“Iceland will be put on a fast track to joining the European Union to rescue the small Arctic state from financial collapse amid rising expectations that it will apply for membership within months,” the Guardian writes. I welcome Iceland to the union, but it’s a bit sad that so many countries wait until a crisis before they apply for membership. To become part of the reunification of Europe ought to be more than a rescue plan.

The Swedish government has promised to do more to preserve and promote minority languages. I suppose that’s a popular ambition in some circles, but is it really the government’s job? I think it’s ridiculous. If people want to speak Finnish, Romani or Yiddish, they should, but politicians should have no say in it. (Pun intended.)

Glenn Reynolds posts a visual sarcasm. It’s true; a picture says more than a thousand words.

“For us, the Holocaust survivors, our moral obligation is to legalize it,” says a man in this somewhat surreal advertisement for the legalization of cannabis in Israel.

I never heard the case been argued quite like this before. It’s, well, hmm, interesting.

A reader tipped me about this definition of “gay porn” on Wikipedia:

Gay pornography is the representation of sex between men with the primary goal of sexual arousal in its audience.

Thanks to the Internet, I finally know what those dirty films are for. I would never have figured it out on my own.

“A new report indicates that economic arguments against euro entry are no longer valid and concludes that in the wake of the finance crisis, it is now time for Sweden to join,” The Local writes.

About time, if you ask me. We should have done the changeover years ago.

See some of what happened on 25 January here.

Background here.

A reader sent me a link to an article by Rabbi Arthur Waskow. His is making the case for Jewish acceptance of same-sex marriage. It is worth reading for Christians with an interest in theology, too. I particularly like this description of God:

God is no longer Father/Mother as in Eden, giving orders, but—unnamed—is inherent in the very process of life, as our parents become when we are fully adult.

The last few weeks have seen a number of disturbing attacks on Jewish institutions in Sweden. Just now, I read about a Jewish man being verbally assaulted by a small mob in Malmö. When he asked them to calm down, the aggressors told him not to speak to them because he was a Jew. No matter what people think of Israel and Zionism, surely everyone must realize this is anti-Semitism.

Omri Grinberg, an Israeli Jew on a temporary stay in Sweden, writes in The Local:

Being a Jewish-Israeli who has moved (temporarily) to Sweden, I am often approached as a representative of the state of Israel. I am far from being that: I am often ashamed of the crimes committed by the Israeli army and Israeli politicians, crimes that do not help any cause but the vague interests of the politicians themselves.

However, this does not mean that I see Israel as the side solely responsible for the many suffering civilians (both Palestinian and Israeli). The politicians in the Palestinian territories are at least as responsible—I wonder how many of the supporters at Saturday’s demonstration actually know the history, causes and doctrine of Hamas?

It might be a bit naive to expect Israelis to make some humanistic distinctions in the current situation, understanding that a human is a human, pain is pain, death is death and suffering is suffering, just as it might naive to expect the Palestinians to re-consider their strategy for reaching the goal of their own state.

But how come people who live in Sweden can’t take a deep breath, sit down, read, listen and think things through?

This desire to pick a side automatically and show support through clichés and stereotypes seems odd, to say the least, when it comes from people who are in a position to understand the complexity of the situation.

He’s right. But I think he is missing one aspect. Sweden has a large Muslim and Palestinian minority with strong ties to the world’s best-organized socialist movement. This movement has controlled the parliament, the state-run television, and most labour organizations in this country for most of the twentieth century. Non-socialist governments are very rare, and often the Social Democratic Party and the state appear to be one and the same. This, I think, is key to understanding Swedish bias in favour of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations. This is key, and so is Europe’s well-established anti-Americanism, which simply states that everything favoured by American governments must be bad for the rest of the world. Israel is a close friend of the United States, and subsequently an enemy of everyone else. In other words, to understand why Swedes ignore the true complexity of the Middle East conflict, one must understand Sweden’s political culture. We are a peaceful people who enjoy our black-and-white outlook on world politics.

An Iranian publisher plans to launch an English version of a book of caricatures and satirical writings about the Holocaust. It’s unbelievably tasteless, but hardly surprising.

This afternoon, a group of friends of Israel in Malmö, Sweden, was attacked by Palestinian extremists during a rally for peace in the Middle East. The terrorist supporters threw eggs and shouted hostile slogans.

Added at 18:15: At least two bottles were thrown at the peace activists. More here.

Andrew Sullivan:

At some point, surely evangelical Christians will have to ask themselves: are we going to continue to demonize homosexuality to such an extent that even our ablest preachers and leaders are led into destructive, secret and often abusive relationships because we cannot allow them to pursue open and honest and loving ones?

