The Goldsmiths LGBTQ+ mash note to Stalin and the Gulag made it into the Telegraph:

Students at a leading London university have been condemned as blind to reality after defending the system of Soviet Gulag labour camps where thousands perished as “compassionate” places of rehabilitation.

Trans rights campaigners at Goldsmiths University described the Gulags as benign places where inmates received education, training and enjoyed the opportunity to take part in clubs, sports and theatre groups.

In fact most historians agree they were a brutal network of labour camps used by Stalin’s Soviet dictatorship to incarcerate internal opponents and so-called ‘enemies of the state’, resulting in the death of more than an estimated 1.05 million people.

But they did it … Read the rest

Carl Benjamin aka “Sargon of Akkad,” famed misogynist bully, was on an EU parliament panel to discuss free speech at the invitation of a UKIP MEP.

A MAN who was fined after filming a pet dog giving Nazi salutes has rubbed shoulders with Nigel Farage after being invited to speak about his case at the European Parliament.

Mark Meechan met with the former UKIP leader and his successor Gerard Batten as he spoke at a conference on threats to free speech on the internet.

…

Meechan, of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, raised more than £193,000 through a crowdfunding page to pay for legal fees to fund an appeal against his conviction and sentence but his application was refused.

He joined

The gulagsplaining turned out to be a step too far even for the Goldsmiths Student Union. Their statement:

Yesterday, Monday 10th September, a member of the LGBTQ+ Society with access to their Twitter account posted tweets containing offensive material. We condemn the abhorrent content of the tweets and they are in complete opposition to the views and values of the Students’ Union.

The Society have broken multiple Union policies and procedures, including failing to adhere to our code of conduct, and we have issued multiple requests for the group to delete the tweets. As such, the Society have been suspended and disaffiliated from the Students’ Union, pending investigation.

I think they should have said what the tweets were about … Read the rest

Well this would explain a lot! The genius (or one of the geniuses) in charge of the @lgbtqgold account undertakes to explain why gulags were such fine fine institutions and Stalin was so tragically misunderstood:

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039140880731521025

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223037328089088

But it is “governed” by a former KGB agent, but don’t let that worry you.

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223043023949824

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223046983311361

Don’t you wish you could go live in one right now?

https://twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039223051097923585

People who don’t consent to repeat the formula “trans women are women” must be eradicated through “re-education” in a nice cozy book-filled gulag.

Such utter stupidity and crass ignorance. Just as well no name is attached because you'd spend years living this one down.

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) September 10, 2018

… Read the rest

There was a claim circulating that feminists had placed stickers at a Manchester railway station with razor blades behind them. That never did make much sense – wouldn’t they be visible behind a flat piece of paper? Also why would feminists seek to discredit themselves that way? Also what about the possibility that this is just yet more of the pretending that women are the source of violent aggression and men are their powerless victims?

Bloody hell. The lie that women are putting razor blades under stickers in Manchester has got over 1K likes. pic.twitter.com/VLS7ImSb0j

— FeministRoar (@FeministRoar) September 5, 2018

So anyway, the police checked, and sure enough – it was bullshit.

10 Sep 2018 15:43
Sticker claims

Yes, that’s fine, no problem at all, go right ahead.

https://twitter.com/Knightcartoons/status/1039017329030393856

Updating to add a tweet and a pointed retweet by JK Rowling:

Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop. https://t.co/YOxVMuTXEC

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 10, 2018

#SerenaWilliams photographed by Annie Leibovitz, 2003 #womensart pic.twitter.com/y2BOwIMy3y

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) September 10, 2018

… Read the rest

Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker:

Update: Three hours after the publication of this story, CNN reported that Moonves will step down from his position at CBS. A person familiar with the discussions said that Moonves will no longer receive any of his exit compensation, pending the results of the independent investigation into the allegations, and that a portion of the amount he would have received will be donated to organizations focussed on sexual harassment and assault.

Now that’s some powerful journalism.

Members of the board of the CBS Corporation are negotiating with the company’s chairman and C.E.O., Leslie Moonves, about his departure. Sources familiar with the board’s activities said the discussions about Moonves stepping down began several weeks

Fox News needles a former CIA contractor to talk on the air about killing Obama.

Kris Paronto, who worked for the intelligence agency during the 2012 Benghazi attacks that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens dead, was speaking to host Pete Hegseth about recent remarks by Obama suggesting that the Republican investigation into the incident was politically motivated.

“It’s disgusting. It just raises the bile inside of me. I had a hard time just watching the speeches,” Paronto told Hegseth, Raw Story reported. “I just wanted to see what he had to say. And when that came across, I just wanted to reach through the screen and just grab him — grab him and choke him.”

“Honestly, the

Ronan Farrow dropped a new story today.

What @RonanFarrow told me: "These women are coming out now" because "they have been extraordinarily frustrated by what they perceive to be INACTION on the part of CBS and its board. And that really is integral to what prompted this follow-up story." pic.twitter.com/7C4R7PnSH4

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 9, 2018

Three hours later…

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1038887744146169856… Read the rest

Zinnia Jones showing the usual empathy for women and girls:

Right up there with Hannah Mouncey in solidarity with girls and women.… Read the rest

The genius of Dave Rubin:

https://twitter.com/aiizavva/status/1038430387154894849

The racist ideas of the day are not coming from conservatives and libertarians, they’re really not, and they’re certainly not coming from classical liberals. They’re coming from the progressives, that actually is just true, it just is.

Mmhm. Sam Harris insisting that Charles Murray was and is right that brown people are stupid is not a racist idea of the day, fer sher.… Read the rest

Just one of those things.

A man has been jailed for six years for killing a woman he stabbed in the throat during a “bizarre and violent” sex game.

Jason Gaskell severed 21-year-old Laura Huteson’s jugular vein and carotid artery with a knife while having sex at his home in Hull on 27 February.

As one does. You know how it is – you get warmed up, everybody’s panting like a dog, and out comes the knife.

“It appears you harboured a desire for, and regularly put into practice, a particularly extreme form of sexual activity in that you enjoyed sadomasochism whereby you held the throats of sexual partners very tightly and regularly used a knife in the midst

At Slate, Lisa Graves reports that Brett Kavanaugh received stolen emails and lied about it under oath.

Much of Washington has spent the week focusing on whether Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. After the revelations of his confirmation hearings, the better question is whether he should be impeached from the federal judiciary.

I do not raise that question lightly, but I am certain it must be raised.

Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda