Raves are sweeping Britain as they did in 1988, when acid house swept the country and ecstasy and bucket hats were everywhere, Sirin Kale of the Guardian reports. 🤪 There’s hope for the new generation!

Israel’s interior minister, Aryeh Deri, is seeking to revive efforts aimed at giving the ultra-Orthodox state rabbinate sole control over Jewish conversions, the Times of Israel reports. 👎

A prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi in Israel has issued a religious ruling against the use of gay conversion therapy, Jacob Magid of the Times of Israel reports. 👍💕

According to Rebecca Nicholson of the Guardian, David France’s tremendously bleak film about the persecution of gay people in Chechnya is a grim portrait of suffering. 😢

This is probably good news for market competition, but what worrying me about Reuters’s report is that politicians seem too involved.

“Mount Rushmore was built on land that belonged to the Lakota tribe and sculpted by a man who had strong bonds with the Ku Klux Klan,” New York Times tweets. “It features the faces of 2 U.S. presidents who were slaveholders.”

🕎 I nearly forgot the greeting last week, so here’s an early one.

שבת שלום

“The statue of the Little Mermaid in the entrance to Copenhagen harbour has been daubed with the words ‘racist fish’,” Jon Henley of the Guardian writes. 🧜😂

“Germany is planning to rehabilitate soldiers who were discriminated against in past years by being rejected for promotion or even fired from the army because of their homosexuality,” Timothy Jones of Deutsche Welle writes. 👍

“Researchers tested 12 healthy people and found that formerly overlooked sites deep within the nose may be reservoirs for Staphylococcus aureus, which is a major cause of disease,” Robert Preidt at WebMD writes. 🦠

“One factor to watch is Biden’s relationship with Rice,” Amie Parnes of The Hill writes. “The two worked closely in the Obama administration, and personal chemistry is an underrated factor in vice presidential decision.”

First Dog on the Moon, “Kids as young as 10 years old can be arrested, hauled before a court and thrown into prison cells. We love sending people to prison!” 🐕🌙

In an overall dull Los Angeles Times column, Doyle McManus provides one interesting fact.

1. Statue of Unity, India, 240m
2. Spring Temple Buddha, China, 153m
3. Statue of Liberty, USA, 93m
4. The Motherland Calls, Russia, 87m
5. Christ the Redeemer, Brazil, 38m
6. Michelangelo’s David, Italy, 5m

Andre Key of Religion Dispatches writes: “In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in [emphasis mine], guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark.” 😮

I can’t get my head around people who say they’re libertarians while arguing in favour of the government’s right to stop free movement. 😕

Source: World Health Organisation

Outbreak Situation
Confirmed Cases	11,468,979
Confirmed Deaths	535,181

“God, I’m bored!” and “God, ‘I’m bored!’” are not the same. ❌

Kelly Faircloth of Jezebel reports that being BFF with a convicted paedophile rapist is tough on His Royal Highness. 🤴⛓

Katie Rogers and Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times report that the Trump administration has formally notified the UN that USA will withdraw from the World Health Organisation. 🙃

BBC reports that Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for coronavirus, a virus he until recently said didn’t exist.

“A centrally funded federal budget can rebalance the gains from trade more credibly than fiscally sovereign states, so a structural shift in specific spending authority or competences must complement fiscal solidarity,” Enrico Perotti and Oscar Soons write at Vox.

I know it’s established terminology, but the expression “people of colour” seems to suggest that some people are colourless. If we are to successfully combat racism, we must get rid of language that assume white as the norm. ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻

Jon Henley of the Guardian reports that gay people seeking asylum in Europe are routinely seeing their claims rejected because of an impossible burden to prove their homosexuality. 🤔𝝀

Newspaper Politiken reports that Scania (Skåne in Swedish) has been cleared by the Danish authorities and residents are now allowed to travel over the Sound. Yay!

שבת ✡ שלום

After turning the 1500-year-old church Hagia Sophia into a mosque, president Erdogan says he wants to “liberate” the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Seth Frantzman of the Jerusalem Post reports. 🤮

“Polish President Andrzej Duda has won the country’s presidential election, the country’s National Electoral Commission has said,” Deutsche Welle writes. “The right-wing politician will lead Poland for five more years.” 🤮

Heera’s husband locked her in a room and poured acid over her face and body because he was unhappy about the small dowry received from her parents when they had married, Shah Meer Baloch of the Guardian reports. 😡

It feels strange to be at work when nearly every colleague works from home or is off on summer holiday. I could just walk away and no one would notice. I thank God for coffee, fast Internet, anf Apple Music. ☕🖥🍏

The Guardian reports that Corbyn allies are angry. It’s no surprise. They are the anti-Semites the new party leadership apoligises for.

