RSS
Disney Says Fired ‘Mandalorian’ Actress ‘Grotesquely Trivialized the Holocaust,’ Calls for Lawsuit Dismissal
Actress Gina Carano arrives at the World Premiere Of Disney’s ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ held at the El Capitan Theatre on December 16, 2019 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Image Press Agency via Reuters Connect
The Walt Disney Company filed a motion on Tuesday night to dismiss a wrongful discharge and sex discrimination lawsuit filed by actress Gina Carano, who was fired from the Disney+ series The Mandalorian for comparing the political divides in America to Nazi Germany.
Disney wants Carano’s lawsuit dismissed “on the grounds that Disney has a constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech, such that the First Amendment provides a complete defense to Carano’s claims.” The Bob Iger-led company said the actress and former mixed martial arts fighter was fired from the Star Wars-based series in 2021 because she chose “to publicly trivialize the Holocaust by comparing criticism of political conservatives to the annihilation of millions of Jewish people — notably, not ‘thousands’ — [which] was the final straw for Disney.”
“The First Amendment protects Disney’s right to protect its own speech from association with Carano’s high-profile, controversial speech,” added the company in its motion this week. “Because the state cannot impose liability on Disney for making that decision, Carano’s claims should be dismissed.”
Disney is asking for a hearing on June 12 in federal court in downtown Los Angeles before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett. Disney is a defendant in the case alongside Lucasfilms and Huckleberry Industries. The entertainment giant purchased Star Wars creator George Lucas’ Lucasfilm in 2012 for just over $4 billion.
Carano starred as bounty hunter Cara Dune in the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. In February 2021, not long after the second season of The Mandalorian finished airing on Disney+, Carano shared on social media a TikTok post that said: “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
Shortly afterward, Lucasfilm, which co-produces The Mandalorian, announced Carano’s firing from the show. It said her social media posts “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” A month later, Disney’s CEO at the time, Bob Chapel, explained that Carano’s views “didn’t align with company values,” including its “values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity, and values of inclusion.”
Carano filed a lawsuit in Feb. 2024, claiming she was wrongfully fired and that her “words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist.” Her lawsuit is receiving financial support from X/Twitter and Tesla owner Musk, who offered to pay legal fees for anyone who faces alleged discrimination because of their social media activity on his social media platform.
Disney said in its motion on Tuesday that it “had enough” after seeing Carano’s social media post about Nazi Germany. The company said the actress “grotesquely trivialized the Holocaust as comparable to sharp political disagreements.”
Carano responded to Disney’s motion on Thursday.
“Disney has confirmed what has been known all along, they will fire you if you say anything they disagree with, even if they have to MISREPRESENT, MALIGN, and MISCHARACTERIZE you to do it,” she wrote in a post on X. “They are now on record letting everyone who works for them know that Disney will take any chance they get to control what you say, what you think or they will attempt to destroy your career. The First Amendment does not allow Disney to wantonly DISCRIMINATE, which is what they have done in my case and frankly have now admitted they did.”
The post Disney Says Fired ‘Mandalorian’ Actress ‘Grotesquely Trivialized the Holocaust,’ Calls for Lawsuit Dismissal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login