I’d say the Fox News guys are the real muppets.

Read More

The recent debate on circumcision has resulted in a growing intolerance against minority groups in Sweden, Göran Rosenberg writes (in Swedish).

“We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor,” Mitt Romney says. “And there’s no question it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor, but my campaign is focused on middle income Americans.”

Oops.

Apparently, yes. But I disagree. As we all know, Jews are God’s people. The rest of you are merely props. (It’s a joke!)

Worldwide protest at continuing insistence by the Swedish government on what has been described as a policy of eugenics in respect of trans men and women.

Five new chapters in his ambitious project:

5. Jesus
6. Double standards
7. Pastoral care
8. Four possible approaches
9. The Salvation Army

Earlier entry here.

Spain’s youth unemployment rate is 51.4 per cent! This is really, really bad news for everybody—not only the young Spaniards.

Let’s purify porn!

What is God’s opinion on capitalism? Personally, I think the Almighty is all for it. Greed is good. Unless you’re a Catholic, because then it’s a mortal sin—unless you’re a pope. But then again, Israel’s God belongs to the Jews and doesn’t care much about Catholics.

According to Wikipedia, Sweden has the third highest rate of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe. I don’t know if this is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.

If so, it’s about time.

It’s Friday. It’s been a busy day, so I haven’t had the time to blog today. I will do better tomorrow. Shabbat shalom!

שבת שלום!

“A debate about homosexuality in Islam is beginning,” The Economist writes. Well, the debate is not entirely new. NN has made her voice heard for quite a few years now, and Syrian-Dutch academic Omar Nahas published his ground-breaking book Islam en homoseksualiteit in 2001.

Atheist fanatic and naturalist homophobe Eric Wadenius has made an attempt to prove that God doesn’t exist:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The Universe began to exist
3. The Universe is defined as “all that exists”
Therefore:
4. All that exists must also have a cause
5. God is defined as something that does not have a cause
Therefore:
6. God does not exist

Well, if the Universe has to be caused by something and that something doesn’t exist, doesn’t the rationale point to the conclusion that we don’t exist?

Assume that I create a time-limited computer program able to write new code. After only a generation, every code that exists within the program is caused by evolution. After a few generations, everything that exists is caused by a self-evolved program with no resemblance to my original code. Does this, by itself, prove that I don’t exist? I say no. All it proves is that I’m no longer needed for the program to exist.

Update: In an update, Wadenius stresses that he only meant to disprove the kalām cosmological argument for the existence of God, and he says he defines the Universe as “everything that ever existed”. I now notice that he did write that, but as I have been taught that the Universe by this definition only refers to matter, I assumed he meant all matter that has ever existed.

Gay activists want recognition for same-sex love and marriage, the homophobes browse pornographic websites. Here’s some intense Ugandan hate speech against gay people.

By the way, does anyone really think that “fist-fucking”, anilingus, and coprophilia—defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the “abnormal interest and pleasure in faeces and defecation”—is exclusively homosexual? It’s not.

Read More

Ginsberg, Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood, Edward Albee, Edmund White… The Economist on gay writing in America.

It’s a gay obligation to notice the new Madonna video. I’m not sure I really like the song, but hey, she’s still absolutely fabulous!

Read More

Lousy actor and crazy leftist personality Roseanne Barr is campaigning to become the American Green Party’s candidate for president. Green? She looks more grey nowadays.

Some people say religion is harmful to children; I’d say politics is worse.

Seems we don’t know about all human tribes.

Frank J. Fleming:

Thinking leads to opinions, and opinions eradicate apathy. Instead, you just need to shrug your shoulders and say, “Eh.”

Whatever.

Hilarious!

To the Greeks, what is beautiful is holy; to the Jews, what is holy is beautiful.

I might have misread the article by Eric Wadenius I wrote about earlier today.

In an update, Wadenius stresses that he only meant to disprove the kalām cosmological argument for the existence of God, and he says he defines the Universe as “everything that ever existed”. I now notice that he did write that, but as I have been taught that the Universe by this definition only refers to matter, I assumed he meant all matter that has ever existed.

