This was unexpected.

Hmm, it’s April Fool’s Day.

Huffington Post has made the list.

Depressing but true.

Daniel Dennett:

Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.

Aren’t we lucky?

According to the Daily Mail, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik planned to bomb American President Obama when he went to collect his Nobel prize in 2009.

Not only did she do this, it was caught on camera. I’d say she should be fined for stupidity.

Here’s a man who takes his job seriously.

It’s no secret that many people get depressed by ageing, but is it worse for gay men?

The former White House correspondent gets an award for preaching that Israeli Jews should be forced into a new European exile.

So says Einat Wilf. I think he is right.

I have met a few people like Stuart Vyse. Non-Jewish atheists who feel strongly for secular Judaism are not that uncommon.

Dan Calic: How come virtually every group of people have at least one country they call home, but if the Jews want one they are deemed racist?

“A Labour council candidate in Wales has apologised for a series of tweets that left him accused of sexism and one which jokingly compared rugby with gay porn,” Pink News reports. Well, to me, all sports are hot man-on-man action. What other point is there to sports?

But Binyamin Netanyahu is more popular.

God knows I’m no fan of nuclear weapons, but Günter Grass is a fool when he blames Israel considering that it is Iran’s leadership that supports the war and Israel and constantly threatens the Jewish State—and the Palestinian territories!—with extermination.

I think it’s ironic that this German poet wants the evict Jews from not only the disputed areas but from all of Israel. Germany’s plan to evict Jews from all of Europe created the upswing for modern-era Zionism and the need for Jews to create a Jewish State. People in Europe tend to be so very selective when debating the history and legitimacy of Israel.

These are the words of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu after the latest attacks on Eilat.

This year, the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter is celebrated simultaneously. The biggest event for me personally will be the second Seder with friends from my synagogue. That’s on Saturday evening.

A bunch of anti-Israel people in Britain has signed a letter objecting to Israeli theatre being invited to London. Allowing Israeli actors into Britain would somehow show support for “occupation” and “colonisation” of Palestine. It’s like boycotting all British actors with reference to Englishmen living in Northern Ireland.

I have made my first charoset ever for tonight’s second-day Passover Seder. There are a bunch of different recipes for this dish, but mine is a mixture of apples, walnuts, wine, sugar, and cinnamon. It’s a ritual dish meant to symbolise the clay the Israelites used to build during their time of slavery in Egypt.

An apology to all regular readers who come here to read news, I have decided to take a couple of days off for Passover. I’m back with regular updates on Tuesday.

OK, I said I would not blog until Tuesday, but hey, this is too funny a list not to mention right away. News website The Daily Beast lists America’s top fifty rabbis.

My personal favourite in the list is number 44, Steven Greenberg.

“Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise in Sweden, and as in France and Great Britain, the violence and harassment is increasingly a consequence of immigration from the Muslim world,” Paulina Neuding writes at Jerusalem Post. “And just as in other parts of Western Europe, there is no reciprocity between the two groups: the war in Gaza caused a sharp rise in anti-Semitic hate crime, while there were no reports of Jewish attacks on Muslims.”

This is only partly true. It’s true that the perpetrators of most anti-Semitic hate crimes in Malmö and the rest of Sweden are Arabic. Muslim, or both; but the bigger problem is the lax attitude towards Jew-bashing in the name of “criticism of Israel”. The violent anti-Semites are very few, even in the most hostile of Malmö’s immigrant neighbourhoods. But the people who legitimise negative attitudes towards Jews are plenty and in high places. Much has been written about Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu’s many anti-Semitic remarks, but he is only one extremely outspoken person in a sea of Swedish people believing in similar fantasies about an all-powerful Israel lobby that controls American politics, the world economy, and hates everyone who is not Jewish.

What makes Sweden rank as a top anti-Semitic country is the complete lack of knowledge about Jewish history and Israel. Sure, everyone learns about the Holocaust in school, but it ends with the Second World War and very few people know anything about the homelessness of Jewish people after the war. No European country wanted to help the homeless Jews, and the Zionist dream of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel became the only option. Of this, most Swedes know nothing—which makes it so easy for so many to put all blame on the Jews. The constant talk about Zionist colonisation, Israeli apartheid, and Jewish superiority goes back to this misconception about Jewish history and Israel.

