The anti-Semitic macho-freaks at WikiLeaks are still upset about rape being illegal in Sweden. About an hour ago, they tweeted their frustration:
Is Sweden the Israel of the north? 2nd largest per-capita arms exporter (after Israel), same pop., own language, isolated, US sycophant.
Well, in my book it’s better to seek approval from someone than force your penis into someone.
Greece’s prime minister has announced there will be a referendum on the EU bailout package. It’s complete madness. What option is there for the Greek people? None. No matter what they do, they will have to lose purchasing power. Some Eurosceptics hope Greece will leave they euro zone, but a new national currency would only result in the same pay cuts many people blame on the European currency.
Read about it at Sky News.
More Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are so far the only visible result of the Palestinians’ flirt with the United Nations.
Read about it at BBC News.
The latest from the crazy right-wing nutjob Michael Savage at the World Net Daily.
Helen Pidd has written an interesting article on Berlin art-duo Adele and Eva.
Read about it at the Guardian.
As expected, Julian Assange today lost his British high-court appeal against extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations. In a short message to the media, Assange said he would now consider his next step and added that he has published a website with information on his legal case and Sweden’s judicial system. Apparently, his main argument for not cooperating with the Swedish police in their rape investigation is that Swedish courts have lay judges. I guess the website works for people with no knowledge of Sweden, but to me it’s obvious that Assange suffers from paranoia. He is engaged in some personal war against Sweden, a country he said he adored for its laws only days before the alleged rape.
Read about it at the Guardian and the website “Sweden v Assange”.
The Swedish Humanist Association has decided to honour Chief Surgeon Gunnar Göthberg its Hedenius prize for his opposition to the legal right of Jews and Muslims to practise male circumcision. Göthberg has argued in favour of a ban and equates male circumcision to illegal female genital mutilation, where the woman’s clitoris and labia are cut. As a leading surgeon, Göthberg has voiced opinion against allowing medical professionals aiding Jews and Muslims, which has forced thousands of Swedish Muslims to seek help from quack circumcisers. The hostility towards male circumcision is less of a problem to Sweden’s Jewish population as the congregations offer help from professional mohelim.
In my opinion, Dr Göthberg voices an immoral opinion, with results similar to those of amateur abortions where professional terminations are illegal. The criminalisation of abortion and male circumcision are both motivated my moralist arguments with horrendous consequences. It does, however, make perfect sense for the Swedish Humanist Association to recognise his work against religious freedom. I wish the Catholic Church and other organised opponents of safe and legal abortions had made it equally clear that they oppose women’s rights.
Read about it in Swedish at Humanistbloggen.
I noticed an interesting thing when I read the motivation for Gunnar Göthberg’s Hedenius prize (see previous entry here). The Swedish Humanist Association writes (in my translation):
The debate concerning circumcision is often linked to the question of religious freedom. Gunnar Göthberg holds a Christian faith and worldview, but doesn’t consider circumcision a matter of freedom of religion. Parents who have their son circumcised and mark him into a religion are wrong.*
I suspect that Dr Göthberg’s Christian faith is mentioned to lessen the criticism against him and the ban he’s proposing, but for those of us concerned with religious history, it’s absurd. One of the oldest positions held by mainstream Christianity is that the Jewish circumcision is a violation of the body God created to perfection (1 Corinthians 12). A ban on Jewish circumcision was one of the very first laws made after Christianity became state religion in the Roman Empire.
The Christian opposition to circumcision dates back to Paul the Apostle:
Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4)
If anything, Dr Göthberg’s Christian faith only strengthens the argument that this ancient Jewish practice ought to be protected by the laws governing religious freedom. Christians have too often been allowed to force their ideas and practices upon Europe’s Jewish minority.
Read more about it in Swedish at Humanistbloggen.
