Why is the royal family not on the list? Have you send our king?

Read it at The Local.

“I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say this, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear its inactivity.”

The next few week or months could be as exiting as the downfall of communist Eastern Europe. I’m still hoping Europe’s political elite goes for minimalist federalism and not a return to big-government nationalism. Establish Eurobonds and set about writing sustainable amendments to the Lisbon Treaty. Sure, there will be people upset about the loss of national sovereignty, but if the politicians do integration right, Europe will soon return to financial stability, which would benefit all Europeans.

So, my advice to Europe’s leadership is to not letting the doom-talk get you down. Make the required changes and move on!

Read about it at Slate.

European leaders had a meeting with atheist organisations this week. They discussed poverty. One of the atheists found it odd.

“There is no reason why we as atheists or freemasons, any more than religious leaders, have any particular expertise on poverty reduction strategies,” David Pollock of the European Humanist Federation says. “There were a series of fairly predictable expressions of outrage that citizens remain in poverty and demands for greater solidarity but nothing especially specific in the way of any strategy.”

I disagree. Unlike the atheist organisations—which are primarily against religion and nothing else—many religious movements work closely with the poor and consider helping people in need an integrated part of their religion. Religion can be blamed for many bad things, but its followers do a lot of good charity work that no one else wants to do.

Read about it at EU Observer.

Today is one of the saddest days of the year. It’s World AIDS Day and I remember some of my friends whom I lost before modern medicine made life easer for most people with HIV.

In Afghanistan, a woman has been sentenced to prison for adultery because the man who raped her was married.

Read about it at CNN.

Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old student, spoke about his family during a public forum in the Iowa House of Representatives.

Watch it at YouTube.

Read More

This is the homophobic equivalent to the anti-multiculturalist argument that all minorities must abide to the customs of society’s mainstream culture. It’s the everyone-must-eat-pork-and-play-with-their-foreskin argument.

Read about it at Washington Post.

This is silly. Let the man argue his case against Israel.

Read about it at Gawker.

It’s Friday, and it’s soon getting dark! The day if rest is here. Time for my weekly moments of “I’m so religious I can’t work” (I’m not, but don’t tell my husband).

שבת שלום!

“A new law which allows civil partnership ceremonies to be conducted in places of worship in England and Wales comes into effect on Monday,” BBC News reports. “The Church said it would not host them just as a ‘gentlemen’s outfitter is not required to supply women’s clothes’.”

Ah, I love witty analogies! But the Church is right; a religious organisation has no more a duty to gay people than pharmacies have to projectile vomiters.

Good news, but what happened to the “u” in Labour?

Read about it at Sydney Morning Herald.

Egypt’s Islamist parties want stricter religious laws after winning a majority in the first round of parliamentary elections. This is the wrong way to go. Egypt needs a secular state that respects all religions.

Read about it at the Guardian.

999 is now down to nil? It’s sad, in a way. I like Cain’s flat-tax approach. The idea of everyone paying the same percentage in tax seem fair to me. But I’m not sure it’s realistic with a tax burden of 9 per cent, not even in America.

Read about it at Talking Points Memo.

“What might appear to be part of a systematic strategy by Iran to provoke its enemies, however, may instead be the latest episode in a decades-long pattern of Iranian factions and even ‘freelancers’ using violence and provocative acts to undermine rivals at home—even at the risk of making Iran more vulnerable to attacks from abroad,” Scott Peterson writes.

Read it at the Christian Science Monitor.

That’s one way to protest high taxes.

Read about it at Paul L. Caron.

“The report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that on any given day, 53 percent of 18 to 29 year-olds go online just to have fun or pass time,” San Francisco Chronicle reports.

When did “for fun” become “for no reason”?

This is so absurd. The Swedish police want to question Julian Assange over a rape allegation, but he refuses because he believes there is a big Swedish-Jewish-American conspiracy against him.

Read about it at BBC News.

At a UN-backed genocide trial in Cambodia, Pol Pot’s deputy has told a court the Khmer Rouge were not “bad people”. He’s wrong. During its reign of terror, the Maoist army killed one third of Cambodia’s population.

Read about it at BBC News.

One cheater endorses another.

Read about it at Fox.