Adding to this is the common confusion about the relationship between Israel and Sweden’s Jewish minority. It’s a fact that to most of us, Israel is considered the Jewish homeland. We love it as such and most of us have friends and family living in Israel. This, however, does not suggest that all Swedish Jews are loyal to the Israeli government or its policies towards the Palestinians. This distinction seems easy to grasp when talking about other national or ethnic minorities, but for some reason, it has become very problematic for many Swedes to keep two things in mind when it comes to Jews and Israel. For some bizarre reason, mentally sane and otherwise intelligent Swedes can, when on the subject, express an understanding for violence directed at a Jewish-owned shop in Malmö because it’s motivated by anger at a conflict in the Middle East. The same person would have no tolerance for a Tibet-activist attacking a Chinese restaurant in Sweden, even though the Chinese minority show as much love and fondness for China as the average Swedish Jew do for Israel. Everyone realises that a Chinese flag on the wall doesn’t suggest loyalty to the Communist Party in Beijing, whereas an Israeli flag is considered a political statement in support of the Israeli government in Jerusalem.

So, to sum up, Paulina Neuding is right when she writes that most anti-Semitic hate crimes are the works of an Arab-Muslim minority importing its contempt for Jews from the Middle East. But Neuding is wrong not to stress that the reason these thugs are tolerated is that far too many Swedes buy into their idea of the conspiring, colonizing, racist, and self-important Jew.

Emily L. Hauser’s article at the Daily Beast is a sad read.

Something tells me it’s not for his speech about world peace.

Stephen Green, leader of the conservative organisation the Christian Voice, blames a British supermarket’s infestation of mice on its support of gay equality.

Two men have been arrested in St Petersburg for protesting against the Russian city’s new anti-gay law. “The new law bans the ‘propaganda of homosexuality to minors’, and effectively prohibits any public discussion of LGBT issues and events,” Pink Paper reports.

I think, however, that Roger Friedman is only counting the CD sales in America.

Good news.

It’s not often the Human Rights Watch criticises a Palestinian terrorist organisation.

Helena Eronen, a prominent member of the far-right political party the True Finns, wants members of minority groups to wear armbands for easy identification. She suggest a rainbow flag for gay people, a crescent for Muslims, and a hammer-and-sickle for Russians.

Read about it in Swedish at Österbottens Tidning.

A series of psychology studies suggests homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents.

I have made some work on the website that might require a reload if you’re a regular visitor. The new code is put in to make the website look better on mobile devices.

What Jack Cashill is saying is that those who kill minority people are the real victims.

“Santorum’s eyebrow-raising campaign statements about gays and lesbians included his comparisons of homosexuality to bestiality and same-sex marriage to 9/11 and terrorism, while vowing to decertify same-sex marriages in the United States should he become president,” the San Francisco Chronicle writes.

Gambian law makes any gay sexual act punishable with up to fourteen years imprisonment.

The film contains such people as the Holocaust-denying Robert Faurisson and the Jew-hating, conspiracy-theorist Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala.

And he is making a film about the Maccabees!!!

I need a drink.

Mitt Romney’s opposition to same-sex marriage puts him at odds with three of his most prominent donors.

Stupid people’s campaign against gay people runs into trouble in London! Let the have their fun. I suggest the Christian Right march through London singing, “We’re here, we’re stupid—get used to it!”

Two Muslim gay men tied the knot in France with the blessing of an imam.

Well, even idiots have the right to freely speak their deluded minds.

Big and fab?

This is not only a problem for the Israeli hotels, but for the whole of world Jewry. The majority of religious Jews are non-Orthodox but are treated as some bizarre minority. What most people don’t realise is that the modern-day Orthodoxy is a very modern phenomena.

The progressives do right to sue for discrimination.

I love this.

The Jewish day of rest is here, and I will take a nap. The past week has been one of some anxiety. I have applied for a new job that I really, really want, and I sent in an application with—in my opinion—good references, a nice CV, and a polite letter. I still don’t know for sure if I got the job, and it’s very frustrating not to know how it worked out. Anyhow, now it’s Shabbat, and I put these worldly worries to the side.

In short, this is what Bengt Westerberg writes in yet another article attacking Sweden’s Jewish minority. The subject matter is Jewish circumcision, which Westerberg want to make a criminal offense. To legitimise his own hatred of Jewish practice, Westerberg has read a book by Leonard Glick, who is a Jew but also one of America’s most fanatical anti-circumcision activists. Amongst other things, Glick is known for picketing hospitals and saying things like, “Circumcision is a fundamental evil.”

It’s become ever more clear to me that male circumcision has become to the atheist fanatics what abortion is to many Christian fundamentalists.

The really sad and depressing thing is that Bengt Westerberg has been given the job of heading the Swedish Government’s survey on racism and xenophobia. It’s a bit like asking the Syrian dictatorship to define human rights.

Read Westerberg’s article in Swedish here.

