I’m on holiday and blogging is slow. Here is a picture from my trip to Utrecht yesterday.

Back home after a week-long break in the Netherlands, I read a depressing leader in The Economist that predicts a devastating war in the Middle East in 2011:

Such a war would bear little resemblance to the previous clashes between Israel and its neighbours. For all their many horrors, the Lebanon war of 2006 and the Gaza war of 2009 were limited affairs. On the Israeli side, in particular, civilian casualties were light. Since 2006, however, Iran and Syria have provided Hizbullah with an arsenal of perhaps 50,000 missiles and rockets, many with ranges and payloads well beyond what Hizbullah had last time. This marks an extraordinary change in the balance of power. For the first time a radical non-state actor has the power to kill thousands of civilians in Israel’s cities more or less at the press of a button.

Unless something is done about Iran, we will have a major war in the Middle East. Europe will most likely do nothing, so everything comes down to what America decides to do.

A new reports, entitled We Are a Buried Generation: Discrimination and Violence against Sexual Minorities in Iran, describes the horror of being gay in Iran.

Read the report in full here.

Every year, conservative activists gather in Washington to discuss politics. The event is called the Conservative Political Action Conference. This year, a group of gay conservatives wants to join, which has made homophobic lobby organisation the Family Research Council to boycott the event. In an open letter, the homophobes write, “Regardless of what CPAC organisers may believe, conservatives and homosexual activists cannot coexist in a movement predicated on social values.”

To the Family Research Council, conservatism is bigotry. It is a good thing for the conservative movement in America that these extremists stay away.

In recent years, several studies have sought and found a difference between the brains of straight and gay people. Now I learn of a brain study that shows great similarity in one area—the “love centre”.

There is something special about hotel rooms.

A famous American sports writer has come out. Immediately, his colleagues speculate about his ability to do locker-room interviews. Why does every discussion about gay men end in fears of straight men being treated as objects of sexual desire?

“The Gallup Poll in the United States released their latest study this week on the state of wellbeing across Americans of various faith,” the blog Jewlicious reports. “Jews, the study found, have the highest wellbeing, overall. The second group are the non-religious.”

Remember the alarmism about the ozone layer? In the 1980s, this was the environmentalists’ major doomsday theory. We would all be burned to death by the sun unless we stopped consuming and went back to the Stone Age. A radical shift in production has now near-healed the ozone layer over Scandinavia.

I’m sure the research in non-fossil fuel will do the same miracles to global warming. In thirty years time we will look back on the alarmism and wonder what all the fuss was about. But I also predict that there will be a new doomsday theory the environmentalists will prescribe global socialism for.

Update: I got an angry email from someone who thinks I’m a jerk for attacking people concerned about the environment. So to be clear, I’m not talking about the average environmentalist who is concerned about the planet, I’m referring to the extremists who say that we should abandon freedom and democracy and surrender to a world government. There are quite a few of them around, and I really don’t like their negativism. There are huge problems to be solved, but alarmism and extremism won’t do it.

I study religion, so I am familiar with religious groups and organisations that claim to possess some special truth-knowledge. The Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation is now among them. On its website, the organisation congratulates itself for successfully recruiting 550 new members in 2010. One part of the message reads:

The Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation is Sweden’s only organisation for young people who love to think freely and critically, and who will not let their curiosity be restricted by dogma, tradition, or authority.

I don’t care about the arrogance, I just think it’s fun to see organised atheists behave this religious. To dismiss the outsider as irrational and delusional is the most fundamental belief of any missionary religion. I figure it’s so much easier to attack someone whom you consider desperately in need of your unique truth-knowledge.

Now everyone can have a large penis. I’m thinking about getting one for a friend only to see how he reacts.

Fathers and mothers are now parent one and two. Great.

It seems the so-called war on Gaza is working. Hamas now wants the constant rocket fire against Israel to stop. Well, I believe it when I see it.

This according to IDF’s Gabi Ashkenazi.

Frankly, I’m not surprised. The threat to Israel is real and a single successful strike by Iran could be a second Holocaust. No smug UN resolution will do anything to prevent this from happening. Only destroying Iran’s nuclear programme will.

David P. Goldman writes about a cultural phenomenon some Western soldiers consider “more terrifying than the al-Qaeda”.

