“Russia’s upper house of parliament has approved President Putin’s request for Russian forces to be used in Ukraine,” BBC News reports.
It’s a scary thought, but it seems Europe is once again heading towards war.
I don’t know if this is true, but considering Putin’s human-rights record, I think it just might be. Anyone protesting the Tsar Putin has reasons to fear for his or her life.
(Photo via tweet by Time’s Moscow reporter Simon Shuster.)
Andrew O’Hagan: “He is thin-skinned, conspiratorial, untruthful, narcissistic, and he thinks he owns the material he conduits.”
Even more bizarre is the working tile of Assange’s book: Ban This Book: From Swedish Whores to Pentagon Bores.
Not everyone was happy with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s decision to veto a bill permitting businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians, but Judson Phillips may have had the most outrageous reaction. In an email and blog post titled “Tyranny, the loss of liberty and Arizona’s SB 1062,” the Tea Party Nation president outlined the devastating effect Brewer’s decision will have on Arizona and society as a whole. He also revealed (shocker) that he’s never been to a same-sex wedding because he is under the impression that they are some sort of cross between an orgy and a trashy bachelorette party. According to Phillips, Brewer has essentially sold Arizona Christians into slavery. Without a law protecting discrimination, bakers will be forced to “create a cake for a homosexual wedding that has a giant phallic symbol on it,” and photographers will have to “photograph a homosexual wedding where the participants decide they want to be nude or engage in sexual behavior.” Other religious groups aren’t obligated to put up with such obscenity! “Would they force a Jewish photographer to work a Klan or Nazi event?” he asked. “How about forcing a Muslim caterer to work a pork barbeque dinner?”
“Attacking the EU would appear to be the safest way for any politician to win votes,” Ylva Elvis Nilsson writes in the EU Observer.
She is right. Populists throughout Europe bash the EU and use widespread ignorance to make the case that their country would be better off without the union—while somehow keeping the benefits of the EU intact. The problem with the EU is not the union in itself but rather the lack of federal structure. The citizens of member states should be allowed to elect their representative in the commission, and the Council of Ministers should be more transparent with open debates.
BBS reports that Aleksander Vitko, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet chief, threatens Ukraine with a full assault if they did not surrender by dawn tomorrow.
Vladimir Putin: “We will not go to war with the Ukrainian people. If we do take military action, it will only be for the protection of the Ukrainian people.”
Great news:
The second large study to look at whether people with HIV become non-infectious if they are on antiretroviral therapy (ART) has found no cases where someone with a viral load under 200 copies/ml transmitted HIV, either by anal or vaginal sex.
Statistical analysis shows that the minimum likely efficacy of successful HIV treatment in reducing the chance of transmitting HIV was 99% for any anal sex and 96% for anal sex with ejaculation where the HIV-negative partner was receptive; but the true efficacy is likely to be nearer to 100% than this.
Vladimir Isachenkov writes:
In some ways, the venue Vladimir Putin chose and the emotional lecture he gave the world about Russia’s actions in Ukraine said it all.
In an hour-long chat with a handful of Kremlin pool reporters at his presidential residence, Putin sat in an easy chair and spoke with the bravado of an ex-KGB agent suspicious of Western plots.
Wagging his finger at the reporters, the defiant leader dismissed the threat of U.S. and European Union sanctions, alleged that “rampaging neo-Nazis” dominate Ukraine’s capital, and said the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers locked in a standoff in Crimea are actually “brothers in arms.” A look at Putin’s appearance and what it says about the crisis and him.
In a perverted sort of way, Putin’s cold-war mentality is amusing—had it not been for the fact that he has one of the world’s largest armies at his disposal. As was the case with Soviet leaders, he rambles on about Nazis not realizing that he himself has far more in common with real-world Nazis than most of his opponents. Not least the bashing of gay people and the tormenting of religious minorities.
Read Vladimir Isachenkov’s article in full at Huffington Post.
From Long Beach Press Telegram:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday compared recent actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine to those implemented by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s.
