Leo Sayer. He was a singer who was big for a long time in the UK. In the US, his big years were 1976 and 1977. He hit number one with "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" (most recently heard in Drew's first CHARLIE'S ANGELS movie) and "When I Need You" -- and hit the top forty with "How Much Love," "Easy To Love" and "Thunder In My Heart." In 1980, he can back in the US with the number 2 hit "More Than I Can Say" (which was the song I remembered immediately when I saw his name). METRO reports:
Leo Sayer has announced he’s been forced to cancel UK gigs due to being ‘very ill’.
The 75-year-old singer confirmed he’s been hospitalised in Australia after suffering from a handful of medical complications.
Issuing a statement on Sunday, the More Than I Can Say crooner – considered a pop icon in the 70s – apologised to fans and said he had been hospitalised for three weeks.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
The fascistic outlook of top Israeli officials was bluntly expressed by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. After of a meeting Monday morning of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Southern Command in Beersheba, which is currently carrying out large-scale bombings of Gaza, Gallant declared: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
To justify his decision to target Gaza’s entire population of 2 million, Gallant compared them to animals, saying: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
In a nationally televised speech yesterday, Netanyahu stressed that Israel’s current bombings of Gaza are “just the beginning” of the planned onslaught against Gaza. He declared, “I said that every place from which Hamas operates will turn into ruins. It is already happening today, it will happen even more in the future.” He echoed Gallant’s langauge, calling the Palestinians “animals.”
Netanyahu added in a post on Twitter, “We will extract a price that will be remembered by them and Israel’s other enemies for decades to come. … They are savages.”
Israel’s military says it has retaken control of the Gaza separation barrier breached by Hamas and is laying landmines in the area. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza, temporarily closing the territory’s only link with Egypt. The crossing was reportedly struck again on Tuesday, injuring two people and leaving a crater obstructing the movement of people and supplies across the border. This comes after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to completely cut off the Gaza Strip and its 2 million inhabitants from the outside world.
Yoav Gallant: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply distressed” by Israel’s siege of Gaza. The U.N.’s top human rights official wrote in response, “The imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
Israel’s ongoing shelling of the Gaza strip has killed at least six Palestinian journalists over the past few days, press freedom watchdogs say.
On Tuesday, journalist Saeed al-Taweel, editor-in-chief of Al-Khamsa News, was killed while reporting, along with two other members of the press. “Unfortunately, they have sent a warning notice to the Hiji building just now that it will be bombed,” al-Taweel said shortly before being killed, according to Al Jazeera. “The area has been evacuated entirely. Women, men, the elderly, kids have all completely fled the area.”
Al-Taweel and the other members of the press had been standing hundreds of meters from the stated target, but the air attack instead hit a building closer to them. All members of the crew had been wearing clothes and helmets that clearly identified themselves as members of the media.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re joined now by Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestinian journalist, poet, writer, correspondent for The Nation, culture editor at Mondoweiss, born and raised in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Mohammed, can you comment, overall, on this situation right now and what you think needs to happen?
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I honestly —
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed — Mohammed, you’re muted. We cannot hear you.
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I think —can you hear me now?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we can.
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I honestly do not know what to tell you. It feels to me as though we are living in the very first few days of an unfolding genocide. I mean, not only are Israeli politicians and journalists alike and global forces calling for the annihilation of the Gaza Strip, for bombing it into the Stone Ages, declaring that they are interested in inflicting damage and not really precision, but these images that we are — these images that we are seeing coming outside of the Gaza Strip are so harrowing and devastating that one wonders — one wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.
I mean, I am incredibly angered that word-of-mouth, unverified reports of, quote-unquote, “rape and decapitation,” which obviously draw on Islamophobic tropes, have garnered more and more political and global outrage than those very images, than a video of a nurse announcing and screaming in distress that her husband has been killed in an Israeli airstrike. And, you know, the PR strategy of the Israeli regime throughout all of this has been to invoke those Islamophobic sentiments, like calling it Israel’s — quote-unquote, “Israel’s 9/11.” And media outlets and journalists who have taken on this framing without any questioning not only work to equate the violence of a besieged, politically isolated group like Hamas with the violence of al-Qaeda and ISIS and so on, but they are also doing the dirty work for Israelis. They are preemptively justifying the genocide of hundreds and thousands of Palestinians. They are justifying a brutal onslaught that is about to come globally. And that should be alarming.