If you want to make a child happy, donate money to Operation Smile. I have. The cause is important to me because I was born with a cleft lip and palate just like these children; but unlike them, I was fortunate enough to be born in a wealthy country where I had access to great health care and brilliant surgeons.

This queer spelling must stop!

A new low for the notoriously mad, homophobic, and anti-Semitic “pastor” Fred Phelps and his entourage.

Update: Arizona bans the picketing.

The libertarian in me says that the state should never be allowed to ban free speech, but emotionally I am pleased that someone stopped the lunatic Westboro Baptist Church from harassing the parents and relatives of the murdered girl.

Read more about it here.

An advertisement calling for a boycott of Israeli goods aired on Palestinian television is unlawfully using the logo of the Spanish government. Maybe it is time to copy the Palestinians and air an advertisement calling for more settlements in Judea and Samaria carrying the logo of the Jordanian and Iranian governments? Just a thought.

I know, it seems like a joke from Monty Python, but it’s true. The Saudis thought the bird was an Israeli spy. (Via Johan Ingerö.)

Worrying reports from Asia Times talk about Westerns preparing to attack their own countries.

Gee, I’m no longer single when I visit Ireland.

Josh Marshall sums up the beliefs of professional homophobe Bryan Fischer:

Over the last few months, we’ve brought you news that prominent social conservative Bryan Fischer has blamed gays for the Wikileaks disclosure, told readers that Obama wants to give America back to the Indians, declared that bears are a threat to our Judeo-Christian culture, declared that no new mosques should be built anywhere in America and insisted that Hitler preferred using gay soldiers since they had “no limits.”

Enough material for a seminar on psychotic delusion.

This is funny. I feel for the poor woman, though.

Read Corvino’s column here. I think many gay people recognise this story from their own lives.

New research shows yet another similarity between humans and chimpanzees. Like humans, chimpanzees care not only about their own offspring but for their grandchildren, too.

A friend to a friend posted his list of inspirational people on Facebook. In some bizarre way, it sums up the subcultural bubble I live in.

The Christian group behind the website Electronic Intifada defies the Dutch government and continue to support anti-Semitic propaganda. The group defends its xenophobia with the usual nonsense about Israel not respecting human rights. As always, there is no condemnation of the daily Palestinian terrorist attacks on civilian Israelis.

Alanda Goodman writes:

As I wrote in November, the Electronic Intifada is one of the major promoters of Israel-demonisation propaganda on the Internet. The publication is founded and run by vicious anti-Israel demagogue Ali Abunimah, and its articles often cross the line of legitimate criticism of the Jewish state into the swamp of anti-Semitism. Its writers promote a one-state solution, accuse the Israeli government of “ethnically cleansing” the Palestinian people, and use Nazi and apartheid epithets to describe Israel.

Ali Abunimah is also known for mocking gay people. A source tells me that Mr Abunimah endorsed Hamas’s homophobic policy and ridiculed Israel for allowing men to kiss in public in an article posted on his blog on 11 June 2010. The article has since been removed.

I urge the Dutch government to stop spending money on homophobic writers with anti-Semitic propaganda websites. Let the extremists pay for their filth.

Israel is the only free country in the region. No surprise really, but if you listen to the anti-Israel propaganda machine you might get the impression that Israel is something else.

Those were Ricky Gervais’s final words as he hosted the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. He could be mistaken for a Reconstructionist Jew.

The Jewish community in Canada has been target in a series of attack.

Akim Reinhardt makes an observation worth thinking about. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)

A severe case of the so-called Stockholm syndrome?

On its official blog, prominent members of the Swedish Humanist Association—an atheist organisation—endorse mediaeval anti-Semitic blood libel. Jews are said to partake in torture of children. The decision to allow these anti-Semitic comments can only be interpreted as endorsement from the organisation.

According to information shared by Michael Petrelis, Iran is about to execute by stoning two young gay men.

The “New Jew” that refuses to accept being bullied and tormented is a huge problem, at least according to German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which cover story this week warns of Jewish revenge. Benjamin Weinthal writes:

German journalism’s exploitation of Jewish religious symbols coupled with worries about Jews seeking to create disorder and secure revenge has a long history in post-Holocaust Germany. The Spiegel cover deliberately conjures up not only German angst about Israel and fabricated Jewish revenge fantasies but also the clichés use of language when writing about Israel in the Federal Republic.

