As more and more countries in Europe and elsewhere surrender to leftist demands and call home their troops from Afghanistan, the local women fear for their lives. The Taliban has not given up their ambition to enslave half the population. Ironically, many of the same people who demand a Western surrender in Afghanistan are radical feminists in domestic affairs.

I think the cover of Time illustrates the need for a continued presence of international troops in Afghanistan. Read parts of its cover article here.

Michael J. Totten is travelling in Israel and the disputed territories; he writes:

You may have heard about the Palestinian BDS movement. The letters in their acronym stand for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction. They really ought to add another D for Destroy. Their goal—and they aren’t shy about saying so publicly even in English—isn’t peace between Israelis and Palestinians, which is what all civilised people should want, but the end of Israel.

He adds a video to prove his claim.

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Fascist newspeak of the Eritrean president.

In Europe’s mainstream media, this will probably be reported as renewed resistance by a peace-loving human-rights organisation. To the rest of us, it’s the deliberate and systematic murder of civilians motivated by anti-Semitism.

Chile could become the third country in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage.

Here’s the latest example. The situation is absurd, and it’s ought to be obvious to everybody that something has to be done about the rabbis controlling Jewish life in Israel.

Mikael Tossavainen of Tel Aviv University as written an essay entitled “The Reepalu Affair as a Paradigm of Swedish Leftwing Antisemitism”. Read it here.

The latest madness from homophobic lobby organisation Concerned Women for America. (Via Towleroad.)

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Pet Shop Boys’s promo for “Before” from 1996.

The Daily Telegraph reports that NASA scientists say “solar tsunami” could hit earth this week. Finally some real climate change to look forward to!

If I’m not blogging on Friday, I’m probably dead from too much sun.

I’m asking because a friend made me create an account on MySpace a few weeks ago, and so far I haven’t received a single message or come across anyone I know. People send me messages on Facebook all the time. On Twitter, not so much—but that’s because I don’t really tweet and engage in any discussions.

According to The Economist, MySpace has about 300 million members. Where are they?

Jakob Heidbrink of Jönköping International Business School has written an article (in Swedish) about the need for a legalisation of narcotic drugs.

That’s an argument often used by homophobes when they campaign against marriage equality. They use (fake) statistics—often produced by homophobic think thanks like Family Research Institute—to prove that gay men tend to have shorter relationships and are less inclined to be monogamous than straight people. Being a couple in a society where everyone and everything work against you is not easy, so I think there used to be some truth to these statistics, but as society grows more tolerant, gay men find it easier to build healthy long-term relationships.

Anyhow, I found this list in the comment section on Towleroad. What’s interesting about it that no one is using it to suggest that heterosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to marry whereas similar lists of “failed” same-sex relationships are considered proof of a deviant gay lifestyle.

• 55 hours – Britney Spears and Jason Alexander
• 8 days – Dennis Hopper and Michelle Phillips
• 9 days – Cher and Gregg Allman
• 30 days – Drew Barrymore and Jeremy Thomas
• 32 days – Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman
• 3 months, 15 days – Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage
• 4 months – Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney
• 4 months, 24 days – Charlie Sheen and Donna Peele
• 5 months – Shannen Doherty and Ashley Hamilton
• 5 months – Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman
• 5 months – Drew Barrymore and Tom Green
• 7 months – Courtney Thorne-Smith and Andrew Conrad
• 8 months – Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd
• 8 months – Elizabeth Taylor and Nicky Hilton
• 18 months – Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley

I found Davey Wavey via Niclas Berggren and fell in love when a saw this video. I don’t normally go for shirtless 20-somethings, but Wavey is a sweetheart.

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Gawker has an interesting story about Corinna Luray Burt, who just might be the strangest person in the Internet:

The prominent white supremacist is an undertaker, bodybuilder, and former torture porn star. By phone, she discussed her contradictory life and how racism “saved her” from porn.

Hm…

Andy Towle reports that a man on Long Island has killed a 17-month-old boy he was babysitting because the child was acting like a girl. Some would say that this is the act of a single man—and it is—but I would argue that it’s also an extreme result of a type of normative indoctrination people experience every day. The prevailing idea that men and women are by nature set to act a certain way is hurtful not only to those who cannot live up to the demands but to all society. In academia, this is what queer activists, philosophers, and social scientists call heteronormativity. It’s perhaps an unfortunate word as some people think it suggests heterosexuals are bad and heterosexuality wrong. It has nothing to do with that. It is merely a term used to describe the way society favours people who adapt to traditional gender roles and family structures.

