“Local politicians in the town of Jönköping have asked police to retract a demonstration permit to neo-Nazis,” The Local reports.

I fully understand that people feel sick to their stomach when Nazis are marching through their town, but the best way to fight fascism and undemocratic movements is to give them the same rights and freedoms they wish to take away from others. Free speech is fundamental to our democratic society. And it goes both ways—so let the Nazis know how much you dislike their ideology.

“Acclaimed French lesbian film Blue Is the Warmest Colour is under attack in Russia for ‘promoting homosexuality’ in minors,” Pink News reports.

I’ve been doing my jury duty today, and whilst on a break, I enjoyed the sunny weather and the magnificent view from the courthouse rooftop. To the north (above), a new skyline is taking form with the construction of several tall-rising buildings; and to the south (below), we have the parts of the harbour and the mediaeval castle that once was the home of Danish kings. Seen in the background is the Øresund Bridge that links Malmö to Copenhagen. Malmö is not the biggest city in the world, but it’s dynamic and beautiful.

British Prime Minister David Cameron:

The introduction of same-sex civil marriage says something about the sort of country we are. It says we are a country that will continue to honour its proud traditions of respect, tolerance and equal worth. It also sends a powerful message to young people growing up who are uncertain about their sexuality. It clearly says ‘you are equal’ whether straight or gay.

Conservatism’s come a long way since Section 28.

Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, has written a new book predicting the end of capitalism. The Huffington Post has published one chapter of it. A quote that says it all:

We are so used to thinking of the capitalist market and government as the only two means of organizing economic life that we overlook the other organizing model in our midst that we depend on daily to deliver a range of goods and services that neither market nor government provides. The Commons predates both the capitalist market and representative government and is the oldest form of institutionalised, self-managed activity in the world.

The contemporary Commons is where billions of people engage in the deeply social aspects of life. It is made up of literally millions of self-managed, mostly democratically run organisations, including educational institutions, healthcare organisations, charities, religious bodies, arts and cultural groups, amateur sports clubs, producer and consumer cooperatives, credit unions, advocacy groups, and a near endless list of other formal and informal institutions that generate the social capital of society.

This is nothing new. Growing up in Europe with all its utopian socialists have feed me with similar ideas from the day I was born. But the problem with all this is that no one who advocates capitalism has ever said defined the free market in these narrow terms. On the contrary, it’s mostly people who want government solutions that favour a system without idealistic and voluntary work. Capitalism ensures a system where people—let’s call it the Contemporary Commons—are free to do what the wish with their time, efforts, and money. I think Rifkin is the type of person that really is a libertarian at heart but has been fooled by the popular defamation of the free market.

It is hard to examine the effects of a medicine when that medicine has little or no active ingredient, The Economist explains.

The Oxford Dictionary defines homoeopathy as “a system of complementary medicine in which ailments are treated by minute doses of natural substances that in larger amounts would produce symptoms of the ailment”.

In other words, urinary incontinence could be cured with a glass of water.

The image is fake, but still says something about our time.

From a tweet by Rishad Tobaccowala.

I watched the British debate on Europe between Europhobic Nigel Farage and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. The most disturbing thing was the openly xenophobic rhetoric by Farage. Skin colour and language skills are apparently what matters the most to this man. But the polls show that the islanders loved it:

• Guardian ICM poll says 69% say Farage won, 31% Clegg.
• YouGov says 68% say Farage won, 27% Clegg.

So sad!

Not a poll to take too seriously, but it’s a light in the dark.

This is quite fun.

“Right-wing populist parties from the Nordic countries are set to take different political paths after the European elections in May,” EU Observer writes.

It’s a sad fact in itself that there are now several groups for extremists to pick from, but it’s sadder still that the Sweden Democrats are looking towards a likely coalition between France’s National Front and the Dutch Freedom Party, both openly racist and fascist. However, the optimist in me wants to see this as an expected reaction to the immense success of European unification in the past six decades. Looking at the debate in America, there are striking similarities between the Republican debate on border control, decentralisation, and smaller federal government. The problem in Europe, however, is that so much of the debate in key member states is focused on the whether or not the EU should exist instead of a healthy and constructive debate on how to move forward. I absolutely agree with the Eurosceptic who want less centralisation and bureaucracy in the EU, but to me this entails a federal structure where nation states have a bigger say but are bound to respect open borders within the single market and the decisions made by the supranational institutions.

Quentin Letts’s column about yesterday’s debate between Farage and Clegg is quite funny and spot on—a mixture of analysis and insults:

Perhaps the most shocking disclosure of the evening came when, in a passage about how you needed to be 57 to have had a vote in the last Europe referendum, Mr Farage told us that today will be his 50th birthday. He is only 50? Jeepers. He looks well north of that. Beer and fags not so great for the ageing process, perhaps.

