Like Maria Said Paz: 2023-01-15

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Sam Smith on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE tonight

That's Chase Rice discussing his upcoming album I HATE COWBOYS AND ALL DOGS GO TO HELL which will be released February 10th. I can't wait and I believe he says in the video above that it will be available on vinyl.

It is! I just pre-ordered on AMAZON. Did you read Kat's "Diana Ross news" yet? This coming Friday, Diana Ross' SURRENDER is being re-released. I went ahead and pre-ordered that after reading Kat's post. I also pre-ordered Carly Simon's LIVE AT GRAND CENTRAL which also comes out next Friday as does Sam Smith's fourth album GLORIA.

So that's three albums I'll have on Friday: Diana, Carly and Sam's albums.

I miss that, by the way, going into a record store (or later, a CD store) and picking several new albums.

Oh, just found out that Sam Smith's going to be on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE tonight as the musical guest. That's going to be non-live here (California) in a few hours but it's going to be live for the east coast and central time zones in less than 30 minutes so let me post this.

There's a lot of music coming out.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, January 20, 2023. Celebrations in Iraq and around the world as The Arabian Gulf Cup concludes with the Lions of Mesopotamia claiming victory.

Yesterday, the Arabian Gulf Cup wrapped up after Iraq went up against Oman.

IRAQI NEWS reports:

The 25th Gulf Cup tournament’s best player title went to rising Iraqi football star Ibrahim Bayesh Al-Kaabi. In the championship game, Bayesh scored an important goal for Iraq in the 24th minute, giving them the lead going into halftime.

Bayesh, who was just 16 years old when he signed with the Zakho club, was born on May 1st, 2000 in Baghdad, Iraq. In his one season of play at Zakho club, he scored two goals. He relocated to Naft Al-Wasat during the 2017 season, then in 2018 he left to join the Air Force from Al-Zawra.

With a total of three goals scored, Iraqi forward Aymen Hussein was named the tournament’s top scorer. Against Yemen, the football star scored twice, and against Qatar, he scored once. Currently, Hussein is a striker with Al-Markhiya in the Qatar Stars League.

Iraqi midfielder Amjad Atwan was awarded Player of the Match for the Gulf Cup final. The Iraqi footballer was crucial throughout the game and scored Iraq’s second goal during the match’s overtime in the 116th minute. Atwan may be used as a defensive midfielder or central midfielder, presently plays at Al-Shamal in the Qatar Stars League.

THE KALEEJ TIMES notes, "His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, congratulated Iraq on winning the Gulf Cup. The leader said in a tweet: "The joy of Iraq today, after long patience and waiting, and the peoples and hearts rejoiced with it.. Today we are all Iraqis in joy.. We are all Iraqis today in victory." And fans from outside Iraq were ecstatic as well. THE MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS reports:

There was traffic chaos in south Manchester on Thursday night (January 19) as crowds stormed Wilmslow Road. Supporters waved the flag of Iraq in the air in a seeming celebration to the country's national football team being crowned Gulf Cup champions after defeating Oman.

Buses and cars became gridlocked along the packed-out curry mile, in Rusholme, from around 7pm. Video footage showed large numbers of people gathering and filming on their mobile phones.

Officers from Greater Manchester Police were also on the scene to help manage the crowds, as cars honked their horns and crowds cheered in what appeared to be elation at the victory.

And in Michigan . . .

Jeffrety St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) reports:

+ More than 70 inmates in Texas are on a hunger strike, protesting solitary confinement in the state’s prison system, which has locked more than 500 people in isolation cells for longer than a decade.

+ New York City taxpayers are on pace to pay $820 million in just overtime for NYPD this year, which is enough to house all 14,000 homeless families in NYC and pay several years of rent for 7,000 families out of work and facing eviction.

+ Our friend Arun Gupta has written a detailed piece exposing the cozy relationship between the Proud Boys and the Portland (Oregon) Police: “Since 2017, police have allowed the Pacific Northwest city to serve as a proving ground for fascists like the Proud Boys. They received legal impunity and even police support with few attempts to stop it. The far-right used political violence to network with white nationalists, militias, and other extremists, raise their image nationally, gain recruits, and build capacity.”