Not too many details have emerged yet, but this could be interesting. The European Union needs a new treaty—preferably a more federalist one.

Read about it at Reuters.

“Protect the virtue of true Americanism from our own mental barbarians who attack our minds with the God-hating secularism of Europe…”

Read about it at Think Progress.

A Swedish ban on male circumcision would in effect be a criminalisation of Judaism in Sweden. I have said and written this several times. Those in favour of a ban say I’m exaggerating. I don’t think so, and I know plenty of Jews who agree but choose to be silent in the public debate. Male circumcision is so intimately linked to being Jewish that few can imagine a Jew with foreskin. I realise how absurd and silly this appears to outsiders, but it’s a reality. Therefore, I’m pleased to see that Dr Magnus Zetterholm has written precisely this in an article in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

Martin Peretz:

One of the most pathetic facts about the Israeli left is how dependent it is on foreign cash, much of it from foreign NGOs and from foreign governments. Anti-semitic Norway, as just one instance, puts big bucks into the political and civil dialogue of Israel. Foreign aid of any sort is not a widely discussed matter in any country. So what the Brits appropriate or the Scandinavians or the Belgians or the flatulent “human rights” organisations is not a consequence of any democratic dialogue. It is an imposition of the professionals. The Israeli public doesn’t trust these organisations or the people who run them.

Read it at The New Republic.

I was incredibly moved by this video. Bullying destroys people. It must end.

Watch it at YouTube.

Read More

An update from the young man in the video:

To all my friends and supporters,

I made this video 4 months ago just before school was about to start. I was 13. It was a very emotionally dark time in my life. I made the video at 4:00am in the morning; I hadn’t been sleeping at night for a long time, too many things going on in my head. I was dreading going back to school and I had not come out to my family yet. Only my closest friends knew. I didn’t know how to say what I needed to say. All I could think about were all the bad things that had been happening at school last year, every year for that matter. I just couldn’t bare to go through that anymore. I was done being fake happy, pretending hateful words didn’t hurt, done hiding it from my family.

So this video was made for my friends that had moved on to High School who were worried for me, to say to them that I was going to take a stand, and to the haters at my middle school that I’m not going anywhere. I am who I am. I posted the video here and told people were to find it. That was it.

My friends were moved by the video and thought I did something important. I was encouraged to upload it to my Facebook page so more people could see it. Maybe it could help someone else going through the same thing. So I linked it Dec. 1st. My Parents saw it for the first time Dec, 2nd.

Then… all this happened.

I never expected in a million years that it would have such a wonderful impact on so many people. I am truly humbled and truly thankful for all the love, encouragement and support from people all over the world. It’s been incredibly overwhelming. I don’t know what to say. Thank you so, so much!

Lastly, yes you have seen me happy in a couple short videos replies I posted; I would think that would be a good thing, and yes I do have friends, my High School friends, and I have made friends because when I came out they realised that they had hurt me and that they fealt sorry. The video is real, and true.

In the last few months everything eventually came out in the open, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders; I’m happy, I’m excepted for who I am, I’m more confident and feel stronger every day.

Thank you all,
Love and peace to all who are hurting.

Jonah Mowry

If Nigeria’s legislators approve of this new bill, gay people will be prohibited from organise, marry, show affection, form relationships. In short, everything gay will be banned.

Why? As always, for the protection of the majority. “We are protecting humanity and family values, in fact, we are protecting civilisation in its entirety,” Senator Ahmed Lawan tells BBC News.

Read about it at Box Turtle Bulletin.

Here’s one question that never crossed my mind. What do Jews who move to Israel do about their pets?

Read about it at My Jewish Learning.

Everything I do to promote minority rights and individual liberty comes down to this problem with so-called positive liberty:

Many liberals, including [Isaiah] Berlin, have suggested that the positive concept of liberty carries with it a danger of authoritarianism. Consider the fate of a permanent and oppressed minority. Because the members of this minority participate in a democratic process characterised by majority rule, they might be said to be free on the grounds that they are members of a society exercising self-control over its own affairs. But they are oppressed, and so are surely unfree.

