're only half Hapsburg) but that didn't work out because of the Salic Law, the war, and Henry IV. Which, for some reason, I had not known before. Ruffs everywhere: http://bjws.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-little-gossip-isabella-clara-eugenia.html And this, incidentally, is Isabella and Catalina's mom, Elizabeth of Valois. That generation of Valoises was all hot, but their dynasty was still boned because Henry III was assassinated and gay. Catalina looks a whole lot like her. 
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 12:27
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100 Years Ago The plans are in for a naval operation in the Dardanelles, which appear to have accounted for any eventuality except the defenders actually making them fight to get through. There's a barely-even-a-skirmish on Mafia Island, and Enver Pasha starts the long journey back to Constantinople as the last-ditch attempt to salvage something from the Sarikamis operation fails. Meanwhile, the paper appears to suggest that a Mr Subsidence is to be blamed for the recent flooding in the Thames Valley... edit: I have a slightly dull question. The First Battle of Champagne began December 20th, right? On the 13th (spoilers), the offensive will be formally suspended, and it'll be business as usual until late February, when they're going to attack again - but, for some reason, the people who decide what battles get called have decided that it's still part of First Champagne. Anyone know why that is, and why the February offensive doesn't have its own name? It's making my brain hurt trying to keep this all straight in my head. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 15:46
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HEY GAL posted:And this, incidentally, is Isabella and Catalina's mom, Elizabeth of Valois. That generation of Valoises was all hot, but their dynasty was still boned because Henry III was assassinated and gay. Catalina looks a whole lot like her. I don't think "gay" is really the best way to describe Henry III. "Generally batshit and probably gay as well" seems more appropriate if I'm remembering him correctly. The Valois family had some issues, to say the least.
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Jan 11, 2015 18:50
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I don't think "gay" is really the best way to describe Henry III. "Generally batshit and probably gay as well" seems more appropriate if I'm remembering him correctly.
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Jan 11, 2015 22:43
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That's cuz he's even more fabulous than the landsknechte.
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Jan 11, 2015 23:58
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Frostwerks posted:That's cuz he's even more fabulous than the landsknechte. Henry III:  One of his *ahem* court favorites, Louis de Maugiron. Died in a mock battle representing the Duel of the Horatii, because of course: 
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Jan 12, 2015 00:03
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That guy looks awesome. Like Kefka from Final Fantasy 6
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Jan 12, 2015 00:30
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Animal posted:That guy looks awesome
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Jan 12, 2015 00:43
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HEY GAL posted:You probably meant this as a joke, but yes. I don't joke about military history.
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Jan 12, 2015 01:44
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HEY GAL posted:He has hosed/killed more dudes than either one of us ever will And yet he was always hearing from his mother about how his older brother Charles did the whole Protestant massacring thing soooo much better. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 03:37
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~the story of life of Henry III~ - France sucks, got nothing to do at all - Hey wanna be King of Poland, just sign below - Do I look like I breathe air of course I wanna be king of Poland, this gig sounds awesome Wait whaddaya mean I signed I'm gonna tolerate the heretics and marry a 50-year-old lady how is it socially unacceptable to poo poo in the hall, what is this place this place sucks, it's cold, they don't speak French and think I'm too gay OH HEY an opening in France see you later suckers - hey wait, I chased you down with a bunch of tartars what up now huh - I don't give a poo poo, not coming back - OK then but if you change your mind, ya know, you can still come back no hard feelings, nope - gently caress that noise, that place sucked but that "dedicated place to poo poo with piping and whatever" thing made sense, I'm keeping it achievement of civilization what's wrong with you duders why do you come in when I'm in the poo poo post *gets stabbed while on the toilet* *Curtains*
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Jan 12, 2015 11:15
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I doubt he could be as successful king as Bathory, but of couse Bathory wasn't that fabulous:
alex314 fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 13:15
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100 Years Ago The British Empire adds Mafia Island to its list of possessions, and immediately turns it into a penal colony for the dummkopf who until just after the Battle of Tanga was the chief intelligence officer for IEF "B". There's a funny story courtesy of a subaltern at Festubert, and Ypres is about to be struck down by a typhoid epidemic. Meanwhile, the Telegraph's reprint of its archives reprints from its archive (ahem) an interview with Otto von Bismarck from 1867. Which is not something you see every day. Also, there will be no University Boat Race this year; neither side can raise a crew because they've all joined up. Also I clipped this from the paper: a Frenchman sets up a letter-box in No Man's Land. As you do. The ending smells suspiciously like what the ANZACs will soon be calling a furphy (after the name of the subcontractor who cleans out their latrines), but it still made me laugh. 
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Jan 12, 2015 18:23
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Every Cambridge college does have a quite substantial plaque of dead former members, posted in its chapel or elsewhere. The lists in the large colleges are depressingly long.
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Jan 12, 2015 18:31
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Your telegraph link is still a placeholder.
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Jan 12, 2015 19:31
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Fixed, thanks. I need to stop doing that.
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Jan 12, 2015 20:06
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Jokes aside, I'm amazed anybody managed to sit in these trenches for the winter and not find some way to be captured by the enemy, just so you could go live in a POW camp instead.
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Jan 12, 2015 20:25
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Jokes aside, I'm amazed anybody managed to sit in these trenches for the winter and not find some way to be captured by the enemy, just so you could go live in a POW camp instead. It's really hard psychologically to leave your friends and deflect to the enemy which you know nothing about except that they've been doing their best to kill you and your superiors have told you are bloodthirsty monsters, subhuman mongrels or worse. It's a leap to the unknown and you don't know if you'll ever see your family again if you do so. And finally you stand a chance of getting shot by either side while crossing the no man's land. When reading on Crimean war I'm always just amazed at the treatment of Russian POWs by Allied armies. Officers could bring their wives to British isles and they were paid a not insignificant 'wage' by their captors and could even travel relatively free.
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Jan 12, 2015 20:41
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PittTheElder posted:Jokes aside, I'm amazed anybody managed to sit in these trenches for the winter and not find some way to be captured by the enemy, just so you could go live in a POW camp instead. The BEF lost about 2,000 men to desertion in January 1915, plus the ones who got caught and court-martialled, which is (I think) between 5% and 15% of their overall strength at the time. (I'd love to get my hands on equivalent numbers for other armies.) A far more popular strategy was to commit some heinous military crime like stealing or insubordination, wangle a nice long prison sentence off the FGCM, and have your war doing hard labour near Etaples. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 21:10
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Tevery Best posted:- Hey wanna be King of Poland, just sign below
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Jan 12, 2015 21:41
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HEY GAL posted:Who hasn't been king of Poland This guy I guess. Of course any story that starts with both candidates for the throne nowhere near Poland and both having to rush to Poland to promptly have a war of succession is basically sejm.txt.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:56
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