March 19, 2003
The Flea welcomes USA Today visitors
The Flea welcomes USA Today visitors to my archaeology, pop-culture and current events blog. Recent posts include a letter from Madonna's rabbi, a long-awaited photo of aspiring pop-star Waffa bin Laden, and a report on CBC Newsworld's appalling first-reaction to the Columbia tragedy (and a follow-up from the office of the leader of the Canadian federal opposition). I hope you will bookmark the blog and visit again.
For regular Flea-readers, here is the USA Today blurb on my recent post against Canada's shameful refusal to fight for liberty:
From Canadian blogger ... ... comes Ghost of a Flea, a blog with an eye on international opinion of the war (and a distinct lack of patience with his government�s hesitation to get involved). Snorts ..., �There are bloggers in Iraq and Iran who are better informed than 99% of Canadian citizens. We should be ashamed of ourselves.�
March 17, 2003
Waffa bin Laden photo
And here she is... Waffa bin Laden courtesy of The Sun and eagle-eyed Flea-readers:
THIS sultry brunette is WAFFA BIN LADEN. On Friday I revealed that evil OSAMA BIN LADEN’S niece was a regular on the London party scene.
The Flea will cover this breaking story any photo, picture, image, download or any other traffic-boosting search term becomes available.
Update: Lots more Waffa Dufour goodness! Waffa video footage! And while you are here, check out the rest of my pop culture coverage.
March 12, 2003
Footprints
Footprints of two friends, probably children, left in volcanic ash more than 325,000 years ago are the oldest ever found. Modern humans have been around for approximately 100,000 years and the beginnings of civilization for less than 10,000. Yet these two people left a trace of themselves and their friendship which may outlast anything any of us will ever make or do or say. Despite the awesome depth of time from which these footprints send their message I could think of them as my friend and I clambered over a snowbank this afternoon. Our footprints will melt with the sun coming this weekend but the gestures which made them may find themselves repeated by people not so disimilar to ourselves tens of thousands of years down the road.
March 01, 2003
Ni Putes, Ni Soumises
The rights of French women should be a cause for the blogosphere (via Little Green Footballs). It is the racism of French social policy which has produced the "cites," ghettos where radical Islam and drug-dealing provide two of the few opportunities for self-respect or economic advancement. It is the racism of the French government which tries to deflect the rage of French Arabs onto Jews or the United States while turning a blind-eye to the subjugation of French women of Arab-descent.
The de facto apartheid-state of France should be the subject of boycotts and the outrage of progressive street marches. The political, financial and technological support of the French government for anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-semitic dictatorships is part of the same systematic contempt for liberty. This is something we can no longer afford to ignore.
The teen-ager told police he was angry with Sohane for snubbing his advances when he lured her into a refuse depot, so he doused her with petrol and threatened her with a lighter.
The tragedy, which left Sohane rolling in agony on a patch of grass to try to extinguish the flames before she later died in hospital, was just the worst in a sea of attacks by minors.
Yet it was horrific enough to spark a feminist revolution that is spreading to hundreds of cites across France.
"My sister was burned because she was rebellious. She broke the rule of the cite which is to be submissive," says Sohane's elder sister, Kahina, in an interview on Web site www.macite.net.
"For her killer, she represented a thing. It was like he was vandalizing a car. Well, today, some more of us are rebelling. We are sick and tired of this oppression," she says.
Spurred on by Kahina and others, a group of women is touring towns across France wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Ni Putes, Ni Soumises" -- "Neither Whores nor Submissive."
Furthermore... I was after this article about "the barbarians at the gates of Paris" yesterday and have now found it thanks to Merde in France. If I kept a Steven Den Beste style essential library this article would be in the catalogue. Social housing policy in "la Zone" reflects both the inhumanity of utopian architecture and the racism of French socialism:
A kind of anti-society has grown up in them—a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust—greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years—is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them.