“I confirm that the SDR 1.2 billion repayment (about EUR 1.5 billion) due by Greece to the IMF today has not been received,” Mr Gerry Rice, Director of Communications at the International Monetary Fund, says in a statement. “We have informed our Executive Board that Greece is now in arrears and can only receive IMF financing once the arrears are cleared.”

Some facts that should make most men want to stop smoking.

Tim Brooks of the Christian Ministries Church has told a conservative radio programme that gay people, just like the men of Sodom who tried to rape angelic visitors, “are trying to force their lifestyle on him, come out and have sex with us, have to participate”.

Peter Dahlen, Managing Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Sweden, talks to The Local:

Stockholm has long claimed to be “the capital of Scandinavia” in its marketing, but Dahlen says that its lack of connectivity weakens the Swedish capital’s assertion.

“Copenhagen has more direct flights than Stockholm,” he remarks. “It’s better connected. I change planes there frequently.”

An unwelcome truth in the Swedish capital, I’m sure. Swedish media is hyper-centralised to tiny part of central Stockholm, and most everything you see and here on television or radio is filtered through this hubristic perspective. So much so that, when Sweden recently won the Eurovision Song Contest, some prominent journalists and politicians urged the people responsible for next years contest not to arrange it “some backwater place” like Malmö, which is a twin city to Copenhagen.

Notorious homophobe Scott Lively has been taken to court, accused of orchestrating genocide in another country.

Tom Delay, the former Speaker Majority Leader of the US House of Representatives, says he knows about secret memoranda from the Justice Department aimed at legalizing “twelve new perversions”, including bestiality and paedophilia. “That’s correct,” he told a television programme. “They’re coming down with twelve new perversions. LGBT is only the beginning. They are going to start expanding it to the other perversions.”

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New opinion poll shows that 74% of Greeks want the country to remain in the euro.

Pro-Palestinian activists aboard a Swedish vessel tried and failed to punch through Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza this week. They made a media spectacle about their humanitarian aid, but there were close to no aid aboard. Anyone still believe this is not about singling out the only Jewish state as the world’s number-one villain?

“Europe should heed the warnings from Greece which it has previously ignored and face up to what type of union it wants to be and needs to be to work better for all involved,” Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe writes.

“Sweden is possibly the nearest thing the world has to a cashless society,” The Local writes, “but some Swedes are worried about the effects on rural areas, pensioners and personal integrity.”

The Islamic State in Egypt has claims responsibility for a rocket attack from the Sinai Peninsula into southern Israel.

From the Financial Times:

The plans, which call for a “haircut” of at least 30 per cent on deposits above €8,000, sketch out an increasingly likely scenario for at least one bank, the sources said.

A Greek bail-in could resemble the rescue plan agreed by Cyprus in 2013, when customers’ funds were seized to shore up the banks, with a haircut imposed on uninsured deposits over €100,000.

It would be implemented as part of a recapitalisation of Greek banks that would be agreed with the country’s creditors—the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.

I decided to talk a quick walk through central Malmö this afternoon. Big mistake! I’m too Nordic for this high temperature. It’s now 32° Celsius.

Greeks voted by a large margin to reject the austerity terms of an aid package from international creditors, an official projection of the final result of today’s referendum shows.

Commenting on the referendum results in Greece, Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the European Liberals and Democrats Group, issued this in a press release:

Tsipras has won the referendum at home, but lost his credibility in the rest of Europe. He has to understand that money for nothing only exists in songs. He has to show he can do more than merely rejecting proposals. This week will determine if Tsipras is a leader who offers solutions or a false prophet without any ideas of his own.

From The Economist:

Scrip has a rich history. Massachusetts paid its citizens “tax anticipation notes” instead of cash in the 1690s, according to a paper by Richard Sylla of the Stern School of Business at New York University. These were swapped for cash once the anticipated tax had been collected. California used scrip in 2009. The recession had sapped revenues, and bickering legislators could not agree on a revised budget. The state began to pay benefits, tax rebates and other bills in “registered warrants” rather than dollars. In all, it issued 450,000 IOUs with a value of $2.6 billion.

