French luxury giant Dior has taken down a controversial photograph that had been criticized in China for “smearing Asian women” by pandering to Western stereotypes while “distorting Chinese culture.”
The photo, which was part of the brand’s ‘Lady Dior’ exhibition in Shanghai, depicts an Asian model wearing a traditional dress and clutching a Dior handbag. It came under fire this week from Chinese media outlets for featuring “spooky eyes, [a] gloomy face and Qing Dynasty-styled nail armor.”
Although Dior has not released a statement regarding the controversy, it confirmed to fashion trade publication Business of Fashion that the photo had been removed from the exhibition. The brand has also reportedly taken the photo off Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The image, which was shot by Chinese photographer Chen Man, had drawn both media ire and public outrage. However, there were apparently no calls for a boycott of the brand.
In an editorial on Monday titled “Is This the Asian Woman in Dior’s Eyes?”, the Beijing Daily paper had noted that the image makes Chinese consumers uncomfortable. The publication criticized Man for “playing up to the brands, or the aesthetic tastes of the Western world.”
For years, Asian women have always appeared with small eyes and freckles from the Western perspective, but the Chinese way to appreciate art and beauty can’t be distorted by that.
Warning that both the brand and the photographer had “gone too far,” the China Women’s News paper ran an editorial on Wednesday that claimed it “indicated their intention of uglifying Chinese women and distorting Chinese culture.”
“Again, from… Dior’s ghost-style picture, which makes the public feel uncomfortable, it’s easy to see some Western brands’ ‘pride and prejudice’ in their aesthetics and culture,” said the newspaper, which is run by the All-China Women’s Federation.
Meanwhile, the Global Times noted that the “lingering controversy could pose a delicate situation” for Dior and other global brands – for whom China’s “massive” luxury market was one of the biggest sources of revenue. The paper said that the Chinese public had become “increasingly sensitive” toward the depiction and treatment of Chinese people and culture by foreign companies.
While pointing out that Chinese social media users had demanded the company and photographer explain their intention, a number of media outlets also highlighted how some netizens had praised the photo as a departure from typical standards of beauty in the country, often characterized by “fair skin and large eyes.”
An adviser to the EU’s top court has claimed that citizens’ information in Germany is being illegally harvested, after telecom companies challenged bulk data collection.
The German data retention law was criticized on Thursday by an adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), who stated that general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data is only allowed in exceptional cases, such as a threat to national security.
According to the adviser, bulk collection of data generates a ‘serious risk’ of leaks or improper access. It also entails a ‘serious interference’ with citizens’ fundamental rights to privacy and the protection of personal data.
This comes after two companies, SpaceNet and Telekom Deutschland, challenged the obligation to store their customers’ telecommunications traffic data in 2016. The Administrative Court of Cologne ruled that the two companies were not obliged to retain data because such an obligation violated Union law. Germany then appealed to the Federal Administrative Court, who asked the CJEU about the compatibility of the data retention obligation.
The CJEU has often stated that indiscriminate mass surveillance does not fit within the general principles of EU law. Over a year ago it saw a similar case involving legal challenges around national bulk data collection under UK and French law. The court then ruled that only limited data collection and temporary retention were allowed. France seeks to bypass the CJEU on data retention and has asked the country’s highest administrative court (the Council of State) not to follow the EU ruling. France is waiting for the conclusion of the procedure launched by the Council of State before “assessing to what extent” national law should be changed.
Despite recent EU court attempts to curb surveillance powers, leaked papers from June 2021 show that the national governments of the Netherlands, France, Spain, Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Estonia are pushing for a new pan-EU data retention law. They claim that data retention is essential for safeguarding public security and ensuring effective criminal investigations.
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France shouldn’t remain silent on Julian Assange, leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has said, after the imprisoned WikiLeaks co-founder’s father suggested that Paris could offer asylum to his son.
The life of Assange – who is being held in solitary confinement at London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison while a British court considers an extradition request by the US – is under threat, Melenchon wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
“For years, we’ve been calling for France to accept him,” the head of the leftist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party said, insisting that “France shouldn’t remain silent.”
The statement by Melenchon, who won 19.6% of the ballot in the first round of the French presidential election in 2017, follows a visit by Assange’s father, John Shipton, to the Whistleblower Meeting in Paris on Monday.
