Orlando: Perverts

The front page of Yeni Akit, a right-wing Turkish newspaper,

The headline translates as 'Death toll rises to 50 in bar where perverted homosexuals go!'

Via Twitter.

PS Yesterday a Christian pastor from Arizona praised the massacre as gay men are perverts and paedophiles.

Lance Price: Madness

A controversial writer who worked as a spin doctor for Tony Blair was paid taxpayers’ money to give media training in Armenia.

Lance Price picked up more than £8,000 from the Foreign Office for a week of sessions with local journalists in the capital, Yerevan.

On his return to London in October 2013, Mr Price tweeted: ‘Back in London after great week in Yerevan with @UKinArmenia supporting British Days and talking media, politics and minorities.’

The British embassy in Yerevan tweeted a picture of one of Mr Price’s training sessions.

Mr Price, 57, started his career with the BBC but was appointed Alistair Campbell’s deputy at No 10 in 1998.

After leaving Labour, he found himself in the limelight after giving the first inside account of Blair’sregime in a book called The Spin Doctor’s Diary'

The Mail.

Who are just a teensy bit obsessed with foreign aid (and homosexualists and Tony Blair).

Note the two examples of this 'madness' they highlight...

Turkish Pride: Every Cloud...

Police in Turkey have been left red-faced after their attempts to block a Pride parade helped to celebrate the occasion.

The officers were using water cannon to clear the peaceful parade in Istanbul when the water droplets caught the sunlight and branched across the sky in a rainbow.

Pride across the world uses a rainbow as its representative colours, on flags and more, giving a clear association with the LGBT community...

The Mirror's rather, err, different take on Istanbul Pride yesterday where police attacked marchers with water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Most of the Western media were baffled as to why they were attacked - usually settling for 'Dunno, something about Ramadan?'

But a reporter for AFP News said; 'Police took action against the crowd when demonstrators began shouting slogans accusing the social conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of "fascism".'

PS Barclays - sponsor of Pride In London. Investor in Raytheon and General Dynamics, makers of arms and 'civil defense' stuff. Big in Turkey...

Update: Please see Paul Canning's blogpost on this; New LGBT Muslim Heroes.

Turkey: Insulting A Public Official

Two Turkish caricaturists have been fined for insulting President Tayyip Erdogan after a court ruled that one of their cartoons implied he was gay, local media said on Wednesday.

Bahadir Baruter and Ozer Aydogan were prosecuted for an illustration on the front page of satirical magazine Penguen last August in which an official greeted Erdogan while apparently making a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

Prosecutors launched the indictment after a citizen complained that the hand signal, commonly used in Turkey to insult homosexuals, was against the country's moral values.

Lawyers representing Erdogan then got involved in the case, demanding that the court punish the cartoonists for "insulting a public official", Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Penguen had no immediate comment, but the cartoonists were quoted by Hurriyet as denying the charges and saying no such implication was intended.

They were initially sentenced to 11 months in prison but the court immediately reduced this to a 7,000 lira ($2,740) fine because of good conduct during the trial.

Erdogan, who brooks little dissent, has dominated politics for more than a decade in Sunni Muslim Turkey, where homosexuality is widely frowned upon...

Reuters.