It will take a few billion years, but our bellowed Milky Way is doomed.

(Photo credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger)

The Teletubbies are not gay, according to one Teletubby.

European politicians should listen to Mario Draghi.

Jonathan Romain is my kind of rabbi.

It’s Friday and I’m preparing for a 25-hour slumber.

I’ve added some new JavaScript to enable older versions of Internet Explorer to read this website’s HTML5 code properly. If there’s any problem, let me know.

By the way, if you’re one of those who still use IE8 or older, you really should get a new browser. But at least you’ll be able to enjoy Aqurette.com from now on.

This is absurd. The prison most likely to be the home of Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik for many years to come is planning to hire people to socialise with the killer.

“Prior cases categorizing statements that falsely impute homosexuality as defamatory per se are based on the flawed premise that it is shameful and disgraceful to be described as lesbian, gay or bisexual,” one judge says. That is correct.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and an outspoken campaigner against same-sex marriage, has given money to paedophile priests.

This would be good for Europe.

New strain of plant possesses same pain-relieving qualities without intoxicating.

Good for us.

Three Jews attacked by men with hammers.

Dear God!

Well, idiots make the world interesting.

Sweet progress.

There’s nothing the Pope hates more than love and civil liberties.

Almost three hundred members of the Mormon Church joined the gay pride march in Salt Lake City Cool.

Today, on 6 June, Sweden marks its National Day, commemorating the election of King Gustav Vasa in 1523. It’s not completely unproblematic. My home is Scania, or Skåne in Swedish and Danish. It is the southernmost part of Sweden and didn’t become part of kingdom until 1658. Our history is more closely linked to Denmark’s. No member of the House of Vasa ruled over Scania, and many in this part of Sweden feel it awkward to celebrate a man who had nothing whatsoever to do with this region’s history.

The thorny issue of same-sex marriage in California may be taken up by the US Supreme Court after appeal judges refused yesterday to revisit their earlier decision to overturn a ban on same-sex weddings, the Independent reports.

You could have had it for €366. A bargain.

Religion is so hot in Hollywood right now.

A few hours ago, another federal judge ruled that the so-called federal Defence of Marriage Act violates the American constitution.

From Tablet:

Roughly a year after Holland’s lower house passed a bill that required all animals killed for meat to be stunned, in violation of Jewish and Muslim law—leading Dutch Jews and Dutch Muslims to band together to oppose the legislation—the government has cut a deal that will permit ritual slaughter so long as the animal is stunned after 40 seconds if it is not yet dead.

A good compromise.

According to a new poll, 60 per cent of Americans say they have a family member or close friend who is gay.

Moscow city court has upheld a decision to turn down the LGBT activists’ request for permission to hold gay pride parades for the next 100 years!!! This is so unbelievably absurd. Russia is still a dictatorship.

From Times of Israel:

The world’s largest and most advanced “fortified hospital” was unveiled this week at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The 2,000 bed underground hospital is designed to keep patients and staff safe dozens of meters below ground even if missiles and rockets are falling above ground—in case the city ever faces the kind of attack it did during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. It is also designed to keep out chemical or biological weapons.

Hezbollah is not happy.

Yesterday, I visited the small village where I was born and took a photo of its church.

Horrific stories of an ongoing ecocide in Syria.

I love Tel Aviv!

Ephraim Tabory writes about the hostile environment.

This is great. Paul Singer has understood that gay rights is no leftist agenda.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer is a nice Jewish girl who likes her Rabbit vibrator.

There’s still hope for the Bush family.

It’s one of those big days for Apple fans.

I’m not surprised really. Putin can’t spell to human rights in any language.

Invited weekly guest has written Sweden’s official Twitter account for some time now, but I haven’t heard of a racist in charge of it until now.

Update: After reading the Twitter comments again, I think she really is an anti-Semite—just a women knowing nothing about Jewish people.

“To make healthy sperm, the testicles need to be a degree or two below body temperature, which is why evolution has seen to it that they hang outside in their own sac, where it’s cooler,” the Independent writes. “Tight Y-fronts risk reversing what millions of years of evolution have achieved.”

Keep ’em cool.

And by a big majority!

That’s a lot of money for nothing.

Two of America’s biggest bigots fight over who is the biggest bigot. Jesus!

We’ve come a long way when straight men posing as gay men is considered scandalous.

“Britain’s Supreme Court said on Thursday it has rejected an application by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to reopen his appeal against extradition to Sweden,” The Local reports.

It’s about time!