Read about it at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

“There was a stir at a conference of Mediterranean writers in Marseilles yesterday when Israeli author Moshe Sakal was booted from a panel discussion at the request of Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish,” Haaretz reports. “The director of the conference, French-Jewish author Pierre Assouline, said Sakal’s participation in the panel, which was on the Arab Spring, ‘was not crucial.’”

(Via Anna Veeder.)

In October, Johann Hari and Elton John wrote an article about the war on gay people. I’m not sure if I have blogged about it already, but if I missed it, I want to say that I especially like this part because it’s so often forgotten:

It’s patronizing and false to claim that poor countries are inevitably homophobic: in 2007, Nepal—a bitterly poor country—introduced binding legal protections for gay people. It’s equally patronizing to think that intensely religious countries are inevitably homophobic. Argentina is highly Catholic, but has legalised gay marriage.

When I began to study religion at university, religious homophobia had much to do with it. During my many years as a gay-right activist, I had experienced too much of it and wanted to learn how to tackle it “from the inside”. What I learned was that religion is no one-way street. Much to my surprise, I learned that it motivates not only the extreme homophobes but also some of the most outspoken gay-rights campaigners. This is important to remember when talking about religion and homosexuality. To say that everything would be better without religion is simply not as clear-cut as it might seem. Also, it’s a big mistake to think that secularism—or atheism—goes hand-in-hand with a liberal attitude towards gay people.

Read about it at Johann Hari.

I know it’s mean of me, but I can’t get over the fact that Newt Gingrich looks like a zombie. But he’s a popular zombie. According to a new survey, he holds a fifteen-point advantage over Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Read about it at CNN.

Good news! “The Obama administration Tuesday issued the first-ever U.S. strategy to address foreign nations’ human-rights violations against gays,” Washington Times reports.

An interesting way to protest against hate.

Read about it at Gawker.

“Judicial changes to the treaty that might take longer time might be needed, but I don’t think that’s the solution markets following us are actually looking for,” Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt says. Well, he’s wrong. What the markets want is stability, and that requires more federalism in the Eurozone.

Read about it at The Local.

That’s a complete quote from a teenager I just saw on television. Fascinating wit.

“The past ten years provide ample evidence that fiscal rules alone are not enough,” The Economist writes. “If, however, new stricter rules were combined with some form of joint liability, then there would be a reward for good behaviour and also a credible sanction: any country that overstepped its fiscal limits could not benefit from Eurobonds.”

I’m no big fan of Tory Euroscepticism, but British Prime Minster David Cameron makes no sense when he says a new EU treaty to establish fiscal control is not a substantial transfer of power.

Read about it at EU Observer.

I like this video. Good-looking men, too. Watch it at YouTube.

Read More

“Croatia signed its accession treaty to the European Union today paving the way for the former Yugoslav republic to join the EU in July 2013,” European Voice reports.

Welcome to the union!

“A group of 23 EU member states is to forge ahead with an intergovernmental agreement on tightening economic governance in the eurozone,” EU Observer reports.

Good. However, it’s important that the new treaty embraces free-market solutions and makes Europe more federal.

Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt is right to oppose a European financial-transaction tax.

Read about it at New Europe.

שבת שלום!

I wonder what other country would accept this without declaring an outright war against the aggressors.

Read about it at Jerusalem Post.

“A new study finds that atheists are among society’s most distrusted group, comparable even to rapists in certain circumstances,” Washington Post reports.

Madness.

Lord Acton: “The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities” (The History of Freedom and Other Essays, London, 1907).

The Masorti movement in Israel has a problem with gay people. Now it has now lost a rabbi because of it. What a shame. Personally, I think homophobia is a tradition we best get rid of. It’s stupid to believe that a person’s sexual orientation has anything to do with his or her ability to be a good rabbi.

Read about it at Forward.

African politicians are angry with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for demanding that gay people be treated as human beings. Personally, I welcome the American move. There is absolutely no reason for Western countries to aid homophobic regimes any more than racist regimes.

Read about it at the Christian Science Monitor..

There are still many crazy homophobes around, but things are getting better—at least in Europe and America.

Read about it at the Guardian.

There is a new winter storm heading this way, according to The Local.