* The original test in Swedish: “Omskärelsedebatten förknippas inte sällan med frågan om religionsfrihet. Gunnar Göthberg har en kristen tro och livssyn men anser att detta inte handlar om religionsfrihet. Föräldrar som låter omskära sin pojke och på det sättet märker honom in i en religion gör fel.”
Peter LaBarbera is a top distorter in the American homophobic lobby. He is projecting his own hate onto the very same people whose rights he’s lobbying against. However, because is such a lunatic, he is funny. I mean, calling gay people “homo-fascists” because they seek the same rights as straight people is like labelling black South Africans fascists because they didn’t put up with apartheid.
Read about it at Pink News.
Apparently, some people feel threatened by a person praying. Ridiculous.
Read about it at The Local.
Four steps to incest.
Read about it at Box Turtle Bulletin.
Apparently, the referendum is now off. Greek politics is really a drama with dramatic turns.
And then this, “The European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, the bloc’s rule-book, does not provide for a country to quit the eurozone without leaving the European Union.” Oops.
“For the first time in a half-century, Cubans will be allowed to buy and sell real estate openly,” San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Gay teenagers should keep their sexuality hidden to avoid being bullied. It’s not the bullies’ fault, but the victims’ for giving the bullies a reason to bully them. Apply this line of thought to rape victims and you’ll see how insane it is.
Read about it at Gawker.
It’s that day again. I’m back after Shabbat.
Ireland is now the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy to the Vatican.
Read about it at Yahoo News.
I find the development of the Tories fascinating. When I lived in Britain in the late 1980s, the Tories were extremely homophobic. Now, they make all others look backwards.
Read about it at the Guardian.
Ever thought about how some people become gay? Well, according to one Christian lunatic, Satan enters a pregnant woman’s womb and makes the child gay. Personally, I have a similar theory on why some people are irrational homophobes. It’s Beelzebub’s fault.
Read about it at Queerty.
The reason Sweden won’t allow Julian Assange special treatment is the country’s special relationship with America. The rape allegation against Assange is of no interest to these conspiracy theorists.
Read about it at Marcello Ferrada-Noli.
In a response to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s call for gay rights, Tanzania’s foreign minister says his country would rather go without British funding than legalise homosexuality. Personally, I would like Europe to end all aid to countries that don’t recognise fundamental human rights for gay people.
Read about it at All Africa.
After the ban on kosher slaughter and the Muslim burqa, I suspect male circumcision is the next big challenge to religious freedom in Europe. Gradually, Europe’s legislators will make it impossible for people to practise Judaism and Islam.
The irony is that this is exactly the reason Europe once embraced freedom religion. Millennia of religious intolerance caused nothing but hostility between people and nations. Even if the contemporary bigots call themselves secularists, their political agenda is the same as that of previous generations of autocratic Christians.
Read about it at Ynetnews.
Worrying prediction. Haven’t we learned anything since the Middle Ages?
Read about it at the Guardian.
She’s a worthy winner.
Read about it at Pink News.
“A group of high-profile Democrats and Republicans who back legalizing gay marriage are calling on advocates to shift the focus on the issue from an argument about equal rights to promoting the value of commitment,” USA Today reports.
Makes sense. What is marriage if not commitment? Personally, I think equal rights under the law is a stronger argument, but if more people think commitment is a better one, whom am I to argue?
(By the way, in my utopia, the state has no marriage law but makes sure legal commitment contracts are upheld.)
“Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles, according to Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings,” the Washington Post reports. “Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said.”
It’s a nightmare in the approaching.
(Via Drudge Report.)
And they want a referendum on the bailout. Personally, I don’t think Greece will go back to a national currency. But it’s hard to see how the Greek will handle their crisis. Personally, I would like to see a federalist solution for Europe. A breakup of the Eurozone would only result in people losing more value.
Read about it at The Local.
For those of you who can read Swedish, here is a disturbing article on the anti-Semitic hate crimes experienced by one rabbi in Malmö. Like so much of anti-Semitism nowadays, attacks on Jewish individuals and institutions are camouflaged as “criticism of Israeli politics”.