The Economist has a map of Putin’s pipelines. It’s a sad reality that, for now, Europe can’t do without Russian gas.

I don’t know if James Lovelock is right or wrong, but it’s refreshing with sceptics when everyone seems so certain about a theory.

Clemens Wergin, foreign editor of German newspaper Die Welt, has written a piece for the New York Times about why Israel no longer trusts Europe:

It is striking that Europe always comes to the Israelis with demands for concessions when it has itself such a bad track record at helping resolve problems in the region. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the European Union agreed to police the Rafah crossing in order to help prevent weapons smuggling. But it essentially abandoned the mission two years later. After the 2006 Lebanon war, European nations took over large parts of the United Nations mission to prevent weapons smuggling to Hezbollah. On their watch the terrorist group acquired tens of thousands of new and more sophisticated rockets. If the Europeans were honest with themselves, they would admit that some of their long-held assumptions didn’t pass the reality test.

Andrew Sullivan:

What we’re seeing across the continent is a rejection of the political class that defends the EU and represents EU austerity and cosmopolitanism. It’s not terribly pretty—but in too many ways, the European establishment has played its hand with the usual deftness of the arrogant and the cocooned.

Laura C. Mallonee:

The Vatican Apostolic Library has announced it will digitise all 82,000 manuscripts in its 135 collections with the help of a Japanese IT company. That’s 41 million pages spanning nearly 2,000 years of church history that will soon be clickable, zoomable, and presumably, printable. When all is said and done, you’ll be able to read the Psalms handwritten across 13th-century vellum on your iPhone—so long as you speak ancient Greek.

In Judaism, a Torah portion is assigned for every week. This week, it’s Leviticus 14:1–15:33, which is about uncleanness. The obsession over cleanness is reoccurring throughout Jewish history. Mikva—the pool of water used for ritual baths—is far more important to Jewish communities than synagogues. In many ancient settlements, the only remaining trace of Jewish life is the community mikva.

Shabbat Shalom!

“Federal judge Timothy Black says he’ll strike down Ohio’s constitutional ban on recognizing same-sex marriages but won’t mandate that Ohio begin performing such unions,” the Advocate reports.

Thousands of dollars in pricey lingerie were stolen from Madonna. This has to be the big news of the day. How will she cope with this loss, I wonder?

(Yes, I know that people say bra, but the full-length brassiere sound so filthy—so very Moulin Rouge.)

“The European Central Bank over the next months will consider various options of ‘quantitative easing’—also known as money printing—to counter a very low inflation rate,” EU Observer reports.

Considering how low inflation is in the Eurozone, it might be a good idea to allow for member states to ease the economic austerity they are subjected to.

The anti-EU movement is Germany is far smaller than its counterparts on France, Britain, and the Netherlands, but there are striking similarities.

A Chinese search ship has detected an electronic pulse in an area of the southern Indian Ocean where a Malaysian Airlines aeroplane went missing about a month ago. Fascinating stuff.

Read more about it at Mail Online.

In a comment to this bizarre story reported by Wonkette, a reader writes, “Cake making is apparently more interesting than I originally thought, I had no idea it involved watching the couple have sex.”

In the article, the pastor attacks the younger Christians who “are weary of pitched cultural battles and are longing for the ‘real Jesus’—a Jesus who talks more about washing feet and feeding the poor than flashpoint issues like same-sex marriage and the sanctity of life.” Ironically, Jesus said absolutely nil about same-sex marriage—but this has still become one of those core issues on which conservative Christians define themselves. But no one can blame Jesus for the violent homophobia that is now synonymous with the kind of Christianity that Darling represents.

This is a fascinating story. Pastor Ryan Bell has decided to suspend his belief in God to see what atheism is all about. And there are people willing to support his experiment by raising 19,000 dollars!

“Non-pork options for Jewish and Muslim students will no longer be offered in school menus in towns where the far-right National Front party won local elections,” Forward reports.

Today, 7 April 2014, it’s precisely fourteen years sine I bought the domain name “aqurette.com”. I began to blog a few months after that, but due to a data loss in a change of server host, the diary archive only goes back to August 2005. It still bugs me that I lost my first years of blogging, but I guess that those entries would be even more embarrassing to read now than the ones that are still available. What I realise every time I browse through older entries is that my interests and priorities have changed over the years. This is the great thing about being a long-time diarist: the documentation of personal development. In the day-to-day experience, it’s easy to be blind to these changes. Human beings are not fixed object but evolving personalities.

Seen above is one of the mastheads that has appeared on this website over the years.

“Hungarians have handed centre-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban another four years in power,” Daily Telegraph reports.

Carl Bildt: What else is in Putin’s heart?

Ashley Feinberg of Gizmodo has written an interesting piece about religion apps.