Sweet progress:

Last summer, gays in the military dared not admit their sexual orientation. This summer, the Pentagon will salute them, marking June as gay pride month just as it has marked other celebrations honoring racial or ethnic groups.

As part of my regular jury service, I’ve been in court listening to testimonies all week, which gave me very little time to blog. Anyhow, here are some news tips from my email inbox that I read today.

Norway’s Centre Party has decided it wants to ban so-called ritual circumcision, which is a popular derogatory description of Jewish and Muslim custom. It’s a way to make it seem barbaric. If one hated Norwegians, a good way to describe their seal hunting would be to depict it “ritual slaughter of baby seals”. The work ritual makes it seem so bad, doesn’t it? Like when the anti-abortion crowd scream about “ritual killing” when talking about women who terminate their pregnancies.

For the first time ever, a women has been ordained rabbi in American Orthodox Judaism. Great news. Gender discrimination is an insult to Judaism.

And finally, the leader of the Turkish movement that violently attacked Israeli soldiers a few years ago has been caught supporting Islamist terrorism. No surprise, really—but still!

A new survey of Scottish people suggests that almost two in three support equal marriage.

Britain now has its own Fred Phelps. Her name is Lisa Nolland. I bet we will hear more from this poo-obsessed nutjob. Religious bigots who say thing like this tend to make a career out of it. She is probably offered speaking engagements in America as this is written.

And they do this with a billboard! Oh, the irony.

Reason at its best.

Religious extremist with big beard and silly hat pledges war against modernity. This time in Israel, but it could just as well has been anywhere else where extremists are given too much power for their own good. The funny thing is that these people think the liberals are destroying religion. I’d say it’s the other way around.

As readers of my journal knows, I’m all for legal and safe circumcision of newborn Jewish and Muslim boys. But I can’t understand why the ultra-Orthodox insist on the unhygienic practice. This is the type of practice that only will benefit those who want to ban circumcision.

The Greek made a sane choice after all. But to save the European project long term, we need to talk about federalism. It’s that simple to me: either we go back to the nationalism that destroyed Europe for most of the post-Roman era, or we create a federal-style Europe where nation states share a democratically elected commission (senate).

Stinging is not good for the bee.

An interesting article in Der Spiegel.

Here’s the final result from yesterday’s general election in Greece. The Nazis and Communists still get an alarmingly amount of votes.

Kathimerini has an informative article on the Greek political parties in English.

I don’t like the idea of holding referendums on minority rights, but I suppose there is a fairly good chance the liberal Washington State will actually vote in favour of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Ah, the hypocrisy.

The bizarre thing is that many people in this country are now upset about wolves behaving like wolves. What else can you expect a wolf to do?

I like this:

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the gay agenda, but may not know what’s in it. Here’s what you do: Download a copy of the United States Constitution, read it. Everything the LGBT community wants is in there.

So true.

The war on drugs is not going well. It’s not good for anyone.

“Militants crossed from Egypt’s turbulent Sinai Peninsula into southern Israel on Monday and opened fire on civilians building a border security fence,” Associated Press reports.

One extremist group greets another. Disgusting.

I watched Midnight Express (1978) on television last night. I’ve seen the film before, but it was many years ago, and perhaps I was then too young to appreciate Brad Davis’s beauty. I remembered the film mostly for its homoerotic shower scene and the sadistic prison guards.

After I saw the film last night, I searched the Internet for information about Davis. He never really became the big actor he deserved to be because he chose gay roles. Homosexuality in Hollywood in the 1970s was deeply closeted and an actor with a gay rumour most likely ended his career. After reading about Brad Davis, I realise he was one of the pioneers who stood up for gay rights when no one else did. It ended badly for him, but it’s because if people like him gay people of today enjoy the liberties we have.

Read about Brad Davis here.

This is the reason I’m an insomniac nowadays. Since September 2010, I’ve lived next to a large construction site. It’s only a few metres from my flat and the room I use as office. The noise begins at six o’clock in the morning and goes on until ten o’clock in the evening, six days a week. Sunday is the only day I can really sleep. But I like the new house, which is to host the local police and the district court.

Here is what it looked like before.

Human-rights activists are routinely being harassed in Uganda, AFP reports.

Bizarre but beautiful—and Shia LaBeouf in the nude.

It’s the video to Icelandic group Sigur Rós’s song “Fjögur píanó” from their new album Valtari.

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It’s the fifth season of True Blood.