I mean, we have seen this unfold during 9/11. We have seen this unfold in history, the utilization of Islamophobia, the dehumanization, the constant dehumanizations of Palestinians, the refusal to see them as human beings who have the right to resist and to defend themselves and to be angry and to want the right to self-determination and to not want to live in siege anymore. All of this refusal to see all of this is contributing, is contributing to this oncoming onslaught, where Israeli politicians can just call Palestinians “human animals,” can just say that they are not really concerned with saving anyone, can threaten to bomb aid envoys coming in from Egypt. This should be concerning to everybody around the world. It is terrifying times we are living in.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue [inaudible] hostage situation, as well. Hamas has reported that in one of the bombing attacks, some of the hostages were killed along with those Hamas militants who were guarding them. What do you think the Israeli government posture will continue to be on this issue of the hostages?
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I mean, so far Hamas has said that they are willing to release all of the female detainees, if Israel is going to release the 36 Palestinian female prisoners currently lingering in Israeli prisons, but the Israeli government has refused to negotiate. In fact, Israeli ministers, like Smotrich, have said that they could not care less about the hostages, and their goal is to inflict as much damage as possible on the besieged Gaza Strip.
And I also want us to get one thing correctly: Holding 2 million people under blockade is a very serious hostage situation. This is what we’re dealing with, the fact that the Israeli regime has been holding Palestinians in Gaza as hostages to exert political pressure on groups like Hamas. The fact that a quarter, 25%, of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prison are held without detention — are held without trial or charges is a hostage situation. The fact that even in death, Palestinian corpses are held in mortuary chambers to be used as bargaining chips is a hostage situation. But time and time again, we are shown by the world its double standards. We are told that the only violence that matters is the violence inflicted upon Israelis, and the only lives that matter are the lives of Israelis. Palestinians have been living as hostages for the past 16 years in this blockade. That must, must end. And it is incumbent upon us as journalists to make this context clear.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, Mohammed El-Kurd. You’ve been in the United States a lot. Of course, you live in Sheikh Jarrah. President Biden is about to give an address. What do you want to hear him say?
MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Well, I know what he is going to say about his biggest, biggest ally in the region. But I also know that my family and my neighborhood have experienced settlers attacks, who — they throw Molotov cocktails overnight. I know that settler violence has been intensifying both in the Old City of Jerusalem and all around the occupied West Bank and even in 1948 territories. And I know that lip service from Biden is not going to address it. But the world needs to know that as long as the occupation persists, as long as the apartheid system persists, resistance to it is going to persist. It is not a difficult equation to understand. People deserve dignity and freedom and to live safely in their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed El-Kurd, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian journalist, writer, correspondent for The Nation, culture editor at Mondoweiss.
THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON THE USS LIBERTY
The US Naval technical research ship Liberty was attacked by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats off the Sinai Peninsula on 8 June. The following account of the circumstances of the attack has been compiled from all available sources.
1. The Liberty reported at 9:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. Washington time) on 8 June that it had been orbited by two delta-wing jet fighters, presumably Israeli Mirages. At 3:05 p.m. (8:05 a.m.) the Liberty was strafed by unidentified jet aircraft. The Liberty apparently was not able to establish communications with other units of the US Sixth Fleet during the air attack, and the first information available to the US commanders was after the subsequent attack by unidentified torpedo boats, which occurred at 3:25 p.m.
2. At 4:11 p.m. (9:11 a.m.) the US Commander in Chief, Europe, notified the National Military Command Center in Washington that the Liberty was under attack and was listing to starboard after being struck by a torpedo. The Commander of the US Sixth Fleet declared the attacking units hostile and sent attack aircraft from the carriers America and Saratoga to protect the Liberty. A good part of the ship’s communications equipment was destroyed by the crew during the attack but emergency communications were soon established with the Saratoga and with the naval communications station in Greece. Because of the tenseness of the situation and the communications delays, the initial reports from the Liberty were sketchy and somewhat confusing.
Specifics of the Attack
3. According to these reports, however, the sequence of events took place as follows. The ship was attacked at 3:05 p.m. (8:05 a.m.) by [Page 470] unidentified jet fighters, believed to be Israeli, at position 31–35N, 33–29E. Six strafing runs were made by the jets. Twenty minutes later three torpedo boats closed at high speed and two of them launched torpedoes after first circling the Liberty. One torpedo passed astern, and the other struck the starboard side of the ship in the spaces occupied by the SIGINT collectors. One of the boats was later identified as Israeli and the hull number of one unit was noted as 206–T. Some 50 minutes later two Israeli helicopters arrived on the scene.