Hunky Swedish blogger Micke Kazarnowicz has posted 299 of his Pride photos on Flickr. Most of them a beautiful.

The quest for individual liberty has spread to China’s sex workers, who protest openly against discrimination.

A federal judge has ruled that the Californian same-sex marriage ban violates constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. It now looks very likely the Supreme Court of the United States will eventually decide the matter of marriage.

Arnold Schwarzenegger:

For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all Californians to consider our history of leading the way to the future, and our growing reputation of treating all people and their relationships with equal respect and dignity.

Today’s decision is by no means California’s first milestone, nor our last, on America’s road to equality and freedom for all people.

They call themselves peace activists, but they want war and violence. Yesterday, the organisers of the violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Turkish militants announced they would send another flotilla to Gaza in an attempt to help Hamas before the end of the year. One of the leaders of the organisation, Mattias Gardell, is best known for a book saluting Osama bin Laden.

If Gardell et alii succeed, my friends in Israel can expect more rockets over their village.

From The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder:

1. Marriage is and has been a civil matter, subject to religious intervention only when requested by the intervenors.
2. California, like every other state, doesn’t require that couples wanting to marry be able to procreate.
3. Marriage as an institution has changed overtime; women were given equal status; interracial marriage was formally legalised; no-fault divorce made it easier to dissolve marriages.
4. California has eliminated marital obligations based on gender.
5. Same-sex love and intimacy “are well-documented in human history.”
6. Sexual orientation is a fundamental characteristic of a human being.
7. Prop 8 proponents’ “assertion that sexual orientation cannot be defined is contrary to the weight of the evidence.”
8. There is no evidence that sexual orientation is chosen, nor than it can be changed.
9. California has no interest in reducing the number of gays and lesbians in its population.
10. “Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital union.”
11. “Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals.”
12. “Domestic partnerships lack the social meaning associated with marriage, and marriage is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States. The availability of domestic partnership does not provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships.”
13. “Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage or otherwise affect the stability of opposite-sex marriages.”

Read more here.

Sweden’s Pirate Party—best known for its support of Internet piracy—wants to change the definition of child pornography to exclude animated cartoons. I second that. The recent case where a cartoon collector was convicted for possession of child pornography is ridiculous.

The party stresses that it does not support the legalisation of child porn.

The Pirate Party has two seats in the European Parliament and is hopeful to win enough votes to gain some seats in the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag, in the upcoming general election. The latest opinions polls suggest it won’t.

Personally, I don’t agree with the party on matters of illegal file sharing, although I, too, see a number of problems with the current copyright laws. However, the party’s defence of privacy and opposition to surveillance has my support. (But I hate the party leader Rickard Falkvinge after his xenophobic remarks about Jews and Muslims being unfit for parenting.)

It’s no surprise that people in New England and California are more liberal in their attitude towards gay rights, but it’s still troubling for those who lives in states such as Utah were less than twenty per cent are in favour of marriage equality.

It’s the biggest chunk of ice to break off the Arctic since 1962. I don’t know if anyone named this island od ice yet, but may I suggest “Al Gore Island”?

Of course, every environmentalist wants this to be a result of global warming and evil capitalism, but there is nothing to suggest they are right.

Andreas Muenchow, professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, says, “Nobody can claim this was caused by global warming. On the other hand nobody can claim that it wasn’t.”

You could say the same thing about God.

Ray Hunt describes the gay Republicans’ invitation as “self hatred at its best”. I’m inclined to agree. Ann Coulter has made it her career to hate gays, blacks, Muslims—well everybody that aren’t white, American, and Christian. She is funny, though.

Update: Politico has more on the Republicans’ relationship with the gays.

The war is lost, so it’s a good thing that America is rethinking its policy. I wish Sweden did the same.

Cool. This is my kind of royalty. If only Harry could do a thing like this.

Therefore, it’s stupid to oppose a mosque being built in New York City. Religious freedom is one of the ideas Islamists despise about liberalism and Western culture. The greatest revenge for 9/11 would be to allow the local Muslims to build their mosque a few blocks from ground zero.

Thor Halvorssen on Hugo Chávez’s obsession with the late Simón Bolívar:

Chávez, in his personalisation of power, assault on private property, stifling of dissent and destruction of the separation of powers, does not embrace Bolívar’s legacy. He represents its antithesis.