+ Cops in Louisiana coerced a woman into working as an informant after her drug arrest. Then failed to protect her, as she was raped twice while undercover. “She was an addict and we just used her as an informant like we’ve done a million times before,” said retired Lt. Mark Parker, who oversaw the operation. “We’ve always done it this way. Looking back, it’s easy to say, ‘What if?’”

+ As California moves to dismantle its death row, Louisiana is using to the former death row block at the infamous Angola prison to incarcerate juveniles. One of the imprisoned kids said: “It is very depressing to be here knowing this is the former death row. When the lights go out at night, I think I see shadows going past.”

+ The city of Pittsburgh passed an ordinance banning officers from stopping drivers for certain minor offenses. The Pittsburgh Police chief has decided to ignore the ordinance, claiming that the rules deflated “officer morale.”

+ After learning that she’d repeatedly been denied jobs because background checks showed she had a criminal record (she didn’t), Julie Hudson, a black 31-year-old Ph. D. student, visited a Philadelphia police station to try and clear things up. She was promptly arrested and taken into custody after being mistaken for a suspect with the same name.

Wrongful imprisonment goes on around the world -- and despite huge outcries. There is a global movement to free Julian Assange from wrongful imprisonment.

Julian remains imprisoned and remains persecuted by US President Joe Biden who, as vice president, once called him "a high tech terrorist." Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs. And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own. For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:

A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat

Eric Lichtblau (GUARDIAN) observes:

The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.

But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.

Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.

Today, DEMOCRACY NOW! has a special broadcast:

On Jan. 20, Democracy Now! will live-stream the Belmarsh Tribunal from Washington, D.C. The event will feature expert testimony from journalists, whistleblowers, lawyers, publishers and parliamentarians on assaults to press freedom and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Watch here live at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Jan. 20.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Srecko Horvat, the co-founder of DiEM25, will chair the tribunal, which is being organized by Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation.

Members of the tribunal include:

Stella Assange, partner of Julian Assange and member of his defense team

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower

Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist

Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. Parliament and founder of the Peace and Justice Project

Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent

Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof

Margaret Kunstler, civil rights attorney

Stefania Maurizi, investigative journalist, Il Fatto Quotidiano

Jesselyn Radack, national security and human rights attorney

Ben Wizner, lead attorney at ACLU of Edward Snowden

Renata Ávila, human rights lawyer, technology and society expert

Jeffrey Sterling, lawyer and former CIA employee

Steven Donziger, human rights attorney

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief, WikiLeaks

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation

Selay Ghaffar, spokesperson, Solidarity Party of Afghanistan

Betty Medsger, investigative reporter

The following sites updated:

Thursday, January 19, 2023

The press forgets their own actions yet again

Does the press ever take responsibility? I don't think so. For example, AP states:

When Hillary Clinton was running for president, her campaign wanted a gentler way to talk about the criminal investigation into her private email server, so they called it a “security review.”

Now President Joe Biden's team is using similar language when talking about the discovery of classified documents in his Delaware home and former office. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, has often described the situation as a “review” or a “legal process," using the term “investigation” less frequently.

Excuse me? Hillary called it that and so did the press. C.I. didn't. She called it a criminal investigation and noted that was the only kind of investigation that the FBI would be conducting. She stated that over and over in real time. She was attacked for doing so. But she didn't care. She knew she was right.

But the press was happy to go along and lie for Hillary and call it a "security review." I have no idea why the AP wants to pretend otherwise all these years later except for the fact that they never take responsibility. Nothing that happens is ever, in their minds, their fault.

Which explains why they never mention the Iraq War these days.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, January 19, 2023. Tragedy in Iraq with 2 dead and over sixty injured ahead of the final match in the Arabian Gulf Cup and tomorrow the Belmarsh Tribunal will steer attention to the assaults on press freedom.

As Iraqis geared up this morning for the Arabian Gulf Cup final with Iraq facing Oman, tragedy took place, GULF NEWS notes, "a stampede between fans who had gathered in front of the Palm Trunk Stadium in Basra that hosts the 25th Gulf Cup final." People began filing into the stadium hours before the game which isn't surprising since that's been the case throughout. Also the case throughout, the crowd has been increasing. Monday, when Iraq again won, over three hours before the soccer match began, the stadium was at capacity. Monday night, the streets of Basra were still filled with near bumper to bumper traffic -- double lane -- as fans demonstrated their excitement and their pride.

