Today we remember those lost to AIDS and celebrate our friends who live with HIV.

There has been no time for blogging the past couple of days. It is Hanukkah and I am preparing for an important meeting in London on Tuesday. But here is some news that caught my attention today:

• Fire kills many in Israel. A multi-national force now fights the fire on the outskirts of Haifa. Turkey and Greece have sent firefighters. It’s not the first time catastrophe brings enemies together.
• Hugo Chávez’s anti-Semitism. A leaked American cable published by Wikileaks reveals fears in the Jewish community in Venezuela. In discussions with American diplomats, Jewish people describe the hostile environment created by the Chávez regime.
• Iran’s national airline has Star of David on roof? Eh? What would Allah say?
• European Parliament wants gay marriage for all. All member states of the European Union, that it. The proposal is that documents issued in one member stat should be valid throughout Europa. Good idea. But I cannot see Poland and the Baltic states accepting this any time soon.
• Church acknowledges it is a hate group. Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church admits that he and his church hates gay people. Words are important here because Christian homophobes normally make the case that their attacks on gay rights are acts of love. They hate the sin but love the sinner, they say. Nonsense, of course. But this is what they say when confronted.
• Gay people are America’s most attacked minority. This according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Centre in Alabama.
• Vladimir Putin says gays are welcome in Russian military. Meanwhile, the American senators are doing their best to keep openly gay people to serve in the military. Apparently, being honest about one’s sexuality would destabilise the troops.

I’m not sure how much I be able to blog in the next few day. I’m travelling and I have several articles to write.

Here is some news that caught my attention this afternoon:

• Jesus is coming on 21 May 2011. This has to be the news of the millennium.
• Anti-Semitic teachers torment Canada. Now, I know that some readers will say that it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel. True, but to only bash Israel and systematically ignore the Palestinian terrorism that makes cause the tension is an expression of anti-Semitism. It’s like always talking about what the black boy was fighting in the schoolyard and not mentioning that the white boy hit him on the head several times. If you do this once and it could be written off as a mistake, if you do it over and over and it is most certainly racism.
• Uneven rights for gay Europeans. Some European countries are near perfect while others are increasingly homophobic, a new reports from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reports.
• The euro crisis. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium. Where will it end?
• European Enlightenment art to Beijing. I hope the ideas will rub off.
• AIDS concerns us all. Julie Rhoad has written an article about HIV and what it has done to us.
• Mercury turns birds gay. I wonder what chemical element will do birds straight.

I’m very busy at the moment and the blog suffers. I have spent the past weekend in Copenhagen and tomorrow I go to London and the Sternberg Centre, which is the largest Jewish cultural centre in Europe. Among other things, I will take a few pictures that will accompany an article I’m writing. I will publish some of those pictures here when I’m back in Sweden on Wednesday evening.

Here is some news that caught my attention this morning:

• New city tunnel in Malmö. My hometown has a new underground rail tunnel that will shorten the journey to Copenhagen. It now takes about half an hour to travel between the two cities’ central stations.
• Julian Assange says rape allegation is part of conspiracy. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is suspected of rape, but the prosecutor’s demand for a hearing only feeds the conspiracy theory that the whole world is out to get him. Give it a rest. Rape is a serious crime and there is nothing to suggests that a celebrity journalist cannot be a rapist.
• Hugo Chávez blames rain on capitalism. If Assange is a borderline case, Chávez is a full-blown lunatic. He blames capitalism for the heavy rain that have made more than 70,000 people homeless in Venezuela.
• Neo-Nazis march in Berlin. There were only twenty-five of them, but is it still worrying.
• European gays meet in Nicosia.
• The myth of Israel’s Jews-only roads. Michael J. Totten debunks a popular myth. There are no Jews-only roads.
• Israeli fire is under control. Good.
• Hamas says Israeli fire is divine punishment. Yeah, right.

The view from my hotel.