Israeli Identification of the Ship
4. None of the communications of the attacking aircraft and torpedo boats is available, but the intercepted conversations between the helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hatzor (near Tel Aviv) leave little doubt that the Israelis failed to identify the Liberty as a US ship before or during the attack. Control told (helicopter) 815 at 3:31 p.m. (8:31 a.m.) that “there is a warship there which we attacked. The men jumped into the water from it. You will try to rescue them.” Although there were other references to a search for the men in the water and although US units later searched the area, no survivors were recovered from the sea, nor were there any indications that any of the 22 missing personnel from the Liberty had been lost overboard.
5. A subsequent message from the control tower to the helicopter identified the ship as Egyptian and told the pilot to return home. Although the Liberty is some 200 feet longer than the Egyptian transport El Quesir, it could easily be mistaken for the latter vessel by an overzealous pilot. Both ships have similar hulls and arrangements of masts and stack.
6. The weather was clear in the area of attack, the Liberty’s hull number (GTR 5) was prominently displayed, and an American flag was flying. The helicopter pilot was then urgently requested to identify the survivors as Egyptian or English speaking (this being the first indication that the Israelis suspected they may have attacked a neutral ship). The helicopter pilot reported seeing an American flag on the Liberty. In another intercept between an unidentified Israeli controller and the helicopter number 815, the pilot reported that number GTR 5 was written on the ship’s side. The controller told the pilot the number had no significance.
7. Thus it was not until 4:12 p.m. (9:12 a.m.) that the Israelis became convinced that the Liberty was American. This was about 44 minutes after the last attack on the ship and the attack had apparently been called off, not because the ship had been identified, but because it seemed to be sinking. (The US Defense Attaché in Tel Aviv reports that Israeli helicopters and the three torpedo boats searched the area until 6:04 p.m. (11:04 a.m.).) The Israeli offer of assistance was declined [Page 471] because of the sensitive mission of the ship. According to US Navy reports, the ship was saved only through the efforts of her crew.
Damage and Personnel Losses
8. The ship suffered heavy material and personnel casualties. A hole estimated to be 39 feet wide at the bottom and 24 feet wide at the top near the waterline was opened by a torpedo. The ship is flooded below the second deck between frames 52 and 78 (36-inch frame spacing). The crew carried out emergency destruction of classified communications and radar equipment, but the ship’s engineering plant is intact. Several flash fires and cannon holes throughout the superstructure caused some minor damage and the ship’s motor whale boat and virtually all of its life rafts were lost. Personnel casualties include 10 killed, 90 wounded, and 22 missing, most of whom were probably trapped in the flooded compartments. The wounded and the dead have been removed from the ship and some additional crew members put aboard. The ship is expected to arrive in Malta on 14 June for dry docking and hull repairs. Security precautions are being taken to protect the classified intercept equipment in the flooded spaces. The US Navy has convened a board of inquiry to look into the incident.
The Ship and Its Orders
9. The USS Liberty is a converted Victory class merchant ship utilized as a SIGINT collector. The unit had moved from its normal station off West Africa to provide additional SIGINT coverage of the Middle East crisis. Official US statements, however, have described the Liberty as an electronics research ship which had been diverted to the crisis area to act as a radio relay station for US embassies.
10. The Liberty sailed from Rota, Spain, on 2 June under orders to patrol no closer than 12.5 miles of the UAR coast and 6.5 miles of the Israeli coast. A modification of orders issued by the Commander of the US Sixth Fleet at 12:17 p.m. (5:17 a.m.) on 8 June had not been received aboard the Liberty, according to the ship’s commanding officer, before the Israeli attack. This change, together with messages from other commands which ordered the Liberty to approach no closer than 100 miles of the coasts of the UAR and Israel and 25 miles of the coast of Cyprus, was delayed in transmission in part because of a misunderstanding of responsibilities for delivery.
11. At annex is a listing of events in chronological order.
Hadi Al-Amiri, a powerful Iraqi politician close to Iran and a key figure in the cross-party alliance backing Iraq's government, has threatened to target U.S. interests if Washington intervenes to support Israel in its conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Amiri leads the Badr Organisation, a Shi'ite political group supported by Iran that makes up a big part of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), the state paramilitary organization that contains many Iran-backed factions.
"If they intervene, we would intervene...if the Americans intervened openly in this conflict...we will consider all American targets legitimate ... and we will not hesitate to target it," al-Amiri said during a tribal gathering in Baghdad on Monday night.
Turkey's president on Wednesday vowed to intensify strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Turkey has been bombing sites in northeast Syria since Thursday, hitting civilian and military targets and infrastructure and causing casualties, according to Kurdish authorities.
"We have already intensified air operations and we will continue, and show the terrorists that we can destroy them anywhere and at any moment," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, referring to fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
Seventeen-year-old Samir Saado was finishing his cleaning shift at the village medical centre when an airstrike hit the building.
