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liquidsilver:
Discuss Asian politics

barton:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/26/chinas-row-with-sweden-over-racist-tv-skit-has-citizens-urging-boycott-ikea-hm/?utm_term=.2d04b591e6bf

You can't make this stuff up.


--- Quote ---A man who watched the family being kicked out of the hostel told Sweden’s biggest newspaper, Aftonbladet, that the police tried to calm down the situation while the Chinese family just “shouted and screamed.” The son’s behavior was particularly strange, suddenly just “throwing himself flat on the ground,” according to the InBeijing blog run by the Swedish journalist Jojje Olsson.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---These melodramatic scenes might seem ripe for satirizing. That’s exactly what the people at Swedish News, a comedy show on SVT, Sweden’s national public TV broadcaster, did. Swedish News features a satirical news segment, much like the “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live.”
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---In it, presenter Jesper Ronndahl delivered a 10-minute-long segment about the whole debacle that was apparently meant to be funny. It ended with a spoof video that the Swedish News team made and said they uploaded onto Youku, the Chinese version of YouTube. (We checked Youku and the video is not there — it’s not clear whether it was ever uploaded, or if Youku took it down.)

The spoof video opens with a woman saying, “Here are a few tips to avoid cultural clashes.”

“For example, we do not poop outside historic buildings. And if you see someone who’s out walking a dog, it’s not because they just bought lunch,” she continued, alluding to the cliche that Asians regularly eat dogs and to old reports that Chinese tourists had defecated outside the Louvre museum in Paris. This part of the report was illustrated with a sign of a person in a Chinese-style hat squatting and pooping while eating out of a bowl with chopsticks.

Then, in what was probably meant to be another attempt at humor, she went on: “Another important cultural difference is that you Chinese are racists. And here in Sweden, there are black people, Jews, Arabs and even homosexuals.”

Well, this rubbed salt into the wound. China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing and its embassy in Stockholm decried the segment as a show of racism and demanded an apology....
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arafura:
Meanwhile, down in Asia-Pacific:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/while-new-zealand-heals-australias-culture-war-rolls-on/ar-BBV4NrS?li=AAgfLCP&OCID=AVRES000

Kishor Napier-Raman

Crikey/
While New Zealand heals, Australia’s culture war rolls on

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft

Yesterday’s funeral prayers for Haji-Daoud Nabi, the 71-year-old Afghan refugee who died trying to protect others at the Masjid Al Noor last Friday, were briefly interrupted by a loud roar.

Members of the Mongrel Mob, one of New Zealand’s biggest bikie gangs, had arrived to pay their respects. A man in a suit, one of the mob’s leaders, emerged from a black limousine, flanked by several tattooed men on motorbikes, and was ushered right to the front of the funeral line next to Nabi’s family, eventually helping to carry the coffin.

There is a slight tendency among Australians to view New Zealand as something of a backwater, the only country further from the world than us. But when it comes to reckoning with the wounds of racism, the Kiwis are miles ahead. Nowhere is this more clear than in the relationship with Māori culture, which is given a genuine sense of value and pride even among pākehā (white) New Zealanders rarely afforded to Indigenous culture back home. Māori hymns have been sung at most vigils for the dead, newsreaders and politicians, who are a far more diverse bunch than back home, frequently litter their speech with Māori words.

Of course, New Zealand is by no means a multicultural paradise. The greater visibility of Māori culture doesn’t obscure the fact that it has the same deep-lying structural racism common to settler-colonial societies. Still, from the Treaty of Waitangi, to the ongoing land settlements with Indigenous people, and a broad push for Māori education in schools, there is substance behind what might otherwise be tokenism.

arafura:
Also in Asia Pacific;

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/maori-reject-pms-this-is-not-us-line/news-story/ce40ad9734b548bd1a6ebf71b27c585c

Maori reject PM's 'This is not us' line

Some Maori leaders are recalling ancient colonial atrocities as they reject Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's "this is not us" response to the killing of 50 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch.

It has been widely adopted as a tagline by New Zealanders horrified by the mosque massacres but Maori are sending out another message: this wasn't the first time.

Ngati Rangi leader Che Wilson recalled the invasion and destruction by Crown troops of the Parihaka settlement in Taranaki in 1881.

"They were all promoting peace, they were praying - the Crown wanted their land and destroyed their lives," he told Radio New Zealand.
"The fact that we are saying 'this is not us' is denying the fact that it has happened in our nation before."

________________

Oh well.

arafura:
Asia-Pacific:

Harmony?

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/there-is-no-harmony-in-what-waleed-aly-stands-for/news-story/a454a3bd492a4c7e294f9bea9af21694

There’s no ‘harmony’ in Waleed Aly’s sanctimonious sermons

It was a bad idea for the Prime Minister to submit to a televised interrogation by Channel 10’s chief narcissist Waleed Aly last week.

The 30-minute interview on the jejune panel show The Project was a set-up, from the silky insolence of Aly to the slumping chair ­designed to make a middle-aged man look sloppy.

It is a mystery why Scott Morrison felt he should reward the foul calumny of the previous week, when Aly ­effectively branded him and Peter Dutton hypocritical ­Islamophobes.

But reward Aly the PM did, squandering his authority to be lectured by a cocksure 40-year-old whose mawkish moralising disguises a hardcore identity politics agenda.

But it wasn’t just Morrison sitting in that awkward armchair. It was every Australian he represents, and he had no right to elevate Aly to the stature of moral arbiter of the nation.

Let no one forget that Aly previously was spokesman and board member of the ­Islamic Council of Victoria, an activist organisation which consistently downplays Islamist terrorism, even while Victoria has remained a hotspot for the homegrown brand.

It has called for “safe ­spaces” for Muslim youth to meet and “use words which in a public space would sound inflammatory”.

The PM was never going to convert Aly fans who took to social media to berate him afterwards for various offences such as “slouching” in the uncomfortable chair.

He “embodies smug male privilege”, wrote one tweeter.

No doubt Aly’s interview with Jacinda Ardern, to be aired tomorrow night, will be quite different. Judging by the promos showing the NZ Prime Minister rushing to hug Aly, expect a fawning ­display aimed at eliciting criticism of Australia.

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