Indeed. Bolívar was a man devoted to enlightened ideals and free-market liberalism, Chávez is a mad and self-centred communist who hates liberty.

The court decision that ended the ban on same-sex marriage in California is seen as a threat to religious freedom by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. What stupid irrationalism! Same-sex marriage would only be a threat to religious freedom was rabbis and priest forced to marry gay couples.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft is very sure about it.

European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard says the world climate talks are going backwards with no progress at all. Personally, I’m not sure this is a bad thing.

I take this opportunity to give name to a scandal. The Swedish Green Party’s unlawful use of an organic tomato in its election campaign shall from now on be referred to as “tomatogate”.

It would be a crime not to link to this. (This is not safe for work. The link will take you to a pornographic website.)

With Elana Kagan sworn in as a United States Supreme Court justice, there are three Jews on the current court. I figure the conspiracy theorist now think they were right all along.

A disturbing picture taken by a Wonkette reader.

A chart from The Economist reveals some interesting data:

Below are some of the cartoons published on HoloCartoons.com, which was launched in Iran yesterday. I publish the cartoons because it’s obvious the Iranian morons want to provoke the liberal world into the kind of infantile and despicable behaviour we see in Iran every time a Western cartoonist dare to mock the Prophet Muhammad. We should not allow ourselves to be provoked by the Islamists’ distasteful attempt to ridicule the Jewish people and the Holocaust victims. Instead, we should praise freedom of expression and laugh at the silly people that spend their time and money making up lies about historic facts.

Sweden has gone mad after the court conviction of a cartoon collector who owned drawings of naked children. Now everything is child pornography. On the radio I heard an expert saying that normal family photos of naked children could be ruled illegal if the judges thought they “could sexually arouse a paedophile”.

Madness. Instead of protecting children from real predators, we are turning everybody into suspected child pornographers.

I don’t mind a federal-style EU, but the last thing Europe needs is a heavier tax burden.

Apparently, something called “responsible procreation” was the main argument of the proponents of California’s now overruled ban on same-sex marriage. Must be the stupidest thing I have heard. You can say a lot about gay people, but one thing we rarely do is to make babies irresponsibly. It takes planning to become a gay parent.

A new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family suggests that couples where both spouses share the same religion are happier and stay together longer. It’s probably correct, but how is this different from couples who share the same opinions and beliefs in other, non-religious matters. I think one would find the same result when studying couples that share the same political ideology, the same lifestyle philosophy, and the same general outlook on life.

To Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, this is bad news. I think his fears—if correct—bring good news.

The judge wants to give the homophobes some time to appeal his ruling. I guess it’s a clever thing to do. No one thinks this will be the end of the matter, and it is better to allow the process some time than to create a situation of uncertainty. I think the United States Supreme Court will eventually settle the issue, and the people arguing in favour of equality will win just as they did in the case about interracial marriage a few decades ago.

I’m fascinated by this advertisement. Every man should have one. Too bad they are so very expensive. I really think it is a good thing that male masturbation is taken so seriously. For far too long it has been considered something sordid and shameful.

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A beautiful graph.

Babylonia plays an important to in Jewish history. For more than a millennium, Jews who lived in the Babylonian Diaspora studied the Torah and developed what would become the most important non-biblical scriptures in Judaism.

Between 586 BCE and 499 CE, the Jewish world had two distinct centres—Judea and Babylonia. The former has always been the most important in terms of worship as it is the land God promised the Israelites, but the latter was back then the intellectual centre where all new ideas came from.

Today I read yet another article about Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s attack on Progressive Judaism and realised that we have the exact same situation now. The Land of Israel will always remain at the centre of Judaism, but you must be blind not to see that it is the Jewish community in America that produces everything that is new and exciting about contemporary Judaism. Taking from the reader comments below the article, the hatred towards modernity is what Israeli religious life is about. The Reform movement’s lack of homophobia is seen as an argument against its Jewishness and numerous Israelis seem to have a need to exclude as many Jews as possible. Apparently, Judaism is to be an exclusive club for the bigots rather than a welcoming religious civilisation.

I realise that I do wrong when I judge all religious Israelis by the comments a few people write, but the problem is that the Knesset seems to mirror them. The conversion bill is the most striking example. If it is turned into law, Israel will give the Chief Rabbis final word in determine who is a Jew, and that power will most certainly be used to fuel the ultra-Orthodox attack on Progressive Judaism. America will then take complete control over mainstream Judaism, as Babylonia did 2,000 years ago.