The entrance to the Sternberg Centre, Europe’s largest Jewish cultural centre.

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The library.

The mikveh.

The ark.

Torah scrolls that survived Nazi Germany.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association—a homophobic lobby group—says the mysterious homosexual agenda motivated the man thought to be behind the WikiLeaks release of State Department cables. Now you know.

I suppose this will be another heavy argument against gays in the military. Straight people don’t leak stuff.

Russia has seen some ugly and violent attacks on foreigners in recent years. The Moscow New urges politicians to do something about it before the 2018 World Cup.

It’s great that the newspaper addresses the problem, but it seems weird to link it to the World Cup. Racist violence is a big enough problem regardless of any forthcoming conflict between foreign football supporters and Russian neo-fascists and nationalists. Ironically, the leading article is an example of the problem Russia has with racism—it is custom and is only seen as a problem when important visitors might be witnesses.

I used to like him for his good looks, now I like him for his good morals, too.

Is this really news? I thought all men knew that a good wank is a great relief.

Handerpants are simply underwear for your hands. Eli Sanders is thrilled.

A new poll suggests that a majority of Israeli Arabs don’t want their towns to become part of Palestinian state. One aspect many commentators neglect is that Israeli Arabs have a much better life than other Arabs. Personally, I no longer believe in a two-state solution. I think a final peace deal must be a sort of two-nation-one-country federation.

The Senate has decided that promoting homophobia is more important than winning wars.

For quite some time, radical feminists have written off men as unnecessary—and even unwanted—for reproduction. Now men can do the same. With stem cell technology, Texas researchers have managed to get two male mice to produce offspring.

In an open letter, a bunch of former EU leaders—including Chris Patten, Javier Solana, and Mary Robinson—wants a new “Berlin wall” to be built in Jerusalem to establish a Palestinian capital in the Jewish heartland. They also call on the European Union to put forward a plan to resolve the conflict, including “a clear time frame, together with the US, UN, Russia, and Arab League.” Note that Israel and the Jewish people are not welcome!

Yesterday evening, central Stockholm experienced an attempted terror attack. A 29-year-old man, believed to be Iraqi, blew himself up in a busy street. A car parked nearby blew up a few minutes after.

The terrorist carried a bag full of nails but failed to cause as much damage as he had set out to do. He killed himself and wounded two people. Minutes before the attack, the man sent a threat to a large news agency and the Swedish Security Service. The man wrote that he intended to kill Swedish people because Swedish troops partake in the fight against the Taliban movement in Afghanistan and because Swedish law protects artist Lars Vilks’s cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

His name was Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly.

The absurd “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy survived a vote in the US Senate. The New York Daily News runs an article by a gay soldier who tells his story. He is convinced that repealing the gay ban would have “an enormously positive effect on our military’s fighting capacity and our country’s commitment to human dignity, fairness and equality.”

A sad tale.

I’m travelling and won’t be able to blog until Thursday.

Opponents to identity politics often say that oppressed minorities seek “special rights”. This might be true in some extreme cases, but the general rule is that minorities want the same rights as the majority. For example, gay activists in America want the law to recognise same-sex marriage not because gay relationships deserve special treatment under the law but because they deserve equal treatment under the law. Still, opponents to same-sex marriage say that the gay activists’ identity politics result not in equal rights but special rights. I believe this is nonsense.

I write this because Newsweek has an article entitled “Are Gay Rights Civil Rights?” My answer is yes. Gay rights are civil rights.

One of the more bizarre arguments against equal rights is that they would violate the rights of the privileged group of people. From the article:

Brian Brown of the National Organisation for Marriage says of same-sex matrimony: “It’s not a civil right, it’s a civil wrong”—one that will diminish the religious freedom of those who consider homosexuality sinful.

