Pro-Palestine protesters demonstrate against supply of F-35 parts to Israel
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The Herald Scotland
11 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Sydney Sweeney drama: JD Vance addresses American Eagle ad controversy
"My political advice to the Democrats is continue to (call) everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi," Vance joked during an episode of the conservative "Ruthless" podcast on Friday, Aug. 1. "That appears to be their actual strategy." The Nazi party used the pseudoscience of eugenics, which promotes some genetic features as better than others, to justify the killing of Jews and countless other minority groups during the Holocaust. Sydney Sweeney dishes on the best jeans, her favorite rom-com and what's on her playlist American Eagle's campaign, which has spawned a fierce cultural debate, used wordplay to describe Sweeney, 27, as having "good genes," a wordplay to promote the brand's denim jeans. Critics have said the ad blitz amounts to a glorification of whiteness and a dog whistle for racist ideologies. But her supporters have said the ad is meant to be a light-hearted wordplay, defending the "Euphoria" actress and the brand. Sweeney previously told USA TODAY that denim was a staple of her wardrobe, but left out AE in her list of favored brands at the time. "I'm very much a white, plain T-shirt kind of girl. I jump around from a bunch of different brands and that kind of depends on what vibe I want to go for," she said. "I have my Levi's white T-shirts and my Cotton On white T-shirts that are just paired with casual jeans. Jean wise: I mean, I love Levi's, Frame, Agolde." Sydney Sweeney controversy, explained In one of several videos for AE, Sweeney, clad in a denim-on-denim outfit, says: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color." "My jeans are blue," she says as the camera pans across her blue denim and her blue eyes. Soon after the campaign dropped, people began to sound the alarm on what they saw as a dangerous message about the beauty ideal, race and "good" versus "bad" genes. Vance, though, chalked the whole ordeal up to an overreaction from the "left" and a doubling down on a strategy that he thinks lost the Democrats the 2024 presidential election. Dunkin' ad about 'genetics' draws comparisons to Sydney Sweeney drama "I actually thought that one of the lessons (Democrats) might take is 'we're going to be less crazy.' And the lesson they have apparently taken is 'we're going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful,'" he said on the podcast. "Great strategy, guys. That's how you're going to win the midterm, especially young American men." The ad's critics, however, argued that a campaign selling jeans to women should not have been shot so clearly from the male gaze. Some consumers were quick to point out what they saw as the regressive nature of the material: A buxom blonde woman drawing attention to her body and employing a sensual tone, they argued, calling back to a stereotypical symbol of a bygone era. "Wasn't she the one who said she didn't want to be seen as an object?" one commenter asked on Sweeney's Instagram page, while another chided: "We can leave Nazi Germany back where it got conquered ty next!!!" Sweeney has not yet spoken out about the controversy, though several prominent members of the GOP have chimed in on her behalf. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, took to X on July 29 to blast the left for criticizing the ad. "Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I'm sure that will poll well...." he wrote. White House's communications director Steven Cheung, a longtime adviser for President Donald Trump, also maligned the criticism, calling it "cancel culture run amok." "This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024," he wrote on X July 29, adding that people are "tired" of this way of thinking. But, when a second ad campaign, this time from Dunkin', dropped featuring the same "genetic" themes, many critics felt vindicated, arguing that it signaled a greater cultural shift toward genetic hierarchy and racism.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Israel key hostage negotiator says war in Gaza is genocide and it's 'unliveable'
Israeli peace negotiator Gershon Baskin said Hamas would have stopped war and released the hostages at the beginning and warned strikes would endanger them One of Israel's key hostage negotiators has revealed Hamas would have released its hostages in three weeks if the Israeli Defence Forces had withdrawn from Gaza. Peace campaigner Gershon Baskin had direct talks with Hamas on stopping the war within days of the attacks of October 7, 2023. He said a key Hamas figure told him: 'We're ready to give [the hostages] back,' in return for IDF withdrawal and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. And the IDF told him they could have been out of the Gaza Strip within three weeks. But the three-week deal fell through when Israeli troops surrounded the city of Gaza and Hamas froze talk of a prisoner exchange. Gershon claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants troops to remain in Gaza to please his right-wing supporters. Because of this, he says just one man can stop the war – US President Donald Trump. He said: 'Only one person can make Netanyahu do what he doesn't want to do.' As the death toll in Gaza passes 60,000, there are rising fears of famine in the Strip. 