“Supporters of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have published an open letter signed by 500 prominent artists, Nobel prize winners and human rights organisations accusing the UK and Sweden of undermining the UN,” Owen Bowcott and David Crouch of the Guardian write.
Needless to say, no one cares for the rape victim who never got justice.
Owen Jones has written a superb article for the Guardian.
I’ve spent the evening in Copenhagen, visiting the old Royal Theatre and enjoying a superb ballet—John Neumeier’s Romeo & Juliet. I took this photo of the beautiful interior before the curtain went up. To me, the theatre has always been somewhat religious—the act of an audience collectively appreciating beauty and fiction.
“The spectacle will begin on March 9 and finish on March 8,” Nicholas St. Fleur of the New York Times writes.
Fascinating phenomenon.
Image: Luc Viatour (Wikimedia Commons).
Ted Cruz has invited an extreme homophobe to campaign alongside him.
Nearly half of the largest American businesses gather information on who on the payroll is homosexual, bisexual, or transgender so better benefit plans can be designed and managers can consider diversity enhancing promotions, Jeff Green of Bloomberg Business reports.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason contributes to a group discussion on libertarian feminism.
Source: ABC News.
The Local lists the novels. My personal favourite in the list is August Strindberg’s classic, The People of Hemsö (1887).
One of Europe’s greatest philosophers.
Via: The Local.
Syed Kamall, a leading Conservative MEP for London, wants Britain to leave the EU because the whole world is not more like the EU. He wants everyone to have free movement and therefore he says no to the only supranational organisation that has successfully enabled free movement. In a parallel universe, it makes sense.
A Russian nuclear war on Europe is highly likely to happen soon, Igor Ivanov, a former Russian foreign minister, threatens. “It can be assured that once the US deploys its missile defence system in Poland, Russia would respond by deploying its own missile defence system in Kaliningrad,” he says.
“At least 31 people have been killed and many seriously injured in attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station,” BBC reports.
“Supporters of Islamic State praised on social media blasts in Brussels that killed at least 31 people on Tuesday,” the New York Post reports.
“At least 34 people have been killed and dozens injured in two suicide bombings at Brussels international airport on Tuesday morning and in a separate blast striking the city’s metro system,” The Local reports in an update.
Update: ISIS supporter on Twitter, via Reuters:
The state will force you to reevaluate your ways a thousand times before you are emboldened to kill Muslims again, and know that Muslims now have a state to defend them.
The man the right is the only one thought to still be alive. Police say the two other men were suicide bombers.
I don’t know who made this mock sticker of Marxism, replacing “workers” with cats, but it’s hilarious. Found it whilst waiting at a bus stop in Malmö.
Gabrielle Bluestone of Gawker writes:
This week, the National Enquirer published a story claiming Ted Cruz may have been involved in as many as five extramarital affairs. But the general allegations are nothing new. People have been talking publicly about, well, something involving Cruz for weeks.
The conjecture so far has been just that—speculation in the absence of receipts. Still, people have repeatedly pointed to Katrina Pierson, a former Cruz aide and one of the women whose blurred-out photo appeared in the National Enquirer story.
On Twitter, conservatives have been discussing the scandal, in vague (and sometimes less-vague) terms since March, using the hashtag #thething, which seems to have originated, or at least gained popularity, around March 11, with the Stop Trump Super PAC twitter account and GOP strategist Rick Wilson.
Ted Cruz is vigorously denying the accusations, but as Sam Biddle of Gawker points out, the tabloid National Enquirer has been right on scandalous and at-first unbelievable things like this before. Time will tell.
Social media is a great tool, but it also has a tendency to bring out the worst in people. A seemingly harmless discussion on Facebook reminded me of that fact today.
Naomi Franzén, a self-proclaimed communist, said I’m “mentally disabled”, have a small penis, and suffers from a countryside complex (as if Malmö isn’t part of Scandinavia’s largest metropolitan area).
Why all this abusive language?