I want to add that I personally think proving—or disproving—God’s existence is meaningless. If something is beyond our universe, we cannot validate it, which is a requirement for the correspondence theory of truth. I’m more interested in the moral argument since I think ethics needs an idea about objectivity—but that argument has nothing to do with correspondence, it deals entirely with rational necessity.

Ruth Eglash writes about a proposed Israeli law resembling Sweden’s failed anti-prostitution laws.

Rupert Sheldrake has written a new book, The Science Delusion.

What matters is our families, we live our lives in our families.

And that’s because gay unions don’t benefit society, Rick Santorum says. And why are we not beneficial to society? Apparently, because we can’t have children. This, in an ironic twist, motivates the discrimination that makes it more difficult for gay people to have a family. The argument is ridiculously circular.

I just watched Madonna’s live performance at the Super Bowl in Indianapolis. She’s still got it.

I’ve been on jury service the whole day and had no time for blogging. I did, however, take this picture of wintery Malmö.

But the most remarkable thing about the Finnish election is that an openly gay candidate came second in the race.

Nietzsche himself would not have been pleased by this article, I’m sure.

I like this sentence, “Jesus was a genius for having the imaginative power to reinvent Judaism but a dangerous idiot for basing this reinvention on the idea that there is virtue to be had in weakness.”

However, I’m not much for Jesus at all. I can’t really see what so great about him—unless you really believe his is the Son of God and resurrected from the dead.

The Iranian government has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jewish people worldwide.

Sleep is important.

Last night, the Masorti rabbi in Stockholm’s Great Synagogue, David Lazar, was awarded by queer magazine QX for his out-spoken support of gay rights.

It’s a big step for these schools.

This is breaking news. More information to come in updates.

The San Francisco Chronicle is first to report:

California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled today. The ban remains in effect, however, while the case proceeds toward the Supreme Court.

Update 1: Los Angeles Times.

Update 2: Judge Stephen Reinhardt: “We consider whether that amendment violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We conclude that it does.”

The Fourteenth Amendment, section 1:

All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Update 3: The Washington Post.

Update 4: New York Times.

I missed Charles Dickens’s birthday by about half an hour. He is one of my favourite authors. I make it up by linking to the article on the novelist Robert Gottlieb wrote for the New York Review of Books in 2010.

Today is Tu Bishvat. I suppose this day makes sense in Israel, but here in the wintery Scandinavia, planting threes is not really on the agenda.

The craziest of the crazy, Rick Santorum, won the three Republican primaries in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado. It’s no official that the Republican grass roots are mentally insane.

A beautiful clusterfuck of a thing.

Michael Rubin asks a valid question.

This question have I often struggled with.

Patrick Appel writes, “There is no greater sin against open debate than to preemptively seal oneself off from evidence.”

When I think about it, most of my strongly held opinions have developed from an initial position quite the opposite to the current ones. For example, I once thought true liberty demanded some style of socialism; not too long ago, I was one of those who saw religion in itself as a threat to human rights and modernity; and a few years ago, I opposed male circumcision because I thought it harmful. I changed my mind on all these ideas because I read up on the available facts and realised I was wrong. Liberty and socialism are incompatible, religion is not in itself a cause of cruelty and backwardness, and male circumcision has many benefits and there is no scientific evidence of its harmfulness.

Read this, too.

Mark Oppenheimer profiles one of America’s top homophobic activists.

No surprise, really. The Reformists welcome a change that would allow gay couples to marry, the Orthodoxy opposes it.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Sweden’s Supreme Court was right to convict four men of hate crimes for distributing homophobic flyers at a school.

I think this is a mistake. Idiots are best fought by argument and shaming; not by depriving them free speech and offer them victimhood. I’m all for bullying the bullies, but this is the wrong way to go about it. It’s better to simply dismiss the homophobes by claiming that they all have disfigured genitalia. If they say it’s not so, we want evidence shown in public—preferably pictures on full-colour leaflets.

As expected, the defence is self-pity.

And free-market liberalism is good for gay people because, companies are more liberal than governments.

The Vatican’s priorities are really provocative.

What’s so fascinating when talking about the scale of the universe is that most people automatically think of the enormously big and forget about the infinite small. This is a brilliant illustration of the scale of our universe.

