Swastika shaped flowerbeds planted on Melbourne city street

[Oilwellian]

FLORAL foul-up has left a city street lined with swastika shapes in a week of major Jewish celebrations.

Gardeners hired by Melbourne City Council intended to arrange the purple and white pot plants into neat geometric shapes.
But they left six 3m garden beds along Swanston St displaying large Nazi symbols.

Jewish community representatives were appalled last night by the timing of the blunder.

City venues including Federation Square are hosting hundreds of Jews this week to celebrate the eight-day Hanukkah festival.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,1658,402248,00.jpg
How can someone accidentally do this?


http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11643707%5E2862,00.html

[Skittles]

1. I have a hard time believing this was accidental

I mean, come on

[Oilwellian]

4. Yeah, me too

especially when you consider the timing of it. :eyes:

[yardwork]

9. I've never seen flower beds in that pattern - for good reason!

No way was this an accident.

The people responsible ought to be fired. I wonder if there will be any consequences?

[Djinn]

17. excuse me?

Thankfully Australia has slightly more worker friendly industrial relations laws than you guys do - you can't sack someone for something you BELEIVE they did but have no proof of.

[GetTheRightVote]

2. Oh, Oh My God, how could this be an accident, pull them out right now

[sakabatou]

3. That is either the swatstika or...

the ancient cymbol of the sun in Japan. Almsot exactly the same.

[AgadorSparticus]

7. ...or it is the ancient sign for auspiciousness as mentioned in the vedas

Hitler didn't come up with this symbol. He hijacked it and turned it backwards to suit his sinister motives. I can't remember the actual name of the symbol but I know that it is supposed to turn to the right. That is why it is auspicious--right thinking, right speech, right actions. When turned to the left, it represents negativity, evil, bad, etc.

[devilgrrl]

10. The Swastika and the Nazis

A few years ago, voters in Nepal went to the polls. They expressed their choice by stamping a swastika next to the name of the candidate of their preference. Farmers in Tibet frequently place a swastika on their home doors, so that no evil can enter the place. A similar custom is followed by Irish farmers, where the swastika placed in their doors is called a Brigit's cross. Cuna Indians in Panama design their blouses with colorful swastikas. Navajo medicine men use colored sand to draw swastikas on the floor while performing their curative rites. As a form of benediction Indian boys paint a swastika on their shaved heads. The swastika is, without a doubt, an ever present symbol. A modern author called it the "Symbol of the Century."

I have seen swastikas in museums all around the world, from Zürich to New York and from Moscow to London and Mexico City. My photo on the left, standing on a frieze of sinistroverse meandroid swastikas, was taken at the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. During a trip to Japan in 1975, my friend Shigehisa Yoshino invited me to visit the Senso-ji Buddhist temple in Tokyo's Asakusa district. Its huge lanterns, made famous to Westerners through the prints of Hiroshige, show several swastikas. But you don't need to go as far as Japan to see swastikas. Many pieces in the collections at the Metropolitan Museum in New York show them. A close look at the Capitol building in Washington D.C. will reveal several friezes formed out of swastikas. It is difficult, in fact, to find an old book on art, mythology, or archaeology, without seen swastikas profusely represented.

Scholarly research on the swastika in modern times, however, seems to be limited to two peak periods: the first around the beginning of the twentieth century; the second during the period of the emergency of Nazism in Germany. Though Hitler himself gives his version of why the swastika was adopted as a symbol of the Nazi movement, there are several other explanations as well. The Swastika and the Nazis <1> is an attempt to show the different theories without taking sides on which of them may the correct one. As it happens with many historical events most likely there is not a single explanation, and the correct answer is a combination of some of these theories.

more: http://www.intelinet.org/swastika/swastika_intro.htm

[Griffy]

12. I thought it was native american symbol if the other way... nt

[AgadorSparticus]

13. no, it originated from the vedas. the word is sanskrit in origin. like

i said, hitler hijacked it and distorted it into somethingg wretched. but i grew up with it as a religious symbol. here is some info on it:

Swastika
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The swastika is a cross with its arms bent 90° to either right or left. It is usually oriented horizontally or at a 45° angle. Its Indian form typically features a dot in each quadrant (as shown in the figure to the right).

The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit स्वस्तिक, svastika, meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is composed of su- (cognate with Greek åõ-), meaning "good, well" and asti a verbal abstract to the root as "to be"; svasti thus means "well-being". The suffix -ka forms a diminutive, and svastika might thus be translated literally as "little thing associated with well-being", corresponding roughly to "lucky charm".