Read about it in Swedish at Dagens Nyheter.
Forget the euro crisis and the turmoil in Greece and Italy. This is important stuff. Will Buddy and Pedro go bisexual? Personally, I think the zoo would have more success if they made it a boy-girl-boy threesome.
Read about it at Queerty.
I have a tendency to make both atheists and religious people angry, which sometimes generate hate emails. Normally, these emails are plain silly, but today I received one that has some point to it. An anonymous person writes that I’m so hostile to Christianity because I don’t know the truth. If I knew the truth, I would realise that homosexuality is a sin against God.
Well, I can’t see how two people loving each other could be a sin against anyone, but my antagonist is right about me not knowing the truth. I also admit that one thing that makes me envious of both theists and atheists is their perception of truth. For me, it’s not that easy. The more I think about it, the more impossible knowledge of truth seems to me. I’m a radical sceptic in that respect. I imagine life to be much easier if one believes in the truth, whatever that truth looks like.
That’s Bruce Cohen’s funny comment to Ron Paul’s attitude towards Israel. It’s an old blog entry and not news at all, but I found it just now.
Read about it at Libertarian America.
People speculate about Greece’s future in the Eurozone, but what would happen if the country decided to leave? According to Kabir Chibber, “in the best-case scenario, Greece would have no buying power, everything would be extremely expensive and it would also be broke”.
What would the worst-case scenario be? Everyone forced to prostitution in Saudi Arabia and slave labour China, or what?
Read about it at BBC News.
At the G20 summit in France, the French and American presidents were caught bad-mouthing Binyamin Netanyahu.
Read about it at Ynetnews.
“Iran will be ready to build a nuclear bomb within a few months,” Haaretz reports.
This is the beginning of the Second Cold War. In Iran, we have a new crazy dictatorship with access to nuclear weapons and with a burning hatred towards Israel, Europe, and America.
Read it at Jerusalem Post.
Well, no one knows for sure if Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is resigning, but I guess there has been some progress as he, for the first time ever, has admitted to making mistakes. Wow!
Read about it at Corriere della Sera.
According to The Economist, President Napolitano has said that Mr Berlusconi will resign later this month.
I have blogged about this South Park episode before, but after five years, I still find it hilarious. Here’s Mr Garrison’s outline of Darwin’s evolutionary theory:
In the beginning, we were all fish, swimming around in the water. Then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different so it got to live. So, retard fish goes on to make more retard babies. Then one day a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its mutant fish hands. And it had butt-sex with a squirrel or something, and made this, retard frog-squirrel, and that had a retard baby, which was a monkey-fish-frog. Then that monkey-fish-frog had butt-sex with that monkey and that monkey had a mutant retard baby, that screwed another monkey and, that made you! So there you go, you’re the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt-sex with a fish-squirrel. Congratulations.
Watch it here.
Ryanair wants to show pornography aboard its aeroplanes. Fascinating idea.
Read about it at Gawker.
A cute story. I like elephants.
Read about it at Daily Mail.
Apparently, God has forsaken Rick Perry. In July, Perry was God’s favourite presidential candidate according to the New Apostolic Reformation. What happened? Is Satan testing Perry? The supernatural plot thickens.
Watch it at YouTube.
On this morning in 1938, Jews in Germany and Austria woke up in cities where Nazis has demolished their property overnight. Unfortunately, destroying Jewish property is still not uncommon in mush of Europe. Anti-Semitism is nowadays often camouflaged as criticism of Israel. This new face of anti-Semitism fools many, but those of us familiar with its history know that the hatred against Jews has gone through similar metamorphoses before. In every generation, Europe’s bigots find some excuse to oppress Jews—religious criticism, scientific racism, or political anti-Zionism.
Read about it at Wikipedia.
Sydney Nsubuga, the killer of Ugandan gay-rights campaigner David Kato, has been sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Read about it at Pink News.
