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Year: 2025

Irish band Kneecap shouts out to Palestine Action Group at Glastonbury

Irish band Kneecap shouts out to Palestine Action Group at Glastonbury

Thousands of fans chanted ‘free Palestine’ and waved Palestinian flags as the Irish trio performed in the UK. Irish-language rap group Kneecap has performed at the Glastonbury Festival in front of tens of thousands of fans chanting “Free Palestine”, defying United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer who said he did not think it was “appropriate” for the band to appear. The group’s Liam O’Hanna on Saturday also gave a “shout-out” to Palestine Action Group, which UK Interior Minister Yvette Cooper announced last week would become a banned group under the Terrorism Act of 2000. “The prime minister of your country, not mine, said he didn’t want us to play, so f*** Keir Starmer,” said O’Hanna, who appeared on stage wearing his trademark Palestinian keffiyeh in front of the capacity crowd, including many people waving Palestinian flags. “This situation can be quite stressful but it’s minimal compared to what the Palestinian people are [facing],” O’Hanna, who performs under the name Mo Chara, added, referring to the backlash the band has faced for its outspoken support of Palestinians in Gaza. He is facing charges under the British Terrorism Act of supporting a proscribed organisation for allegedly waving a flag of Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group at a concert in London in November last year. O’Hanna has said he picked up a flag that was thrown onto the stage without knowing what it represented. The rapper is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury, I’m a free man!” he shouted as the trio took to the stage at Glastonbury’s West Holts field, which holds about 30,000 people. Advertisement The trio also thanked festival organisers Michael and Emily Eavis for resisting pressure to cancel their appearance, including from Starmer. Several Kneecap concerts have been cancelled since the band’s performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California in April, where they accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians, enabled by the United States government. At least 56,412 Palestinians have been killed and 133,054 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Ireland’s people and government have been some of the most outspoken critics of the war, as well as Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza’s population, which many people see as having parallels to the English occupation of Ireland. Festival-goers wave Palestinian flags during Kneecap’s Glastonbury set [Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP] The BBC, which broadcasts dozens of Glastonbury performances, did not show Kneecap’s set live, but said it planned to make it available online later. The broadcaster said it would not be re-airing the live performance of British rap punk duo Bob Vylan who appeared on stage before Kneecap and led chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF [Israeli army]”. A BBC spokesperson said the comments were “deeply offensive”, and that they would not be available to rewatch on BBC iPlayer. The BBC also reported that UK Culture Minister Lisa Nandy spoke to the BBC director general, Tim Davie, seeking an “urgent explanation” after the chants were aired live. According to the BBC, Avon and Somerset Police also said that they would be reviewing footage of both Kneecap and Bob Vylan’s sets to “determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation”. The bands were among about 4,000 performers across 120 stages to appear at this year’s festival, which also featured headliners including Neil Young, Charli XCX, Rod Stewart, Busta Rhymes, Olivia Rodrigo and Doechii, as well as a surprise appearance by Britpop band Pulp. Adblock test (Why?)

Trump administration takes on new battle shutting down initial Iran strike assessments

Trump administration takes on new battle shutting down initial Iran strike assessments

A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s claim that recent U.S. airstrikes “completely and totally obliterated” three Iranian nuclear facilities, instead concluding the mission only set back Iran’s program by several months. The report, published by CNN and The New York Times, comes just days after Trump approved the strikes amid escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. In a national address immediately following the operation, Trump declared the sites “completely and totally obliterated.”  While members of the Trump administration have waged a new war to discredit the initial report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, multiple experts told Fox News Digital that there is too little information available right now to accurately determine how much damage the strikes did.  Piecing together a thorough intelligence assessment is complex and time-consuming, they said.  FBI INVESTIGATING IRAN STRIKE LEAKER, LEAVITT SAYS: ‘THEY SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE’ Dan Shapiro, who previously served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he didn’t put a lot of stock in both overly pessimistic or overly optimistic assessments that emerged quickly, and said that the initial assessment from DIA was likely only based on satellite imagery.  “That’s one piece of the puzzle of how you would really make this assessment,” Shapiro, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital. “You’d really want to have to test all the other streams of intelligence, from signals intelligence, human intelligence, other forms of monitoring the site, potentially visits by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, potentially visits by other people. So that’s going to take days to weeks to get a real assessment.”  “But I think it’s likely that if the munitions performed as expected, that significant damage was done, and would set back the program significantly,” Shapiro said.  Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that initial battle damage assessments suggested “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” but he acknowledged that a final assessment would “take some time.”  Still, media reports based on the DIA report painted a different picture, and CNN’s reporting on the initial report said that Iran’s stash of enriched uranium was not destroyed in the strikes, citing seven people who had been briefed on the report. The findings were based on a battle damage assessment from U.S. Central Command, according to CNN.  Other members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have subsequently pushed back on the DIA report’s conclusions, claiming that the report was labeled “low confidence.”  TRUMP SLAMS RUSSIA’S CASUAL THREAT TO ARM IRAN WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS: ‘THAT’S WHY PUTIN’S THE BOSS’ The term is commonly used when labeling initial assessments, and means that conclusions are based on limited data, according to experts.  Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, who previously served as the director for transnational threats at the National Security Council for former President Bill Clinton, said the low confidence description is commonly used in early assessments.  “Low confidence means the analyst is not sure of the accuracy of their assessment,” said Montgomery, now a senior fellow at the Washington think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “This is frequent when with a Quick Look 24-hour assessment like this one.” Montgomery’s colleague, Craig Singleton, also a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that the low confidence label is used in cases with thin evidence and serves as a warning to policy-makers to seek additional information.  “Most importantly, low confidence assessments are usually issued when key facts have yet to be verified, which certainly applies in this case,” Singleton said. Rob Greenway, former deputy assistant to the president on Trump’s National Security Council, told Fox News Digital that it will take one or two months to get a more thorough assessment with higher confidence.  IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER REITERATES ‘SERIOUS DAMAGE’ TO NUCLEAR FACILITIES, DESPITE AYATOLLAH’S COMMENTS  Greenway also said that the strikes were designed to create damage underground, which will complicate the assessment of damage, because it is not immediately available and will require multiple sources of intelligence, such as signals or human intelligence, to draw conclusions.  Israel had also previously conducted strikes targeting the sites, adding to the web of analysis that must be evaluated, Greenway said.  “Each of these are one piece of a much larger puzzle, and you’re trying to gauge the ultimate effect of the entirety of the puzzle, not just one particular strike,” said Greenway, now the director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation. “All of that means it’s going to take time in order to do it.”  Even so, Greenway said that the amount of ordnance dropped on the sites – including more than 14 30,000-lb. bombs – means that the targeted facilities have been so heavily compromised they are no longer serviceable.  “We were putting twice the amount of ordnance required to achieve the desired effect, just to make sure that we didn’t have to go back,” Greenway said.  EX-CLINTON OFFICIAL APPLAUDS TRUMP’S ‘COURAGEOUS’ IRAN CALL, DOUBTS HARRIS WOULD’VE HAD THE NERVE “There’s virtually no mathematical probability in which either facility can be used again by Iran for the intended purpose, if at all, which again means that everything now is within Israel’s capability to strike if that’s required,” Greenway said.  And Michael Allen, a former National Security Council senior director in the George W. Bush administration, said that even though a final judgment from the intelligence community won’t be ready soon, the intelligence portrait will become “richer” in the coming days.  “Stuff is pouring in, and we’re out there collecting it, and they’re trying to hustle it to the White House as soon as possible,” Allen, now the managing director of advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies, told Fox News Digital.  White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that very few people had access to this report, and those who leaked it