Erdoğan’s purges continue.

[T]he Turkish government crackdown widened on Tuesday to include the education sector and government departments.

Turkish media announced that:

• 15,200 teachers and other education staff had been sacked
• 1,577 university deans were ordered to resign
• 8,777 interior ministry workers were dismissed
• 1,500 staff in the finance ministry had been fired
• 257 people working in the prime minister’s office were sacked

Turkey’s media regulation body on Tuesday also revoked the licences of 24 radio and TV channels accused of links to Mr Gulen.

The news came on top of the arrests of more than 6,000 military personal and the sackings of nearly 9,000 police officers. About 3,000 judges have also been suspended.

The removal of thousands of

This is scary. When I say Trump is scary I’m not being hyperbolic or metaphorical, I mean scary. Getting people killed scary. Stirring up the fascist beast scary.

One of his advisers has said Clinton should be shot for treason.

A New Hampshire state representative who advises Donald Trump on veterans’ issues called Tuesday for Hillary Clinton to be “put in the firing line and shot for treason” for her handling of the Benghazi terror attack.

Appearing on WRKO radio from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, state Representative Al Baldasaro, a Londonderry Republican, called the presumptive Democratic nominee “a piece of garbage.”

…

“She is a disgrace . . . for the lies that she told those

The moral bankruptcy de nos jours – a comment right here on my post about Milo Yiannopoulos’s permanent banishment from Twitter –

I’m indifferent. I know little about the tweets aimed at Jones, but I do know that no one has a ‘right’ not to be insulted or offended.

Emphasis added.

It could be the anthem of the Sadistic Callous Asshole brigade – no one has a ‘right’ not to be insulted or offended, therefore I can and will devote all my leisure time to insulting people on Twitter.

The lack of thought of it – the crudity – the emptiness. Yes, no kidding, there aren’t laws against being mean and rude. We know that. We know that treating … Read the rest

Famous Twitter harasser Milo Yiannopoulos has finally been banned altogether from the social platform that made him internet-famous. It’s about time. The guy has built a career (however shoddy) on sadistically torturing people via Twitter.

Twitter has permanently banned a rightwing writer and notorious troll for his role in the online abuse of Leslie Jones over her role in the Ghostbusters reboot.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the technology editor for Breitbart.com, tweeted as @Nero. Before he was banned, he had more than 338,000 followers and called himself “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet” for his provocations online.

A known contrarian who likened rape culture to Harry Potter (“both fantasy”) and affectionately referred to Donald Trump as “daddy”, he emerged as a

Brighton Grammar expelled the two boys who set up the Instagram account to post pictures of much younger girls and label them “sluts.”

Police are investigating the social media account, which was created on Friday and featured photos of girls as young as 11 without their knowledge.

The school is reeling from the scandal, and reassuring parents and students that it will not tolerate “disrespectful behaviour on any social media”.

“Disrespectful” is not the right word. It’s much, much too mild. What those boys did is misogynist, and cruel, and damaging. We really need to not trivialize or minimize this kind of shit. We need to name it accurately.

The case was brought to the public’s attention after a concerned

She “apologized.”

https://youtu.be/G8z2KC74n4o

At 19 seconds:

That photo was taken to be part of a personal conversation with a girlfriend

Stop right there. You don’t get to take naked photos of people without permission. PERIOD.

Also by saying that she yanked the rug out from under her claim that she’s “not that kind of person.” Please. That “personal conversation” with a “girlfriend” (she means friend) would not have been about how nice the other women at the gym are and what a good time she was having, it would have been about the horror of seeing women who don’t look like Danni Mathers. That’s the kind of person she is.… Read the rest

So the big question today is (not counting the one about will the US go down in flames in a few months or not) why did anyone think it was a good idea to fill out Melania Trump’s convention speech by plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s from 2008?

The disarray was evident as Mr. Trump’s campaign and senior Republicans offered conflicting explanations for the similarities in the speeches, with some officials conceding that the passages were lifted and demanding accountability, and others arguing that nothing untoward had occurred.

They aren’t similarities you know. They’re the same words.

Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, pushed back aggressively against accusations of plagiarism and even tried to go on the offensive.

Describing it as “a

Guest post by Pieter Droogendijk

I have a rage. I’m not linking to anything, because the articles in question don’t deserve even one additional hit. But here’s the thing; there’s apparently an uproar on the internet about Rogue One, Star Wars, Ghost Busters, Mad Max, and a bunch of other crap. Here’s my take:

MORE FEMALE LEADS!

If it were up to me, every movie would have a lady protagonist. I don’t care if it “makes sense for the story;” it’s a story. Make it make sense. We have some catching up to do; men have led movies since the first one.

Remake Rambo. Remake Commando. Remake Star Wars, Star Trek, and Star Rambo. Remake everything, whatever you want, … Read the rest

So another item from the Washington Post snagged my attention while I was reading the first one – sidebars work, kids! It snagged my attention so I read it, in horror.

A Playboy Playmate found this normal woman’s naked body gross. So she posted it online.

Because it’s important for the world at large to see and judge random people’s naked bodies.