Katrina Trinko:

The disagreement over same-sex marriage is not about bigotry toward anyone. It’s about what marriage is. Many people, whether by reason of religious beliefs or secular traditional views, see the institution of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

The same thing could be said about the once intense opposition to interracial marriage.

“The Church of Norway has voted not to allow gay couples to be married by its priests in normal church services,” The Local reports.

All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.

“The EU court in Luxembourg has struck down a law on internet and phone surveillance, saying its loose wording opens the door to untoward snooping on private lives,” EU Observer reports. Good news!

This video is probably fake, but it’s fun nonetheless.

Read More

Her name is Valeria Lukyanova.

Cerberus, a monstrous watchdog with three heads, which, according to Greek mythology, guarded the entrance to Hades, the land of dead. Here portrayed by English artist William Blake (1757–1827).

This month, less than one in ten Internet users used Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s web browser. Ten years ago, 84.7% used Internet Explorer and Microsoft’s arrogance towards consumers and competitors was staggering. Back then, everyone had to comply to Microsoft’s standards, now, no one cares about its lame attempts to neglect recommendations and standards by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Today’s most important investigation.

Finally, an opportunity to post an entry dealing with both royalty and homosexuality!

The Economist: “Worldwide only 43% of murders result in someone being put behind bars.”

To avoid being murdered, you should be a woman living outside the Americas and Africa.

Picture by Willy Horsch of an old Torah scroll from Glockengasse Synagogue in Cologne, Germany. Nazis destroyed the synagogue during the Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938. Miraculously, the scroll survived in a condition good enough to be repaired. The city’s opera house now stands where the synagogue once stood.

In an article published by the homophobic website World Net Daily, professional homophobe Matt Barber writes:

Average folks have finally begun to recognise that America’s “progressive” power class of cultural Marxists and left-wing statists really intends, and always has, to subjugate ideological dissenters through abject inequality and intolerance, while demanding blind obedience to an anti-Christian, sexual-anarchist, socio-political agenda.

After this self-pitying victimhood, Barber moves on to defame gay people:

So, America, here’s a refresher. Homosexuality 101: The central, defining feature of homosexuality is same-sex sodomy, a filthy practice—both from a moral and biological standpoint—that spreads disease, ruins lives and mocks both God and nature. […] In short, these sexually confused and spiritually lost souls, particularly males caught-up in this lifestyle, can only “consummate” a counterfeit “gay marriage” through the squalid, unnatural and feculent misuse and abuse of both the reproductive and digestive systems.

The homophobes’ obsession with anal sex is fascinating. Linking same-sex marriage and male homosexuality to dirt and faeces is repeated in homophobic rhetoric throughout the world—from the extreme right of Barber’s America to the rallies in favour of genocide in Uganda. For these people, anal sex is the “defining feature of homosexuality”, when, in reality, this sexual practice is not exclusively gay. In fact, it’s quite popular amongst heterosexuals:

The report, titled “Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction and Sexual Identity in the United States,” which reportedly polled thousands of people between the ages of 15 and 44 from 2006 through 2008, found that 44 percent of straight men and 36 percent of straight women admitted to having had anal sex at least once in their lives.

Not that Barber et alii would ever consider these facts. To him and the rest of the homophobic movement, the sole purpose is to infuriate the public and legitimise hate and detestation of gay people.

By the way, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with anal sex. Many people find it disgusting, and that’s fine, but it’s a sexual practice as ancient as humankind. The whole idea that body parts are made for one thing only is faulty; and worse still is the belief that one can make moral judgements based on this idea. If anal sex were immoral because God made the reproductive and digestive systems for one purpose only, then it could be argued that it’s a sin to lick a postage stamp with a tongue made for tasting and swallowing foot. It would also be a sin to use your foot for driving a car when God made it for walking.

“Itella Posti will release seven new sets of stamps, containing a total of 33 new designs. It is a great collection to choose from; the subjects of the new stamps include male drawings by Tom of Finland,” the Finnish postal service announces.

It’s been a good day. I spent the afternoon at Malmö Opera where I saw Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. It’s not my favourite opera, but it’s a nice, although tragic, love story in the usual Italian style—boy meets girl, they can’t have each other, but then, just before she dies, they realise that the obstacle to their love can be conquered. Sweet love and grim death, accompanied by beautiful music. I took the photo from my seat a few minutes before the opera began.

The Swagger New York writes about a new survey that reveals differences between the sexes on the issue of perfect bodies.

The Guardian live-blogs the Ukraine crisis. It seems a sure bet that Russia will do to Eastern Ukraine what it did to Crimea.

The 2014 Pulitzer prize for distinguished fiction by an American author is awarded to the novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

“Same-sex civil unions were this evening approved in Malta, allowing gay couples to adopt,” Pink News reports. “Over a thousand people who had gathered in Palace Square outside Parliament cheered as the bill passed.”