It seems odd to me that one of the threats is a one-state solution.

It’s hilarious that these naïve pro-terrorist activists don’t understand why they were treated as terrorist. They fly to the most democratic country in the Middle East to manifest their support of suicide bombers and rocket attacks against civilian Israelis.

Cute love story.

A new study suggests that opponents to same-sex marriage think it’s a threat to society but not to themselves. I think this is funny. These people see no reason why gay people’s marriages would harm them, but their favourite argument is that it would harm other people’s marriages.

Scientists hope a new cell treatment could eradicate the lethal virus from the body of a person living with HIV. Great news!

These God-fearing people are dissatisfied with God’s creation.

And here’s the latest slur from the Swedish Humanist Association. On it’s official blog, it proclaims that Jews who “cut off parts of their children’s genitalia” are xenophobes. Apparently, all children have the right to be brought up in accordance with mainstream culture, and pride in diversity is racism. Assimilation is the only way for a minority group not to violate their children’s rights.

The irony is that the only political party in Sweden to argue for a ban on the Jewish bris is the xenophobic, far-right, and über-jingoistic Sweden Democrats. But I’m not surprised. In my opinion, the Swedish Humanist Association is nothing but a group for posh xenophobes who hate multiculturalism.

“After the massacre of Jews in Toulouse, many people cried when seeing Miriam Monsonego’s little body wrapped in a white shroud,” Giulio Meotti writes. “But most Europeans looked the other way, and the United Nations, EU and the chattering classes all washed their hands of the Jewish blood.”

Homophobia kills.

If you—like me—take pleasure in other people’s failures, this is funny.

David Linden is right.

Man-on-man action is not allowed in the United Arab Emirates.

Maybe it’s a good thing he is about to lose the presidential election in France. The problem is that the other main candidates are mad, too.

After my latest criticism of the Swedish Humanist Association for its ongoing attack on Sweden’s Jewish minority, I received an email from a reader who wanted lecture me on human right. In short, he argues that there is no such thing as minority rights because all human rights are about individuals. Therefore, he argues, it is not a violation of anyone’s rights to ban Jewish circumcision. On the contrary, he says, it’s by allowing such a ritual a state violate its Jewish citizens the human rights award others.

This is the common defence from people who seek criminalisation of Jewish circumcision, Islamic clothing, ritual slaughter, religious schools, and whatever else makes a minority different from the majority. The case they make is that human rights demand assimilation.

They are wrong. Human rights are individual, but there are conventions specifically designed to protect the rights of individuals belonging to a minority group. One of these is the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Its Article 5 reads, “The Parties undertake to promote the conditions necessary for persons belonging to national minorities to maintain and develop their culture, and to preserve the essential elements of their identity, namely their religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage.”

The Jews are one of Sweden’s national minorities, so it would be a violation of the convention to ban Judaism’s most important tradition. This is why not a single nation in Europe has banned Jewish circumcision since the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Seen in green on the map above are the signatories of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

Tom Head writes about the difference between the two but missed what I think is the most obvious. Human rights are based on the idea that a human being enjoys some rights merely by being human. Civil liberties, on the other hand, are privileges humans award themselves.

These religious nutjobs are making it very easy for people to hate religion.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t believe anyone seriously think the Swedish minister is a racist based on this.

I like the History Learning Site’s definition: “Civil liberties are freedoms that are guaranteed to people to protect them from an over-powerful government.”

I guess Bengt Westerberg didn’t get enough attention for his anti-Jewish article in atheist magazine Sans, so he has sent it for publication on news website Newsmill. Read my comments here.

Update: Anna Ekström answers Westerberg at Newsmill.

It’s not easy to defend freedom of religion in Sweden. Far too many Swedes simply cannot see the value of defending religious practices outside the Lutheran mainstream. If you, like me, defend the rights of minorities, you get angry reactions from people. On several occasions, I have received death threats and been told to leave Sweden because of my outspoken defence of Jewish and Muslim customs. So, I’m not surprised to read this comment at Humanistbloggen. In short, the man argues that my “agenda” is determined by my ethnicity and sexual preferences—it’s my Jewishness and my homosexuality that make me stand up for the Jewish circumcision.

I realise that it’s meant to offend, but there might be some truth to it. I mean, I know what an uncircumcised penis smells like compared to a nice and clean circumcised one. The smell of smegma can make anyone look for a scalpel.

And it’s the gays’ fault.

Good news! Israel’s Masorti Movement has decided to approve the ordination of homosexual rabbis.

The Papal State is madder than normally. How dare these nuns disobey the Vicar of Christ by loving gay people!