This being the last match, the authorities should have estimated the largest crowd yet and should have prepared that the stadium would again fill to capacity before everyone who wanted to get in could get in. Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) notes that Basra's Governor Asaad al-Eidnai warned yesterday that people shouldn't gather outside Palm Trunk Satidum because "this could lead to a stampede and [the] perfect image of our country, hosting this event, could be tarnished only a few hours before the final ceremony." While it was nice that words were offered the day before, it's a shame that words weren't matched with actions -- setting up precautions to prevent what eventually did happen.

ALJAZEERA has a photo gallery of the huge crowds here and they note, "The Iraqi interior ministry told Al Jazeera that two people had died and about 80 have been in injured in the stampede on Thursday." Sinan Mahmoud reports, "Hamza Adnan Ahmed, 26, from Baghdad, died after being caught up in the incident, his brother Omar told The National. He had been in Basra since the beginning of the tournament. His brother, cousin and friend were injured." Celine Alkhaldi, Mostafa Salem and Aqeel Najim (CNN) note, "A video sent to CNN showed fans seated inside the stadium after the stampede. Seating areas hosting Iraqi fans were completely full, while the section designated to Omani fans was empty, pending their arrival later in the day."

Some outlets are offering statements to the effect of, 'After deliberations, the government decided to allow today's match to take place.' Deliberations?

There were none or should have been none. What happened was an accident due to poor planning on the part of the government. Had the match been called off? Rioting. That's what would have taken place -- that's in Iraq, that's in the US, that's anywhere. The excitement level, the expectations, you could not call off today's event for any reason other than weather and not see a riot break out.

At THIRD on Tuesday, we noted, "However the match goes, Iraq's accomplished a lot. [. . .] This is their moment and they should be thrilled. Now if only the government had the same energy and drive that the team and the fans do."

The death of two and the injuries of many is sad and it's tragic. Safety precautions which should have been place were not. That's on the government.

David Sadler (GLOBAL ECHO) explains:

They meet at Basra Stadium in a match titled “Promising Stars”.

Today, the attention of football fans in the “Arabian Gulf” is directed to the “Basra International Stadium”, which will be the scene of the upcoming final match of “Gulf 25” between the owner of the land and the fans (the Iraqi team) and his Omani counterpart.

The Lions of Mesopotamia is looking forward to winning a fourth title in its history, and the first in nearly 35 years, specifically since 1988 in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, the Omani Red aspires to a third and first title since 2018.

In other news . . .

Kevin Gosztola addresses the plight of Julian Assange in the video above. US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian and, for those who've forgotten, Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs. And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own. For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:

Eric Lichtblau (GUARDIAN) observes:

Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.

Reminder, DEMOCRACY NOW! has a special broadcast this week:

Watch here live at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Jan. 20.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Srecko Horvat, the co-founder of DiEM25, will chair the tribunal, which is being organized by Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation.

Members of the tribunal include:

Stella Assange, partner of Julian Assange and member of his defense team

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower

Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist

Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. Parliament and founder of the Peace and Justice Project

Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent

Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof

Margaret Kunstler, civil rights attorney

Stefania Maurizi, investigative journalist, Il Fatto Quotidiano

Jesselyn Radack, national security and human rights attorney

Ben Wizner, lead attorney at ACLU of Edward Snowden

Renata Ávila, human rights lawyer, technology and society expert

Jeffrey Sterling, lawyer and former CIA employee

Steven Donziger, human rights attorney

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief, WikiLeaks

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation

Selay Ghaffar, spokesperson, Solidarity Party of Afghanistan

Betty Medsger, investigative reporter

The following sites updated:

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

GLAAD's Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

I was in the mood for Joni Mitchell's COURT AND SPARK last night but not in the mood to move my tired and lazy rear so I grabbed my phone and pulled up AMAZON MUSIC. Before I could search for Joni, though, the home page showed a Nanci Griffith collection I hadn't heard of before, BEST OF NANCI GRIFFITH -- it's a playlist.

It's got 50 tracks and it's a really good representation of her entire recording career. It'll make you realize just how much you miss her. I do miss her.