The countless gay men who are currently running many of the world’s leading Christian denominations are threats to themselves, to other gay men, to their wives and their churches because ancient doctrine forces them into twisted shells of human beings.

Well put.

Sullivan comments this article about outed evangelical leader Ted Haggard.

I spend my days at the Department of Philosophy at Lund University preparing my dissertation. This is the view from one of the department’s windows.

Swedish newspaper Expressen publishes a great article by Dilsa Demirbag-Sten on the growing tolerance of anti-Semitism in Sweden and Europe.

More in Swedish here.

A few days ago, the synagogue in Malmö, Sweden, was attacked. Cans labelled “Zyklon B”—the lethal insecticide used to kill Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp—were placed at the synagogue. Yesterday, a self-proclaimed artist by the name Dan Park (picture) acknowledges responsibility for the attack. “I like to mock bans and think it’s fun to joke about death and murder,” he tells newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet. He says he has placed a total of seven labelled cans and a number of Nazi swastikas in front of the synagogue the past two months.

Dan Park writes a blog in Swedish, which he uses to brag about his attacks on Jews and other minority groups.

Update: It was not Dan Park in the picture. I have removed it.

Swedish newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet has interviewed two young women who describe how anti-Semitic sentiments have forced them to hide their Jewish identity. It makes me sad and upset.

Meanwhile, communist bloggers continue to trivialize anti-Semitism. One even suggests it’s not hateful to wish all Jews be exiled to Greenland, which is another Swedish blogger’s solution to the “Jewish problem”.

All linked articles are written in Swedish. I know it’s frustrating to non-Swedish readers, but I don’t have the time to translate them all.

It’s a big day today. The United States gets its first ever black president. Unfortunately, I’m extremely busy at the moment and will not be able to blog the inauguration live. I have to watch the whole thing afterwards as I’m spending the evening in a boring meeting discussing the construction of a new police station.

Anders Carlberg of the Jewish Community of Gothenburg writes about the situation for Swedish Jews in Haaretz.

(Via Akiva.)

Attractive faces activate the same reward circuitry in the brain as drugs:

New methods reveal that averageness, or a lack of distinctness, makes someone more appealing, while facial symmetry doesn’t automatically make a knockout, as most people believe. Features that make a man look manly or a woman feminine can trump both averageness and symmetry, but only sometimes. And studies of faces in motion support the idea that femininity and masculinity are important to attractiveness.

In my opinion, studies like these should teach us not to put too much into first impressions. Some evolutionary biologist would like us to believe that we are forced to act on inherited impulses, but considering how many asymmetric and outright ugly people that manage to find mates and procreate, I think we ought to view facial beauty as just one of many qualities people find attractive.

Peace at last. Hopefully, this will end the disturbing outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe.

“The Swedish government continues to gain popularity among voters,” The Local writes. “The right of centre Alliance coalition government is now the most popular government since 2003 according to a new poll from Skop.”

The nationalization failed and Hugo Chávez is forced to seek “imperialist” help to save Venezuelan oil industry from collapse. Joe Weisenthal writes:

What’s interesting is that the idea of re-inviting Western firms was actually floated prior to the collapse in oil prices, upon the realization that local producers weren’t up to the task.

Expect this to play out around the world. State-run firms badly underperform their private peers, and governments desperate for revenue won’t have the luxury of squandering their resources when they’re this cheap.

Chávez is slowly learning the lesson that all other countries that experimented with communism learned in the twentieth century.

On 24 March 2008, two gay men were brutally attacked at a Stockholm underground station. The court acknowledges that they were kicked and beaten for no other reason than being gay and therefore considers it a hate crime. Despite this, the court sentences the perpetrators to four months in prison, which, in reality, means no time at all. They will serve two or three months in house arrest—that’s it.

I have been a lay juror for two years now, and I know people are sentences to more than twice as many months in prison for non-violent crimes like possession of narcotics and attempts to buy service from a prostitute. In my opinion, the Swedish system is perverse. The legislators obviously care more about punishing recreational drug users and sex-buying johns than they do about the lives and safety of hate-crime victims.

I honestly don’t see any reason why gay people should go to the police after being attacked. We would be much better off if we learned to fight back.

From the International Herald Tribune:

President Hugo Chávez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to damage his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

Until recently, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.

But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks—including Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France—promising them access to some of the world's largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants here.

The official rhetoric will still be socialist, but the reality is that Venezuelan nationalization of the oil business has come to an end.

My blog colleague Niclas Berggren is on holiday in Thailand and has left his blog to two male straight guest writers. This means his regular postings of pictures of beautiful men has temporarily stopped. So, I feel the duty to fill his shoes in this respect. Here is a picture of an Australian footballer known only as Jason I think Niclas would like. Enjoy.