Sweden is famous in Israel for all the bad things.

Eitan Haber predicts that the Israeli conversion dispute will not be resolved in our lifetime. I figure he’s right.

How do you make a comedy about a pompous boss in a totalitarian state?

Lisa Leff of the Huffington Post writes:

A federal appeals court put same-sex weddings in California on hold indefinitely Monday while it considers the constitutionality of the state’s gay marriage ban.

The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, trumps a lower court judge’s order that would have allowed county clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Wednesday.

The homophobes continue to argue that a ban on same-sex marriage is necessary encourage responsible childbearing. As we all know, gay people are known for getting each other pregnant while intoxicated.

The Israeli Nature and Parks Authority refused a gay couple with two children entry to nature reserves. “A couple is a man and a woman, not a man and a man,” they were told.

The INPA ought to buy its staff a dictionary.

John Bolton, America’s former ambassador to the UN, says Israel has just a few days to launch a military strike to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the first nuclear power reactor is set to launch on 21 August. Bolton warns that an attack beyond that date could release harmful radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

Once Iran has the bomb, everything will change in the Middle East. The most corrupt fascist in the region will have the power to wipe out Israel and anyone else who challenge its theocratic and undemocratic system. Its leader, unelected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has promised to do just that.

Newsweek has made a list of the world’s best countries.

The Local has more here.

On 8 August, I wrote about the absurd news of Ann Counter being invited to speak at a gay event. Now I learn that she is no longer welcome to attend the homophobic “Taking America Back” Convention because of this. Apparently, it is now considered too much even to talk to gay people. Well, even Hitler and Stalin could be mistaken for libertarians next such professional extreme-right homophobes as Ray Moore, Matt Barber, and Judith Reisman, who will all speak at the convention.

I mentioned Judith Reisman in the previous entry. Read more about here research and work here. I especially like the part where she says Alfred Kinsey was no real scientist and then goes on to accuse him of child molestation based on no proof at all. Since Kinsey interviews active paedophiles she concludes, “there is absolutely no reason to believe that Kinsey himself was not involved in the sexual abuse of these children”. Pure science, eh?

Oh, I also like the part about the German homosexual movement being responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust (of which itself was a victim) and her idea about gay people planning to repeat the crimes of Nazi Germany.

Judith Reisman is wicked and mad. But the problem is that far too many conservative Americans and active Republicans listen to her and other mad homophobes like her. It is no wonder that people think the worst of gays when a powerful homophobic lobby travels the world with this message of hate based on fake research.

One of Americas most immoral hate preacher, “Dr Laura”, quits her radio programme after racist remarks. Good! She is a horrible person best known for her ideas about gay men being paedophiles and biological errors. She has also encouraged parents with disabled children to abandon their sons and daughters.

Read more over at Huffington Post.

At one point someone wrote a now famous letter to Dr Laura about her homophobia.

The German health ministry has announced plans to legalise marijuana. At least for those who have a prescription.

Update added 18 July 2012: A funny picture of two birds has been removed due to unintended copyright breach.

Perhaps an argument for allowing animals the vote?

Sounds too optimistic if you ask me, but a meeting with that aim is scheduled in Washington for 2 October.

“If a woman dressed as a man has sex with a guy with a vagina, can they still get into heaven? Or are they already there?”

Via Slog.

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I have made the argument several times in this journal: the arguments for discriminatory treatment of gay people resemble those that were used in the defence of racial segregation.

One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers think so, too.

Read Ross Douthat’s original column here.

The quote is not taken from some homophobic organisation’s website. Apparently, this is the kind of ideas that some young queer activist hold today.

It’s not an isolated American phenomenon either, we have the same thing in Sweden.

The regime has ordered the people to celebrate.

Two Swedish women say they were raped by Mr Assange. The media hero is now on the run not only from the CIA but the Swedish and EU police, too.

Ah, what a drama…

The conspiracy theorists on Twitter have had a field day. The link between the CIA, the two women, and a Swedish “right-wing tabloid” is obvious. I blame George Bush for the whole thing—to blame him is always a sure bet in these circles.

Iran’s nuclear programme has brought back the insane love for fascism that nearly killed Europe from within in the past century.

The reader comment pictured above is taken from this article.