One of my favourite spy novels have been adapted for the screen once more. Manohla Dargis seems thrilled:

Dread throbs like a heartbeat in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” a superb new adaptation of the 1974 spy novel by John le Carré. It’s a deep pulse that maintains its insistent rhythm throughout the film’s murmured conversations, life-and-death office intrigues, violence and yearning loves. The throbbing does a number on your nervous system—this is a movie you watch on high alert—and brings you into the state of mind that can feel like a state of siege and goes by the name of British secret service, or just the Circus.

Read it at the New York Times.

The British Liberal Democrats are right to be disappointed in David Cameron. His narrow nationalistic illustrates the problem Europe needs to overcome in order to be prosperous. For millennia, Europe has been divided by this very attitude.

Read about it at Daily Mail.

“Brooklyn prosecutors say authorities have arrested 85 people in the Orthodox Jewish community on child sex abuse charges in the past three years,” Forward reports.

It is no coincidence that these things happen in communities with a hostile attitude towards human sexuality.

When it comes to religious freedom, Barack Obama is not a reliable friend.

Read about it at Reason.

“We can, and have an obligation to, reach every person on the planet,” Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo says.

Yeah, fuck modesty!

Read about it at San Francisco Chronicle.

PS! I’m Aqurette on Twitter. If you follow me, you’ll get the latest headlines from this journal plus my bilingual chatter about daily life in Sweden.

“The wife of a Republican former Alabama gubernatorial candidate says she was shocked to find out her husband, who had campaigned against same sex marriage, has donated sperm to several lesbian women,” The Raw Story reports.

I love headlines like this one.

Another song for Hanukkah. Apparantly, the Maccabeats has had a number of hits in the Jewish community in America. I’m not much for religious pop generally, but this song is catchy. Reminds me of something by Westlife.

Watch it at YouTube.

Read More

Matt Welch:

Not a day goes by when George W. Bush’s deregulation is not blamed for the financial crisis, and yet he hired 90,000 net new regulators, passed the largest Wall Street reform since the Depression, and increased fiscally significant regulations by more than any president since Richard Nixon. We are told by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and his friends in The Nation that the country is being ruled by a ruthless “austerity class,” yet federal spending has continued to increase even after the summer’s debt-ceiling agreement.

The myth that the current crisis is due to a lack of regulation is dangerous. Every regulation and every tax increase mean more power to the political elite and less power to the people—it’s the road to totalitarianism.

Read it at Reason.

My gay friends and I loved this comedy in the 1990s. We could go on for hours quoting Patsy and Edina. Now the pair is back. Here’s a preview.

Watch it at YouTube.

Read More

This past weekend, Britain’s prime minister vetoed a new treaty for the European Union. Some British nationalists now hope this will result in Britain completely withdrawing from the union. My prediction is that the twenty-six remaining EU members will work out a new treaty over the next year and that Britain, in about five years, will sign up to it without having had anything to say on its contents. The idea of Britain leaving the EU—a wet dream to some Britons—is unrealistic considering the country’s dependence on Europe in trade.

Canada’s most famous gay couple have split up—over a female! Pedro has learned a lesson many gay men have bitterly learned in the past—a relationship with a bisexual always ends in tears.

Read about it at BBC News.

When I see these pictures, I really want to go back to San Francisco. It’s one of my new favourite destinations. The men are beautiful.

Watch pictures at Queerty.

“A member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee said on Monday that the military was set to practice its ability to close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most important oil transit channel in the world,” Reuters reports.

Read it at Yahoo News.

I have been doing some new web design the past few days. If you read this blog on your iPhone, you should now see the website in a design especially made for mobile devices.

Apart from this, I have made the first scratch on a website for my synagogue, which is a new egalitarian one within the Jewish Community of Malmö. It’s a very simple website only meant to contain some basic information. The text is not written yet.

Watch it at Synagogan.se.

“Long lines formed in front of Swedbank cash machines in the [Latvian] capital Riga after false rumours about the bank’s alleged financial difficulties had circulated on the social media network, Twitter,” the Independent reports.

I just read a review (not online) of Umberto Eco’s new novel The Prague Cemetery, which is about anti-Semitism and the forgery of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s fascinating how people have used this fake protocol to legitimise hatred and violence against Jew. It hits me that no one who takes this “Jewish conspiracy” seriously can ever had any contact with a Jewish organisation. One of the very few things Jews agree on is disagreement.