(Picture from Gay Tel Aviv.)

I underwent some minor surgery this morning. It hurts more than I thought it would, so I had to take the afternoon off. I will answer emails and text messages tomorrow.

It’s the third time since the ongoing Gaza conflict began Jews in my hometown are attacked by protesters. I blame radical leftist groups and their outrageous campaign against everything and everyone with the slightest link to Israel. I’m ashamed on their behalf.

Benjamin Pogrund in Jerusalem Post:

The protests are fierce and angry, fuelled by tragedies like the killing of 46 people when the Israeli army shelled a school building in Jabalya refugee camp, and in the death of a family of seven.

But where were the protestors when missiles were falling on southern Israel? Had they come into the streets then and demanded that Hamas stop firing we wouldn’t have the gory mess in Gaza today.

The rockets and mortars first struck on April 16, 2001. Since then, there have been more than 6,300. Last year’s toll was more than 3,000.

For much of the time the rockets were primitive Qassams with small warheads. However small, they kill as effectively as any high-tech grenade launcher. The missiles have been getting deadlier: Katyushas and, more recently, Grad missiles have been reaching further into Israel, striking towns 25 miles from Gaza.

Casualties from the rockets have mercifully been light, with about 20 deaths. That is not due to any lack of trying by Hamas. Instead, it’s because of air raid sirens which give people less than a minute to get into shelter.

And:

That there is much anguish and anger about Palestinian suffering while there was so little response to what Israelis were enduring raises worrying questions. Are protestors giving vent to genuine compassion for Palestinian victims, or is there something dark and ugly under the surface in singling out Israel as though there has never before been a war in which innocent civilians are tragically caught in the fire?

How else to explain the extreme condemnation of Israel? The outpouring of so much hatred and the wild abuse of language and history in accusations of “genocide,” “Holocaust” and the “Warsaw Ghetto”?

An official of Unrwa, the United Nations relief agency, was on television this week with a long and passionate call to end the Israeli attack. But not a word about what led to it. Why do he and others speak as though the Israeli onslaught came out of nothing, without reason or cause? Why, too, is there silence about Hamas’ firing of missiles from the heart of civilian areas?

These are the questions I have been asking in this journal and elsewhere.

I guess it was inevitable that the Swedish blogosphere’s most ugly face of bigoted neo-communism would get some tabloid attention considering the dramaturgy of the debate on the Gaza conflict. However, I don’t care enough to translate even a tiny bit of biology professor Erik Svensson’s anti-Semitic fantasies, but an interesting thing to note is the pattern used by all bigoted people in this country. All of them, being it Pentecostal homophobes or Marxist anti-Semites, use the same rhetoric trick to free themselves from well-deserved name-calling. “I’m not a homophobe, I just hate the homosexual lifestyle,” religious people often cry when I debate them. Professor Svensson and his online entourage use the same mumbo jumbo: “I’m not an anti-Semite,” they all declare right before they begin to describe how much they loathe the Jewish people and its longing for a safe refuge, free from persecution.

The future looks grim for Sweden’s centre-right government, a new opinion poll suggests.

This is about the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Naomi Klein, the Canadian queen of commercial anti-commercialism, explains how she is boycotting Israel:

For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus’s work, and none to me. I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

I figure Naomi Klein’s massive ego would not allow her to do a real boycott. Personally, I think the Israelis would be better off without her ridiculous conspiracy book in Hebrew translation.

By the way, if you read Klein’s boycott-Israel article in full, notice how she doesn’t mention Hamas’s rockets, which, after all, was the cause of the ongoing war. That’s like writing about the Second World War without mentioning Hitler and Nazism.

The video is corny, but I cannot get the song out of my head.

I just found this video clip via Michael J. Totten.

What can I say? Hamas is doing what it can to worsen the devastation of Gaza in order to gain support from the “useful idiots” in Europe and America. What people must understand is that Hamas is no ordinary resistance movement—it’s not a Palestinian equivalent to the South African ANC, it’s a religious terror organization with no respect for human life. It doesn’t care about the Palestinian people; it’s only bothered with pleasing a god it thinks demands the complete destruction of everything non-Muslim in the Middle East and beyond.

If the Israeli Defence Forces manages to destroy Hamas, it will be a great victory not only for Israel, but for the Palestinian people, too.

The incoming Obama administration will not abandon President Bush’s doctrine of isolating Hamas, the Jerusalem Post reports. Good. To negotiate with terrorists is to legitimize violence.