I have made some new changed to the website, implementing new HTML5 elements to it. Unfortunately, this means that Aqurette.com will no longer look right in versions of Internet Explorer older than the current IE9. If you’re on a Windows-run PC, use Firefox.

The blog is quiet today because I’m ill. The Shabbat is here in a few hours, so I wish you all a peaceful weekend. Shabbat shalom!

A Republican in the Washington State legislature delivers an emotional address in support of same-sex marriage.

Bob Krumm predicts a messy divorce of Europe. Well, the EU has been predicted to fail since the start. So was the United States when it first declared its union.

It’s been a strange weekend for me. I have been suffering from a severe cold and felt very disconnected from the world. Not that there were any lack of news. Had I been my normal self I would have blogged about Mitt Romney winning Maine and Whitney Houston dying in her California hotel room. Instead, I sniffled and coughed while writing some new code, bring this website into the beautiful world of HTML5. So, if the website looks odd, you should try reloading. If you use some old Internet Explorer, update to version 9 or, better yet, use Firefox or Chrome instead. Older versions of Internet Explorer are the only browsers lacking support for the new HTML5 tags on this website.

Here is Whitney Houston at her best.

Read More

Greek communists do what communists do best—rioting and vandalizing. As if burning down buildings would solve any of Greece’s problems! Idiots.

Read more about it at Kathimerini.

What could happen if the US Supreme Court were to rule on same-sex marriage.

We are haunted.

Good news from New Jersey.

Even better news from Washington State.

Hating Muslims is not enough for bleached fool Geert Wilders. Now he goes after non-Dutch Europeans, too.

“Not only could the brains emerge from the chaos after the universe,” Esther Inglis-Arkell writes, “but one could have already emerged.”

A study from 1987 revealed that foetuses masturbate.

Lady Warsi:

“For me one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes—denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.”

I think she has a point, but she’s dead wrong about her opposition to multiculturalism.

One terrorists meets another and makes ridicules statements.

No, not Obama the President—Osama, the terrorist mastermind.

Marc Tracy:

Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich: three non-Protestants. One of them will be only the fifth non-Protestant major-party presidential nominee in United States history—and the first Republican.

I suppose that’s one good thing about it.

Taking heat from idiots means he’s doing his job.

Nightmares are coming true.

God’s punishment for being extremely immoral and stupid?

I have a friend who really, really, really wants Android to be the big thing. As an Apple fan myself, I love stories like this one.

Some “modern” words are very old.

Too many politicians still think it’s fine to discriminate against gay people—and to ignore democratic decisions.

Two committees in the Maryland House of Delegates vote to approve a same-sex marriage bill.

Julian Baggini thinks it has lost its secular soul.

In my opinion, the problem is that a small, rather fanatical group of people has turned secularism into a religion of its own. In many secularists’ mind, there is no room for liberty when belief in their own rationality tells them they are right to tell others how to think and act. Add to this a complete lack of self-criticism and humour and you have a bunch of religious fools.

From UN Watch:

Protesting the council’s first panel discussion on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation, scheduled for March 7th, Libya’s representative told the gathering of ambassadors today that LGBT topics “affect religion and the continuation and reproduction of the human race.” He added that, were it not for their suspension, Libya would have opposed the council’s June 2011 resolution on the topic.

If gay people are given equal rights, reproduction will stop? Because all people will turn gay, or what?

I like this: “The skin on my hands is rough, the skin on my penis isn’t. Sometimes guys just need a more luxurious wank.”

In a letter to the Swedish government, Sweden’s two leading Jewish and Muslim organisations complain about Bengt Westerberg as the person in charge of a national enquiry into racism and xenophobia. Mr Westerberg is an outspoken opponent to Judaism and Islam and his remarks about male circumcision has resulted in a number of xenophobic attacks on Jews and Muslims.

Read the letter in Swedish here.

If you needed proof that political endorsements are not always made by carful reflection, here it is.

“A former FBI agent who has said a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee has no legal right to exist will be training the county sheriff’s department about Muslim culture and terrorism threats,” Think Progress reports.

Charlemagne: The history of fiscal federalism may offer the euro zone some lessons.

Are stars more prone to religious conversions than the rest of us?

Scott Clement wonders how much does religion really matter at the ballot box in America.

Bill Maher on Rick Santorum.