Well, because I pointed out that the newly introduced border checks on commuter trains between Malmö and Copenhagen is a daily menace forced on us by politicians in Stockholm who never have to experience the consequences themselves. It’s not the first time parliamentarians in Stockholm are doing this. For years, Malmö has suffered under a number of illiberal pilot projects allowing the police to check people’s identity documentation for no apparent reason. When some of these projects expand to Stockholm—they then become of national interest in the media.
This is what I pointed out on Facebook. And that’s why a grumpy supporter of “Fortress Sweden” reduced me to a disabled peasant with a small penis.
In social media, this happens all the time. But imagine a conversation derailing like this in real life! No one would go along with it. That would be considered social incompetence.
Raf Sanchez of the Telegraph writes:
An Irish schoolteacher who came to a Jerusalem hospital convinced she was about to give birth to the Baby Jesus when in fact she was not even pregnant.
A Canadian tourist who believed he was the Biblical strongman Sampson and tried to tear stone blocks out of the Wailing Wall.
An Austrian man who flew into a rage in his hotel kitchen when staff refused to prepare the the Last Supper for him.
These are just a few examples of what has come to be known as the Jerusalem Syndrome: a well-documented phenomenon where foreign visitors suffer psychotic delusions that they are figures from the Bible or harbingers of the End of Days.
Fascinating syndrome.
Image: Jerusalem’s Old City, by Shmuel Spiegelman (Wikimedia Commons).
I have unfollowed everyone on Twitter. It’s nothing personal. I must stop being sucked into the time-consuming and self-destructive world of social media. Too many evil comments and meaningless discussions leading nowhere. Besides, I have plans for the future that could be hurt by old, online nastiness.
Freddie Campion of GQ has made the list.
Don’t ever underestimate people’s aptitude for evil deeds, nor their potential for good ones.
Image: “God of Heavenly Punishment” by unknown artist, 12th century, Japan (Tokyo National Museum).
I recently listened a debate on radio. A group of journalists discussed a young man who decided to end his life very publicly on social media. What angered the journalists wasn’t the fact that an Internet forum allowed him to share his thoughts and preparation. It seemed unimportant to them that this young man felt terribly bad and subsequently became one of nearly 2,000 Swedes who commit suicide every year.
The Code of Ethics for Press, Radio, and Television in Sweden explicitly states that death by suicide should be concealed out of respect for the surviving family, as if mental illness were something uniquely shameful that simply cannot be discussed openly. Why is that? Is it even a debate amongst Swedish journalists about this?
Image: The Suicide by French painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883).
“The best part about your 20s is that you can recover quickly from the inevitable mistakes you’ll make as you figure out how to make it in the real world,” Richard Feloni of Business Insider writes. He has put together a list of things successful 20-somethings don’t do:
Now I know why I’m such a failure. For a long time I really thought education and talent were enough to become successful, and I’ve often been too impatient and eager to please. Last but not least, I’ve let others define far too much. I truly wish I could go back twenty years and tell my younger self that I can’t occupy myself with thoughts of other people’s perception of me. I make myself, no one else.
Image: The Bather by French artist Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). I think it’s a good illustration of youth.
I love the urban landscape I live in. Nothing untouched, everything thought through.
I posted an entry earlier about evil. I now came across this 1821 illustrations to the Book of Job, showing Satan smiting Job with boils. By English painter William Blake (1757–1827).
Matt Broomfield of The Independent reports:
Tony Blair has said that “many millions” of Muslims hold a viewpoint that is “fundamentally incompatible with the modern world”.
Rejecting arguments that Isis is simply “tens of thousands of brainwashed crazies,” he continued: “[Isis] does not seek dialogue but dominance. It cannot therefore be contained. It has to be defeated.”
I’d say that anyone, regardless of religion, who wants to replace democracy and civil liberties with theocracy and totalitarianism is fundamentally incompatible with the modern world.
Unfortunately, the torture during the Iraq War has made it difficult for the free and democratic world to claim the moral high ground. Mr Blair is right, the Islamic State needs to be stopped by any means, not least for the sake of the many Muslim victims of its terror regime. However, we must also realise that the West is partly to blame for its success.
Image: A detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq being tortured by an American soldier.
“The Pride rainbow flag, a global symbol for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements, is being turned into a Swedish stamp next month,” The Local reports.
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