Revolutionary communists, prominent union leaders, and the leader of the Social Democratic Party joined Hezbollah and Hamas supporters in rallies across Sweden. Journalist Per Gudmundson reports from the rally in Stockholm:

Mona Sahlin, leader of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden, participated today in a rally where Hizbollah flags waved in the air and an Israeli flag was set to flames. Other participants in the demonstration were Jan Eliasson, former social democratic Minister of Foreign Affairs and former President of the United Nations General Assembly, and Wanja Lundby Wedin, chair of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation.

The rally was organised by the Network Gaza Solidarity, in which members of the extreme left work together with immigrant organisations. The demo started at Sergels Torg, in downtown Stockholm, and then paraded to the Israeli embassy where the flagburning took place.

I have written a letter to the Israeli embassy expressing my apology for the behaviour of some of my fellow citizens. I am truly ashamed by the unmasked anti-Semitism that leading politicians naively legitimize by embracing the most fascist of Islamist movements.

The Local has more in English. Erik Svansbro reports with pictures from the rally in Norrköping.

More in Swedish: Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter report from Stockholm; Sydsvenska Dagbladet reports from Malmö and Copenhagen.

Western homophobes often try to link homosexuality to bestiality; it is an old Christian tradition dating back to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and popularized by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Anyhow, I just learned that Lebanon has taken this line of thought to a new level by legally allowing men to have sex with animals—on the condition that the animals are female.

(Via Mikael Tossavainen.)

Swedish journalist Anderas Malm is best known for slandering liberals and supporting religious fundamentalists. He’s a Marxist Ann Coulter. Both of them make their living by deliberately twist and distort the words and opinions of prominent liberals in order to discredit them. Both try their hardest to make liberalism everything they themselves are: elitist, homophobic, racist, irrational, and dishonest.

Although I know Malm is a master at cut-and-paste quotation technique, I don’t think I have ever read anything as viciously deceitful as his latest article, which is an attempt to prove that people who support Israel’s right to defend itself are in fact bloodthirsty advocates of genocide. What makes it a bit funny—in an ironic way—is that Malm is arguing that Sweden should follow Iran and support Hamas with guns and rockets to fire indiscriminately at civilian Israelis.

Israeli soldiers have found a handwritten map showing how Hamas planned to use civilian homes in Gaza as battleground. Deliberately having the enemy kill civilians to get sympathy—Hamas has once again proved its love for the Palestinian people.

A frozen lake in southern Amsterdam on 31 December 2008.

Golda Meir, Israel’s fourth prime minister, has been quoted as saying, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children; we cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

I think she was right.

Mayer Rabinowitz, an associate professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, thinks Halakhah (the religious law) should consider transsexual people who undergo sexual reassignment surgery in terms of their new gender. “Those who claim that we can not change God’s creation are closing their eyes to conversion, and to transplants as well as many other medical procedures which in fact do change God’s creation,” he argues. “Halakhah has always been macroscopic and not microscopic. Therefore, external organs determine the sexual status of a person.”

Liberal theology at its best. Far from the narrow-minded fundamentalism of mainstream Christianity and Islam.

“Five people were lightly wounded when terrorists in Lebanon on Thursday morning fired several Katyusha rockets at the area of Nahariya in northern Israel,” the Jerusalem Post reports. I guess Hezbollah is jealous of Hamas getting all the attention.

Update: There has been no confirmation from Hezbollah, which makes it likely some other group is responsible.

Thanks to the US Department of Defence, we might soon be able to get new teeth, fingers, toes—and talk to virtual ghosts:

The announcement, from the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, requests “a highly interactive PC or web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with virtual renditions of deployed Service Members.” The application must “produce compelling interactive dialogue between a Service member and their families … using video footage or high-resolution 3-D rendering. The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics. For instance, a child may get a response from saying ‘I love you’, or ‘I miss you’, or ‘Good night mommy/daddy.’”

It would be way cooler if people could design their favourite ghost. Mine would look like Ryan Phillippe and posses the wit of Stephen Fry—on second thought, I might just go for an Ohad Knoller replica.

The headline is a quotation from Richard Dawkins, who is about to put “There is no God” banners on buses across Britain. An excellent initiative.

Nine gay men have been sentenced to eight years in prison by a court in Senegal, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reports. Apparently, making love is considered a crime against nature. Normally, same-sex lovemaking only result in five years imprisonment, but the judges were in a jolly mood and added three years because the men worked in a project against the spread of HIV. That made the men “members of a criminal organization”.

Not a day goes by without some religious idiots making life a living hell for my brothers. It’s depressing.