Breaking news from New Jersey, via Washington Blade.

This is good news, but these countries sided with the Syrian regime at the United Nations: Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Belarus, Zimbabwe, and Cuba. Shame!

More here.

The future of the Mac.

Venezuela’s one-man freak show is still going on.

Those of my readers who are familiar with the Swedish language and the domestic debate on identity politics and minority rights should read this.

Benji Lovitt explains.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants civil rights to be a matter of popular opinion. Sad man.

A bill to legalise same-sex marriage has won approval in the Maryland House of Delegates.

Michael Totten shares a joke about Syrian dictator Assad:

After a national “election” in Syria, an aide comes to President Assad and says, “Mr. President, you won the election with a 99.7 percent majority. That menas only three-tenths of 1 percent of the people did not vote for you. What more could you ask for?” Assad replies, “Their names.”

Worst thing is that it’s not an unthinkable scenario.

Does multiculturalism keep immigrants confined to their “group” and discourage them from becoming “individuals” and “citizens” of a modern democracy? Salim Mansur seem to think so, but I disagree. The great thing about Western civilisation is the liberty for people to be who they are. In countries and cultures with little or no respect for individuals, the majority culture is mandatory; you are free to be an individual only as long as you don’t differ from others. That is not what true liberty is about.

“Officials in key parts of the Obama administration are increasingly convinced that sanctions will not deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear programme, and believe that the US will be left with no option but to launch an attack on Iran or watch Israel do so,” the Guardian reports.

It’s complicated.

Frederick Clarkson portrays Rick Santorum as a man who sees only his own Catholic Church as Satan free.

From UN Watch:

A Pakistani spokesman for the UN’s Islamic bloc sparked outrage today after announcing to the UN’s top rights body that its 56 member states would ignore a scheduled UN rights panel on anti-gay violence, saying they were “disturbed” at the “attempted focus on certain persons” on the grounds of their “abnormal sexual behaviour,” which “have nothing to do with fundamental human rights.”

Ironically, the statement shows that it has everything to do with human rights.

The end is near?

Anti-Semitism in commonplace in the Church of England.

The Knesset bill would amend all of Israel’s existing anti-discrimination laws to include a prohibition on discrimination against people for reasons of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Jewish tradition is “an assault” on human rights and “an attack on boys’ integrity”, according to Swedish Paediatric Society. In a statement hailed by militant atheists and the extreme right, the society now says it wants to see a ban on Jewish and Muslim circumcision.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff: “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor.” Yeah, right!

Did I forget to reports on this? Bad of me. Anyhow, Swedish transsexuals may soon be able to keep their reproductive systems.

The rabbit is not a kosher animal, so I won’t eat it, but in theory, I like the thought of rabbit nuggets.

That’s what this is about.

At least that’s what Adam Lusher is insinuating. Personally, I don’t think this kind of slander helps anyone. Militant secularists like Dawkins are as big a threat to religious freedom as religious fanatics, and should be fought by the same methods—reason, humour, and the pursuit of liberty.

When the artist Lars Vilks showed a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad, an angry mob attacked him.

Read More

Peace with Arab countries will not be possible if they do not compensate the Jews who were expelled after the establishment of the State of Israel.

A boar called Kalle has become irresistibly smitten with one of his Swedish farm mates, a breeding bull named Sune Mangs. Sweet.

This lunatic could become the Republican presidential candidate!

Later is too late.

The details are not known yet. The Crown Princess gave birth earlier this morning. Her husband, Prince Daniel, will meet the press in about twenty minutes and then reveal the gender of the baby.

It’s a girl! Prince Daniel just announced the news. The next two monarchs of Sweden will be queens.

Follow the news about the royal baby at The Local.

I have been on jury service most of the day and snapped this picture of the courthouse flying its flags marking the birth of Sweden’s new princess.

Another African country considers toughening the penalty for being gay.

From Right Wing Watch:

Pastor Steven Andrew of USA Christian Ministries is leading a boycott of companies which endorsed a marriage equality bill in Washington state, including Google, Starbucks and Amazon, charging them with “working against Jesus and leading people to sin and to possibly go to hell.” Andrew, who previously claimed that “Starbucks hates God” over the company’s backing of gay rights, told the Christian Post that any company that favors marriage equality is “anti-God” and is “doing the devil’s work.”