Hannah Rosenthal, the American envoy to combat anti-Semitism, will meet with the mayor of Malmö.

Paul Oestreicher:

Jesus was a Hebrew rabbi. Unusually, he was unmarried. The idea that he had a romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene is the stuff of fiction, based on no biblical evidence. The evidence, on the other hand, that he may have been what we today call gay is very strong. But even gay rights campaigners in the church have been reluctant to suggest it.

And:

After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I felt I was left with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a century of my Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been homosexual.

Oh, this priest will be burned from two ends. The Christian orthodoxy and the militant secularists will both say he’s a heretic who is not a real Christian.

It’s Friday night!

Being openly gay in the Palestinian areas is impossible due to widespread and officially sanctioned homophobia, so gay Palestinians travel to Tel Aviv once amount for a secret party.

Rabbi Shmuli Yanklowitz has declared that he is a “proud ally with those of LGBT orientation.”

Some 48 people were injured in a train collision not far from where I used to have my office when I lived in Amsterdam.

It’s like watching Dumb and Dumber. The most popular candidate wants a 90% income tax, and the second most popular man wants to ban Islam.

Huffington Post has made a list. I think my personal favourite—if that’s the right word for it—is Bill O’Reilly warning to parent that their children might experiment with “alternative lifestyles” after watching “Glee” on television. Gee!

I’m not surprised by the result of this test. I’m a libertarian who dislikes government intervention as much as I like liberty. Find out whom you would vote for in the American presidential election in the 2012 Presidential Election Quiz.

PS! I know some of my American friends will thank God I’m not an American.

The Copenhagen Diocesan Council has decided to close sixteen churches. Christianity is having a tough time in Europe.

Venezuela’s de facto dictator Hugo Chávez is missing. Let’s hope he stays that way.

There is an ongoing debate in Sweden about male circumcision. Former leader of the Liberal Party, Bengt Westerberg, wrote on Newsmill that Jews ought to reconsider brit milah. I have now written a reply, which Newsmill published a few hours ago.

Read my article in Swedish at Newsmill.

A reader emailed me to ask why my sidebar contains links to websites like Angry Arab and World Net Daily, which obviously oppose everything I stand for. Well, the answer is that I link to websites I read on a regular basis, which are not necessarily websites I approve of. Angry Arab is written by a mad anti-Semite, and World Net Daily is insanely homophobic, but both are interesting to follow for people interested in extremism and xenophobia.

It’s an important gesture from President Obama. The gay victims of the Holocaust are often neglected.

Here’s another case of criminals who deserve harsh punishment for being stupid.

We need a separation between state and genitalia.

This is not far from what websites looked like back then.

“While the Arab spring has certainly unleashed democratic forces in the Middle East, including free and fair elections, it has yet to create fully fledged democracies,” Samer Libdeh writes. “Arab Christians have a tough task ahead in navigating the rough new political terrain but they must work hard to cultivate new alliances with emerging ethnic and religious elites to ensure that their rights and identities are adequately bulwarked as a matter of law—but also as a matter of practice.”

Intolerance against religious minorities is a growing trend in most of the world.

On the eve of Israel’s 64th Independence Day, the country’s population stands at 7,881,000.

“Libya, preparing for elections in June, has banned parties based on religion, tribe or ethnicity,” Reuters reports.

It’s probably a clever move, but I’m not sure it’s good for democracy to have rules like this.

Emi Kolawole:

Being a geek is all about your own personal level of enthusiasm, not how your level of enthusiasm measures up to others. If you like something so much that a casual mention of it makes your whole being light up like a halogen lamp, if hearing a stranger fondly mention your favorite book or game is instant grounds for friendship, if you have ever found yourself bouncing out of your chair because something you learned blew your mind so hard that you physically could not contain yourself—you are a geek.

Sixty-four years ago, the State of Israel was created in the Jewish homeland.

It’s been a whole year since I was in San Francisco. I miss the city.

Now, who are the racists?

J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year:

The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.

After many decades of dictatorship, Egypt’s election commission has released a final list of thirteen candidates eligible to run in next month’s presidential election.

Eurobonds would be good for Europe.

In an article in Swedish Christian newspaper Dagen, Peter Larsson writes, “Trying to solve the problems many gay people struggle with by attempting to erase what God did when he created us as man and woman is not a good solution.”

Who created gay people then? If you hold as true that God created humankind, than gay people were part of God’s creation. Trying to make gay people something else is dishonest.

Now I know the answer to one thing that has puzzled me for a while. Why has Bengt Westerberg, a former leader of Sweden’s Liberal Party, engaged himself in such an outspoken attack on the Jewish minority lately? Well, it turns out the Swedish Humanist Association’s nominating committee wants him on the board of this anti-religion organisation.