Dani Mathers, Playboy’s 2015 Playmate of the Year, was at L.A. Fitness on Wednesday when the body of a fellow gym-goer offended her. The 29-year-old took to Snapchat to post the woman’s body — naked, on her story.

The caption: “If I can’t see unsee this then you can’t either.” It pictured Mathers, sporting weight-lifting gloves and a

That’s how it should work.

Shannon Sullivan was surprised, then angry.

Not two months after 2-year-old Lane Graves was dragged into a lake by an alligator at a Disney resort and killed, she found herself face-to-face with a sign that made her deeply uncomfortable.

The Disney College Program bills itself as a “life-changing,” “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. Sullivan knew that she might lose her summer internship if she spoke out about this sign, but she couldn’t hold her tongue. She was willing to risk her spot in the program, one she quickly lost after she posted a photo of the sign to Twitter.

What did the sign say? “Alligators are friendly and cuddly, jump in the water and play with them!”? … Read the rest

Via Muslim and Exmuslim Women for Secularism:

“Masculinity so fragile, a woman only needs to breathe to hurt it.” Artwork by Rahema Alam.

… Read the rest

Boys at a private school in Melbourne set up an Instagram account last week in order to post photos of little girls and call them sluts.

Police are investigating an Instagram account which was set up by students at an exclusive private boys’ school to share photos of young girls without their knowledge.

The offensive account was created by two Year 11 boys at Brighton Grammar School and encouraged viewers to vote on the “slut of the year”.

“Offensive” isn’t the right word there. It’s misogynist and sexist and rapey.

A Melbourne mother who spoke out in disgust on her Facebook page after discovering that photos of her young daughter were uploaded onto the social media page, told Fairfax Media

Right Wing Watch tells us about one of the people speaking at the Republican convention this week.

The Republican National Convention released a partial list today of the politicians, activists, C-list celebrities and Donald Trump family members who will be speaking at next week’s convention. What the speakers’ list lacks in establishment GOP leaders it makes up for in fringe activists. One name especially stands out: Sheriff David Clarke, the Milwaukee law enforcement officer who has made a name for himself hurling anti-Obama vitriol on Fox News and elsewhere while quietly cozying up to anti-government extremist groups.

Clarke, who is African American, has built a conservative following by enthusiastically bashing President Obama, his Justice Department, Hillary Clinton and the Black

Another day, another Allahu Akbar. Today’s location is Germany.

A police operation is underway in the German town of Heidingsfeld, part of the southern city of Würzburg, after a man launched an attack on a regional passenger train at around 9.15pm local time (1915 UTC) on Monday.

Three people were seriously injured and a fourth suffered light injuries. Another 14 are being treated for shock.

The suspect was a 17-year-old Afghan refugee.

The teenager reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” before launching the attack using a knife and axe. He was shot dead by police in Heidingsfeld as he attempted to flee the scene. His motive was not immediately clear.

If it’s true that he shouted “Allahu Akbar” then his motive … Read the rest

I shouldn’t laugh, but…who could possibly help it?

What We Mean When We Say “Femme”: A Roundtable

Oh wow, don’t you just long to know what they mean when they say “femme”? I’m all agog, myself.

Femmes. We live in different places. We’re different ages. We have different gender identities. Some of us are people of color, some of us are white. In this representative sample, we are Autostraddle writers, or artists, or musicians, or educators, or all of these things. The only thing we have in common is that we’re queer and that, in our own deeply personal way, we breathe life into the word femme. But like so many other differences, we don’t agree on what the word

The failed coup has been a gift to Erdoğan. Patrick Coburn at the Independent says he’s using it to get rid of what’s left of secularism in Turkey.

The number of people detained so far is at 6,000 including soldiers, and around 3,000 judges and legal officials who are unlikely to have been connected to the attempted military takeover.

Reichstag fire.

The failed coup is serving as an excuse for a massive round-up of members of the judiciary and army officers, far greater than anything seen in Turkey for years, and is presumably a bid to secure Erdogan’s grip on the Turkish state. So numerous are those detained that a sports stadium is being used to hold some of them,

The NY Times on the Baton Rouge shooter.

As investigators worked, details about [Gavin] Long, 29, of Kansas City, Mo., began to emerge. Court records filed in Missouri showed that Mr. Long filed a name-change notice with the Jackson County recorder’s office, seeking to change his name to Cosmo Ausar Setepenra and saying he was a member of an indigenous tribe. A spokeswoman for the court said Mr. Long never filed a petition with the court, so the document was not legally binding.

Using that name, Mr. Long billed himself online as a self-help author and life coach who could help men become more “alpha.”

Like the gunman who killed five police officers more than a week ago in

The punishment for reporting a gang rape is…another gang rape. By the same gang.

There has been outrage in India after a student was allegedly gang-raped by five men who had also raped her three years ago.

Police are yet to make any arrests although the 21-year-old was attacked last week in Rohtak town in the northern state of Haryana.

She had been pursuing a case in court against the five men, when she was attacked on Wednesday.

The woman said she was forced inside a car and the men tried to strangle her.

She was seriously injured and left for dead in the bushes. A passerby saw her and took her to the hospital.

She’s a Dalit.… Read the rest