The leaders of most Greek parties will issue a joint statement calling for a debt deal.

No matter what happens in Europe, you can be sure Nigel Farage will take it as a sign of his Europhobic ultra-nationalism is what people really want. In an article run by the Telegraph, the UKIP leader rejoices at the fact that many Greek No-voters were young:

The result is a tired, stumbling European Union that is dying on its feet before our very eyes. Credibility for the project is fading fast as citizens right across Europe awaken to the reality of its authoritarian instincts that seek to run roughshod over public opinion.

With younger generations now turning against the EU project, we can see support for the EU’s dream of a United States of Europe fading fast. An outdated European Union has been found out and rejected emphatically by young Greeks in the 21st century.

It is all too clear to see why: both the euro single currency and the European Union itself have done great harm to the prospects of young people who are now realising that we do not need a single currency or a political union to be friends, neighbours and trading partners. Far more important than this European Union is the concept of national democracy, of which this Greek referendum and its result are a beaming example of.

This, however, is not even close to being the truth. The No-campaign was fought by populists with the very clear message that Greece should stay in the euro and at the heart of the European Union.

“Days before the Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage around the United States last week, Newman Congregational Church in Rumford, Rhode Island, installed a set of rainbow doors along its fence to send a strong message in support of equality,” Antonia Blumberg of the Huffington Post writes.

Religion brings out the worst and the best in people.

It’s no wonder Greece is in default. The full story at NAV Blog.

The Greek government has been given a “final deadline” until the end of the week to present a proposal of reforms, ahead of a meeting of all twenty-eight EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday. Meanwhile, the European Commission say it already has plans for how to deal with a Greek exit from the eurozone.

Michael Öhman, leader of a Heby wing of the nationalist Sweden Democrat party, has caused a controversy after he told a journalist that halal meat has magical powers that turns people into Muslims, The Local reports.

It’s no secret that racist politicians are stupid, but this has to be some kind of star performance even for professional racists.

“Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday took a verbal beating from the main political groups in the European Parliament for turning up both at a euro summit the previous evening and then in plenary with no concrete proposals on where to go next with his debt-ridden country,” Nikolaj Nielsen of EU Observer writes.

Yesterday, the European Parliament, perhaps for the first time, became the centre of European politics. Good!

Most of the banned books deal with homosexuality and gender issues.

“We don’t want to discriminate against anyone and at home parents can call themselves daddy number one and daddy number two, but I have to consider the majority of families, which have a mum and a dad,” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro tells Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “It is parents who should educate children about these things, not schools.”

Why do hatemongers always use children as an excuse to promote their own bigotry?

A crisis does inspire some fascinating creativity. I can’t post the picture of the graffiti here due to copyright restrictions, but watch Orestis Panagiotou’s photo at the European Pressphoto Agency’s website.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 4,000,000 Syrians—a sixth of the population—have fled abroad to escape the conflict in their country. Of these, about 270,000 have sought asylum in Europe.

America’s former president Jimmy Carter said in an interview that he thinks Jesus would approve of same-sex marriage.

The thing is that Jesus said absolutely nothing about gay people nor homosexuality. Full stop. Nothing! At all!

Yet, for some reason, the opposition to gay rights and equality has to many contemporary Christians become the thing that defines them.

“In addition to being the first choice for the majority of likely voters who participated in the poll, Trump was also the primary second choice for those who preferred another candidate as their nominee,” Neetzan Zimmerman of The Hill reports.

This comes only about a week after he made a public rant against Mexican immigrants, calling them rapists and disease carriers.

Does America really want a racist lunatic as president? I hope not.

Image: Michael Vadon (Wikimedia Commons).

Image: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI.