Doing the Devil’s work? So the Evil One into books, coffee, and the Internet?

A new trend in the world of religion? But spotting a Mormon is not that difficult, at least not if you’re able to check out his underwear.

Tolerance is good for everyone.

That’s the name and title of Sweden’s newborn princess and future monarch.

I laughed out load when I red this headline at The Local. But, yes, it’s true. Many monarchs have indeed been queens. Some would argue that goes for most of them.

It’s been a busy week for me. I have been on jury service for four days. Next week will be somewhat more relaxed and I’m hoping to catch up on some neglected writing. Anyhow, now it’s Shabbat and I’m taking a few hours off.

“A Georgia Institute of Technology team of electrical engineers have developed a sensor-packed dental retainer that people with high-level spinal cord injuries can manipulate with their tongue to manoeuvre an electric wheelchair,” Wired reports.

Allahpundit: “Every atheist is technically an agnostic; the distinction in the labels is largely the degree of confidence with which one’s concluded that there’s no God.”

I’d say that this goes for mainstream religious people as well. This is what “faith” is about. Personally, I don’t think true knowledge about divinity is ever possible. So, when discussing religion, we ought to focus on people’s relationship to metaphysical claims rather than the objective truth of these claims.

I think it’s wrong to have a public vote on civil rights. Imagine a public vote in 1967—instead of the Supreme Court—to determine whether inter-racial marriage should be legalised.

Iran is making yet another threat.

Related: The Economist’s leader of Iran.

In a statement, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angels, a Jewish human-rights organisation, says it sees no reason to relax its travel advisory on Malmö. This has upset Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu to the extent that he nearly repeated his anti-Semitic remarks that brought him international repute a few years ago.

“I get the impression that the centre’s purpose is to make people forget about what happens in Israel, violations against human rights all people ought to condemn,” he says to Swedish newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet.

The quotation in Swedish: ”Jag får intrycket att centrets syfte är att människor ska glömma bort vad som sker i staten Israel, kränkningar mot mänskliga rättigheter som alla människor borde ta avstånd från.”

Shmuel Rosner takes a look at the statistics.

The man is a sad joke.

Hm, is this really a clever equation? Well, maybe.

Swedish-Jewish actor Erland Josephson has died.

A new song from Madonna’s forthcoming album.

I was unable to watch the Oscars live last night, but thankfully Time has the list.

Jews must help each other, and the Jewish Agency has decided to do that as the majority of Greece’s Jewish communal institutions are on the verge of closure.

Should the state pay for circumcision? If the state pays for other medical procedures, I think it should. However, in an ideal situation, health care is a private matter.

The oldest couple to make aliyah.

Bjørn Lomborg has lost his funding and must close his Copenhagen Consensus Centre:

Denmark’s general election last year ushered in a new administration less keen to support his views. Earlier this month, the Danish government confirmed that it had cut more than £1 million in funding for Lomborg’s centre. As a result, he only has funding in place until the end of June.

In an interview to be published next week, Lomborg tells the Ecologist that he was the victim of politics. ‘I met with the woman who’s now Prime Minister (Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the daughter-in-law of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock). I said: “I’d love to show you how the Copenhagen Consensus is a good idea,” and she looked at me and said: “I think that probably might be right, Bjørn, but I will just get so much more mileage out of criticising you.”’

It’s simply not good politics to scrutinise the popular idea that humankind is to blame for climate change.

“There is no evidence to suggest that long prison sentences deter or limit people from abusing drugs.”

UN Secretary General calls for countries to recognise and respect homosexuality.

Update: Just remembered that I have written about this before. Oh, well, it is worth a second mentioning.

Good for him.

I don’t know whom they’re referring to.

An unexpected success of a film about Ahmet Yildiz, whom I wrote about in July 2009.

Wikileaks has now officially lost the plot.

“In a key speech on human rights, the head of the Anglican Church put his weight behind other leading clergy who have launched a powerful campaign to prevent David Cameron from going ahead with his plan to allow the full rights of marriage to same-sex couples,” the Daily Mail reports.

Not too long ago, the Church said the same thing about interracial couples.