The best quote of the day comes from David Axelrod’s comment on Newt Gingrich.

Read about it at Time.

What does a worsening of the Syria conflict mean for Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah?

Read about it at CNN.

“Almost a quarter of the European Union’s 500 million people have never used the internet and there is a widening division between the web-savvy north of Europe and the poorer south and east,” Cyprus Mail reports.

Personally, I can’t imagine living completely offline.

Last year, a not-very-bright terrorist blew himself up in an attempt to kill Christmas shoppers in Stockholm. This year, two madmen open fire and kill several people in Belgium and Italy.

Read about it at Huffington Post.

Army Captain Stephen Hill:

“I was pretty surprised when the boos happened. It was shocking to me, my gut kind of dropped out. I thought that I had done something wrong. But I think what’s worse is probably that Mr. Santorum’s response got so many cheers.”

The audience at the debate was unbelievably rude. But what can you expect from a party that has completely been taken over by bigoted people who take pride in ignorance and Christian fundamentalism.

Read about it at The Raw Story.

Read also a letter to Andrew Sullivan on the issue here.

“A Swedish academic has come under fire in Norway after writing an article suggesting that Israel played a part in the July 22nd massacre carried out by Anders Behring Breivik that claimed 77 lives,” The Local reports.

It’s absurd. But I’m not surprised. The demonisation of Israel in Scandinavian media and politics is so overwhelming that many people truly believe Israelis to be evil. Conspiracy theories can be found where you least expect them.

The great voyeur is Britain’s new roll in Europe, apparently.

Read about it at BBC News.

One of the world’s wittiest, brightest, and funniest writers has died. I admired his writing and his sharp rhetoric. I loved him when I agreed with him as much as I loathed him when I didn’t. He was one of those people who seemed to enjoy making people angry by polarizing every debate. I think Christopher Hitchens will be best remembered for being a pioneer in turning atheism into a religious-style movement. He died in Texas yesterday.

Read about it at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and the Guardian.

It’s always something of a shock when Swedish mainstream media acknowledges something good about this Israel. Today, tabloid Expressen runs an article about Tel Aviv.

Read it in Swedish here.

It’s been a busy week. I have been on jury service at the Scania and Blekinge Court of Appeal, which meant that my mind has been preoccupied by criminal proceedings. But now the weekend is here. The sun is about to go down at this northern latitude, which means that Shabbat is here. Shabbat shalom!

שבת שלום!

Health Central lists nine unusual, but real, phobias. These are my six “favourites” (I’m not sure this is the right word for, but you know what I mean):

1. Aphenphosmphobia: the fear of touching
2. Cacophobia: the fear of ugliness
3. Vestiophobia: the fear of clothing
4. Selenophobia: the fear of the moon
5. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: the fear of long words
6. Panophobia: the fear of everything

Read about it at here.

From Variety:

In some Middle East countries, being gay is cause for punishment, including a death penalty. However, Israel’s right-wing, conservative government is putting a great deal of resources into promoting the country as a place that accepts and welcomes homosexuals.

And the gay-themed films keep coming from the only country in the Middle East that even tolerates gay people.

His homosexuality is not the problem, his stupidity is.

Read about it at Wonkette.

“The Swedish tourism agency has convinced the government to turn over management of the official national Swedish Twitter account to everyday Swedes, on a rotating basis, to show the world what a swell place full of swell people Sweden is,” Boing Boing reports.

This will end badly.

Former Czech president Václav Havel has died. He was a fighter for freedom his entire life and will be best remembered for his opposition to communism.

Read about it at Czech Happenings and the Guardian.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the forced removal of a female passenger from her bus seat by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man on a public bus during a cabinet meeting, stating that Israel ‘must protect its public space, and maintain its openness and safety for all citizens’,” Forward reports.

Good!

Update: More at Ynetnews.

“Ever-growing numbers of commuters between Malmö, Sweden’s southernmost large city, and the Danish capital, Copenhagen, require new infrastructure solutions,” The Local reports. “A bold new suggestion currently being investigated involves a subway line connecting the neighbouring countries.”

