Two pieces of news.
1. In Syria:
The Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas says one of its members has been assassinated in Damascus.
Kamal Ghanaja was reportedly shot dead by gunmen who burst into his home in the Syrian capital’s northern suburb of Qudsaya earlier this week.
Hamas has not formally blamed anyone for the killing but one official told the AFP news agency that the Israeli secret service, Mossad, was behind it.
Israel’s defence minister described the accusation as not “necessarily true”.
“He was not really personally familiar [to me],” Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio on Thursday.
“According to all the background published, he was no saint and I don’t want to add anything or comment about this incident.”
2. In the USA:
At 13 and cute as candy, twins Lynx and Lamb Gaede could have passed for any other teenagers with dreams of pop stardom.
Apart, that is, from their songs about white supremacy and smiley-faced Hitler T-shirts.
In 2005 the Mirror revealed how the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, all-American sisters formed a band called Prussian Blue – named after a by-product of the poison used to gas millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
Schooled in bile and racist lies by their warped mother and grandfather, these children of hate were cheered by right wing fanatics as they belted out tunes such as Aryan Man Awake and gave Nazi salutes on stage.
But seven years on it seems the Sieg Heil sisters have had a radical change of heart – and are now singing a different tune.
They appear to have turned from fascist, anti-immigration hate-mongers into laid-back liberals celebrating the joys of ethnic diversity and spreading a message of peace and love.
After escaping the all-controlling clutches of their mother, April, and battling serious health problems, Lynx and Lamb, now 20, say they have swapped their Hitler youth for a happy hippy lifestyle.
And, like so many other pop star transformations, the Gaede twins appear to have been helped along their journey of “enlightenment” by smoking a lot of marijuana.
“My sister and I are pretty liberal now,” Lamb revealed in a recent US TV interview.
“Yeah,” chipped in Lynx, languidly flicking her long blonde hair.
“Personally, I love diversity! I’m stoked that we have so many different cultures.
“I think it’s amazing, and it makes me proud of humanity every day that we have so many different places and people.
“I’m glad we were in a band, but I think we should have been pushed toward something a little more mainstream and easier for us to handle than being front-men for a belief system that we didn’t even completely understand at that time.
“We were little kids.”
…
At 15 Lynx was diagnosed with cancer and had a large tumour removed from her shoulder.
She also developed a rare condition called cyclic vomiting syndrome.
Lamb suffered from scoliosis of the spine and chronic back pain, which led to emotional problems.
After various drugs failed to help either of them they were both prescribed medical marijuana – and say it changed their lives.
This is their latest thinking:
So presumably they are no longer Holocaust deniers? Lynx hesitates.
“I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued.
“I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t.”
“Yeah,” Lamb adds: “I just think everyone needs to frickin’ get over it!”