“Palestinians may demand vote on UN membership to force other countries to publicly justify their refusal of support,” the Guardian reports.
Here are some justifications from the top of my head:
I’m not sure the Palestinians have thought this approach through. If Palestine became a sovereign state, the terror attacks on Israel would make the conflict a conventional war and Hamas and others would no longer be able to pretend their rockets against civilians are part of a legit fight against occupation.
Good, good, good! People need to realise that gay people are no freaks but ordinary people who enjoy the same things as others—including football. One of he biggest problems in the fight for gay rights is the silence of men and women who don’t fit the stereotype.
Read about it at ESPN.
Clever Stockholm birds travel by public transport.
Read about it at The Local.
Britain’s most Eurosceptic tabloid is extra joyful nowadays. But don’t let its pessimism fool you; it’s been against European integration for years.
Read about it at Daily Express.
It’s been in the Swedish news for a few days, but now it’s slowly becoming global news. The sad thing is that remarks like these upset so few nowadays. It’s really absurd and insulting to compare Israel to a dictatorship that industrialised genocide of more than six million Jews and tens of thousands of Roma and gay people.
Read about it at the Jewish Chronicle.
See you all in a day or two.
שבת שלום
Yesterday, I made some changes to the website that will make sharing its articles look better on Facebook. I also bought a new application that (maybe) will make it easier for me to blog via my mobile (I do it now). You will know what entries are written like this by the many misspellings, I’m sure.
It seems that way, according to the Telegraph.
“Jews in Malmö in southern Sweden have been the victims of an increased number of hate-crimes in 2011,” The Local reports.
“The Russian security services are being blamed for an attempt to spread baseless gay smears about the son of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock,” Daily Mail reports.
Bizarre story. Like something from a really bad 1950s spy novel. Hopefully, trying to smear someone with a gay rumour will in a not-too-distant future be as intriguing as rumours about someone’s left-handedness.
“Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain says that God told him to run for president,” Huffington Post writes.
Religious experiences often appear in moments of despair, such as illness and mourning. Sullivan’s experience is quite common. What does it mean? Well, those who oppose the idea of a personal God say that it’s hallucination, theists say that it’s a kind of prophecy.
Watch it at The Daily Beast.
“Lady Gaga stunned fans last night when she performed without a head!”
Read about it at Daily Star.
Nuclear energy is safe, people tell me.
Read about it at The Local.
Daniel Levin reviews Umberto Eco’s new novel, The Prague Cemetery, which is about the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Read it at The Daily Beast.
“Leaving the EU is not in our national interest,” Britain’s prime minister argues. “Outside, we would end up like Norway, subject to every rule for the single market made in Brussels but unable to shape those rules.”
This is an argument not made too often by Conservatives in Britain. But it’s true. Europe needs a single market, and those countries that are not full members of the EU will lose out.
Read about it at BBC News.
“The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened a new front in their fight against abortion and same-sex marriage on Monday, recasting their opposition as a struggle for ‘religious liberty’ against a government and a culture that are infringing on the church’s rights,” New York Times reports.
I’m so fed up with the fanatics’ abuse of religious liberty—one of the most fundamental and important rights in any civilised society. To allow for same-sex couples to marry is to recognise that liberal congregations have the same right as the more orthodox ones to practise their religion. The current legislation is an obstacle for those who interpret the religious scriptures in a non-homophobic way.
In an article about the threat of anti-Semitic legislation in Europe, I find a quotation I like. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt says, “Being liberal just to liberals is hypocrisy, if you’re going to be illiberal when it comes to religious freedoms.” He is absolutely right. To only tolerate things and people you like is not what liberalism is about. A true liberal defends the rights of those whose civil liberties are in question.
I also think Goldschmidt is right about the message of campaigns against kosher slaughter and ritual circumcision is that Jewish tradition is inhumane. To talk about Jews as mutilated sadists with barbaric rituals is in itself xenophobic.