I live in Malmö, and I know how packed the existing rush-hour commuter trains to Copenhagen are. A metro-line connecting the two cities would be welcome.

In a tweet to mark the death of Christopher Hitchens, Irshad Manji posts a link to a 2009 article on atheists as proof of God’s existence:

It may be that atheists themselves are inadvertently affirming the existence of a loving God. Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese sage, noted that a great leader makes his followers believe they’ve led themselves. In that sense, a scientist, humanist or atheist who chalks up all progress to the human mind could be showing what an empowering and effective leader God actually is.

I don’t buy it, but it’s a fascinating idea. And yes, a clever boss would probably make his employees think they are doing what they’re doing out of free will. But does it prove there has to be a boss? Not really.

Read it at The Globe and Mail.

However, the EU officials have no problem with Sweden being too Swedish, Denmark too Danish, the Netherlands too Dutch, etcetera.

Read about it at EU Observer.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il—one of the world’s most brutal dictators—has died. Good. It’s turning out to be a bad year for tyrants.

Read about it at BBC News.

Once one of Sweden’s largest companies, carmaker SAAB today announced its bankruptcy.

Read about it at The Local.

I despise people who protest for the sake of protesting.

Read about it at The Local.

“Apparently, there are just under 3000 Jews in the Czech Republic; however, according to the most recent census data, those in the Czech Republic who voluntarily filled in their religion as ‘Jedi’ numbered over 15,000,” Jewschool reports.

May the force be with you.

“A teen who fatally shot a gay junior high classmate in the back of the head during a computer lab nearly four years ago was sentenced Monday to 21 years in state prison,” Associated Press reports.

“Nothing is really that special when you’re talking about the taste of meat, but it is weird to look into the eyes of a friend when you are chewing on his belly.”

OMG!

Read about it at Gawker.

The homophobic lobbyist Bryan Fischer is back with yet another insultingly stupid comment.

Read about it at Right Wing Watch.

A French blogger has become an internet hit by needling the rich and powerful with knitted dolls in sly recreations of the news, The Local reports.

Cool. Reminds me of the British Spitting Image back in the late 1980s. I loved that show.

Read the blog here.

Swedish journalist Göran Rosenberg has written a superb article on the ongoing attack on Judaism in Sweden. He describes how members of the Swedish Humanist Association portray Jews as sadistic people who cut up children.

Read it in Swedish at Svenska Dagbladet.

Watch it at YouTube.

Read More

The eight-day Jewish festival Hanukkah begins tomorrow night. To mark the occasion, I’ve decorated the website with dreidels in the background. The dreidel is a game traditionally plated during Hanukkah. Here’s the “Dreidel Song” from South Park.

Read More

What is North Korea’s new dictator like?

Read about it at The Daily Beast.

Hanukkah and Christmas at the same time. For a bicultural man like myself, it’s too much. Last year was easier. Hanukkah was in early December, and there was more than a week separating it from Christmas. Not so this year. It’s all happening at the same time. I thank God no one in my family celebrates Kwanzaa.

“Two female US sailors have become the first same-sex couple to share the traditional dockside ‘first kiss’ since the US ended a ban on gays in the army,” BBC News reports.

Great! But it’s absurd that it had to take until 2011 before it became reality. Why people are so afraid of love, I’ll never understand.

Steve Chapman debunks the Christian Right’s idea of American values.

Read it at Reason.

I have seen Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton several times and never thought about the Nazi flag.

Read about it at The Local.

Chris Stedman has written an article criticising his fellow atheist activists. It feels nice to read an atheist who sees the same problem with the atheist movement as I do—namely the xenophobia and the unfair attacks on reformers:

Indiscriminate attacks on “religion,” as if it were a single note to be demolished instead of a complex spectrum to be reformed, are a very real problem because they obscure what are, in my mind, much more important aims—making the world a better, more rational place—with a distracting, destructive and alienating narrative that doesn’t account for differences in belief and practice.

He lists four examples of hateful attacks on Muslims and Islam:

American Atheists No God Blog: “One thing we need to keep in mind is that Muslims are particularly barbaric and primitive, even more so than their competitive mythologies.”

