Taiwanese High School's Nazi-Themed Parade

Some Taiwanese are militantly ignorant. These are the people who believe that the less they know the happier they will be, as in they won't hear irony in the phrase "ignorance is bliss." It's something they That explains why a person like Liu Hsi-cheng (劉習正) could become a high school history teacher and yet help students organize and promote a Nazi parade at his school. What is really disturbing is that this dumbass had the gall to ask for a second chance by blaming his students: "[Liu] said his students deeply regret their actions and believe that the entire class should take the blame because they made a collective decision to dress as Nazis." Yeah, I was just following my students decision to do something stupid? If school were really a democracy students would vote to decide what scores their teachers could give them. They'd vote to determine which textbooks their teachers used, etc. Point is: school isn't a democracy, it's an authoritarian regime with teachers being, hopefully, wise and even-handed dictators. On the other hand, the country was ruled for nearly half a century by a fascist one-party government...And no, the KMT didn't really care for stuff like history or philosophy. Education was, and to a large extent still is, science and technology-oriented. The result? Shit like this.

That is all.

台灣有隱性種族歧視

26 十一月 , 2015  

社工師　月下波光

 

一則台灣人飆罵外國人的新聞上了國際版面，也讓外媒點出了台灣隱性種族歧視的問題，許多人看到這樣的評論，紛紛感到震驚，許多人跳出來澄清，這只是少部分人的行為，台灣最美的風景是人，我們絕對沒有甚麼種族歧視。但我們仔細觀察卻不難發現，台灣人的種族歧視埋在骨子裡，嘴巴不說，可身體卻誠實的一直在做，沒人敢說、也沒人願意承認。

 

甚麼是種族歧視？甚麼是隱性種族歧視？

sauce

China Deployed Missiles on Disputed Island, U.S. Says

FEB. 16, 2016

HONG KONG — The Pentagon has evidence that the Chinese military has deployed surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island in the South China Sea, a United States official has said.

The deployment escalates regional tensions that have been inflamed by China’s extensive effort to build artificial islands in the South China Sea, bolstering its claim to sovereignty over an area about the size of Argentina, where the Philippines, Vietnam and other nations also claim territory. The United States does not recognize China’s claims, and in recent months, it has sailed warships and flown military aircraft near the Chinese outposts to assert its right to freedom of navigation.

The United States official said the Chinese appeared to have deployed HQ-9 missile batteries on Woody Island in the Paracel chain. China has long had military and civilian infrastructure on the island, which is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, in a statement, confirmed on Wednesday that China had placed antiaircraft missiles on the island.

Collapsed Building Reinforced With Used Cooking Oil Cannisters: image

 Daily Mail (02/07/2016):

Pictures of the apartment complex destroyed in the Taiwan earthquake on Saturday show that its walls appear to have been built using empty cooking oil cans. {ACTUALLY it clearly says "Kansai Paint" on the cans}

Rescuers are racing against time to save more than 125 people stuck beneath the rubble of the block of flats in Tainan, Taiwan after a powerful earthquake struck the southern part of the island on Saturday.

The death toll for the 6.4 magnitude earthquake has now reached 24, with 22 of the victims found in the toppled Tainan building including a ten-day-old girl and two other children.

While Tainan's government says the building had obtained its construction permit legally, images show large rectangular, commercial cans of cooking-oil packed inside wall cavities exposed by the damage, apparently having been used as building material.

Abuse of foreigner on Taipei MRT reflects social problems: scholars

Taipei, Nov. 14 (CNA) The verbal abuse that a British man and his Taiwanese girlfriend suffered at the hands of a Taiwanese man on Taipei's mass rapid transit (MRT) system recently reflects bigger social problems in Taiwan, local scholars said.

The verbal abuse came to light on Nov. 11 after a British man, who identified himself as Christopher Raymond Hall, uploaded a video of the incident onto his YouTube channel. In the video recorded by his girlfriend, the apparent abuser, later identified as a 30-year-old who worked for a security firm, was shown calling Hall a "scrounger," "trash" and "a piece of crap" and his girlfriend a "whore" and "Taiwanese trash" for dating a Westerner.

The video has since been viewed over 1.6 million times on YouTube and attracted media reports, which prompted police to find and question the Taiwanese man and hand him over to prosecutors on charges of public insult, which is punishable with a fine of no more than NT$9,000 (US$274).

Lan Pei-chia (藍佩嘉), a sociology professor at National Taiwan University, said it is hard to comment on this specific incident because the public knows little about the abuser on the MRT, but added that she believes the most important thing right now is not to launch a witch-hunt after the abuser because "he is not an isolated case."

"If a Caucasian man from the West, who enjoys a privileged position in Taiwan, can encounter such a thing, what about someone from a Southeast Asian country or other countries who is in a structurally disadvantaged position in Taiwan, and who struggles with the double disadvantage of class and race? What would his situation be like?" said Lan.

"We may also have to ask ourselves, 'why didn't the other people on the MRT train do anything? Why are we indifferent toward such racial discrimination?'" Lan told CNA in a telephone interview Friday.

Although hesitant to comment on the case, Lan said one of the likely reasons causing the extreme hatred as witnessed in the video is the Taiwanese man's feeling of inferiority in front of the British man.

The Taiwanese man was quoted by local media saying Thursday that he yelled at Hall because they bumped into each other on the MRT train, and Hall had shown him a poor attitude.

In Hall's account in the video, he said the couple boarded the train at MRT Da-an Station and sat down as soon as there were free seats. They moved away after realizing that the man was staring at them, but he followed them to the next carriage and began insulting them, according to Hall.

Lee I-ching (李怡青), a psychology professor from the National Chengchi University, said as Taiwan's society becomes more racially diverse, some Taiwanese people may not be accustomed to the change and may vent their anger and frustration over their own lives at a foreigner, believing that the foreigner "is here to rob them of their jobs or resources."

The fact that the abuser targeted the Taiwanese girlfriend of Hall may show the man's prejudice against what he perceived as the girl's xenophilia, Lee said.

The feeling that Taiwanese girls have been "snatched away" by foreign men originated from nationalist discourses, which view the female body as an important "boundary marker" for the nation, Lan said.

Lee said the outburst of the Taiwanese man is not necessarily a response to what the foreigner said or did, but a reflection of his own discontent in his work and life.

"It is possible that he had a bad day at work, was scolded by his boss and missed his ride home. Many things could have gone awry before he met the foreigner, when his emotions erupted," Lee said.

Lee said she believes that the Taiwanese public's reactions would not have been as strong as they were -- with many people taking to the Internet to strongly condemn the abuser, saying he has "brought shame on all Taiwanese"-- if the victim was not Caucasian, but someone from Southeast Asia.

"It is because it happened to a white person that it became news. If this happened to a person from Southeast Asia, it might not become news because it happens quite often...some people who differentiate between races may wonder, 'how could this happen to a white person?" she said.

The fact that there was a vivid video footage, and that the victim appeared to be a civil and polite person, may have also contributed to the outrage, Lee added.

The viral video has generated much discussion on social media, with many foreigners jumping to the defense of Taiwan, saying such treatment of foreigners is not common in a country that is often touted for its hospitality and friendliness.

"A terrible experience, but thankfully a minority response to foreigners in Taiwan," wrote Facebook user Mark Bell.

(By Christie Chen)