Putin’s desire to protect minority Russians in Ukraine is reminiscent of Hitler’s actions to protect ethnic Germans outside Germany, she said.
The secondary legislation needed for same-sex marriages to commence in England and Wales passed the House of Commons yesterday evening, Pink News reports. Good news!
“A radical gene therapy to combat HIV using genetically modified cells that are resistant to the virus has been declared a success by scientists following the first clinical trial,” the Guardian reports.
Dori Caspi has made a beautiful collection of photographs of the nearly extinct Himba tribe in Africa. From an interview with the photographer:
Do you consider your work political in its focus on societies that face danger of extinction?I can draw a clear and conscious separation between the inner place from which I photograph—the energetic source to my art—and the meaning and connotations which might arise from my work. My art is not political, nor does it carry ideological flags. My urge to photograph arrives, first to all, from an artistic, esthetic and emotional place. Saying that, I am fully aware to the importance of my work in the documentary aspect. I have no doubt that on historical time dimension, the Himba, like the Omo Valley tribes, are in the last minute of their existence as traditional tribal societies. The changes which these tribes are going through, those enforced and those at will, are powerful and swift more than ever before. Roads are being broken into the tribes isolated regions, their lands are being given to huge corporates, and cellular communication is arriving at their huts. These days, almost all tribesmen walk around with cellular hanging on their chests. This is not the beginning of the end. This is end itself, and in some sad way—my art documents its last moments.
View the pictures here.
Getty Images has opened its photo archives for social media and non-commercial blogs by allowing people to embed images. It’s a great service that I’m sure will benefit many photographers as well. Seen below is an example, a beautiful picture of Jerusalem.
“According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, a record high of 59 percent of Americans now support marriage equality,” Think Progress reports.
Read more about it at Washington Post.
“A central Stockholm high school with special classes for Jewish pupils was covered in Nazi graffiti on Monday morning, leaving a parent in tears and fearing the rise of fascism in Europe,” The Local writes.
“A journalist with British and Swedish nationality has been killed in Afghanistan,” BBC News reports.
Nils Horner worked for the Swedish Radio.
The head of the World Jewish Congress urges Swedish authorities to redouble security around Jewish sites after recent attacks. He is absolutely right.
“The enthusiastic rehabilitation of Boy George after he served time for a vicious attack says much about our disregard for male victims of violence,” writes Patrick Strudwick.
He is right. Male victims of violence are treated poorly due to society’s perception of men as perpetrators only.
Two men living together in a small village in western Sweden were targeted in a third apparently homophobic attack on Wednesday.
If any Swede were under the impression that homophobia was a thing of the past, this shows that bigotry is still with us.
“From the beginning of the culture’s own self-consciousness, to be Jewish was to be Bookish,” Simon Schama writes in his new book The Story of the Jews. I like that.
Purim begins tonight, so what better day to link to Helen Webberley’s article on Rembrandt and the Purim story.
Seen above is the painting Haman Begging Esther for Mercy (ca 1635) by Rembrandt (1606–1669).
A new law outlaws taking pictures without permission of everyone in the photograph. In an era where everyone has a smartphone with a high-quality camera, this law is very bizarre.
He has given up cannabis and made a new album. Good for him.
“George Soros, one of the world’s leading investors, has warned that the European Union is in danger of falling apart if it fails to confront Vladimir Putin’s naked aggression in Ukraine,” The Daily Beast reports.
Soros delivers a new prediction of the EU’s downfall on a daily basis now. It could have something to do with his new book on the subject. Problem is that there’s a list of deal-breaking issues that he says will break up the EU. Only a few days ago, it was the euro that would break Europe apart. Personally, I believe the EU will survive both the current debt crisis and Putin’s lunacy.
ABC News reports on Russian reactions to US sanctions. Fascists don’t care about sanctions. To them, it’s all about confrontation.
This just might be one if those days that will be with us forever. A bit like 28 June 1914, the day when a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. It didn’t seem that important at the time, but it would later be singled out as the spark that led to the First World War, which killed more than ten million men of several nationalities.