A Norwegian fisherman was gutting a large cod he had caught when he ran across an unusual lump in his fish. We live in a bizarre world!

Whilst millions of Jews celebrate Passover (פסח), I will scribble frenetically in order to finish my essay on religious freedom before the deadline on Tuesday morning. The blog will go silent until then, unless something very dramatic happens in the world.

Have a nice Passover or Easter holiday!

I remember an interview I read with Andrew Sullivan, in which he described both a mental state and an actual room in his home as his “blog cave”. It’s a place he escapes to when he needs to focus on something important or an ongoing event in the world. I came to think of this blog cave when I unsuccessfully tried to finish an essay over the Easter holiday. I caught myself longing for a place in complete solitude, where nothing and nobody can distract me. I’m not blaming my husband not the world at large, but when I get stuck in a text there’s no end to the excuses I find to postpone the writing. The stress that comes from watching the hours to a deadline become fewer has made me think that I need a blog cave to save myself from leisureliness.

This, in turn, reminds me of something Depeche Mode sang many years ago:

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me
Can’t you understand.

And they made a great video, too.

Read More

The Economist has some good news: “Its first bond offering in four years, seen as a test of confidence, did much better than expected.”

Later today, I will upgrade the software that runs this website. Hopefully, everything will work out fine. Knock on wood.

Update: Upgrade done.

In the past few weeks, I have watched seasons one to four of Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad. I can highly recommend it to fans of crime drama mixed with morbid humour. It reminds me of some of the Coen brothers’ films, such as Blood Simple (1984), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), and Fargo (1996)—all stories about crime going terribly wrong in a humours way.

Greg Grandin of The Nation describes the Nobel laureate as a rebel against form and an artist against the forces of oblivion. Nice.

I will always remember him for the story of the fallen angel found on a South American beach. Magic realism at its best.

“Scientists pried open the 850-year-old casket of King Erik the Holy on Wednesday, hoping to find out more about the king, his crown, and his eating habits,” The Local writes. Fascinating archaeology. This type of events always makes me wonder what future generations of scientist will learn about us.

Amanda Hess of Slate writes about a new study of sex workers and pimps that reveals how the market for underage sex actually operates.

“The aircraft, believed to be Tupolev 95s, were spotted off the coast of northeast Scotland,” Sky News reports. “They were turned away from Britain when an RAF Typhoon was scrambled from Leuchars airbase, near Dundee.”

Has Putin lost his mind? Does he really want a new cold war? It seems that way.

I completely forgot that William Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. In other words, yesterday marked his 450th anniversary.

It’s a beautiful spring day here in Malmö, and that makes Shabbat even more welcome than usual. I am, however, forced to work this Shabbat, which is something I normally try to avoid. But if the weather stays this nice, I just might move my office to the balcony.

שבת שלום!

“A report published today from Human Rights Watch has revealed the danger that many gay individuals face in Syria from not only the Syrian Army and Islamist organisations, but from their family members too,” Pink News writes.

Once again, professional homophobe Matt Barber tells us that gay people are really child molesters driven by a secret agenda aiming to legalise paedophilia. Because if you’re a man who love men you automatically attracted by little boys just as men who love women are attracted to little girls?

My iPhone 4 died today. He slipped away quietly in his sleep and was gone by the time I tried to bring him back on. There was only one thing to do after such a sad event—get a new iPhone. So, today, I order a new, 64GB, blackish iPhone 5s. It will be brought to me by the end of next week. Until then, you can’t ring or text me. If you want to get in touch, send me an old-fashion email.

“The US is on the brink of losing its status as the world’s largest economy, and is likely to slip behind China this year, sooner than widely anticipated, according to the world’s leading statistical agencies,” Financial Times reports. “The US has been the global leader since overtaking the UK in 1872. Most economists previously thought China would pull ahead in 2019.”

The monarchy is undemocratic and as a libertarian I ought to oppose it, but there is something about it that makes me a big fan and supporter of Sweden’s current constitutional monarchy. In short, I find it appealing that some parts of the state rises above the political quarrels of the day and can, at least in theory, represent the entire country. The conservative in me also likes the fact that Sweden, unlike other European monarchies, such as Britain and the Netherlands, has no history of republicanism. Our monarchy is one of the oldest in the world. And in light of the constitutional reform made in the 1970s, whereby the king was stripped of all political powers, it’s hard to see what harm the monarchy could possibly do. So, with this said, I say happy birthday to the king on his 68th birthday.

Photographer: Bruno Ehrs
Copyright: The Royal Court of Sweden

“Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has been arrested for questioning about the 1972 abduction, murder and disappearance of Jean McConville,” Irish Times writes.

This is potentially big news. Sinn Féin, as IRA’s political party, must have lots of lives on its conscience.