Read it at Jerusalem Post.
“I do believe that pornography is literature, that it’s worthy of literary study.”
Read about it at The New Republic.
The seven Jewish wonders are: monotheism, the land of Israel, Torah, the calendar, Jewish survival, the State of Israel, and global significance.
Read about it at Natan Slifkin.
“Julian Assange applied Tuesday for Britain’s Supreme Court to hear his appeal against extradition to Sweden, dragging out a legal saga that has already lasted more than a year,” The Local reports.
It’s insane. The police want to question the man about an alleged rape but Assange and his conspiracy-theory entourage think it’s part of a big plot to get him extradited to America. To avoid the questions about the night of the alleged rape, he is hiding in Britain, a country that consider itself America’s best friend. Delusions of grandeur, anyone?
“The State of Israel cannot allow itself to live under a nuclear threat from a state whose leaders declare openly that they plan to destroy us,” Zevulun Orlev says. “This isn’t a discussion in the plenum or in the newspaper headlines about how to do it, and we hope the world will take care of the problem, but experience shows us that we cannot rely on the world.”
Read about it at Jerusalem Post.
The Dutch parliament has voted in favour of a change in the law to prevent civil servants from refusing to conduct same-sex marriages. I’m not sure this is such a good idea. The opponents of gay rights will use this to portray marriage equality a threat to religious liberty.
Read about it at Dutch News.
It’s silly, but funny, too.
Read about it at the Washington Post.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have sent some of their top terrorists to Iran for extensive training on how to become anti-tank missile experts. Iran’s regime seems determined to do everything in its power to create a second Holocaust.
Read about it at Jerusalem Post.
“A draft resolution backed by Arab and European countries and the United States was submitted Thursday to the United Nations General Assembly, seeking to condemn human rights violations in the on-going violence in Syria,” Haaretz reports. “Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia were among Arab states that joined Germany, Britain, and France to sponsor the draft submitted to the assembly’s human rights committee.”
Good news, although it’s a bit absurd that a country like Saudi Arabia condemns another country for human-rights violations.
“Lawmakers from the ruling United Russia party have backed a controversial bill imposing fines for the promotion of gay ‘propaganda’ among young people in the city of Saint Petersburg,” France 24 reports. “The bill proposed by the United Russia faction was passed in its first reading on Wednesday in the city’s parliament, where the party controls 23 out of 50 seats.”
Propaganda to these people is information and human-rights activism to the rest of us. But, as always, homosexuality is linked to paedophilia, and the infringement of civil liberties is said to be necessary to protect children. It’s a global trend amongst bigoted people. Whenever they want to discriminate a minority, they talk about children’s rights.
Read more about it at Moscow News.
By the way, if you want a Swedish example of the “end civil liberties to save the children from the evil minority”-rhetoric, read what these bigots write about Jews and Muslims. In short, a bunch of dogmatic atheists argue that freedom of religion must be scrapped to save Jewish and Muslim children from their irrational and sadistic parents. Apparently, true diversity comes from forced assimilation and severe penalties for practising Judaism and Islam.
The Enlightenment brought us religious freedom precisely to prevent this mediaeval oppression of religious minorities in Europe.
The Global Fund has denied Uganda aid because the country’s policies are deemed harsh on gay people.
Read about it at All Africa.
Bishop Christopher Senyonjo is a hero.
Read about it at All Africa.
Anshel Pfeffer has a conspiracy theory.
Read it at Haaretz.
שבת שלום!
“The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour,” AFP reports.
According to presidential candidate Herman Cain, the Afghan tribe is about to take over Libya. Fascinating stupidity.
Read about it at Little Green Footballs.
The search is over.
Read about it at Ynetnews.
“The friendly army that Copts embraced during the Arab spring has turned its guns on those who embraced it,” André Aciman writes in an article about growing oppression of Egypt’s Christian minority.
