OnPoint: Dear DomPost
47 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 Newer→ Last
-
Please consider this a submission to your opinion page.
Just call yourself 'Deputy Director, Institute of Global Media Studies', that should do it.
But yeah, how desperately sad. When the newspaper editor doesn't even care enough to - well, edit ... we might as well just give up and leave the trees standing.
-
The last time I bought the Dominion (it wasn't even Post yet) was shortly after my arrival, when they published an openly racist editorial against the French. Ok, it was the French, so they sort of had it coming, but still...
I lie, actually, I did buy some copies during a holiday in Napier. However, I wouldn't completely discount the possibility that they did actually interpret the piece correctly and published it anyway in the interest of, you know, racism.
-
"a fully modern but peacefully inclined country"
which is quite happy to kill animals deemed by quite a lot of the world to be in an internationally-sanctioned sanctuary,
*and*
quite happy to engage in an act of shipwreck (however that manouvere started off.)A fully- modern country that not only has sections of the population engaged in historical revisionism, but allows those people to deny things that happened ("logs-of-wood" anyone?) Much less than the slaughter that took place in Nanking - but still a matter which must not be denied.
I have huge respect for Japanese art, and some of Japanese cuisine. I know a little of the nation's history, but do know that brutal decisions are esconsed among tea ceremonies and superb swords/metallurgy...yeah, cliche but kind of fits the ethos.
The *real* problem is -such unedited garbage as Keith has exposed
going straight out into the public media trough with NO backgrounding whatsoever.Sorry for the sputtering. The Key's comments apropos Tuhoe, and a coupla other things, are making proper breathing difficult. Kia kaha, Keith-
-
An openly racist editorial against the French.
Oxymoron IMHO.
-
Having spent 4 years living in S Korea it would barely be a month in between news stories about how Japanese text books continued to gloss over their war atrocities and still hadn't apologised for the Korean comfort women used during world war II.
That country for all its 'development' and moves away from being a bunch of marauding, murdering maniacs for centuries still has some major issues that it needs to properly acknowledge and properly deal with.
I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon though.
-
Hmm. Before anything else is considered, wasn't this just a really weird opinion piece to be giving half a page to?
-
That country for all its 'development' and moves away from being a bunch of marauding, murdering maniacs for centuries still has some major issues that it needs to properly acknowledge and properly deal with.
Let's acknowledge that there's a lot of places this description could apply to, hmmmm?
The Dom Post does have some standards, though - a week or so ago it refused to publish a screed from "Kiwis For Balanced Reporting On the Middle East" or some such group which was basically all the reasons Israel was awesome, starting with King David. (They had it published as an ad instead.) So I guess there's a line. Somewhere. If they dig hard enough.
-
I get the impression the "world" section consists almost entirely of articles selected from syndication and wire services, mostly on whether they fit nicely around the ads.
Often there'll be an article with an obvious NZ angle that they don't address at all, because the Independent/Reuters/New York Times hasn't.
-
Hmm. Before anything else is considered, wasn't this just a really weird opinion piece to be giving half a page to?
Well, yes -- since since DomPost seems utterly disintered in covering that corner of the world unless there kinky Loli-goths, whale entrails or a body count involved.
-
It could just be that the Dominion Post hosts a nest of Japanese militarists or their sympathisers.
Time to get Ian Wishart on the case I think
-
Yeah, I've noticed a lot of Japanese cars parked on Boulcott St.
-
I do understand that both a very large Japanese commercial interest has a 'display' centre on Willis Street and the embassy of that great nation is also located nearby. Some might say that this points to a worrying CBD axis of commercial, government, press and militerism
-
Sic the Falun Gong on em
-
Ok, let me see if I understand the sinister Chinese plot she's worried about:
1. A very large number of Chinese move en-masse to this island in the south of Japan. Hmm, island population of 1800, so call it 1500 voters, so they'd need maybe 1000 migrants to get a majority (assuming typical local government voter turnout).
2. A range of Chinese stand for local government and carefully-coordinated voting gives them a majority.
3. The now-Chinese-controlled local government ... uh ... um ... grants building consent for a Chinese government naval base?