Today, Russia officially annexed Crimea in southern Ukraine after about two weeks of military occupation and a fake referendum. Europe suddenly feels a bit a colder. Brrr!
The new coin, which will be introduced in 2017, is said to be the most secure in circulation in the world.
I had a meeting with my supervisor at Lund University this afternoon and we set the deadline for my Master’s essay to 22 April. The essay will be debated at a philosophy seminar on 13 May. It feels strange to have a real deadline for a project I have been thinking about for more than two years. The working title of my essay is “Applied Freedom of Religion” (Tillämpad religionsfrihet in Swedish).
The liberal D66 has overtaken the Social Democrats as the biggest party in Amsterdam.
Rabbi Reuven Hammer has written a great article for the Jerusalem Post demanding the abolishment of Israel’s Vatican-like Chief Rabbinate.
Emily Timbol: “Fred Phelps may be dead, but homophobia sure as hell isn’t.”
I like Rabbi Michael Bernstein’s approach to science:
Science is our best means of deepening our understanding and encounter with the fabric of the universe. The stuff of which even we are made. However, we also seek to know what is meaningful about our encounters with each other, our world and even ourselves. Religion and religious traditions provide us with frameworks to respond meaningfully to the mysteries before us.
As human beings, we are stuck with our languages in understanding objective reality. Religion is one such language.
From The Local:
A Swedish expert invited by the government to speak at the release of its white paper on Roma discrimination was on Tuesday denied entry to the breakfast room at Stockholm’s Sheraton hotel. She had to drink her coffee in the lobby.
It’s sad that this blunt racism still exists.
The sun is disappearing outside my window and Shabbat is here. There has not been much blogging in the past week, and I think there will be even less in the weeks to come. I’m working hard on my essay on religious freedom, which now has a set deadline for 22 April. The lack of time for blogging is a direct consequence of my diminished interest in current affairs. All my energy is now reserved for my essay.
Shabbat Shalom!
From Politico:
Voucher programs in more than a dozen states draw on the public treasury to help students pay for private schools. Typically, 70 percent or more of participating schools are religious, and among them are creationist schools that train students to reject and refute the cornerstones of modern science. Here’s a look at course descriptions, textbooks and assignments from some of those schools.
This is my favourite. From a science workbook made by Accelerated Christian Education:
Read the word and its definition; then underline the sentence that uses the word correctly.
CREATIONIST: Creationist means a scientist who believes in Creation.
a. The freezing rain fell from the Creationist.
b. Many scientists today are Creationists.AUTHORITY: Authority means power.
a. God has all authority.
b. I found a new authority on my birthday.
It’s sad to see how some people abuse not only science, bur religion, too. I’m all in favour of religious schools for those who wish to send their children to one, but it still strikes me as absurd that some religious folks are so set upon fighting science that they prefer lying to their children.
A picture of a spiral galaxy over 150 million light-years away.
(Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Florida Institute of Technology.)
I’m not sure why, but the last Sunday in March, when Sweden and the rest of the EU enters summer time by setting clocks an hour ahead of the standard time, I always gets this feeling that summer is really here. So, in a few hours, summer is officially here. To prepare for this moment I have thrown my worn-out winter coat in the rubbish bin.
A historic moment in Britain—in pictures.
Apparently, 10 per cent of Danish children are conceived while their parents are on holiday. This has inspired a Danish package-holiday company to make some sexy advertising.
“The assault took place in Helsingborg, southern Sweden, on Sunday afternoon before a match between Stockholm’s Djurgården and Helsingborg,” The Local reports. “Witnesses have said that the attacker was a man in his mid-forties, and that the assault was unprovoked.”
Football hooliganism is one of those social phenomena that I never will understand. If you like to combine violence and sport, why not go for boxing?
No real surprise, British anti-EU xenophobe Nigel Farage is an idiot, but it’s still fascinating how some extremists openly admire undemocratic bullies whilst bashing democratic leaders.
The European Union is under attack from all sides, Hans Kundnani writes.
But that might be because people don’t see appreciate the EU as the anti-utopian utopian project it is.