The swastika appears in art and design throughout human history, symbolising many different things — luck, Surya (the sun), Brahma, or the Hindu concept of samsara. In fact, the swastika is used primarily as a religious symbol by Hindus – it was first mentioned in the Vedas, the holy texts of Hinduism – but transferred to other Indic religions like Buddhism and Jainism. It also occurs in other Asian, European, and Native American cultures – sometimes as a simple geometrical motif, sometimes as a religious symbol. The almost universally positive meanings of the swastika were subverted in the early twentieth century when it was adopted as the emblem of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Since World War II, most Westerners see it as solely a fascist symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use and its use in other cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

[crimson333]

14. yep

I watch Indian movies all the time, and from time to time in the older movies, you can see the symbol on door frames of the house

[jellybelly]

15. I love Indian movies

I love Indian movies;-)

That symbol will forever be connected with the Third Reich. Sadly, it lost any peaceful meaning when Hitler hijacked it.

[crimson333]

31. thats why I joined Netflix

They have a good supply of bollywood movies for 17.99 a month

I do get a little tired of the endless love stories at times, but i get the historical movies and older movies to watch usually.

although I bought monsoon wedding, because I loved it.

[Cleita]

16. There is evidence of swastikas as symbols dating back to

the Neolithic period in Europe. Hitler borrowed it for his own purposes. However, I think those pansy displays were deliberate.

[AgadorSparticus]

18. what evidence? i've never heard of this. i'm interested

if you have information on this, i'd like to read it.

[Cleita]

21. Here's a website that touches on it for immediate gratification.

http://www.usanogh.com/articles/article.php?story_id=68

However, pick up any of the books by the late Marija Gimbutas, an anthropologist/archaeologist who specialized in the Neolithic period and they are full of illustrations of Neolithic artwork that are covered with symbols that are various renditions of swastika-like symbols. There are also stick figures of women giving birth that come close to a swastika, so they probably started out as a fertility symbol.

[AgadorSparticus]

23. interesting read. thanks for the link. nt

[fujiyama]

19. I'm guessing

the symbol originated among different cultures independantly.

It's a very simple symbol, just like a cross, a star, or some other shape. It's not hard to realize why different cultures would look at it as a symbol of luck (either good or bad) or anything else for that matter . Coincidentally though, it is used by a symbol of good luck in many of the cultures mentioned (whethr the Native Americans or the Irish).

Unfortunately though, Hitler destroyed the meaning of an ancient symbol. As someone stated, atleast in the West, for the near future it will be associated with the Third Reich.

[Art_from_Ark]

24. The Japanese symbol, called the "fylfot", is the reverse of the swastika

as is clearly seen by the symbol in the upper left part of this map. Fylfots on maps denote Buddhist temples:

http://www.mapion.co.jp/c/f?el=139/18/50.895&scl=70000&uc=1&grp=all&nl=35/45/50.309

[norml]

5. Rupert Murdock, Mel Gibson, or Crocodile Dundee?

Who done it?

[toymachines]

6. its really screwed up that hitler tarred that good symbol

i love its shape, its too bad it has to stand for such a horrible thing. isnt it also like a tibetin symbol of the universe, maybe a mandala or something. anyways, i wish its symbolism could be changed to something positive, take away its negative power.

[lazarus]

8. A few years ago

I was staying in a very nice hotel in Atlanta. The kind with all the rooms on balconies overlooking the central lobby.

One night, a Jewish couple was having their wedding reception. The tables had been spread out in what would have appeared a neat pattern from the floor.

But, from 6 floors up, it was a swastika. I still wonder if that was accidental.

Not quite a full swastika. The final section of each leg was only half, but it was clear.

[GRLMGC]

11. In my hometown

we have "swastikas" on the lampposts. They're not actually swastikas. They're the symbol for peace that Hitler stole and reversed. I'm actually quite surprised they're still there.

[leftchick]

20. That is no accident!

wtf? do they really think the whole US population is comprised of morans?

[HuskerLib]

26. morons YES, morans NO

Actually, this has nothing to do with Americans, it's in Australia. And one thing that has bothered me for the last year that I've been reading DU...if you don't know the difference between a moron and the name moran, maybe you should not use it. Just something to think about.

[leftchick]

28. if you have been reading DU for a year then you would know...

In freeperville (aka: freerepublic.com) morans = morons...




:eyes:

[idiosyncratic]

29. This is the picture of the guy calling others "Morans"

[-..__...]

22. Old, but interesting news story.

"Berlin forest swastika to go but its image may remain
By Hannah Cleaver in Berlin
(Filed: 30/11/2000)

A SWASTIKA planted in a forest near Berlin is to be felled.

Blot on the landscape: there are fears that the stumps could leave a swastika-shaped scar still visible

The shape of the 60 sq yd Nazi symbol is revealed in the autumn when the leaves of the larches that form it turn brown against an evergreen background of pines.

But only the trees planted by Hitler Youth volunteers in 1937 will be cut, leading to fears that their stumps could leave a swastika-shaped scar still visible.

The symbol was largely forgotten about during the Cold War, and was rediscovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall only when the unified German government ordered aerial surveys of state-owned land".

More...

[girl gone mad]

25. I can actually believe it was an accident.

People have been known to do brain-dead things.

[tsuki]

27. No, not even if they were visually impared.

[jmowreader]

30. This is going to sound crass and cruel, but...

when's Bush going to Australia next?