Fazil Say has written an open letter to Turkey’s President Erdoğan about his government’s oppression of the arts and artists.
Mr President, Culture Minister and other authorities,
I am writing this letter to you from Peking. I have a concert in China tonight. I have my own pieces in the programme. My three pieces were removed from the programme in Ankara and it was criticized severely, I heard. [Read more…]
It’s always a good idea to see what Scalzi has been tweeting and retweeting lately.
Originally a comment by latsot on Floating above the ugly fray of politics.
The world of advertising is a strange one. Ah fuck it, I’m going to pull a made-up law out of my arse. Let’s call it Fortran’s Law: any sufficiently long-lived advertising campaign will forget what it’s actually advertising and why it even exists in the first place.
Here in the UK we have animated meerkats selling insurance. [Read more…]
FA Cup winners Arsenal, Paddy Power, Stonewall and the Gay Football Supporters’ Network have again teamed up to help tackle one of the toughest challenges in sport: homophobia in football.
Rainbow coloured boot laces have been dispatched to every single professional player in the UK, including youth and women’s teams, alongside deliveries to all MPs and leading political figures. And we are urging them to show their support by lacing up over the 13th/ 14th September – Rainbow Lace weekend. Fans and grass-root players will also be asked to tweet their support using the official hashtag: #RainbowLaces.
Newsweek did an analysis of GamerGate to determine whether it was really about a perceived lack of ethics among video games journalists, or a campaign of harassment against women who make, write about and enjoy video games, masquerading as a movement of gamers upset about a perceived lack of ethics among games journalists. Newsweek concluded it’s the latter. [Read more…]
Ashley Miller had a horrible, upsetting experience yesterday evening. It should have been a great experience:
As a filmmaker, intersectional scholar, and a huge fan and supporter of the original trailer and campaign for “Dear White People,” I was ecstatic to be able to go see the film here in Columbia, SC. The film itself didn’t disappoint. Clearly influenced by Wes Anderson in cinematography, but wholly unique in tone, it was a brilliantly funny, biting, and moving film. The acting, the directing, the cinematography were all superb, even before you take into account the origin story and budget of the film.
But there was a problem, a big big problem.
Spoilers alert. [Read more…]
Julie Bindel has a long article on Sharia versus Muslim women at Standpoint.
The voices of Muslim women who have suffered terrible consequences as a result of sharia taking root in Britain are often silenced. I spoke with a number of women who have had experience of sharia courts.
Fawzia married her husband when she was 16 years old and was divorced eight years later. [Read more…]
Iran went ahead and hanged Rayhaneh Jabbari. The bastards.
Ms Jabbari was arrested in 2007 for the killing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence who she said tried to sexually abuse her. [Read more…]
In a discussion on a philosopher’s Facebook wall yesterday I saw a mention of post-colonial approaches to secularism. I was curious about what those might be, and said something about my curiosity on my Facebook wall, and Meredith Tax gave me some sources. One is this piece in the CHE by Jacques Berlinerblau.
He says there’s a lot of unhelpful imprecision about secularism under foot. [Read more…]
What’s a good way to win more allies? Let’s see…to grab the name of someone else’s anti-violence campaign and pretend it’s always been yours, and use it to attack that campaign?
It will probably work. Shits are drawn to shit. Salon reports:
The White Ribbon campaign is a movement that started in Canada in 1991. It focuses on getting men and boys to step up in the movement against violence against women, and it has a number of global chapters. But this week, A Voice for Men started its own White Ribbon campaign and is now claiming to be the original White Ribbon campaign while warping the actual campaign’s message and intent.
[Read more…]