During the event, Shipton told Sputnik news agency that it would be “an honorable thing” for the French government to grant his son asylum.
“I feel that France hasn’t attacked Julian over the last 12 years and consequently France is free to act in return for the information that WikiLeaks and Julian brought to France,” he said, referring to the website’s revelations of the US intelligence agencies spying on French presidents and hacking into local banks.
🔴 John #Shipton : «La France n’a pas attaqué #Julian pendant les dernières années difficiles, donc la France est libre d’agir en échange des informations que #WikiLeaks et Julian ont apportées à la France. Ce serait honorable pour la #France d’offrir [l’asile] à Julian #Assange» pic.twitter.com/ceZ7qTARua
Several dozen French lawmakers have also recently called upon Paris to take Assange in, with the Australian-born publisher’s legal team saying last year that their client was hoping to find asylum on French soil.
Assange could face up to 175 years behind bars if he’s extradited to the US, where he’s wanted on espionage charges over the release by WikiLeaks of classified documents on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and others.
He was placed in Belmarsh in April 2019 over breach of bail, after being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years.
The publisher had been fleeing an arrest warrant issued over sexual assault allegations which he has always denied, and which failed to result in any actual charges due to lack of evidence.
Assange’s supporters insist that he has actually been persecuted over his legitimate journalistic activities and revealing the truth to the public.
The UK High Court is expected to rule on the appeal by the US against a lower court decision to bar the WikiLeaks co-founder’s extradition to America due to the 50-year-old’s poor health condition and risk of suicide.
Assange’s team will then be able to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court if it’s not favorable.
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Controversial psychologist and author Jordan Peterson claimed Western countries had no “moral right” to force developing nations to reduce pollution output, noting instead that improving their economies was key.
During an appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ show on Thursday, the Canadian professor noted that the focus of climate change policies should be on incentivizing the development of cheap energy in poorer polluter countries.
“The best long term solution is to try to make developing countries as rich as possible, and the best way to do that is not control their pollution output, but to help them develop the cheapest energy they can possibly manage as fast as they possibly can,” Peterson said.
The debate saw UK undersecretary for employment Mims Davies suggest that measures taken to tackle climate change should not come at the “expense of developing countries.” But Peterson countered that it “absolutely, 100% will be [at their expense].”
I don’t think we have any moral right in the West at all to do that.
He also criticized the recent COP26 climate change conference for failing to explore ideas on how best to improve national economies in the developing world, noting that he saw “very little of that sort of idea” coming out of the UN summit.
In the final hours of the two-week conference, China and India had intervened to soften the wording around the use of coal in the Glasgow Pact. The two countries demanded a change in the final text of the agreement that called for coal to be phased out, revising this to “phasing down unabated coal.”
The move prompted COP26 president and UK minister Alok Sharma to declare that China and India would have to “justify” their actions to countries that were more vulnerable to global warming effects. However, officials in both Beijing and New Delhi have countered that the criticism was unfair.
The annual migration of red crabs has brought traffic to a standstill on an Australian island. Apart from the epic journey, the species is also notorious for eating its own young.
Tens of millions of crustaceans are swarming Canberra-governed Christmas Island, which is almost a thousand miles northwest of the Australian mainland. Parks Australia, a government body in charge of wildlife conservation on the island, has deployed its staff to manage traffic, rake crabs off roads and provide advisories to local residents regarding road closures. Authorities are well-prepared to deal with the epic crab march as it repeats every year, usually in October and November. There are even special bridges and tunnels in place, built over and under busy roads so as to minimize the number of crabs crushed by cars. The sight of millions of these creatures making their perilous trek has become one of Christmas Island’s main tourist attractions.
The exact timing of the red crabs’ journey from forest to ocean is defined by rainfall and lunar phases. The march is led by male crabs, which are later joined by females. On reaching the ocean, they mate and spawn, with each female capable of producing as many as 100,000 eggs. However, most of the young crabs never make it back to the forest as they end up being eaten by fish and whale sharks for whom this is a veritable feast. To make matters worse, the crab larvae that do make it to the beach are often devoured by returning adult crabs of the very same species, hence one of their names – the cannibal crab.