GLAAD's announced their film and TV nominations. I'm noting one category:

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

“American Horror Story: NYC” (FX)

“The Ignorant Angels” (Hulu)

“The Best Man: The Final Chapters” (Peacock)

“Welcome to Chippendales” (Hulu)

“The White Lotus” (HBO)

AMERICAN HORROR STORY? I thought the one before was strong. But they are hit or miss for me. NYC? This was a hit. In part because I really loved the cast. Russell Tovey and Patti LuPone especially deserve applause but I don't think any actor offered a false note in the series. This was the best AHS since season six or so.

I did like THE BEST MAN: THE FINAL CHAPTERS so I wouldn't be upset if it won. THE WHITE LOTUS was entertaining (and much talked about) so fine if it wins. In fact, the only one I would object to is WELCOME TO CHIPPENDALES. I did not care for it. I thought I would. I enjoy the main actor in all the films I've seen him in (including ETERNALS). But this was so dull and needed real actors in the supporting roles. The woman playing Dorothy Stratten, for example, couldn't play Dorothy or pass for Cheryl Tiegs.

On TV . . .

"TV: It's a disaster" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):

Instead, we're supposed to focus on the character people call "Velma." But it's not "Velma." Velma's been around for 50 years, this isn't her.

If Mindy had created this show based on a new character, it probably would have worked better. Some are bothered that Velma is gay. That's not a concern for us. But we are bothered by how Mindy portrays Velma -- as though she's sporting a chip the size of Utah on her shoulder. And, jinkies, Velma is and has been many things but bitter was never one of them.

Wonderful.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, January 18, 2023. The Australian government says 'enough is enough' as Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange, Iraq gets ready to face Oman in the Arabian Gulf Cup, Richard Branson's airline faces a huge fine, and much more.

Starting with Julian Assange.

US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian and, for those who've forgotten, Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs. And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own. For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:

Eric Lichtblau (GUARDIAN) observes:

Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.

At SALON, Ben Cohen writes:

Barack Obama refused to indict Assange because of the "New York Times problem": If Obama were to indict Assange for publishing truthful information, he'd have to indict the New York Times as well. But Biden has now affirmed Trump's contention that publishing the truth is a crime. Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. That law is controversial enough when prosecutors use it to target whistleblowers, but it has never been used successfully against a publisher. What Biden is really saying by indicting Assange is that the U.S. government can lie to the public, conceal its criminal behavior and then destroy those who would dare seek the truth.

The Justice Department has charged Assange for receiving and publishing truthful, newsworthy information leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, but has never charged any of the military or government officials whose wrongdoing was exposed.

It is the 21st-century version of killing the messenger.

No one was harmed by Assange's reporting, unless you count the bruised reputations of politicians who were caught breaking the law, lying or concealing misconduct. Experts testified in British court proceedings that Assange went to extreme lengths to help protect both his sources and people who might be harmed by the disclosure of sensitive information. Instead of investigating the wrongdoing that WikiLeaks exposed and punishing those who broke the law or covered it up, the government has focused on attacking whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them.

Yesterday, on DEMOCRACY NOW!, US House Rep Ro Khanna was asked about Julian Assane:

AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask you about Julian Assange. There’s going to be a tribunal at the end of the week at the National Press Club. Many major news organizations are calling for the Biden administration to drop the charges against him. He faces 175 years in prison in the United States, if extradited, tried and found guilty. The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Der Spiegel have called for these charges to be dropped, that freedom of the press is at stake. Do you join in that call?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, I have said that there’s a reason President Obama never brought charges against Assange. Whatever you think of his moral actions — and I have not defended those — I do not believe that you can bring charges against someone simply for publishing information. If there were actual evidence that Assange himself had deliberately sought and gathered classified information through illegal means, then that is different. But if the charges are based simply on his receiving this information and publishing it, that, in my view, affects the entire concept of freedom of press and has a chilling effect on publishers. And I have said that that is overbroad.

Baby steps? That's supposed to pass for leadership, Ro? And you want to move from your district to having the whole state vote for you? You're not earning my vote with what I consider the bare minimum a person should be doing. More bravery is being shown from the Australian government (finally). ANADOLU AGENCY reports:

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday urged the US and UK to close the extradition process against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, saying "enough is enough."

During an interview with ABC Radio, the Australian premier said his country's position on Assange is very clear, which he has communicated to the US and UK.