This is unsound reasoning. It could have been a sound argument had anyone suggested that the government should force religious groups to accept same-sex marriage. Civil rights are never about forcing people to hold a set of beliefs; it is about the relation between the state and its citizens. Equal treatment under the law would infringe on religious freedom only if the state is theocratic. But in America, where the state is strictly secular, no such infringement will occur.

How the tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas came about and how it has developed.

My hometown has been blacklisted by a Jewish organisation in California. The reason is the city’s high rate of anti-Semitic hate crime and the mayor’s hostile attitude towards Jews.

Goodbye, legal joint in the café. Welcome back, illegal weed in the street corner.

The Chief Rabbinate must accept reform or go. It’s absurd that a modern democracy allows a tiny group of religious extremists determine who is a member of the people.

We all know Mel Gibson is a mentally ill anti-Semitic and homophobe. This only adds to that.

Commentary has more here.

I share Kevin Naff’s anger at those who say gay rights are important but do noting. Naff gives an example, “Hillary Clinton was cheered recently for recording a video in support of the increasingly annoying ‘It Gets Better’ campaign, then a week later told a reporter that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Israel Shamir ought to be an embarrassment even to an organisation high on conspiracy theories.

Jonathan S. Tobin writes about Hamas:

In response to a question from the Times about reconciliation with Israel, Yusef Mansi, the Hamas minister of public works and housing, summed up the Islamists’ stand: “I would rather die a martyr like my son than shake the hand of my enemy.”

No room for peace deals. You simply cannot negotiate with extremists.

Where are the global warming and the Mediterranean temperatures we were promised? I so wanted to believe Al Gore.

Bigotry is something these people take pride in. Let’s make 2011 a year of tolerance and liberalism!

Venezuela’s long-time de facto dictator Hugo Chávez is now a full-fledged dictator for eighteen months. Chávez can now sidestep the newly elected parliament, which will take office in January. When the people vote for non-socialists, he communists lose interest in democracy.

I’m bored with the whole frenzy about Julian Assange, but it is important to remember that the rape allegations against him are serious and ought to be treated as such. I don’t know if he’s guilty, but it annoys me that so many assume that because he is something of a journalistic hero he cannot be a rapist. Wake up! Many great men have been sexist pigs.

The Guardian’s article about Assange’s ten days in Sweden puts a few things right.

The discrimination of gay people in the American military is over. From the New York Times:

The Senate on Saturday voted to strike down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.

By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay, lesbian and bisexual troops as second-class citizens.

We can now welcome America to the twenty-first century.

Gay rights are at the top of the UN agenda in a vote on Tuesday. I have lost my faith in the UN, so anything other than a total neglect of gay people’s basic human rights would surprise me. What else can you expect from an organisation where dictators are allowed to set the rules.

I like this. The terrorist’s father-in-law says, “With his action, he denies all the good he has received from Sweden, Sweden which took us in [and] has given us what no Arab or Muslim country has given us.”

A group calling itself Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign advertises an anti-Israel message in buses. The group claims that American taxpayers finance Israeli war crimes. Ironically, the “war crimes” the group blames on Israel describe well what Hamas is doing.

On its website, the anti-Israel group says Israel is “targeting, killing, and collectively punishing non-combatant men, women and children”. This is precisely what Hamas is doing all the time, day after day, year after year. The terrorists have fired tens of thousands of rockets into civilian areas in Israel. The leaders of Hamas have repeatedly stated that all Jews are legit targets.

The anti-Israel group says Israel is “moving its own population into an occupied zone”, is building an “Apartheid Wall”, and is “exercising disproportionate use of force”. This is what Palestinian terrorists have done repeatedly. This is why Israel was forced to build a barrier to protect its citizens from Palestinian suicide bombers moving into Israel.

The anti-Israel group says that Israel is “denying the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees”. It is Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that deny the rights of Jews to return to Israel. The Palestinians who left in 1948 did so because the Arab countries told them to. The Arab population that decided to stay are now Israeli citizens. At the same time, Arab countries expelled about a million Jews who were forced to seek refuge in Israel. The “ethnic cleansing” that the anti-Israel group blames on Israel is the work of Israel’s Arab neighbours.

Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign is only the latest in a long line of hate groups spreading lies about Israel in order to demonise Jews.

Children’s wellbeing should come before the wishes of bigots wanting to become parents.

The word sociopath came to mind when I read this.

No surprise, really, but I think it will be difficult to run on homophobia when more people get used to gay soldiers and realise that they pose no threat to the military.

The General Assembly has voted to restore a reference to sexual orientation in a resolution against the unjustified killing of minority groups. Good. There is still some hope for humankind. I was just about to give up all faith in it.

A new survey suggests that there are 6.5 million Jews in the United States. That is an increase by 20 per cent since 1990. Being Jewish is in.

President Obama has sign the repeal. This is historic.

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The homophobic lobby doesn’t like fuck.

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History repeats itself. Europe seems unable to rid itself of millennia-old xenophobia. But I bet the priest will now complain about how critics of Jews are always labelled as anti-Semites.

Andrew Brown seems to think that Facebook and iPad are partly to blame for the terrorist attack in Stockholm a week ago. He might have a point, but I think the benefits of modern technology are far greater than the disadvantages.

Shankar Vedantam wonders why Americans say they are more religious than their actions suggest and finds that it has to do with identity:

Religion in America seems tied up with questions of identity in ways that are not the case in other industrialised countries. When you ask Americans about their religious beliefs, it’s like asking them whether they are good people, or asking whether they are patriots. They’ll say yes, even if they cheated on their taxes, bilked Medicare for unnecessary services, and evaded the draft. Asking people how often they attend church elicits answers about their identity—who people think they are or feel they ought to be, rather than what they actually believe and do.

He also points out that the history of America is different from the history of Europe in the sense that religion has always been more tightly linked to group identity. In Europe, the nation state has influenced identity. Religion has often been a matter for the state, and until recently, most European countries had few and marginalised minority groups. For centuries, being Christian came natural to most people in Europe. However, contemporary Europe is far more diverse and I think religious identity will become more important in the next fem decades. But it is important to stress that religion is not always a matter of traditional faith and practice. Secular people can often be identified according to their religious backgrounds based on their ethical values and cultural habits.

America and Russia has ratified START, a new treaty that reduces the limit for deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550. Great! A source (not online) tells me that this will radically reduce the two nations’ nuclear capability. Now they will only be able to blow up the planet twice instead of seven times over. Hurrah!

From a speech by Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association:

Conservative groups, simply as a public service, may want to sound this message far and wide out of simple, straightforward compassion, just in order to protect potential homosexual soldiers from themselves and from the distressing discovery that they just kissed off a handy exit option that nobody else had. The more this message resounds, the fewer homosexuals will want to enlist. It’s one thing to be gay, and say, hey, I’ll give it a few weeks and then bail if I don’t like the food, can’t get enough action in the barracks, or thought I’d enjoy ogling male soldiers in the shower more than I did. Those days are now shortly to be a distant memory for our homosexual friends. They enlist, they’re stuck with the whole program just like everybody else.

Everything a gay person does is about sex? It says more about the homophobes than about gay people.

Today is Christmas Eve, the day when Jews tear toilet paper.

Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, the nutjob Christian website World Net Daily published a collection of letters by people opposing the repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the American military. Normally, the things these people write are disturbing, but when confronted with this much hate and stereotyping, it becomes funny. The hate lobby is its own worst enemy. No satirist could make this better. Here is an example:

As a 26-year veteran I have advised my grandson, who wanted to be a Marine officer, to find another dream. He agreed and has plans to go into another career. One look at the freaks in a queer pride parade was all it took to understand that this kind of perversion will be in our military along with the harassment complaints filed by by “gays”. Someone should track VA disability claims made by “gays” who contract AIDS while in service. This means that money will be spent on them that would be used to help wounded and others with claims not related to their perverted behavior.