PZ Myers: “Come on, Islam… It’s bad enough to be the religion of hate, but to be the religion of cowardice ought to leave you feeling ashamed.”

JT Eberhard: “Islam is a shitty religion (more shitty than most, and try me if you don’t think we can defend that statement) and Muhammad was a pedophile, which has resulted in several Muslims continuing the practice.”

Al Stefanelli: “[Islam] is a virus of the mind, a form of psychosis and when interpreted literally it produces a believer that can be very dangerous. When you add ideologies that support violence and the call for world domination, the only logical conclusion is a physical manifestation of unconditional obedience to a twisted, barbaric philosophy that we know as terrorism.”

I recognise all this from the Swedish debate. Angry atheists often behave like traditional xenophobes. They pick something really extreme and horrific from a certain religion and make all religious people responsible for it. All Muslims are said to promote paedophile because Muhammad had a 9-year-old wife, all Jews are selfishly ruthless because the Torah teaches violence, and all Christians are homophobes because the biblical writer Paul, ostensibly, condemns homosexuality in the Book of Romans. When confronted with a religious person who doesn’t fit the prejudice, the atheist activist says that this person is not really religious.

The reality is that devoutly religious people are often found on both sides of the arguments. In my two decades of fighting homophobia, some of my most reliable support has come from religious people who consider the oppression of gay people a sin against God.

Read it at Huffington Post.

“Newt Gingrich’s recent remarks show that hatred towards gays still remains strangely acceptable,” Touré writes. From the article:

When Newt Gingrich, the leader of the GOP presidential nomination race in some polls on some days, was recently asked if gay Americans should support his candidacy he said they should vote for Obama. The hate transmitted there runs deep: he’s saying not only do I not want your support, but I don’t even want you to take your vote to my partymate Mitt Romney or another GOPer because even though beating Obama is the most important job, your support is so unwanted, so dangerous, so unctuous that I’d rather you vote for my enemy. I don’t want you in the GOP constituency. Take your immoral, besmirched body and go away.

And:

Surely the argument that gays will challenge the sanctity of marriage is made into an hysterical joke by people like Newt who has been married three times, two of them ending because of adultery. But I think for many people there are all sorts of smokescreen arguments that mask the truth: to them homosexuality is icky. Well, to me, Newt’s politics are icky but I would never think of constraining his constitutional rights.

One day we will look back at this era and many will be embarrassed that when it came to homosexuality, they were like a new age Archie Bunker. And many in the media will have to look in the mirror and ask themselves why we didn’t critique Newt for attacking gays and didn’t stand up for the afflicted the way we would have if he’d spewed hate at any other group of Americans.

I think Touré is right. Racism was socially accepted not too long ago, but today, most people realise how absurd it is to judge someone by their skin colour or ethnicity. In a few decades, I’m sure most people in Europe and America will feel the same about homophobia. Looking back, people will be embarrassed by the hatred voiced in our time.

Read it at Time.

Here we go again:

Minnesota’s (now former) Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch had been working so hard on a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage in her state, but ALAS, the amendment couldn’t be approved in time to keep her own straight marriage safe from harm—she resigned her Senate leadership post last week after being caught having an affair with a male staffer.

Read about it at Wonkette.

It’s Friday night, and Shabbat is here. It’s also the day before Christmas. Tomorrow evening, I will join my Christian family members for a traditional Swedish Christmas Eve.

I wish all my readers a merry Christmas.

שבת שלום!

As a definition, atheism belongs to the same dull category as non-driver or ex-smoker, Ian Jack writes. Personally, I think the problem with atheism is that political fanatics have hijacked it. Nowadays, atheism is more a political ideology than a disbelief in the existence of God.

Read it at the Guardian.

A fascinating list.

Read it at Huffington Post.

The peace process is dead. The Palestinian terrorist organisation wants to eliminate Israel and turn the Jewish homeland Islamic.

Read about it at Jerusalem Post.

Another day in Hamas’s war on Israel:

A rocket fired from the northern Gaza Strip exploded in an open field in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council on Saturday. A short while later a mortar shell hit an open field in the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported in either incident.

Read about it at Ynetnews.

It’s easy to share the frustration expressed at Jewlicious.

The prime mover is about to be discovered.

Read about it at The Local.