Take as an example the headline of the article in the current issue documenting a chronology of the planned hit on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his posh Dubai hotel: it screams out “An eye for an eye, a murder for a murder.” The cheap wordplay on a section from the Hebrew Bible further reinforces widespread European prejudices against Jews. Der Spiegel’s editors know they are playing with anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments. But expanding circulation counts, and preaching to the choir of resentments in Germany takes priority over fact-based reporting.

Jews fighting back is apparently a scary thing for some.

His mother had her suspicions and took the boy to see the family doctor. Hilarious.

He really deserves the prize. I consider him one of the world’s best novelists. And I salute him for standing up to the anti-Israel crowd that wants him to join their silly boycott. Imagine how different the debate on Israel would be if all intellectuals reasoned like him:

“I think one should always make a distinction between a civil society and its government. It is the Jerusalem book fair, not the Israeli foreign ministry, which is making the award. I would urge people to make the distinction—it is about literature.”

And:

“I am not a supporter of the Israeli settler movement, nor of Hamas. I would align myself in the middle of a great many of my Israeli friends who despair that there will ever be peace while the settlements continue. I support the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s call for a freeze on the settlements. But I also have no time for Hamas lobbing missiles into Israel either.”

A role model for those who can’t criticise Israel without anti-Semitism.

A milestone. Mazel tov!

In a massive campaign against gay rights and equality, the Catholic Church sent homophobic propaganda to all Catholic families in the state. Yes, free speech and all that, but what about common decency? A witness writes to AmericaBlog Gay:

Last fall, the Catholic Church sent DVDs to all Catholics in Minnesota, an anti-gay DVD. This was just a part of many anti-gay rhetoric that has stepped up in Minnesota.

A lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, began to dislike the former governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. Many social conservatives believed that a new Democratic governor and a Democratically-controlled legislature would legalise gay marriage in Minnesota. So for the past few years, there has been a swarm of pro-Republican, anti-gay billboards popping up at the sides of major highways. So I had to leave that place. I couldn’t go to the mall, or go to my job, or school without seeing a billboard that made me so sad.

Shame on the Catholic Church!

“[Islamophobia] has seeped into our society in a way where it is acceptable around dinner to have these conversations where anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry is quite openly discussed,” Sayeeda Warsi says in a BBC interview.

I think she is right. The problem is that both militant Islamophobes and Islamist groups are doing their best to nourish such attitudes.

And the winner is—God!

My own theory about these talent shows used to be that the person who most people want to have sex with wins. But that was before Susan Boyle. Now I’m more open to the theory of God as judge of talent shows (in a pantheistic sort of way).

New statistics from Statistics Sweden paints a grim picture. Swedish people are basically old, fat drunks concerned about the environment.

Some people are too much. Gordon Klingenschmitt is one of them. Impressive newspeak, though.

Read More

It’s not like anyone who followed Hugo Chávez would be surprised, but still:

“I’m not going to return the Enabling Law,” said Chavez, speaking in a televised address. “I made a call to encourage courteous and respectful dialogue, but look at their response.”

Chavez first said that he needed special legislative powers for 18 months, which were approved by a lame-duck congress dominated by his allies in December, to swiftly approve disaster-relief measures after severe floods and mudslides that left thousands homeless last year.

But last week, Chavez said lawmakers could reduce the period from a year and a half to 5 months.

Critics have accused Chavez of using the “Enabling Law” to sidestep congressional controls by lawmakers in the new legislature, which was sworn in earlier this month. Opposition lawmakers note that Chavez’s allies gave him authority to legislate in a wide range of areas including land-reform initiatives and Venezuela’s economic system – not just measures aimed at helping Venezuelans displaced by the floods.

Opposition lawmaker Jesus Paraqueima scoffed at Chavez’s argument that he requires special powers to aid those affected by the floods.

“It’s not necessary,” Paraqueima said in a telephone interview. “If he needs an increased budget to help the homeless, we’d gladly approve it.”

Chavez’s ruling party has a strong majority in the assembly, but opponents gained ground in September congressional elections, winning 67 of the assembly’s 165 seats. Their gains prevented Chavez allies from obtaining the two-thirds majority needed to pass some types of legislation.

Chávez is the Brezhnev of the twenty-first century. Only uglier and with more state-financed murals.