Pink News reports:

If passed, the Ukrainian Law 8711 would prohibit the promotion of homosexuality in the media. It has drawn international criticism with warnings that it would impinge on the rights of citizens, endanger those bodies working in Ukraine to protect human rights and hinder HIV prevention and treatment efforts.

Marcus Urban will tweet against the bill at @AllOut.

Gay and Jewish activists protested the arrival of Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Rio de Janeiro.

Despicable behaviour.

This man has to be the biggest drama queen ever.

But they’ve toned it down a bit. The language about putting gay people to death is now gone. Lifetime imprisonment for loving a member of your own gender is so much more humane.

Jace Lacob is a fan of Scandinavian crime.

So says Andrew Mitchell.

This is so bizarre. To ban the “promotion of homosexuality” is like banning the “encouragement of dark-coloured skin”. But then Uganda in 2012 is like 1220 to the rest of the world.

Yossi Käyhkö moved to Israel.

This could be great.

Midsummer is a big thing in Sweden. It’s one of the most important holidays in the calendar, mainly because it gives Swedes an excuse to drink tons of alcohol and behave really badly. The biggest day in this two-day holiday is tomorrow, on Midsummer Eve. Family and friends get together and eat fish and strawberries. Crazy traditionalists dance around like frogs circling the maypole. It’s legalised insanity. But so are most ethnical holidays, and this is the Swedish example of that.

Anyhow, my father-in-law is visiting and tomorrow we’re off to celebrate Midsummer with my parents at my family’s summerhouse. In other words, there will little or no blogging in the next few days.

(Photo by Mikael Häggström.)

Patrik Lindenfors, a vocal spin-doctor at the Swedish Humanist Association, is unhappy about an article by five priests in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, in which they criticise the militant atheists’ campaign for a ban on minority custom. Lindenfors replies rhetorically, “Since when did it become xenophobic to assert universal human rights for all people?”

The answer is simple. It becomes xenophobic when “human rights for all” becomes synonymous to “everyone be forced to adapt to us”. This is especially the case when this self-centred narcissism is the only argument against a practice. When militant secularists demand a ban on Islamic clothing or Jewish circumcision, it’s about xenophobia.

Now I’m off to see some atheists dancing like frogs. It’s Midsummer Eve and time to ridicule the silly heathenish, part-time Christians. Imagine what a sad place this would be with universal ban on everything not understood by the majority. Dancing like frogs at the maypole would be the first thing to go.

Obama has phoned Egypt’s newly elected Islamist president. Meanwhile, the ultra-fascist Hamas hopes the win will help their cause.

This is cute.

As always, European media ignores this.

Nick Cohen has written a great column at the Observer.

The Guardian has made a gallery.

The Daily Mail making a big thing about dogs being made into food in China. Personally, I’m more upset about the complete ignorance Europeans often show when confronted with other cultures. In China, people eat dogs. In Europe, people eat pig. To many, it’s equally disgusting.

“Gad Beck, an anti-Nazi Zionist resistance fighter and the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died on Sunday in Berlin,” Jerusalem Post reports. ”He passed away in a senior citizens’ home six days before his 89th birthday, which would have been on June 30.”

Popeye was right.

“Madonna has a cleanup team sweep her tour dressing rooms after shows for bits of hair, skin, and spit the singer might have left behind so that fans cannot get ahold of her DNA,” Jason Kottke writes.

A circumcised penis is not only better looking; it’s also less likely to take up HIV.

A new study shows what I already knew:

A study published in February by the American Journal of Public Health found that gay men in Massachusetts were in better physical and mental health after that state became the first to recognise same-sex marriage in 2003. Researchers examined the medical records of 1,211 gay and bisexual men who went to “a large, community-based health clinic” in a “large metropolitan city” and compared the patients’ use of medical services before and after the law went into effect.

Tali Farkash writes about a visit to San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, which I visited myself about a year ago.

The anti-circumcision lobby has won a victory in a German district court. I wouldn’t be too worried. It’s one thing to persuade a small court; it’s something altogether different to persuade a higher court to ban Judaism’s most sacred tradition. A ban would be nothing short of a ban on Judaism and Jewish life.

Update: More at Jerusalem Post.

No, they need to get over it.

The target this time was the small town of Netivot.

Good advice.

Economics experts from across Europe released a report yesterday offering a roadmap to a stable euro. I like it.

“If a judge can attack Judaism as well as Islam head on in this manner without fear of the consequences, then perhaps a tipping point may have been reached in German society that may have serious consequences for the long-term viability of Jewish life in the country and Western Europe,” Jonathan S. Tobin writes. And he is right!

