Maman Poulet

Monday's Musings

• Did you know Britain is home to 7 million bloggers? This includes Bebo and Myspace.

• Roy Greenslade on why the Daily IRISH Mail is doing badly in Ireland.

• The Women’s Compartments of Cairo’s Underground. (Hat Tip feministe) Now if that would mean the end of sitting beside A.N.Other bloke who spreads his legs to air or play with his nether regions I might just start a campaign.

• Mr. And Mrs. is to make a TV comeback. Ah go on now you remember it – See here for a refresher course. Now it is not the first come back for the show – Julian Clary already did an equal opportunities version in 1999. Let’s see what Celador do with it this time.

• Google is your friend - at least in how to 'get a girl and get laid'. Damien spent his Sunday writing this - does it work as well in 'getting a boy'? I suggest Damien spends next Sunday trying it out and of course reporting back on his experiences!
  

• Gay Community News (or GCN as its now only known these days) is 200 editions old this month. Maman Poulet’s picture appears twice in this edition. Anyway to mark the occasion they have 12 mp3 tracks available for download on their site from 12 different irish queer artists. Shaz Oye, Zrazy and Michelle Ann Kelly are on my Creative Zen today.

• As Simon hinted the other day there has been conflict over the issue of highlighting the situation facing gay people in Iran. Some western organisations are disputing whether the 2 teenagers executed last year were gay, they also say that protesting against these actions is Western oppression of Islamist culture or something like that. Well Al Fil of the Middle East Gay Journal Blog replies to all this hokum and tells the Western Gay Movement (well the official professional NGO wing) to cop on.
  

I hate what Long [Scott Long of Human Rights Watch] says about "imputing a Westernized ‘gay’ identity on these youths", which is a steaming pile of donkey-#$%@. Islamists are putting a gay identity on people in the Middle East just as much as the West is. Gay people in the Middle East didn't experience the current level of persecution until the 1990s, when the gay movement began to gain momentum in the West. Why? It's simple - Islamists want to distance the East from the West. By showing how gay the West is, and how gay the East isn't, they accomplish their goal. Why do you think there has been so much coverage of gay marriage in Western nations? Gay people are a group that evoke relatively little sympathy in the Middle East, and are an easy target for the Islamists. The current crackdowns targeting gay people are merely an extension of the Islamist vs. Western Imperialism battle that has been raging for decades. Islamists superimpose the term "gay" just as much as Westerners, and it's uninformed - and a bit ethnocentric - to say otherwise.

posted by Maman Poulet @ 7/24/2006 12:58:00 a.m.