Sudan’s transitional government has been praised for its latest reforms, Kaamil Ahmed of the Guardian reports. 👍

The Guardian reports a spy story that only validates Russia’s inability to do anything except cheating. 👎

I booked a plane ticket to Gran Canaria in September. If all goes well, I’ll be able to see the island after nine months of abstinence. Seen below is the Maspalomas Lighthouse in a photo I took in March 2018.

שבת ✡ שלום

♫ Strawberries, cherries, and an angel’s kiss in spring / My summer wine is really made from all these things…

Human rights groups have catalogued widespread abuses against the Muslim minority in China’s western region, including mass forced sterilisation and detainment in camps, Heather Stewart of the Guardian reports.

In 2014, BBC published a good and concise background. As has been the case in most communist countries, China is officially an atheist nation. People are expected to worship the state only. Faith in God is seen as betrayal and religious people are forced to convert to atheism.

“Astronomers have discovered that there is a vast wall across the southern border of the local cosmos,” Dennis Overbye of the New York Times writes.

Great news from a free thinker. His blog died five years ago, but it’s now reinvented as a weekly webmag. Yay! 🙂

“The previously dull public diplomacy of the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs is adopting the cocky tone of their Russian colleagues,” Nicu Popescu writes in an opinion piece at the EU Observer.

After a marathon summit that went into its fifth day did EU leaders reach a deal on a €750bn recovery package stimulus package to help Europe’s economies recover from the coronavirus, Eszter Zalan of the EU Observer reports. 💶

Many of Sweden’s political pundits write about the EU becoming a “USE” in the negative. I think a federal Europe would be a good thing. Big government thrives in closed-door meetings. 🇪🇺

After reading Agnes Callard’s article in the New York Times, my answer is, well, maybe:

And Aristotle’s mistake was serious enough that he comes off badly even when compared to the various “bad guys” of history who sought to justify the exclusion of certain groups—women, black people, Jews, gays, atheists—from the sheltering umbrella of human dignity. Because Aristotle went so far as to think there was no umbrella.

In the wake of the EU’s recovery fund, it puzzles me that Sweden’s socialists, who normally can’t see enough of taxation and redistribution of wealth, now suddenly think these are a bad things. 🤔

The Economist writes that the EU’s decision to borrow and spend jointly is historic still not as big a decision as Alexander Hamilton’s for the US once was. True. Personally, I think we might have something to learn from Hamilton.

« Le matin du 16 avril, le docteur Bernard Rieux sortit de son cabinet et buta sur un rat mort, au milieu du palier. »

Albert Camus’s plaguesome (😎) novel is available for free online. I love the Internet.

In a draft resolution, the European Parliament says that the budget agreed by EU leaders earlier this week it is unacceptable, Eszter Zalan of EU Observer reports.

Josh Milton of Pink News reports that Israel’s parliament has approved a bill to ban so-called conversion therapy, which is an evil form of pseudo-psychological bulling intended to “cure” gay people from homosexuality. 👍

שבת ✡ שלום

“If aliens are real, salvation through Jesus Christ is the only way they enter Heaven,” Jonathan Stickland, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, tweets. 🤣 #Jeebus

The number of coronavirus infections has now topped 16 million, Deutsche Welle reports. 😢

The Babylon Bee tweets, “You’re out and about and you see someone lobbing a brick at you. What do you do? How do you know if this is a violent attack on your person or a peaceful protest?” 😀

A recent survey shows that 55% of Italians accept gay people, far below the EU average of 72%, Angela Giuffrida of the Guardian reports. ☹️

Read Frank Bruni’s opinion piece in the New York Times. It captures the essence of this post-truth presidency.

“The horses used to belong to the Air Force, which makes only slightly more sense,” Eric Boehm of Reason writes. 🐴🚀

Daniel Strauss writes in the Guardian about an impossible choice.

No one could be surprised by a priest admitted to having sexual encounters with teenage boys, except, perhaps, that the boys are older than the usual victims.

It’s been a slow week for this diary, but now it’s Friday and time for Shabbat.

שבת ✡ שלום