Read the document here (page 56).

“A national atheist organisation is demanding that a Rhode Island city remove a cross from a 91-year-old memorial,” World Net Daily reports.

If it’s true, it’s yet another example of atheists copying the worse aspect of religious fanaticism.

According to Freedom from Religion Foundation’s website, it’s true.

All religious homophobes should read this article.

A new poll suggests a positive trend in attitudes towards same-sex marriage.

Swedish circumcision debate is mirroring the American debate on abortion. Today, a group of four prominent anti-religion lobbyists writes in newspaper Göteborgs-Posten that Jewish circumcision ought to be criminalised. They argue that infant circumcision violates human rights and the Hippocratic oath. To illustrate the dangers of circumcision, the four authors exemplifies with a case where a newborn boy required hospital care after the surgery. Sure, every case of complications fallowing circumcision is bad, but how would criminalisation help Jewish and Muslim boys? Criminalizing infant circumcision wouldn’t stop people from being religious or traditional any more than criminalizing abortion would make heterosexual men and women abstain from sex. In both cases, the only result from criminalisation is more pain and suffering.

Done right by professionals, neither infant circumcision nor abortion need to be harmful. In fact, the greatest danger is criminalisation in itself.

It’s Friday night and Shabbat is here. I will spend a lot of the weekend clubbing. A private, queer nightclub in Malmö is celebrating its birthday.

I like the comment that reads, “A group of nearly 90% men sing ‘Where are the women?’ Oh, the irony.” It sums it up pretty well.

Read More

Read this article by Christopher Harrity.

When a father phoned in to a Cleveland radio show with concerns about his teenage daughter being gay, the host, Dominic Dieter, said, “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

Timothy Kincaid explains.

Bengt Westerberg, former leader of Sweden’s Liberal Party, has been elected member of the board of the atheist lobby group Swedish Humanist Association. Westerberg is known for his opposition to religious freedom.

Recently, Westerberg has written several articles demanding a ban on Jewish circumcision. Many Jews have been puzzled by Westerberg’s hostility towards Sweden’s Jewish minority. In a situation where hate crimes has become part of daily Jewish life, Westerberg has chosen to attack the victims by labelling them child abusers.

From Jerusalem Post:

Seventy-two percent would back an international strike, while just 14% would oppose it, and 14% did not express an opinion.

When asked whether they supported Israel taking action if the US declined, support was much lower. Only 45% said they would back an Israeli strike, 40% opposed this, and 15% had no opinion.

There are many problems with an attack on Iran. It’s unlikely that such an attack would pass without retribution. On the other hand, Iran has already attacked Israel many times over by supplying terrorist groups in Gaza and Lebanon with rockets and ammunition. Iran has also engaged in attempts to attack America and Saudi Arabia.

The madman just got madder.

Some—assumingly Christian—students walked out on Dan Savage during a speech about homophobia and biblical literacy. Now some right-wing nutjobs try to make Savage a bully.

This is quite informative. The atheists’ biggest problem, though, is their smug attitude towards objective truth.

Personally, I don’t care mush for traditional theism. I don’t believe there is a supernatural being in that sense. I do, however, believe that humankind is better off by holding fictional morality for true, which, I would say, is God to me.

Perhaps I’m overly cynical—it has been noted—and pessimistic about the world, but I think that there is no such thing as morality and decent behaviour without the belief in some supreme power. For many years, I tried to defend such a power without reference to God, but I failed. Without God—or some other form of fictional power—there would be nothing preventing us from harming people and behave as monsters. The idea of God, to me, is therefore one of decent behaviour, not of anthropomorphic divinity.

(Video via Humanistbloggen.)

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The Catholic Church is perhaps not too bad after all. I mean, paid leave for showing gay pornography…

I like this apology. But I think Savage makes a common mistake when he writes, “All Christians read the Bible selectively.” Perhaps it’s true for Christians, but for Jews, it’s very mush a matter of three millennia of interpretation. What is found in the Bible must be read through the Talmud and tons of responsa literature. Arguing about biblical law is pretty much what Judaism is about.

When searching the Internet for something completely different, I came across this painting by 17th-century artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It portrays Amor, the Greek god of desire and erotic lust.

The battle is on.

I think Paul Carr is on to something. Telling people about your addiction, no matter what it is, is the fist step to break the destructive behaviour. And it’s important for others, too. Addiction is so shameful to so many that it creates the illusion that addiction is a rare condition.

A news report from Eurojust suggests a booming slave trade.