And here is a classic:

I entered the Navy when I was 17 years old. I was very naive at the time and was molested twice within the first year by other “gay” sailors. Homosexuals by their very nature are promiscuous and aggressive and will take every opportunity they have to make advances on straight heterosexuals. It is their stated goal to see how many straight individuals they can subvert. I can’t imagine what it will do to our military readiness if they are allowed to serve openly.

Poor, fragile soldiers! They are prepared to take a bullet for their country and are willing to risk being kidnapped and murdered by Islamists, but a flirt from a gay guy sets them off balance. If the Taliban wants to win the war on Afghanistan, they should arrange a Gay Pride in Kandahar.

Seriously, though, it is obvious that the lunatics at World Net Daily wrote the letters. No one writes “gay” in quotation mark throughout unless they want to stress this particular publication’s theory of homosexuality as being a harmful choice. For most people—including homophobes—gay is the recognised noun and adjective.

Well, what can you expect from an online journal that still questions Barack Obama’s birth certificate and for months acted as if Hawaii is not really part of the United States.

Fascinating stuff.

Estonia will become a full member of the euro zone on New Years Day when coins and bank notes replace the local currency. It should be a joyous event, but the debt crisis and all the negative spin about the euro make it hard for Estonians to celebrate. But I welcome the new member to the euro zone, and I’m convinced that the current problems will be history before we know it.

A short film about sloppy swappers.

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Not too long ago, most gay activists in Europe did consider Ireland hopelessly conservative. However, in recent years, things have progressed. And now, gay couples in Ireland will have legal recognition. It is not completely equal to marriage, but it is a huge step in the right direction. Congrats!

You might think that it is the terrorists who are responsible for their actions, but this is wrong. At least according to Abbas Barzegar:

It is common sense to most people that the acts of violence committed by groups like Al-Qaeda and their home grown wannabes are political in origin but wrapped in religious ideology. Muslim youth today are enraged, for instance, by misdirected drone strikes in Pakistan that kill innocent women and children, and the seemingly endless oppression of Palestinians. Both Afghanistan and Somalia, today’s terrorist hot spots, have been failed states for two generations; the youth in these countries have only known social strife, war and failed promises from the international community.

Terrorists attacked New York and Washington with aid from the Taliban mob in Afghanistan; terrorists attacked Israel in 1948 and have continued to do so ever since; terrorists attacked civilian passengers on the London underground and in Madrid commuter trains; terrorists blew themselves up in attacks on innocent Christmas shoppers in Stockholm and local markets all over the Middle East. Don’t be fooled by the sob stories, these terrorists are no victims of the wars they began.

Officially, the Palestinian Authority wants a Jew-free Palestine. However, the Palestinian politicians don’t mind the cash the Jews bring. Following Palestinian politics is like watching a bad staging of The Merchant of Venice.

The people at Pink News are rightfully upset:

On the 28th December, Sir Elton and his partner, the film-maker David Furnish announced the birth of their son, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, to an unnamed surrogate mother.

The same night, the BBC broadcast a report by Lizo Mzimba on the birth of the child. With the introduction “not everyone is pleased to see such a high profile same sex couple start to raise a surrogate child”, Mr Mzimba proceeded to interview Stephen Green, of right-wing group Christian Voice, without any warning that he is someone who has in the past supported the death penalty for gay men.

Imagine if a celebrity black couple had a baby and the news asked a vicious racist to comment.

When I first browsed through the news this morning, I completely misunderstood this story. Gay seal fights university students in a bar?

Thanks to the good people at Oxford American Dictionary, I learned that a SEAL is “a member of an elite force within the U.S. Navy specializing in guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency.”

I wish all my readers a happy new year. I’m celebrating the New Year with friends in Amsterdam. It has become a tradition for me to do so.