Read it at New York Times.
“Dozens of Israeli women stripped off their clothes Saturday in a show of solidarity with the 20-year-old Egyptian blogger who caused a stir in the Arab world last week when she posted a naked photo of herself in protest against the limits on free expression in her country,” Ynetnews reports.
My kind of protest!
“Brussels bureaucrats were ridiculed yesterday after banning drink manufacturers from claiming that water can prevent dehydration,” the Telegraph reports.
Makes sense. If you don’t have enough water in your body, there really is no reason to believe drinking water would change that.
Patrik Lindenfors, author, biology professor, and blogger for the Swedish Humanist Association, debates male circumcision and writes (in my translation):
The debate on circumcision is sensitive because it affects the rights of two of society’s vulnerable groups, the Jews and the Muslims, in contrast to the rights of another vulnerable group, the children. The Swedish Humanist Association and others advocate children’s rights (anyone can decide to be circumcision as an adult) while others advocate the rights of the group before the rights of the child.*
Now, I’m sure this is how Lindenfors sees it, but my defence of religious freedom—and thereby the right of Jews and Muslims to circumcise their sons—has nothing to do with collective rights before individual rights. On the contrary, a ban on a vital religious practice—unless it’s scientifically proven harmful or forced upon someone against their expressed will—is to forcefully assimilate individuals into the majority group. To ban circumcision would not protect the Jewish and Muslim boys from collectivism, it would only force their parents to bring their children up in accordance with the practice of society’s largest group, which in this case is Sweden’s cultural and secular Christians.
Freedom of religion was established as a human right and fundamental civil liberty in Europe precisely to prevent a government from abusing its powers by denying minority people their religious practice. This type of oppression was commonplace in old, pre-Enlightenment Europe, where kings and popes felt it necessary to forcefully help Jews and Muslims see the truth in Christianity. It’s both sad and ironic to see how human rights and civil liberties are now abused for much the same reason.
Read about it in Swedish at Humanistbloggen.
* The original text in Swedish: ”Omskärelsefrågan är känslig eftersom den handlar om rättigheterna hos två utsatta grupper i samhället, judar och muslimer, kontrasterat mot rättigheterna hos en annan utsatt grupp i samhället: barnen. Där Humanisterna och andra hävdar barnens rättigheter (vem som vill kan få omskära sig som vuxen) hävdar andra debattörer gruppernas rättigheter framför barnens.”
I’m for legalizing drugs. In my opinion, people have the right to harm themselves. However, an even greater argument for legalisation is that it’s harm reduction. The criminalisation of drug takers and addicts is in itself harmful.
Sweden is known for its opposition to legalisation and harm reduction. In this country, you’re doomed as a politician if you openly advocate harm reduction. But today, I read an article by Swedish MP William Petzäll, who has the courage to do just that. Not that anyone will listen to what he says on this important matter.
Read it in Swedish at Newsmill.
Update: Huffington Post runs an article about a former spy who now advocate legalisation.
So says Stephen Hawking, and I think he is right. We need to colonise new planets.
Read about it at Winnipeg Free Press.
America’s Chinese restaurants thank the Jewish people for their Christmas tradition.
(Photo by David Lee.)
Here’s a photo of the interior at Malmö Public Library. It’s one of my favourite buildings in this city. Besides, I hade to try out the camera on my new iPhone.
Only three per cent of EU citizens now have socialist governments. Still too many, if you ask me.
Read about it at the Telegraph.
“I’m fighting every day to protect everyone’s rights as human beings, and it seems counterintuitive for me to be fighting for those rights and not have them,” Captain Stephen Hill says.
Spot on! Far too often, those who take majority privileges for granted see minority rights as “special rights”. They are wrong. Equal rights are not about people being treated as identical clones, but as equal citizens.
Read about it at the Associated Press.
Learning from your mistakes is the first step towards success.
Read about it at San Francisco Chronicle.