"I agree that enough is enough. It's time this issue was brought to a close," Albanese said, according to a transcript posted on his office’s official website.

"And I've made that very clear to the US administration and to the UK Government as well, that my view hasn't changed from the view I had when I was Opposition Leader, which is that it's time that this was brought to a close," he added.

Reminder, DEMOCRACY NOW! has a special broadcast this week:

Watch here live at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Jan. 20.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Srecko Horvat, the co-founder of DiEM25, will chair the tribunal, which is being organized by Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation.

Members of the tribunal include:

Stella Assange, partner of Julian Assange and member of his defense team

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower

Noam Chomsky, linguist and activist

Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. Parliament and founder of the Peace and Justice Project

Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent

Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof

Margaret Kunstler, civil rights attorney

Stefania Maurizi, investigative journalist, Il Fatto Quotidiano

Jesselyn Radack, national security and human rights attorney

Ben Wizner, lead attorney at ACLU of Edward Snowden

Renata Ávila, human rights lawyer, technology and society expert

Jeffrey Sterling, lawyer and former CIA employee

Steven Donziger, human rights attorney

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief, WikiLeaks

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation

Selay Ghaffar, spokesperson, Solidarity Party of Afghanistan

Betty Medsger, investigative reporter

Meanwhile, the Gulf Cup is nearing its conclusion. Iraq hosted this year and Basra has been the site of much excitement as the world has celebrated the outstanding performance of Iraq's Lions.

Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) reports:

Sinbad, the legendary sailor from “The Arabian Nights,” rose from the darkness to greet the crowd. Lights and lasers danced across the stadium. For an hour, Iraqi musicians, dancers and actors took fans on a journey through thousands of years of Iraqi history. “We are a beacon to the world,” crooned popular singer Hussam Alrassam.

The spectacle on Jan. 6 marked the beginning of the 25th Arabian Gulf Cup soccer tournament, hosted by Iraq for the first time since 1979 — as the country seeks to turn the page on decades of violence, instability and isolation.

[. . .]

The tournament, which is held every two years, features countries from the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman), in addition to Yemen and Iraq. Much as the recent World Cup in Doha, Qatar, served to introduce Persian Gulf culture to the outside world, the tournament in Basra gave many gulf citizens their first chance to experience Iraq.

For locals, it was a rare opportunity to watch international soccer in their own backyard and, just as importantly, to express national pride and regional solidarity.

“Despite the fierce competition between the gulf countries to win the championship, what matters to us in the first place is honoring our guests after a long absence,” said Hussam Muthana, 27, a Basra taxi driver. “We are neighbors and cousins, even if outside political circumstances have kept us apart.”

More than 50,000 gulf visitors have poured into Iraq over the past two weeks, according to Iraqi authorities, as the country eased border restrictions and granted free visas. They made their way to the southern port of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, where they were welcomed with banners and gulf flags.

The article also features many outstanding photos so please check it out. Tomorrow, Iraq faces Oman.

Now, what's that? Is that the voice of Sandy Denny?

It's Sandy with Led Zeppelin. And is the late Sandy now laughing at the current plight of Richard Branson who dropped her from his label in the 70s? Phil Davies (TRAVEL WEEKLY) notes:

Virgin Atlantic has been fined more than $1 million for flying in restricted airspace over Iraq on services between London and India.

The penalty was imposed by the US Department of Transportation (DoT) for operating flights under a codeshare with US partner Delta Air Lines.

The US DoT, imposing the £1.05 million fine, said: “By carrying the DL [Delta] code on flights in airspace in which the FAA prohibits US carriers from flying, Virgin Atlantic operated in violation of the conditions of its statement of authorisation and in violation of federal law.”

THE NATIONAL adds:

The US transport department said Virgin Atlantic had told the agency the “prohibited overflights were inadvertent, caused by operational disruptions and loss of personnel due to the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Virgin Atlantic told the department that upon notification by the US government, “it immediately rerouted flights to avoid the airspace in question and informed its board and senior leadership of the issue”.

Virgin Atlantic also noted that it had invested in Sentinel by Osprey, an automated tool that “dynamically alerts airlines at the flight planning stage or operational stage, of any regulatory restrictions impacting their, or their codeshare partners’ flights”.

All the birds are leaving, Richard, they know it's time for them to go.

New content at THIRD:

The following sites updated: