An online potato chips advert featuring Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher has been removed after viewer complaints that it was racist, reports say.The Popchips advert showed the 34-year-old actor in brown makeup portraying a Bollywood film producer. It was removed from YouTube and Facebook after it was criticised. The potato chip maker said the advert was “created to provoke a few laughs and was never intended to stereotype or offend anyone”…
While the debate about the all-white casting on HBO’s Girls has been garnering attention on the blogosphere, it’s surprising there hasn’t been a similar dialogue concerning the portrayal of Asian-Americans in US sitcoms. E4′s latest aquisition, 2 Broke Girls, is the most problematic. Created by Sex and the City’s Michael Patrick King, it’s the story of two white waitresses (Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs) who work in a Brooklyn restaurant whose boss is Asian-American Han Lee ( Matthew Moy). Short, asexual and work-obsessed, Lee is ridiculed for his broken English and failing to “get” US culture. In one episode Dennings’ character says, after a run-in with Lee: “You can’t tell an Asian he made a mistake. He’ll go in back and throw himself on a sword.”
Civil liberties groups have called for an independent inquiry into the shooting of two Aboriginal teenagers in Sydney’s busy Kings Cross nightlife area at the weekend. Police shot the teenagers, aged 14 and 18, when the stolen vehicle they were driving mounted a crowded pavement in the early hours of Saturday morning, hitting two women. Four other males, aged 13, 14, 16 and 24, were in the back seat and not hurt…
The family of a black man found burned to death have condemned police chiefs for failing to start disciplinary action against officers blamed by an internal report for a “catalogue of errors”, which amount to “a failing in duty”…
There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain’s colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied…
Babar Ahmad, the British man jailed without trial since 2004 while fighting extradition on terror charges, has pleaded to be tried in Britain and accused the police of “outsourcing” his case to the US. Ahmad, accused of running a US-hosted website that encouraged terrorism, said he had never been formally questioned about the allegations against him or been presented with any evidence…
Far-right groups from across Europe, including members of the English Defence League (EDL), are holding a rally in Denmark in a bid to set up “an anti-Islamic alliance” across the continent. The demonstration in Denmark’s second city of Aarhus is expected to draw anti-Islamic groups from countries including Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden…
Scotland Yard is facing a racism scandal after a black man used his mobile phone to record police officers subjecting him to a tirade of abuse in which he was told: “The problem with you is you will always be a n*****. The recording, obtained by the Guardian, was made by the 21-year-old after he was stopped in his car, arrested and placed in a police van the day after last summer’s riots…
Christopher Samba has become the latest victim of racism in Russia after a banana was allegedly thrown at the former Blackburn Rovers defender during his new side Anzhi Makhachkala’s match against Lokomotiv Moscow…
The mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence has called for the Home Office to reopen an inquiry into police handling of the case, following fresh claims of corruption. Doreen Lawrence has written to Theresa May, the home secretary, expressing her concerns that the initial murder investigation was flawed. Her move comes after a Scotland Yard report was leaked last week claiming that a police officer who interviewed the suspects following the killing had links to one of their fathers…
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