I like this Argentinian campaign for same-sex marriage.
Watch more of the same at Blabbeando.
Self-destruction appears to be something that exists in even the simplest life forms.
Read about it at Slate.
This article is a year old, but it might just be the stupidest, most sexist thing I have ever read. Paul Elam is blaming women for being raped.
Read it at A Voice for Men (via Twitter).
Apparently, yes. But only human bears.
Read about it at Towleroad.
“Police in Örnsköldsvik, in the north of Sweden, recently sent a loaded rifle through the post to the forensic laboratory for analysis,” The Local reports. “These things happen now and again, unfortunately,” says Tore Olsson at the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science.
Yeah, the police send loaded guns in the post all the time. No biggie.
From the Jewish Journal:
The beating of a 13-year-old Jewish girl in Brussels has Belgium’s Jewish umbrella group contemplating civil action.
Oceane Sluijzer, 13, was beaten by five Moroccan female classmates after a confrontation at a sports center last week, the European Jewish Press reported.
The attackers also shouted, “Shut up, you dirty Jew, and return to your country” at Sluijzer, who has filed a formal complaint with the Brussels police.
Had it been in Sweden, there would be a bunch on politicians saying it’s unfortunate but must be considered legit criticism of Israeli politics. In fact, this is precisely what Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu said when asked about widespread bullying of Jewish children in his city’s schools. I hope the Brussels politicians take it more seriously.
I don’t know what to make of this vodka advertisement. Hm, the dog actually looks a bit like a rabbi I met a few years ago.
Read about it at Gawker.
The Palestinians adopting a free-market model. There’s something I had not anticipated. Fascinating development.
Read about it at Cato.
“He had certain sexual perversions in sex, for example, he liked to do it in public,” says a women who claims to be Saif al-Islam Qaddafi’s former girlfriend. I don’t like the man, but his so-called sexual perversion seems very modest to me.
Read about it at Daily Mail.
I’m watching the Republican debate on CNN, and so far, I’m not very impressed by any of the candidates, except, perhaps, Ron Paul for his steadfast principles and defence of civil liberties. However, I have to say that I do feel the Republicans are more inclined to support Israel, which I think is a good thing. But the problem is, it seems to me, that none of the candidates has sufficient knowledge about the Middle East. This shows not only in the questions related to Israel, but also in the discussion on terrorism and the threat to American security. Rick Santorum actually proposes religious profiling; as if the radical Muslims he fears would label themselves “Muslim” in their visa applications were they serious about attacking America.
According to Obama’s National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime would serve a serious blow to Iran and would serve to further isolate the Islamic Republic. True. But better still would be some kind of constructive support to the Iranian opposition. We must not forget that the people of Iran do not want the Ahmadinejad regime.
Read about it at Haaretz.
The best to come out of tonight’s CNN debate so far.
The craziest segments of America’s homophobic lobby love to link homosexuality to Nazism. Duncan Osborne has written an article about this for Gay City News.
“Commission president José Manuel Barroso is expected to argue strongly for stability bonds, also known as eurobonds, against a backdrop of soaring borrowing costs and shattered confidence around Europe,” the Guardian reports.
Barroso is right. I have long argued in favour of Eurobonds and a federal structure of the European Union. Europe has tried nationalism, and it did us no good. Let’s try pan-European federalism.
Russian Puppet-President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will deploy new missiles aimed at American missile defence sites in Europe if Washington goes ahead with the planned shield.
If you thought the Cold War was over and the Soviet Empire gone—think again.
Read about it at Yahoo News.
The Danish government is preparing new legislation that will allow Denmark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church to marry same-sex couples. The first such couples will be wed in the summer of 2012.
Read about it in Swedish at Kyrkans Tidning.
The new century just arrived to Oxford.
Read about it at Queerty.
“I don’t think we would have survived as a people without the Torah,” Professor Melvin Konner says. “Even though every generation has people like me, who draw away from observing the Torah’s mitzvot, it remains the core of the Jewish people.”