A picture a took today. Hallands Väderö is an island in southern Sweden.

Britain:

America:

It seems atheism is the most popular belief system for British converts.

Secular News Daily, the atheist website that reports the news, is naturally happy about these figures, but one comment annoys me:

Most notably, a lot of people have converted to ‘no religion’. Unlike the UK, however, some people move from ‘No religion’ into a religious group. That hardly ever happens in the UK, and perhaps reflects the social pressures on US individuals to be at least nominally religious.

Why not the other way around? Being religious in Western Europe means being mocked and bullied on a daily basis. People hide their religious identities to avoid bad treatment and the humiliation of being grouped with crazy fanatics and fundamentalists. Therefore, it only makes sense to assume that the trend towards atheism is, in part, a result of this intolerance.

The irony surrounding atheism is that its adherents are so sure of their own superiority that only the very religious can match them. Another comment in the article proves a perfect example:

What’s more, non-Christians almost all have stayed religious—very few have switched out to non-religion. I guess that’s because these people are mostly first or second-generation immigrants, for whom religion forms an important part of their cultural identity.

It’s true that Jews and Muslims don’t see their religion in the same way as Christians do. But that has to do with these two religions being fundamentally different. Only Christianity is obsessed with belief and what goes on inside people’s heads.

Now, what is interesting about the quoted paragraph is that the atheist writer assumes that all people will eventually acknowledge atheism as the truth. This is precisely what Christians have always thought. The Jews, Muslims, Hindus, are Buddhists just haven’t seen the light yet. When they learn about Jesus—sorry—atheism they will throw away their misguided beliefs and flawed identities.

On this day five years ago, I wrote my first blog entry on Aqurette.com.

I bought the domain name “Aqurette.com” in April 2000. My intention back then was to publish the articles I had written for magazines and newspapers. And so I did. Most articles from the late 1990s and the early 2000s were made available on my website and I was very, very proud of my work. It should be said that I was a lot more productive freelancer then than I am now. My life the past few years have mostly been about university studies, Swedish politics, and gay-rights campaigning.

Anyhow, in the summer of 2005, the Dutch company that hosted my website had some kind of accident that resulted in a complete eradication of everything that I had put online. I had no backup and I was devastated for weeks. Everything I had done was gone. To this day, I cannot understand why I threw away all the original files.

In mid-August 2005, I decided to experiment with blogging. It was the new thing and I had begun to follow Andrew Sullivan and a few other blog pioneers in America. So I got myself a new web host and spent the nights designing my new website. Then, on 23 August, I published my first entry in the new format—a piece about English spelling and grammar.

It has been five years, and now the blog—or journal, as I prefer to call it—has become an integrated part of my everyday life. The journal has gone from being a hobby to something semi-professional, and Aqurette.com is now registered with the Swedish authorities and falls under the same laws as mainstream newspapers. I have more readers—especially RSS subscribers—than I could ever have imagined.

I have been through a few bizarre things in the past five years—particularly from homophobes who dislike me for being gay; and socialists and fascists who dislike me for being a libertarian. But none of them come close to the stalking experience of one Stefan Sanneskär, who not only harassed me online for months but also sent slanderous letters and emails to my friends, colleagues, and a number of Swedish MPs. Oh, dear!

So, here I am, five years later. There have been times when I thought about closing down, but right now it feels like it will be many more years before I write my final entry.

Thank you all for reading. Keep sending me emails with comments and ideas.

The text on this mock poster from the Swedish Communist Party reads (in my translation): “We don’t think you are capable to control you money. Therefore, we want to take all your money in tax and then give some of it back as state benefit. Nice, eh?”

Had this been a real poster from the Communists it would be the first genuinely honest election-campaign poster they ever made. Their politics is all about draining the people on money in order to centralise power in the hands of a few leftist know-it-alls.

The words belong to Ugandan parliamentarian David Bahati. Strangely enough, neither he nor any other Ugandans seem eager to implement other laws of the Bible—such as slavery and death penalty for working on the Sabbath. As always, homophobes single out gay people. It should be noted that the Bible does not. In fact, the Bible is not very clear on the matter. On the one hand, parts of it could be read as condemnation of homosexuality, but other parts, such as the love of David and Jonathan, are clearly a celebration of homosexuality.

The truth is that various people wrote the Bible over many centuries. It has since been edited and translated several times. It’s a collection of political, historical, and ethical writing—and it should be read as such.