“The first thing to do if you ever find yourself suddenly expelled into the vacuum of space is exhale,” Michelle Starr of CNET writes.

Fascinating stuff that makes one happy to be surrounded by oxygen. But the idea of being “buried” in space and simply drift away for millions of years is somehow appealing to me. Having the body covered with dirt is less so.

From the EU Observer:

The EU’s population as of 1 January stood at 508.2 million, 1 million more when compared to the same date last year, according to the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat. Germany, at 81.2 million, is the most populated EU state, followed by France (66.4 million), and UK (64.8 million)

When you have nothing better to do, there’s always a test to be taken.

Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, on Twitter:

In the ongoing press conference, Tusk and other top EU officials say a Greek exit from the euro will not happen. Good news!

“Arguing with Twitter hashtags is like urinating into a hurricane, and a particularly stupid and self-righteous hurricane at that,” James Kirkup of the Telegraph writes.

#ThisIsACoup is trending on Twitter.

I found this image at the blog of the Swedish Humanist Assosiation. It’s a good illustration of the lack of broader religious knowledge in the often Christian-centric atheist movement of Europe and America. This religious illiteracy is shown repeatedly as all religions are equated with Christianity and its focus on belief and good-evil dualism.

There are plenty of things worthy of criticism in Judaism, but something even remotely similar to the Christian and Islamic concept of Hell is not one of them. In fact, the closest Judaism comes to Hell is the Kabbalistic idea of a “supernal washing machine”.

The Eurozone leaders saved Greece from an unwanted exit from the single currency, but the British Europhobes at the Telegraph cannot resist painting the success all in black. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything Europe can do right in the eyes of these hostile pessimists.

What is fascinating, though, is that the political extremes are now openly befriending each other; nationalistic conservatives with a longing for a twentieth-century-divided Europe and anti-austerity Marxists are now the best of friend, joint together by the resentment of pan-European politics. But it’s a shallow friendship.

What Europe needs, as many in Greece realise, is proper federalism. Greece’s now former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, hit a point in a recent article:

The euro is a hybrid of a fixed exchange-rate regime, like the 1980s ERM, or the 1930s gold standard, and a state currency. The former relies on the fear of expulsion to hold together, while state money involves mechanisms for recycling surpluses between member states (for instance, a federal budget, common bonds). The eurozone falls between these stools—it is more than an exchange-rate regime and less than a state.

And there’s the rub. After the crisis of 2008/9, Europe didn’t know how to respond. Should it prepare the ground for at least one expulsion (that is, Grexit) to strengthen discipline? Or move to a federation? So far it has done neither, its existentialist angst forever rising. Schäuble is convinced that as things stand, he needs a Grexit to clear the air, one way or another. Suddenly, a permanently unsustainable Greek public debt, without which the risk of Grexit would fade, has acquired a new usefulness for Schauble.

What do I mean by that? Based on months of negotiation, my conviction is that the German finance minister wants Greece to be pushed out of the single currency to put the fear of God into the French and have them accept his model of a disciplinarian eurozone.

He is probably wrong about the malicious Germans—a popular but xenophobic stereotype—but he is right about the decision the EU, and especially the Eurozone, must now make between federalism and the current, unsustainable system.

Big decisions, like the ones made over the past weekend, that have a deep impact on European taxpayers, ought to be debated in public and not behind closed doors. The Council of the European Union, where ministers from member states gather and make decisions, should become a proper senate and its ministers held accountable by their national parliaments and their electorate. The secretive culture and the Kremlinology that surrounds today’s summits must stop, and the people of Europe must be able to listen to all arguments raised. The EU needs more democracy, and it requires federalism.

I have spent the weekend in Luxembourg, France, Belgium, and Germany. A 48-hour mini-European tour. Today, only hours before flying home, I visited Trier, one of the oldest—if not the oldest—German towns and the site of the Porta Nigra (Latin for black gate), the largest Roman city gate north of the Alps.