Read about it at Ynetnews.
“I think you know the principled stand that the United States Government takes on this issue and that the Secretary of State in particular takes on this issue, which is that gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights,” a spokesperson for the State Department says.
Read about it at Think Progress.
A court in Cameroon has sentenced three men to five years in prison for engaging in gay sex.
Read about it at Hürriyet.
“Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has called British Prime Minister David Cameron ‘satanic’ for considering withholding aid from countries that do not respect gay rights,” The Raw Story reports.
So says the mad dictator who has killed thousands and tyrannised millions.
Rumour has it that Germany’s Angela Merkel is softening on her opposition to Eurobonds. The sooner she comes around, the better for everyone.
Read about it at Der Spiegel.
The Syrian government, which is currently killing hundreds of democracy activists, has been elected to sit in a UN committee on human rights.
Read about it at UN Watch.
NASA has sent a robot to Mars to see if there ever were life on the planet.
Read about it at the Associated Press.
Gale-force winds in Malmö make me think I might not be here for long. I live next to a construction site with a very large crane wobbling about in the storm. The weather is getting worse by the hour and is expected to culminate later tonight.
Read about it in Swedish at Sydsvenskan.
It’s nice to read about Jürgen Habermas, a man truly passionate about the European Union.
Read about it at Der Spiegel.
It’s early Christmas in Britain’s most conservative and nationalistic circles. The should take a look at Britain’s economy before trying to cause panic over “broke Europe”.
Read about it at The Telegraph and Charles Crawford.
“The European Commission has launched a polemic on Eurobonds—a proposal that Eurozone countries should guarantee one another’s debt, taking member states into uncharted territory in terms of solidarity and trust,” EU Observer reports.
I’m not so sure about that. In my experience, people love the simplest explanation even when it’s ridiculously anti-intellectual.
Read about it at the Guardian.
Fiscal union is the way to go.
Read about it at the Associated Press.
The Israel Defence Forces confirms that at least three rockets have exploded in the Western Galilee near the border with Lebanon.
Read about it at Ynetnews.
“The recent efforts of three leading rabbis to construct a kosher wedding ceremony for same-sex couples hews closely to the traditional Jewish heterosexual ceremony, in an effort, they say, to ensure that same-sex couples suffer no inequality in the sacred standards governing their vows,” Forward reports. “But these efforts, ironically, are now drawing criticism from some activists for replicating aspects of the Jewish wedding rite that they consider sexist.”
More at Jewschool.
David Böcking writes about the high price of abandoning the euro. Personally, refuse to believe that Europe would abandon the single currency and return to nationalistic protectionism and border controls.
Read it at Der Spiegel.
Update: Read more about it at Financial Times.
“Nigeria’s Senate has voted to outlaw gay marriage, gay advocacy groups and same-sex public displays of affection,” the Independent reports. “Under the proposed law, gay couples who marry could face up to 14 years each in prison, while those who assist them could be sentenced to 10 years.”
It’s all part of that new trend—criminalise everything associated with an unwanted minority. It’s gay people in Africa and Russia; it’s Jews, Muslims, and Roma in Europe. To me, it’s basically the same intolerance towards those who differ from the mainstream. Makes me sick.
Witty headline, right? Now, it gets better when you read this article at Gawker.
Has Apple created a robotic voice of no-choice moralism? Apparently, yes. Fascinating.
Read about it at The Raw Story.
This is how you make sane people wonder if religion is a mental illness.
Read about it at John Shore.
Read about the Bulgarian example at EU Observer. It ought to make everyone eager to avoid the same for Europe—unless you’re a crazy backward British Europhobe, of course.
“Iceland’s parliament voted on Tuesday in favor of recognizing the Palestinian Territories as an independent state, the first Western European country to do so according Iceland’s foreign minister,” Haaretz reports.
Too much fish is not good for people.