'Genocide' Gershon told the Mirror: 'It is a genocide. 'There's a difference between the Holocaust and what's going on in Gaza. But there is a legal definition of what genocide is, and it's the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide. It was written first in 1948. Many Jews participated in the drafting of that document. ' Israel has erased a civilization in Gaza. We have turned Gaza into an unliveable place. It's not just the number of people who are killed. 'It's the fact that we have destroyed everything. Two million people who are homeless, no public institutions, no libraries, no mosques, no public buildings, no water infrastructure, electric infrastructure, no schools, no universities. 'That's the erasure of a civilization. And that is the definition of genocide. It pains me to say the country of the Jewish people is committing genocide in Gaza.' The US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is in Gaza to visit one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) distribution sites in Rafah, southern Gaza. All sites are in zones controlled by the Israeli military and have become flashpoints of desperation. Hundreds have been killed by gunfire or trampling. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots, and GHF says its armed contractors have used pepper spray or warning shots. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Witkoff was sent to craft a plan to boost food and aid deliveries, while Trump said the fastest way to end the crisis would be for Hamas to surrender. Officials at Nasser Hospital said they have received the bodies of 25 people, including 13 who were killed while trying to get aid, including near the site that US officials visited. GHF denied anyone was killed at their sites on Friday. Gershon knew his life's work would be negotiating peace after his Israeli-born wife's cousin Sasson Nuriel, a 51 year-old Israeli businessman, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 2005. As he wept at Sasson's funeral, Gershon felt useless. He recalled: 'I was standing with the family over his grave and crying like everyone else and I felt so bad because I had been working with Palestinians for more than two decades. I swore to myself that if ever again someone would ask me for help, I would do everything humanly possible.' The following year, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and dragged into Gaza, where he remained imprisoned for five years. Gershon worked tirelessly to help free him, succeeding after five years. Since October 7, 2023, he has repeatedly tried to help in easing the pain of Gazans and Israelis by trying to persuade Israel to end the war. He does not believe civilians are deliberately targeted in Gaza, but he admits Israel's military is not accepting responsibility. Gershon said: 'They're not being deliberately targeted, but there's no moral sense of responsibility for what they call collateral damage. I talked to soldiers who have come back from Gaza and the kind of picture they describe is I think very much a self-justification for the horrors that they are doing. 'I say: 'Do you really need to bulldoze every building, every house? Do you need to have it bombed? Is it really necessary to wipe it out, to destroy whole communities?', and they say every building can be booby trapped. 'That's at the level of soldiers. I'm not talking about the officers, who are implementing a policy set by the Israeli government of making Gaza unliveable.' Three days after the Gaza war broke out, Gershon called Razi Hamed, a senior member of Hamas. He said: 'I contacted him when I heard his house was bombed. I said: 'I wanted to see if you're alive.' 'Then I said: 'It's not logical to me that you guys are going to hold women and children and elderly and sick and wounded hostages.' And he said: 'Yeah, we're ready to give them back.'' Hamed wanted the release of close to 100 women and minor prisoners held in Israeli jails, mostly from the West Bank. This prompted many conversations with Hamas, even as official negotiations for peace were taking place between Israel and the militant group in Qatar and Egypt. Now Gershon says: 'This was at the beginning of the war, the first time I came out and said the military pressure is going to kill hostages.' Of the 251 captives taken on October 7, 140 living hostages have been released, along with eight bodies. Israeli troops have rescued eight and recovered 49 bodies. Along with four hostages who were taken by Hamas before the current war, there are believed to be 50 left – no more than 20 of them still alive. Gershon said: 'Some of those hostages look like they came out of concentration camps and they're treated really badly. They don't have fresh water. They don't have fresh food.' Asked about the likelihood of any of them making it home safely, he said: 'It's completely dependent on one person – on Donald Trump.' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has threatened Israel that the UK will recognise Palestine as a state unless Netanyahu moves towards peace – a move criticised by some relatives of British hostages. But Mr Baskin believes this was unnecessary. He added: 'Netanyahu is not going to do anything because Starmer is threatening him.'
