Zara Pulls Ad Over Gaza Reference Claims

Fashion brand Zara on Tuesday said it was removing an advertising campaign from its website and social media channels after angry criticism online claimed that it resembled images of destruction in Gaza. 

 

The move follows days of boycott calls across Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok over the promotion called ‘The Jacket’, which featured a model holding a mannequin seemingly wrapped in white plastic, fragments of plasterboard, a roughly painted crooked wooden box, rubble and statues, as well as other mannequins with missing limbs. 

 

“Unfortunately, some customers felt offended by these images, which have now been removed, and saw in them something far from what was intended when they were created”, Zara said in a statement posted on its Instagram account. 

 

The Inditex-owned fashion brand added that the ad campaign, which was conceived in July and photographed in September, presents a series of images of “unfinished sculptures in a sculptor’s studio and was created with the sole purpose of showcasing craft-made garments in an artistic context”.

 

UK’s Advertising Standards Authority said they had received over 100 complaints that the imagery referenced the current conflict in Gaza and was therefore offensive. 

 

In early November, UK clothing chain M&S apologized for an Instagram video showing green, white, and red paper hats burning in a fire. The company explained that the video was part of a campaign recorded in August to “playfully show that some people don’t enjoy wearing paper Christmas hats”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, some social media users argued the hats reflected the colors of the Palestinian flag. And they accused M&S of "promoting the burning of the Palestinian flag". 

 

In the end, the firm deleted the picture and apologised for any "unintentional hurt".

 

It should be noted that the colors of the festive hats are also the same as the flags of Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Oman, Lebanon, Madagascar and Burundi and are ones traditionally associated every Christmas.

Raise a Glass to Sparkling Mead

Mead is sparking earnest enthusiasm among drinkers! 

Thanks to the likes of "Game of Thrones" and the surge in popularity of other fantasy series, mead, the ancient alcoholic beverage made from honey, is making a comeback. 

Meet Bulles de Ruche. Water, honey... and bubbles! That's the recipe for this brand-new drink that refreshes an age-old tipple dating back to bygone days.  What's different about this 2021 take on mead is the addition of a light fizz, as well as a lower alcohol content, at no more than 4.5°.

Created by Paul-Augustin Delattre, Beeche's Bulles de Ruche mead brand has chosen three types of honey to create versions of the drink with different aromatic profiles: lychee honey sourced in south-eastern Madagascar; and lavender honey harvested on the Valensole plateau in Provence, and lime honey gathered in the Forest of Halatte in the Oise region of France. 

What’s special about this honey wine is that it has a tremendous amount of versatility – like craft beers, you can make different styles with different flavors. You can add spices, fruits, vegetables, grains and/or hops. It’s its own distinct category, somewhere between beer and wine. You’d sip/drink/guzzle it like a wine, cider or beer. 

These substyles include braggot, which is mead mixed with beer or malt and hops; melomel, which is mead with added fruit; hydromel, which is watered-down melomel (popular in Spain and France); and Great Mead, which is mead intended to be aged. Like wine, it can be still or sparkling and range from crisp and dry to rich and sweet. 

In case you didn’t know, mead was one of the very first alcoholic beverages ever made, predating beer and wine – as far back as 3,000 BCE. It’s thought that mead was first created when rain dropped into a pot of honey, and that the first people to start drinking and making it were those of China’s Henan province. 

Mead then became a staple for the Greeks, Romans, Gauls, Vikings (to which it also has a strong bond in pop culture references), Poles, Russians, and Ethiopians, who have their own form of mead called tej. 

As Vogue points out, you can find mead shout-outs everywhere from the bible to Chaucer to Aristotle to Beowulf. 

Mead was associated with good health and vitality in timeworn cultures and called “the drink of the gods” in Greek mythology. Do those claims hold up today? Maybe. 

It’s believed that mead has some health benefits because of its star ingredient, honey. Healthline says that according to research, honey has strong antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. However, there’s not enough evidence yet to support that honey still has these magical vibes once it’s been fermented. 

The fermentation aspect may be a health plus of its own, though. Those helpful little living microorganisms called probiotics can exist in this naturally fermented beverage, but again, it’s unclear how effective or concentrated they are since other ingredients possibly used in a certain mead could affect or even kill the bacteria. 