This is an interesting video. It not only kills the Islamophobic myth about all Arabs being Islamists, it also calls for Islamic reform. The man who says that religions are human-made is right. This is also one of the core beliefs—or assumptions—in Progressive Judaism. The religious texts are written by our predecessors and ought to be freely interpreted, or rejected, by us. The orthodoxy hates this approach to religion, which forces people to choose between two extremes. We can see this in Israel, where the ever-more orthodox rabbinate is polarizing the religious debate. And we see this in the Arab world, where state-sponsored religious extremism is often the only option. In America, the Jewish situation is completely different. Religious freedom has created an atmosphere where people for ethnic, cultural, or philosophical reasons can keep their religious identity without having to surrender to fundamentalism or conformism. Religious freedom allows people to be orthodox or atheist, but it also allows people the option to be both religious and sceptical. There is no need for anyone to reject all tradition and culture merely because he or she cannot believe in an anthropomorphic God or divine intervention.

Read More

(Via Humanistbloggen.)

Alfred Hickling writes about a gay icon.

Jonathan S. Tobin is rightfully upset.

Rob Stein of the Washington Post writes:

The U.S. company that makes a drug most states use in lethal injection announced Friday that it would no longer produce the powerful anesthetic, a decision that throws capital punishment in the United States into disarray.

The states should take this opportunity to abolish the death penalty. I accept the moral argument that people deserves a punishment that match their crime, but the practical difficulties linked to death penalty make it wrong.

Nick Cohen writes, “Tunisia was in journalistic terms a great story from the Middle East that virtually sat up and begged journalists to take notice, but because it did not involve Israel, foreign desks looked the other way.” Right on. But I would go one step further and add that Tunisia was not only ignored by Western media, the dictatorship’s actions in the UN gave legitimacy to the anti-Israel bias. When have you ever read or listened to a journalist scrutinizing the countries that support all those resolutions singling out Israel as the most horrendous nation in the world? Never. When I have had the opportunity to ask the journalistic establishment about this, the answer has always been something along the line that Israel is a democracy and therefore must behave better that its totalitarian neighbours. In other words, it is fine for dictators to violate human rights but a mistake made by a democracy is unacceptable.

The Daily Beast lists the most tolerant states in America:

1. Wisconsin
2. Maryland
3. Illinois
4. Pennsylvania
5. Hawaii
6. California
7. Minnesota
8. New Jersey
9. New Hampshire
10. New Mexico

I’m a bit surprised by California’s place on the top ten—and where is New York?

Giles Fraser makes an observation I, too, have made several times in the recent past. In his Guardian column, he writes, “What can begin as a perfectly legitimate conversation about, say, religious belief and human rights, can drift into a licence for observations that in any other circumstance would be regarded as tantamount to racism.”

Good news in a new report from the Jewish Agency.

Jan Söderqvist doesn’t think having sex with scantily-clad women in make-up should be a crime. I agree.

This advertisement has been banned by Fox. I’m not sure what to make of it.

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This is a potentially interesting discrimination case in Britain. A gay nightclub in Manchester advertises for straight staff.

No equality, but plenty of snack.

I don’t know what to think of Ahmed Saad. The straight novelist says he is a gay-rights activist, but then he says that gay people may be executed if they refuse to commit to a heterosexual way of life.

What will this do to Israel in the future? We could see an increasingly religious state. The progressive strands of Judaism might be excluded completely.

I like Ernest Borgnine’s motto (in Vanity Fair, not online).

Two men married each other in Beijing on Saturday. It has caused a big debate. Non-official sources tell me that there are those within the ruling Communist Party who want to legalise same-sex marriage in China.

(Via Towleroad.)

A new study suggests Facebook, Twitter, texting, and other forms of social networking gets you sex faster. It’s scientific, so it must be true.

Personally, I prefer gay saunas for quick sex, but I’m a pervert, so don’t take notice.

Winners:

• Nerds and entrepreneurs
• Moderates
• College students and their parents
• Business, labour, and the construction industry
• Farmers

Losers:

• Liberals
• Oil companies
• The unemployed
• Serious deficit hawks
• Trial lawyers
• The wealthy

Read the explanations here.

An advertisement for a large Swedish employers’ organisation seen nationally in mainstream media.

Today we remember the millions of victims of the Nazi genocide.

Shock and despair in Uganda after news of Kato David Kisule’s death.

Busy beavers at Pentagon.

Polish parliaments gets its first black member.