Irish footballer James McClean has angered Daily Mail after he turned his back on the British national anthem and the English flag of St George. When British extreme-right leader Nigel Farage turned his back on the European anthem and flag in 2014, Daily Mail was not at all upset about his rudeness.

In a new study published by the International Society for Sexual Medicine, women were found to consider the “position and shape of the meatus” as the least important penile aspect.

Now we know.

Whilst in a short visit to France this past weekend, I found this statue of a black man on a building in the Thionville centre. I’m not sure if it is racism or not. Depends on how you look at it and for what purpose it has been made. All other statues were of white people, but none other was made to look like a slave.

“Police in west Sweden have arrested two people suspected of being linked to a murder in Syria,” The Local reports.

“On Tuesday, Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz released a video titled ‘In Defense of Religious Liberty’. Cruz interviews Dick and Betty Odgaard, who own a wedding venue called the Gortz Haus Gallery in Iowa and refuse to serve same-sex couples,” Mark Joseph Stern of Slate reports.

In time, this behaviour will seem as absurd as the race discrimination that made some American Christians believe God wants a ban on interracial marriage.

According to a year-old report from Europol, out of the 152 terrorist acts in the EU in 2013, only two were religiously motivated. In 2011, none of the 174 attacks were by religious organisations. Ethno-nationalist organisations are far more prone to terrorism, but they tend to commit acts of terrorism that have low, if any, casualty rates, meaning they don’t get extensive news coverage.

Image: The number of suspects arrested for religiously inspired terrorism in EU Member States in 2013.

“Evangelical Lutheran Bishop Kevin Kanouse—who opposed both same-sex marriage and permitting gay clergy—wrote an emotional letter to church leaders this week, explaining his decision to come out,” Nick Duffy of Pink News writes.

Internalised homophobia is the worst kind of homophobias as it makes a gay person actually believe that he or she is bad for being gay. But for this pastor, there was light in the long, dark tunnel:

Throughout our church’s conversations about human sexuality, I was torn. I knew the scriptures that condemn homosexuality and I could quote them well. Yet, I began to recognise the grace of the Gospel and to understand that God loves me just as I am.

Being gay is not a sin. My sin was a lifetime of denying that the God who created me, also accepts me and loves me. It was faithlessness.

Many others are still trapped in the dark hating themselves.

Angelique Chrisafis of the Guardian writes:

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-right veteran and co-founder of the Front National, has won a third legal victory in the increasingly bitter feud with his daughter and party leader, Marine Le Pen.The Versailles appeals court upheld an earlier legal decision in favour of the 87-year-old that annulled his daughter’s attempt to suspend him from the party and declared unlawful her postal ballot of party members, which sought to remove his title as honorary party president.

Bitter sectarianism is a distinctive feature of all extremism.

The wreck of a submarine found off Sweden’s coast is probably a Tsarist-era Russian vessel, nicknamed Catfish, which collided with a ship in 1916.

I had no idea there were submarines that old, but after some online research, I have learned that the first submarines were developed by the Greeks in 1538.

I didn’t know Bubbe well, but he used to stay at our place when he had business in Malmö, and he was always in a good mood. What I really liked about him the most was he managed to make his camp attitude so normal. You never knew what hair colour Bubbe would have when he rang the doorbell, but you could be sure it would be absolutely fabulous.

Image: Johan Fredriksson (Wikimedia Commons).

“Six people were stabbed Thursday afternoon during Jerusalem’s annual gay pride parade and one Jewish suspect was arrested and identified as Ishay Shliser, who carried out a similar attack in 2005 in which three marchers were wounded,” Ynetnews reports.

Today, Ynetnews writes about a man’s unremorseful plot to murder at the gay-pride parade.

Malmö has a sewer lid that features the city’s coat of arms.

A well-known Senegalese journalist has been sentenced to six months in prison for acts of homosexuality.