Basically, the jury’s still out, but at worst, mead isn’t less healthy than beer and at best, it could have some positive healthy powers. 

Anyway, I’ll have to wait for Bulles de Ruche to land on our shores before I can have a quaff of it.  

19 Million Cases

Yesterday, the world hit 19 million cases. And a day earlier, the coronavirus pandemic death toll had passed 700,000. 

I suppose this is what is commonly referred to as the ‘second wave’. Again, if we examine the twelve worst-affected countries, they have combined to contribute 72.7% of the world total cases.

 

Two countries, the United States and India stuck out like sore thumbs. 

SARS-CoV-2 continues to plague the US as the number of cases went beyond 5 million. And India has become the third country to pass two million cases. 

In fact, it has taken 20 days for the country to progress from a million to two million cases. That is faster than the time the US (43 days) and Brazil (27 days) took to double from a million cases. The only saving grace is that India recorded fewer fatalities than both these countries.

I wish the country would focus on fighting Covid-19 rather than fighting China. 

Africa has a million people now been confirmed to have had the coronavirus – and 87.5% are coming from these 12 countries:

Mary Stephen, technical officer at the WHO's regional office for Africa warns: "We haven't seen the peak in Africa yet".

Another Snake Oil Peddler Exposed

Madagascar got the world to sit up when on April 20, 2020, its president Andry Rajoelina (left) took a sip of a homegrown beverage and declared the herbal tonic could prevent coronavirus and cure it. 

It was given the name Covid-Organics and it is derived from artemisia, also known as sweet wormwood (Scientific name: Artemisia annua) – a plant with proven anti-malarial properties – and other indigenous herbs.

The beverage's distribution across the country and to some other African governments (Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger and Tanzania) sparked controversy and warnings by the WHO who said its efficacy against the pathogen was unproven. 

Still, he stuck to his guns. 

"What is the problem with Covid-Organics, really? Could it be that this product comes from Africa? Could it be that it's not OK for a country like Madagascar, which is the 63rd poorest country in the world... to have come up with (this formula) that can help save the world?" asked Rajoelina, who claimed the infusion cures patients within ten days. 

He had confidently asserted: "The patients who have healed have taken no other product than Covid-Organics". 

His trust in the cure was cruelly pulverized when yesterday, his government had to re-impose a lockdown in central Madagascar. Troops were even deployed to ensure residents comply with containment measures, including a curfew in Antananarivo.

This came after the island nation recorded 213 new cases in the capital city on Saturday. And another 309 infections revealed themselves on Sunday. 

So now, we know for sure that Covid-Organics doesn’t work.

Cobweb Cape

Image credit: http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01442/spidr_main_1442079a.jpg

Image credit: http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01442/spider1_1442080a.jpg

The above cape took more than four years to create and 80 people were involved in the process. This extraordinary garment – which is naturally gold-coloured – was woven entirely from Golden Orb Weaver spider silk, which is known for both its intense color and strength.

Image credit: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/09/1-spiders.jpg

UK’s The Sun had reported Monday that Brit Simon Peers and American Nicholas Godley – residing in Madagascar – as the men behind the design. Inspired by 19th century accounts and illustrations they started experimenting with spider silk in 2004 to see if they could revive the lost tradition.

What’s amazing is that these spiders were collected every morning from the Madagascan highlands and harnessed in special "silking" contraptions. Trained handlers would then extract the silk from 24 spiders at a time before being taken it to a weaving workshop. At the end of each day, the spiders were returned to the wild.

Only the females of the species, which isn’t poisonous, produce the silk filaments, 24 of which are twisted by hand into a single strand, then twisted again with three other similar strands to make the silk thread. It took 1.2 million of these spiders to produce this 11x4-foot shawl and is one of only two such silk textiles that exist worldwide.

Image credit: http://www.ecouterre.com/art-historian-creates-worlds-largest-shawl-made-from-gold-colored-spider-silk/spider-silk-shawl-1/

If you’re in London, the Golden Spider Silk goes on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum on January 25, 2012.