Following the brutal murder of gay-rights activist David Kato, the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights (RFSL) has launched a fund-raising drive in support of the Ugandan gay-rights movement.

Jim Burroway writes about David Kato here.

A nutjob Canadian journalist writes in Turkish newspaper Hürriyet about his wet dream:

In the long run, we may see some Arab states start working on nuclear weapons, to create some balance of forces between the two sides, but probably not for a while yet.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, this lunatic promotes a second holocaust. Update: The article was published yesterday.

Bla, bla, bla. John Ragan is an idiot.

This is historical. From a Daily Monitor leader:

People like David Kato and others who might be gay are Ugandans and enjoy the same rights and protections of the law as heterosexuals. We cannot send them into exile neither, lock them away, or hang them.

And:

We need to have an honest discussion about how to ensure that their rights are upheld without violating the rights of other Ugandans.

Maybe the consensual homophobia went too far when David Kato was murdered. If we are lucky, this could spark a liberal reaction to the mediaeval take on Christian ethics that has been so dominant for so long.

Stylish pets.

What happened to égalité in the national motto?

Another day, another Christian homophobe vomiting his hate online. In response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union, Jim Garlow of the Skyline Wesleyan Church has written the speech he wishes Obama had made:

I have tragically hastened to destroy the No. 1 preserver of all that is good in society—the family, consisting of a mother and a father. In my need to be politically correct, and my desire to garner more votes from the nuclear family attackers, I was drawn in to their errors and sins of redefining the family. I am ashamed of this. I am sorry. I ask for forgiveness.

I have helped to demoralise the military that defends us. I ran roughshod over 59% of the US Marines when I forced my social experimentation upon them, coercing them to accept lifestyles as normative, with no thought of troop readiness and cohesion. I was drawn in to the errors, lies and sins of political correctness, at the expense of truth. I am ashamed of this. I am sorry. I ask for forgiveness.

Obama should apologise for not hating and discriminating against a group of people merely for whom the love? The very suggestion is perverse.

After a long week, I go into weekend mood. No blogging for a day or so.

This is bizarre. In an article about Brenda Namiggade, a Ugandan lesbian who sought refuge in Britain, I find an odd practice where courts decide who is a homosexual. In the article, a spokesperson for the British border agency says, “An immigration judge found on the evidence before them that Ms Namiggade was not homosexual.” How did that happen?

Cute and adorable.

Update: The video has been removed from the Internet.

Apartheid is now written into the state constitution. Gay people are second-class citizens.

Fears are called for by the fact that Hamas is the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main opposition group. Personally, I think a democratic North Africa would only serve Israel’s long-term interests of peace and stability.

The ranting Sandmonkey is reporting live on Twitter.

Anti-Semitism is alive and well in Europe.

Being openly gay no longer means being childless.

I second Anne Applebaum:

Politicians like stability. Bankers like stability. But the “stability” we have so long embraced in the Arab world wasn’t really stability. It was repression. The benign dictators we have supported, or anyway tolerated—the Zine al-Abidine Ben Alis, the Hosni Mubaraks, the various kings and princes—have stayed in power by preventing economic development, clamping down on free speech, keeping tight control of education, and above all by stamping down hard on anything resembling civil society. Every year, more books are translated into Greek—a language spoken by 11 million people—than into Arabic, a language spoken by more than 220 million. Independent organisations of all kinds, from political parties and private businesses to women’s groups and academic societies have been watched, harassed, or banned altogether.

The result: Egypt, like many Arab societies, has a wealthy and well-armed elite at the top and a fanatical and well-organised Islamic fundamentalist movement at the bottom. In between lies a large and unorganised body of people who have never participated in politics, whose business activities have been limited by corruption and nepotism, and whose access to the outside world has been hampered by stupid laws and suspicious bureaucrats.

I know some people in Israel fear the outcome of this uprising, but I think a democratic Arab world would only be a change for the better.

Apparently, the queen of egoism and laissez-faire capitalism accepted government money. A hypocrite or a moral externalist?

The Israel-bashing at the State University of New Jersey is not for Jews.

The British Conservative MP Nigel Evans came out after listening to openly gay rugby star Gareth Thomas.

“A 22-year-old Swedish tourist in Egypt claims he was arrested and tortured for four days by police before escaping when protesters set fire to the building where he was being held,” The Local writes.