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Terrorist 7/7 London bombings and 9/11 plotter 'could walk UK streets in days'
Haroon Aswat, 50, originally from West Yorkshire, could soon be freed despite admitting his role in the attack on the World Trade Center and the 7/7 London bombings A terrorist who helped mastermind 9/11 and the 7/7 London bombings could soon be freed in the UK despite being a 'risk to national security'. Haroon Aswat, 50, was jailed for 20 years in 2015 in New York over terror offences and deported back to the UK in 2022. He has since been detained in a secure hospital, with his release expected soon to his family in West Yorkshire. He had been involved in setting up a 'terrorist training camp' in the US with radical cleric Abu Hamza in the 1990s and has admitted his role in 9/11 as well as the London bombings in 2005. It comes as Putin warns of nuclear war after unleashing another night of hell on Ukraine. He admitted to a psychiatrist 'I am a terrorist' before he was deported back to the UK and US court documents reveal that he also confessed to being a 'mastermind behind the (9/11) attacks and a 2005 attack in the UK', reports The Sun. Aswat has also threatened to kill Jews, Christians and other Muslim groups, and it is feared that he could be released onto streets in the UK without a full risk assessment within days due to a legal loophole blocking him from stringent checks. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick reportedly said: 'This despicable man was behind one of the most deadly attacks in modern history. He should never experience freedom again." At a hearing in April, the Metropolitan Police applied for a 'notification order', meaning Aswat would be subject to certain requirements about informing police of his whereabouts and personal life upon his release. In a ruling, Mr Justice Jay approved the order for 30 years, which Aswat did not oppose. But he said that despite a psychiatrist's finding in 2022 that there 'remains the risk of Islamic violent extremism' by Aswat, no risk assessment had been carried out. In his judgment, Mr Justice Jay added: 'Although (the psychiatrist) did not conduct a full risk assessment for terrorist risk, he identified 15 of the 22 relevant factors … as being likely to be present.' He added: 'No formal terrorist risk assessment has been carried out in the United Kingdom since the defendant's return here. The circumstances of his detention have precluded that. However, on the basis of the material which is available, the defendant has been assessed by various police officers … that he remains a risk to national security.' He said that the psychiatrist had concluded 'there remains the risk of Islamic violent extremism-motivated targeted terrorist offending behaviour given his threats to kill Jews, Christians and certain groups of Muslims … (t)here is also a risk of him influencing other vulnerable individuals, as when he is in an abnormal mental state his religious extremist rhetoric is amplified by mental illness'. And a US District Court document shows how he admitted his role in terrorist activities. It stated: 'In March 2017 the defendant stated, 'if you think I am a terrorist, I don't shy away from my responsibility' and also stated he was a mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and a 2005 terrorist attack in the UK.' The papers also reveal that Aswat was in contact with Osama bin Laden and trained in al-Queda camps in Afghanistan before the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Police also traced 20 calls made by 7/7 bombers to a phone connected to Aswat. In his witness statement Det Chief Supt Gareth Rees, head of operations for the Met's SO15 Counter Terrorism Command, said of Aswat: 'He has spoken positively of his time with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and expressed aspirations to reconnect with them. 'Based on my experience, this is conduct which gives me grave concerns about the risk which the defendant poses to the UK's national security and to the public. The assessment of medical practitioners is that he currently has capacity to make complex decisions and understand complex restrictions when mentally he may temporarily lose capacity if he were to relapse into a psychotic state.' Aswat, who is now 50, helped to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and Seattle in the US from 1999, which the American government described as a camp 'to train young impressionable men in America to fight and kill so that they could travel to Afghanistan to join forces with al Qaida'. He then travelled to Afghanistan to receive training from al Qaida in 2001, and in 2005 was arrested in Zambia and extradited to the UK. In August that year, he was then arrested in the UK because of an arrest warrant being issued for him in the US, and was eventually extradited. In March 2015, he pleaded guilty in the US to one count of conspiracy to provide support to a foreign terrorist organisation before January 1 2000, and to another charge related to providing material to a terrorist organisation. He was jailed for 20 years, but did not serve the full sentence due to 'periods of detention in this country awaiting extradition' being taken into account, Mr Justice Jay said. A Government spokesman reportedly said: "Protecting our national security is the very first priority of this government and if any individual poses a threat to that security, the police and intelligence services have a range of powers they can apply to deal with that threat. "We will always do whatever is necessary inside the law to protect the public from any risk posed by former terrorist offenders or people of terrorist concern." The Mirror has contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment.