Another example of atheism becoming very religious:

Every Christmas for the past 60 years, Nativity scenes have dominated two blocks of a park on bluffs overlooking the ocean in Santa Monica, California.

The 14 scenes depicting Jesus Christ’s birth have long been a popular attraction among area residents and tourists to the southern California city.

This year, however, atheists have taken over most of the two-block stretch, nearly shutting out and angering a group of churches who contend the atheists have organised against the Christians and gamed a city lottery process allocating the holiday exhibit space.

In response, a leader of the atheist group says he’s just looking for evenhanded treatment to present his beliefs in a public space—and goes so far as to say that the city shouldn’t even be allowing any religious or even atheist expression in the park.

Everything seems to be about criminalisation to these people. In other words, the exact same ideology found in many fundamentalist religious movements. Personally, I think everyone should be allowed to express themselves in public.

Read about it at CNN.

A victory for religious freedom in the Netherlands.

Read about it at The Jewish Chronicle.

Iran’s defence minister warns that an Israeli attack on his country would be an Israeli suicide.

Read about it at Jerusalem Post.

Marcello Ferrada-Noli is so very impressed by Assange that he compares him to one of history’s most vicious killers.

Read about it at Newsmill.

Famous people travelling like regular folks. Unconfirmed rumour has it that some of them go to the toilet like normal people, too. But I don’t believe it until someone blogs about it.

Watch them here.

A nightmare coming true for the anti-circumcision lobby:

Encouraged by the results on the ground, the United Nations and United States recently announced a five-year plan to radically increase circumcision in the HIV-stricken continent. Working with African governments, they have so far circumcised 600,000 men. They are aiming to perform 20 million new adult circumcisions over the course of the plan.

The challenge is preparing doctors to cope with the fast flow of patients that the plan will bring. That is where Israeli medics come in. Operation Abraham, a volunteer outreach initiative, is sending doctors from Israel to different corners of Africa to train local doctors like those at St. Mary’s.

Perhaps not an argument for routine circumcision, but still a blow to those who argue there are no benefits.

Read about it at Forward.

Two Swedish journalists have been sentenced to eleven years imprisonment in Ethiopia.

Read about it at The Local.

This is ultra-Orthodox abuse of religious freedom. Everyone has the right to practice his or her religion, but no one has the right to force their religion onto others.

Read about it at Al Jazeera.

HIV treatment as prevention:

HIV/AIDS researchers have long debated whether antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat HIV-infected people might have a double benefit and cut transmission rates. To some it was obvious: ARVs reduce HIV levels, so individuals should be less infectious. Skeptics contended that this was unproven. Then in May of this year, the 052 clinical trial conducted by the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) reported that ARVs reduced the risk of heterosexual transmission by 96%

Read about it at Science.

The dietary advices by mainstream medical science over the last thirty years are to blame for America’s obesity problem. The lesson everyone should learn is to never assume authority is right.

Read about it at PolicyMic.

Another day in Palestinian terrorism. World media will wait with reports until Israel retaliates, which it will label “an Israeli attack”, pretending the Palestinians did nothing to provoke Israel.

Read about it at Ynetnews.

From the Dry Bones Blog.

A Swedish court has ruled that a woman’s refusal to be served by a black clerk at the local office of a public agency is not a crime.

I can’t help but thinking that the biblical “an eye for an eye” is appropriate here. Sure, no one commits a crime by refusing to be helped by a black person, but then everyone should be allowed to refuse service to these bigots.

Read about it at The Local.

It’s Friday, and I’m in Amsterdam for my annual new-year celebration.

שבת שלום!

Another day in Christian fundamentalism.

Read about it at Pink News.

For claiming Jewish people killed Jesus (via The Daily Beast).

Long-time readers know that I’ve made these silly New Year’s resolutions before, but I have learn from this and decided on a minimalist approach summed up in two resolutions:

• Write that book now, God damn it!
• Don’t change anything about you

Happy new year!

Finally, a best-of-the-year list worth reading!

Being abroad (kind of), I went through the latest news from Sweden. This is what I found. My precious!

The only day on the year when it’s OK too go all ABBA!

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This about slogans.

Finally, someone with a positive attitude towards the euro.