So yes, we should blame David Bahati for wanting gays dead. Only he is responsible for this hatful and perverted wish.

A man found guilty of paralysing another man in a fight could be sentenced to bodily paralysis.

I feel pain just reading about men getting a so-called Brazilian wax, but the hairless human is a fascinating trend.

More on the subject here.

The number of Swedes taking narcotic drugs has increased by 15 per cent in the past decade. Where is the successful “Swedish model” that will one day make Sweden a society entirely free from illegal drugs? Nowhere in sight, it seems.

Sweden’s drug policy has failed. There are more people dying from narcotic drugs in this country than in the Netherlands. Still, it is almost impossible to question the current policy without being punished or ridiculed by the establishment in all major political parties. The liberal drug policy of the Netherlands is still used in government propaganda as being the road to hell—despite all evidence of the opposite.

Sweden needs a new attitude towards drugs—one that focuses on harm reduction.

The Second Cold War is here. “Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has instructed the government to start building the country’s first nuclear power plant at a site on the Mediterranean coast, ending a year of controversy,” the Jerusalem Post reports.

Sweden’s four-party government—known as the Alliance—today promised further tax cuts if it wins the general election on 19 September. This is great news. Swedes suffer from the world’s heaviest tax burden and can do with some big tax cuts. In my opinion, the goal should be to cut the taxes in half in ten years.

The war is more lethal than the drugs.

Picture found in a group on Qruiser.

Ken Mehlman, who helped orchestrate many of George W. Bush’s anti-gay initiatives, is coming out in an interview for The Atlantic.

If the website looks strange—reload. I’ve made some changes to the style sheet.

Two weeks ago, the Social Democrats made an election-campaign poster stating that 466,000 Swedes are unemployed due to the centre-right government. Since then, the figure has dropped to 415,000. Now the government has presented a new poster telling the electorate about this. I like this! When the socialist opposition tries to scare people by giving the impression that things are getting worse, the centre-right government coalition replies with facts of the contrary.

The racist Sweden Democrats has made a short film for their election campaign in which they portray Muslim women as a threat to the welfare of Swedish seniors. The party had hoped it would be broadcast on TV4, Sweden’s largest privately owned television channel. But TV4’s CEO Jan Scherman has now decided not to air the film.

Personally, I think the Sweden Democrats gain more from the boycott than it would from the film being broadcast. The party has been very successful at acting the oppressed underdog of Swedish politics. Now its campaigners can continue to milk the idea that their racist party has some truth about immigration and Muslims the established politicians want to hide from the people.

Watch the Sweden Democrats’s film here.

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If you have nothing better to do…

Jon Stewart mocks the latest case of a Republican homophobe suddenly realizing he is gay.

According to the new book The Male Brain by Louann Brisendine, the sexual pursuit area in the male brain is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain, which consumes him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.

The book seems to be all about heterosexual men, but I think the same applies to gay men. Personally, I work hard to resist my urge to ogle at men’s buttocks.

Update: I just now found this video clip where Louann Brisendine explains the “gay brain”.

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The only thing the three parties in the opposition agree on is that successful people must be punished with an extra-heavy tax burden somehow. In a socialist society there’s no room for people who make money by doing things other people are willing to pay for—unless those people are politicians.

He is now 24 years old, and still kept a prisoner by Hamas.

Swedish liberal Fredrick Federley makes an excellent case against the racist Sweden Democrats. The party tries to gain support from the gay community by accusing Muslims of queer bashing. It is true that Muslim men have caused many violent incidents, but as Federley points out, the Christian Swedes that make up the Sweden Democrats established the tradition.

A new study on Swedish prostitution was presented at a press conference today. (The link goes to a video where the study is presented in Swedish.)

Not exactly the poverty-stricken streets and houses we are fed in mainstream media.

“Someone who tries to define Jews by a genetic make-up is consumed by a racist mania,” says Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. He is right.

I’m just helping Megan McArdle by answering her question. Monogamy is not unnatural in the sense that it goes against nature—as if nature had an opinion on anything—but it is obvious to me that our ideas about sexual relationships are linked to the religious civilisation we are part of. This has nothing to do with belief in God; it is strictly a matter of culture.

Perhaps it is because the two personify the internalised homophobia that eats into so many gay men? These are the type of men bigoted people refer to when they excuse their illiberal ideas by saying they have friends who are gay.

I’m one of them. QX has made a list of us all.