"I didn't see anything other than dust and smoke," said Saado, a member of Iraq’s minority Yazidi community. "My leg was stuck under the rubble. I called for help and people were coming but the planes kept striking.”
At least four civilians were killed that day, Aug. 17, 2021, local officials said. Among the dead was Saado’s father, who worked as a cook at the centre in Iraq’s northern Sinjar province, about 100 km (62 miles) from the Turkish border. Saado suffered a broken pelvis and a cracked skull.
The strike was part of escalating attacks by Turkish aircraft and drones in mainly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria, which have since continued, a Reuters data analysis shows. Western firms have supplied critical components for the drones, which Kurdish and Iraqi officials say Turkey is deploying with increasing frequency.
Reuters analysed violent incidents recorded by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a global research organisation that collects reports from media outlets, government reports, non-governmental groups and other sources. This analysis shows that in 2022, Turkey carried out at least 2,044 airstrikes in mostly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria, a 53% increase on the previous year and the highest number since ACLED began documenting strikes across the two countries in 2017. The figure is likely a conservative estimate because Reuters’ analysis excluded airstrikes that may have been conducted in battle.
ACLED draws information about airstrikes in northern Iraq and Syria from sources including the PKK’s military wing, the Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu and conflict monitors the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Airwars and Liveuamap.
We're moving over to film and Julia Ormond. I am not a friend of Julia's so keep that in mind -- I'm not rushing to rescue her. She is one of the two foreign actresses that CAA tried to pimp out to Harvey. Last Friday, she came forward with a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein, MIRMAX, THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY and CAA. That day's snapshot originally had two paragraphs about this but they were pulled for space and also because I thought that they could have been worded better. Kept meaning to get back to it. In the meantime, e-mails. I'm silent it must mean she's lying! I could be silent just because I don't know anything. In this case, I do know. This did happen to her. We've noted her and another actress who were basically set up -- noted them for five years now? They were both non-Americans and they both appeared in a few hit movies and then were disappeared due to Harvey.
On NPR's All Things Considered, Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, argued that the film is "being marketed to QAnon believers, it's being embraced by this community, and its leading actor is a huge part of the QAnon community".[84]
Ballard has criticized those drawing a connection between the film and QAnon, saying, "They make zero connection to the actual story. It's very difficult to make that connection when it's actually based on a true story." He told The New York Times, "Some of these theories have allowed people to open their eyes, so now it's our job to flood the space with real information so the facts can be shared."[76][85]
The actor and singer, who has officially filed the paperwork to run as an independent candidate for Mexico's 2024 presidential race, shared the video footage and accompanying caption on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.
Dressed in a black ensemble, Verástegui is seen aiming a firearm at a target while standing outdoors in a walled space. The 12-second footage showed him firing several rounds.
While Verástegui did not speak in the footage, the 49-year-old's choice of words in his accompanying caption captured the attention of social media users.
"Look at what we are going to do to the terrorists of the 2030 agenda, climate change and gender ideology," read the caption, which was written in Spanish. "I'm reading you [your comments]."
A New York City woman has sued a deli, alleging that a former employee assaulted her as he mistook her for being transgender.
Jasmine Adams, a 35-year-old mother of two, filed a lawsuit on Monday, alleging that she was attacked by a cashier during a visit to purchase marijuana for a friend at Staten Island's West Brighton Deli Grocery & Grill on July 28, according to New York's Daily News.
Following a dispute over the marijuana—which has become widely available at retail stores in the city since it was legalized in 2021—the worker purportedly became hostile and threatened to call police, prompting Adams to urge him to follow through with the threat.
Adams, who is bisexual and was wearing an Apple Watch wristband featuring rainbow Pride flag colors at the time, alleges that the worker then called her a "transvestite" and flew into a violent rage.
"I heard him call me a transvestite," Adams told the Daily News. "I'm like, 'Transvestite? I'm a whole female. I have lady parts.'"
The lawsuit accuses the deli worker of spraying Adams in the face with mace before running from behind the counter to further assault her. Adams said that she attempted to hit him with a coffee pot when he grabbed her hair and dragged her out of the store while calling her a "b****," according to the suit.
A video of the incident reviewed by the newspaper purportedly shows the worker dragging Adams down a set of concrete stairs as bystanders react with shock. With Adams on the ground, the worker proceeds to kick her in the head.
"Next thing I know when I opened my eyes, I was outside next to my car on the floor," said Adams. "I said to myself that I gotta get outta here because I don't know if he's going to kill me."
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