4. The Japanese central government either doesn't notice (unlikely, with people like Koike around) or doesn't care....
I mean, seriously? What can local government on an island with the population of Greytown do to compromise national security? And if there is something they can do, what's stopping central government from passing a law to overrule them?
-
Totally bizarre for sure, but I'd prefer to believe in Keith's own suggestion as to how this happened before I believe in some deliberate intent on the DomPost's side
You skimmed through a wire service you subscribe to and saw something about Chinese naval influence in the Pacific...
Plain ignorance. Blissful ignorance. Almost endearing...
-
Funnily enough, this is the same DomPost that got manhandled away from the Japanese Embassy in Wellington for daring to bring up the issue of whale hunting.
-
This is the same nutty rhetoric shared by most Japanese politicians and power brokers. The occasional emotional potshot at the Chinese or the Koreans is a useful tool to shift attention away from Japan's own chronically dysfunctional society and hopelessly inept political system.
Most permanent residents of Japan (myself included) see the futility in voting. As long as we can slip under the taxation radar, we're not going to get too concerned. It's a survival tactic but a practical response to the reality.
-
In an ironical sense, this starts to look increasingly like Nihon bashi(ng) just a little bit, don't you think? We are sill happy to buy their cars, right? And we're back to drinking French wine, aren't we? I'd hate to fall out of step.
Yes there are issues in Japanese society, that when I lived there many moons ago used to drive me bananas. Why for example did my third generation Korean friend have to carry a foreign identity card and have his fingerprints taken? And certainly this article is way off the mark.
However, if I can get away with a biblical reference, let the country who is innocent cast the first trident.
-
On the point of revisionism- The day both these countries can make a concerted effort to remove revisionism of their own dark pasts from their history textbooks will be a win for knowledge.
Having Monday watched 1000 Chinese students participating in formative military training on the quad across from where I was teaching and in light of last years 60th anniversary celebration parade, in which the Pièce de resistance was the parading of nuclear missiles down the main street of the Chinese capital, I think you're going out on a bit of a limb arguing that the comparison with Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany is that far off Keith.
100 million people with military training?
1.3 billion population?
resistance against whom? This is nonviolent expansion.She is, to a Chinese person, what a Holocaust denier is to a Jew.
Lest we forget, the Jews weren't engaged in a 10 year old civil war amongst themselves, refusing to allign with one another when the holocaust took place. It's easy to play the victim on that one. but If you're seriously making a call against revisionism of the circumstances surrounding the the Japanese invasion, as Confucius suggested in 200BC...
"Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean."
-
Even if you didn't notice the large historical revisionism elephant in the room, you should've seen that it was at least a thinly veiled piece of xenophobia.
And presumably because of this not published it - why ever not? Its an op-ed piece, it informs the reader of opinions.
Wellingtonians should be informed of the attitude of the LDP (and a representative swathe of Japanese) to foreigners, even though that view is xenophobic and revisionist and is offensive to you. The LDP ruled Japan for half a century and is likely to be the next government of Japan (because the Social Democrats are finding themselves unable to boot America off the isles fast enough to satisfy their support). The opinions of powerful Japanese politicians are important and worthy of space in an op-ed column.
-
Do you think the Japanese have forgiven us yet for Rutherford?
-
Not that I agree with Yuriko Koike's opinion, merely that it is an opinion, and more so, a contentious opinion; the possession and espousal of opinions being a luxury that Japanese citizens can afford.
-
chris wrote...
I think you're going out on a bit of a limb arguing that the comparison with Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany is that far off Keith
I don't think that is the point. Sure, China's armament might be a bit like imperial Germany's.
However, given that we are talking about armament in the Pacific, and that the commentator is Japanese, it is much more relevant to be talking about imperial Japan's armament in the Pacific.
Particularly, when the same commentator is also talking about Japan's "peaceful" development as a regional and international power.
-
And to be fair, this resurgence of history revisionism in Japan appears to be partly linked to the economic insecurity following the early 1990s bubble burst.
-
I don't disagree Richard. But as I see it, half Keith's article is devoted to the problem of revisionism, and as both sides actively engage in widespread revisionism, I felt compelled to point out that it's a two way street.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.