That's Kylie Minogue's latest single "Padam Padam" -- video was released today. Kylie's an international superstar. WIKIPEDIA notes:
Kylie Ann Minogue AO OBE (/mɪˈnoʊɡ/; born 28 May 1968)[2][3] is an Australian[1] singer, songwriter and actress. Minogue is the highest-selling female Australian artist of all time, having sold over 80 million records worldwide.[4] She has been recognised for reinventing herself in music as well as fashion, and is referred to by the European press as the "Princess of Pop" and a style icon. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, three Brit Awards and 17 ARIA Music Awards.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Minogue first achieved recognition starring in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, playing tomboy mechanic Charlene Robinson. She gained prominence as a recording artist in the late 1980s and released four bubblegum and dance-pop-influenced studio albums produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. By the early 1990s, she had amassed several top ten singles in the UK and Australia, including "I Should Be So Lucky", "The Loco-Motion", "Hand on Your Heart", and "Better the Devil You Know". Taking more creative control over her music, Minogue signed with Deconstruction Records in 1993 and released Kylie Minogue (1994) and Impossible Princess (1997), both of which received positive reviews. She returned to mainstream dance-oriented music with 2000's Light Years, including the number-one hits "Spinning Around" and "On a Night Like This". The follow-up, Fever (2001), was an international breakthrough for Minogue, becoming her best-selling album to date. Two of its singles, "Love at First Sight" and "In Your Eyes", became hits, but its lead single, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" became one of the most successful singles of the 2000s, selling over five million units.
Minogue continued reinventing her image and experimenting with a range of genres on her subsequent albums, which spawned successful singles such as "Slow", "2 Hearts", "All the Lovers", "Santa Baby", "Timebomb" and "Dancing". With her 2020 album Disco, she became the first female artist to have a chart-topping album in the UK for five consecutive decades. Minogue made her film debut in The Delinquents (1989) and portrayed Cammy in Street Fighter (1994). She has also appeared in the films Moulin Rouge! (2001), Jack & Diane, Holy Motors (2012) and San Andreas (2015). In 2014, she appeared as a judge on the third series of The Voice UK and The Voice Australia. Her other ventures include product endorsements, children's books, fashion, and charitable work.
Minogue was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to music. She was appointed by the French government as a Chevalier (knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her contribution to the enrichment of French culture. While touring in 2005, Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Health Science (D.H.Sc.) degree by Anglia Ruskin University in 2011 for her work in raising awareness for breast cancer. At the 2011 ARIA Music Awards, Minogue was inducted by the Australian Recording Industry Association into the ARIA Hall of Fame. She was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2019 Australia Day Honours.[5]
In the US, her hits have included "I Should Be So Lucky," an 80s remake of the Goffin-King classic "The Locomotion," "Confide in Me," "Can't Get You Out of Head," "Love At First Sight," "Come Into My World," "Come Into My World," "Slow," "Red Blooded Woman," "I Believe In You," "All I See," "All The Lovers," "Get Outta My World," "Timebomb," "Into The Blue," "I Was Gonna Cancel" . . .
She's ruled the dance charts in the US. Charlie Duncan (PINK NEWS) reports:
The Minogue sisters are here to take over the world – and if not the world, they seem to be settling for the queer community’s collective consciousness instead.
With younger sister Dannii helming the UK’s first gay dating show I Kissed a Boy, complete with theme song/single “We Could Be The One” due to be released in support of queer charity Switchboard LGBT, Australian icon Kylie Minogue has stepped up to the plate to release her newest single “Padam Padam”.
The electro-pop banger, which also serves as the lead single for Minogue’s upcoming 16th (yes, 16th) studio album Tension, details the magnetism between two people upon hearing each other’s heartbeats.
“Padam, padam, I hear it and I know. Padam, padam, I know you wanna take me home,” sings Minogue over a heavy dance beat.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
On 13 December 2003, in Operation Red Dawn, Saddam was captured by American forces after being found hiding in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse in ad-Dawr, near Tikrit. Following his capture, Saddam was transported to a US base near Tikrit, and later taken to the American base near Baghdad. Documents obtained and released by the National Security Archive detail FBI interviews and conversations with Saddam while he was in US custody.[126] On 14 December, US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer confirmed that Saddam Hussein had indeed been captured at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit.[127] Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody.
Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer than his familiar appearance. He was described by US officials as being in good health. Bremer reported plans to put Saddam on trial, but claimed that the details of such a trial had not yet been determined. Iraqis and Americans who spoke with Saddam after his capture generally reported that he remained self-assured, describing himself as a "firm, but just leader."[128]
British tabloid newspaper The Sun posted a picture of Saddam wearing white briefs on the front cover of a newspaper. Other photographs inside the paper show Saddam washing his trousers, shuffling, and sleeping. The US government stated that it considered the release of the pictures a violation of the Geneva Convention, and that it would investigate the photographs.[129][130] During this period Saddam was interrogated by FBI agent George Piro.[131]
The guards at the Baghdad detention facility called their prisoner "Vic," which stands for 'Very Important Criminal', and let him plant a small garden near his cell. The nickname and the garden are among the details about the former Iraqi leader that emerged during a March 2008 tour of the Baghdad prison and cell where Saddam slept, bathed, and kept a journal and wrote poetry in the final days before his execution; he was concerned to ensure his legacy and how the history would be told. The tour was conducted by US Marine Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, overseer of detention operations for the US military in Iraq at the time.[132] During his imprisonment he exercised and was allowed to have his personal garden, he also smoked his cigars and wrote his diary in the courtyard of his cell.[133]
On 30 June 2004, Saddam Hussein, held in custody by US forces at the US base "Camp Cropper," along with 11 other senior Ba'athist leaders, was handed over to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for crimes against humanity and other offences.