When I travelled in America in the early 1990s, I came across a radical gay-rights organization that talked about establishing a queer nation. I thought it was a mad idea then, but as times goes by I realize that gay men need refuge and the only way to provide that is to follow the Jewish example and create an independent state. Of course, a large majority of gays around the world would only sniff at such an idea, but the many who are seeking a way out of oppression will most certainly see the need. Perhaps it’s time to realize that straight people don’t care about us?

Extremist socialists are joining forces with militant Islamists to terrorize the Jewish community in Sweden.

Some predict the Obama administration will end the ridiculous Clinton compromise known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. I hope they are right.

I was shocked by this piece of news from BBC: “President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to announce major changes to the French judiciary, bringing it closer to the system in the English-speaking world.” Say what? After all, this country turned down a proposed 200-plus-pages European constitution because it was too slim, too “American”, and left some tiny room for non-politicized living. So, yes, it would be a dream come true if Sarkozy put an end to Napoleonic bureaucracy, but I doubt his success in this matter. The France I know loves its paper pushers.

My extended New Year celebration is over and I’m supposed to return to normally today. But I don’t want to. The past week has been one nearly free of television and newspapers, which meant it became easier to ignore the topics I usually discuss in this journal. The few times I read or watched the news, I learned about more casualties in Gaza and Israel. While waiting for the plane home, I heard a BBC voice saying about 600 people have died in the war so far. And all this pain and suffering because Hamas refuses to negotiate a new peace deal with Israel! Is the rocket rain over southern Israel really worth the price? I know the question only makes sense to secular people who value humanity more than divinity—but still! Can’t someone slap some sense into the Gaza leadership?

Well, a new year has begun and I will continue to share my thoughts with whoever wants to read them. Aqurette.com has been my online home for nine years this coming April, and the saved archives goes back to 2005. I looked through it the other day, and I must admit that when reading some of the stuff I wrote a couple of years ago, I was a tiny bit embarrassed. But I think long-time blogging does that to all writers. It’s not unlike the traditional diary. Certain ideas that seemed so clever a few years ago appear infantile and stupid now. People you admired are suddenly bores nearly forgotten. But this is what my life has been like the past few years, and this journal reflects that. My ambition is to let it do so for at least another year.

By the way, I will always remember New Year’s Eve 2008 as the day I discovered the Manic Street Preachers. Twenty years after everyone else did, but better late than never.

Who would have thought a song about the Spanish Civil War could be so catchy?

I found this question on Dan Savage’s sex column and realized I have had the exact same thought:

Is “saddleback” a sex act? If not, can you define it as one? Or if it is, can you popularize it? I’m wondering because each time I hear about Rick Warren, I can’t get past the name of his church.

The Eurozone got its sixteenth member on 1 January. Slovakia is the latest EU country to scrap its national currency for the multinational euro.

The Eurozone expanded elsewhere too.

For the first time ever, Höganäs, the small town I grew up in, has done something really cool. The town has introduced the euro:

The residents of Höganäs were predominantly in favour joining the European single currency when the Swedish people voted to reject the euro in a referendum on the issue in 2003. In declaring Höganäs a “Eurocity”, county councillor Péter Kovács has renewed calls for the government to work harder to introduce the euro countrywide.

“We have developed a Eurocity logo, which we think will become a standard across Sweden and we believe that almost all the counties in Skåne will follow suit within a couple of years,” Kovács said to local newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet.

From January 1st Höganäs residents will be able to pay rent, bills and conduct their shopping in either Swedish kronor or Euros. ATM machines will dispense either currency without additional charge.

Rumour has it that Denmark is about to have its second referendum on adopting the euro. A majority seems to be in favour this time around.

As has been the case for some years now, I’m in the Netherlands to celebrate New Year with friends. I’m back in my office on Wednesday, 7 January. My blogging will be infrequent until then.

The Czech Republic will chair the European Council the next six months. Now the Czech government is doing what it can to stop the country’s head-of-state, President Vaclav Klaus, from saying too many embarrassing things in public. The man is known for comparing the European Union to a communist state, and questioning global warming. Personally, I think it would be good if President Klaus’s voice was heard more often. Not that I agree with him on everything, but he does have a point in most thing he says. The EU is not a communist state, far from it, but EU institutions have developed socialist and collectivist attitudes. It is a matter of too much bureaucracy and too few politicians who care enough to see the dangers of red tape and expanding government.

Earlier today, Björn Pedersen announced that one of my favourite bloggers, Henrik Alexandersson, won the annual Swedish Political Blog of the Year Award for 2008. Congratulation!

Read Henrik’s thank-yous here.

Caroline Glick of Jerusalem Post writes:

Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari’a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

What a holy act! If God is not pleased, I’m sure the Islamophobes are.