No wonder, a ban would in effect make it illegal to practice Judaism and Islam. For Jews, circumcision has kept our people alive in the Diaspora for two millennia.

History might soon repeat itself, to the cheer of Sweden’s militant atheists. Bigoted lunatics!

It seems unavoidable that every generation finds some excuse to harass and humiliate Jews. First, we had the Ancient Greeks who banned circumcision, which inspired Paul when he created Christianity. Then we had the Inquisition, the blood libels, and the conspiracy theories. Then Hitler turned anti-Semitism into a racism; backed up by propaganda portrays of the evil Jew who torture animals and conspire against the Aryan Christians. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Stalin banned Jewish circumcision because it violated his vision of a secular society.

In contemporary Europe, Jews are simultaneously attacked because we are made responsible for everything Israel does in the Middle East and because we don’t want to give up our Jewish heritage in Europe. We are trapped. Either we give up our Jewishness or we make aliyah.

Europe has oppressed its Jews for two millennia with various, but similar, pseudo-excuses in every generation. The latest excuse is in fact the oldest one there is. Circumcision has been a popular excuse for anti-Semitism since the Revolt of the Maccabees in 160 BCE. The Cologne court that ruled Jewish circumcision illegal is acting in accordance with its own xenophobic tradition. It’s a sad spectacle to see the religious freedom fought for during the Enlightenment go up in flames simply because people with little or no knowledge of Judaism and circumcision assume they have the right to strip Jews of our basic human rights.

I was born in Sweden, and I love Europe, but I begin to think that I have no future here. It saddens me greatly.

Hear! Hear!

I took a long walk this evening and saw the sunset over Öresund, the narrow channel between southern Sweden and Denmark.

At least in Google’s experience. Strange.

To no surprise to anyone outside radical atheist or Islamophobic circles, the greatest challenge for Arab women is not religion but the lack of economic and social development.

This is bad. A Tunisian appeals court has ruled to uphold a seven-year sentence for a man convicted of blasphemy for posting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.

Makes me proud of the Jewish homeland.

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Brian Palmer of Slate has written an informed answer to that question. From the article:

Circumcision was uniquely associated with Jews in first-century Rome, even though other ethnic and religious groups practiced it. Romans wrote satirical poems mocking the Jews for taking a day off each week, refusing to eat pork, worshipping a sky god, and removing their sons’ foreskin. It is, therefore, neither surprising that early Christian converts sought advice on whether to adopt the practice of circumcision nor that Paul made it the focus of several of his famous letters.

Nothing much has changed since Roman time. In the article “The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome” (2001), Frederick M. Hodges—himself an anti-circumcision activist—writes that the ancient Greeks and Romans linked Jewish circumcision to “concepts of primitiveness, barbarity, backwardness, superstition, and oppression”. This is precisely what anti-circumcision activists do now. The debate has been the same for more than two millennia.

Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has issued the following statement:

Circumcision of newborn male children is a core religious rite of Judaism, practiced by Jews around the world. The decision by a district court in Cologne, Germany, to deem non-medical circumcision a crime places an intolerable burden on the free exercise of religion by Jews and also by Muslims who practice male circumcision as part of their religious faith.

We support the call by the Central Council of Jews in Germany for the German parliament to quickly pass legislation specifically protecting circumcision as a religious practice. Germany’s commitment to religious freedom requires nothing less.

We hope and believe the German parliament will have the political will to do so. Germany has dedicated itself to re-building Jewish life, and the consequences of a ban on circumcision would be a devastating blow to the future of the Jewish community. While the ruling by the court in Cologne does not appear to have anti-Semitic intent, its effect is to say “Jews are not welcome.”

I agree. To Europe’s secularists and Christians, this is only about what they consider a meaningless surgery, but to Jews throughout the world, it’s a matter of survival. There is no room for compromise. If we cant make our boys truly Jewish our people is dead in a generation.

It’s not easy being Jewish in Europe nowadays. In Germany, a district court tried to outlaw circumcision this week, and in Sweden, kosher food is expensive because no government has removed the ban on shechita, a law inspired by Hitler’s propaganda in the 1930s! But so far, no one has suggested a ban on Shabbat, although I’m pretty sure it will come. It will most likely be labelled a selfish and dangerous indoctrination of innocent Jewish children who wish for nothing more than being Gentiles. Give it time and the militant extremists will find some way to bring the mediaeval Shabbat-ban into this century.