A few weeks later, he was charged by the Iraqi Special Tribunal with crimes committed against residents of Dujail in 1982, following a failed assassination attempt against him. Specific charges included the murder of 148 people, torture of women and children and the illegal arrest of 399 others.[134][135] Among the many challenges of the trial were:
- Saddam and his lawyers contesting the court's authority and maintaining that he was still the President of Iraq.[136]
- The assassinations and attempted assassinations of several of Saddam's lawyers.
- The replacement of the chief presiding judge midway through the trial.
On 5 November 2006, Saddam was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court in 1982, were convicted of similar charges. The verdict and sentencing were both appealed, but subsequently affirmed by Iraq's Supreme Court of Appeals.[137]
In 2011, Justice Thomas's undisclosed private jet and yacht trips from highly political Republican billionaire Harlan Crow were sent to the Judicial Conference’s Financial Disclosure Committee for a determination as to whether Thomas may have broken the law. It also came to light during that era that Justice Thomas had for years failed to disclose income his wife received from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank with frequent business before the Court.
Recent reporting from the Washington Post revealed that in 2012, Leonard Leo, the orchestrator of right-wing influence campaigns around the Supreme Court, directed payments of at least $25,000 to a consulting firm run by Ginni Thomas and asked that her name be left off the paperwork.
In April, bombshell reporting by ProPublica exposed that Justice Thomas and his wife accepted extravagant vacations worth as much as $500,000 on the dime of Harlan Crow and did not disclose the travel. That report was later followed by an additional ProPublica story detailing Crow’s purchase of a string of properties from Justice Thomas and his family members, which was not properly disclosed. Further reporting by ProPublica indicates that Crow paid for multiple years of tuition for Justice Thomas’s grandnephew to attend private boarding schools.
Congress created the Judicial Conference through statute and with passage of the Ethics in Government Act, Congress imposed clear financial disclosure and recusal rules that apply to the Supreme Court.
One month ago, Congressman Hank Johnson and I wrote to the Judicial Conference of the United States, asking it to look at recent reports that Justice Clarence Thomas violated the Ethics in Government Act by failing to disclose gifts of travel and luxury vacations provided by a right-wing billionaire. The Judicial Conference's responsibilities under that law are quite clear. If there is 'reasonable cause to believe' that Justice Thomas willfully failed to file, then it must refer him to the Justice Department for investigation.
But US District Judge Mark Wolf, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, said on Wednesday that the full Judicial Conference did not receive notice of the complaints sent to leaders of the conference and therefore couldn’t decide how the body should act on them.
“This concerned me because the issues raised by the letters were serious,” Wolf said in testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee looking into court ethics.
“Pursuant to established conference policies and procedures, if the committee (on financial disclosures) had considered the letters, my colleagues on the Judicial Conference and I should have been informed of them in its reports to the Conference, even if the committee was not recommending any action by the Conference,” he said.
“Such information would have afforded me and the other members of the conference the opportunity to discuss and decide whether there was reasonable cause to believe Justice Thomas had willfully violated the act and, if so, to make the required referral to the attorney general,” Wolf added.
john stauber really is disgusting. he used to be a media critic. today, the transphobe tweets:
Last week the Pulitzer Prizes were announced, and noticeable among the accolades for strong, authentic journalism was the absence of awards for individual New York Times pieces.
For more than a year, The New York Times has published irresponsible, biased coverage of transgender people, and repeatedly elevated the views and opinions of the small fringe of anti-LGBTQ activists, often without identifying their connections to anti-LGBTQ groups, amplifying inaccurate and harmful misinformation about transgender people and issues. Three months after a coalition of GLAAD and more than 100 coalition partners sent a letter to The New York Times demanding fair, accurate, and inclusive trans coverage, the Times did not receive any Pulitzer Prizes for individual articles, nor for Investigative Reporting (the prize went to the staff of The Wall Street Journal), Explanatory Reporting (awarded to Caitlin Dickerson of The Atlantic), National Reporting (awarded to Carline Kitchener of The Washington Post), Feature Writing (awarded to Eli Saslow of The Washington Post), Commentary (awarded to Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham), or Editorial Writing (awarded to Miami Herald Editorial Board, for a series written by Amy Driscoll). The complete list of prizes is here.
The Pulitzer Prizes recognized robust, inclusive, and empathetic reporting on vulnerable communities, with winners representing topics of massive impact on diverse, marginalized, and voiceless people—indigenous and Black populations, children, immigrants, detainees, prisoners—and stories that did not trade in an artificial “both sides” dynamic that has characterized the Times’s transgender coverage. The prizes included recognition of work that featured inclusive reporting of vulnerable communities by journalists who are members of those communities, including awarding the prize for General Nonfiction to Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa for their book, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking).
Despite what the Times’s leadership has claimed, more precise and empathetic journalism can and should include reporters whose own backgrounds and experiences reflect the people they are reporting on. Ignoring critiques as “activism” and silencing colleagues from oppressed backgrounds reflects a moral, intellectual and emotional failure across the Times’s leadership. In the three months following the coalition letter, the Times has refused to publicly acknowledge its coverage failures, respond directly to the letter, or meet with trans leaders.
GLAAD continued its protest of The New York Times on May 9, with a digital billboard at the entrance of the New York Times building in Manhattan.
Also in awards news this past week, on May 13, GLAAD announced recipients for the final 18 of this year’s 33 categories of the 34th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York City hosted by producer, Critics Choice-nominated actor and GLAAD Award winner, Harvey Guillén.