In a statement read out by the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, the Catholic Church plays down its sex-abuse record by claiming that research has shown that only 1.5% to 5% of its clergy were involved in child molestation. Considering that there are more than 400,000 Catholic priests worldwide, this means that there are between 6,000 and 20,000 active paedophiles in the church’s service.

But as always, the Pope and the Vatican tries to blame it on the gays. We are supposed to believe that the real problem is same-sex attraction and not the fact that very young boys are systematically raped by adult men.

Last week, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was given fifteen minutes to address the United Nations General Assembly. Being used to make up his own rules, he rambled on for an hour and a half. After seventy-five minutes, the translator gave up and cried, “I just can’t take this any more!”

I think the translator should be given an award for coping even that long. From what I understand, most of the audience had left the room long before that.

Today is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. It is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz speaks of a “wave of aliyah from Sweden”. It is true that more Swedish Jews are moving to Israel, but to say that twenty-four people make a wave is to exaggerate the trend.

Malmö had its own Pride parade on Saturday. I did not take part myself, but taking from this video, the 900 that people did had an excellent time.

The new president of the United Nations General Assembly says homosexuality is unacceptable. At a press conference on Friday, Ali Abdussalam Treki got a question about the UN resolution that calls for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality. In his reply, he said he opposed the resolution. He went on to say that homosexuality is unacceptable in most of the world and that some countries allow it only because they think of it is as “a kind of democracy”. He is wrong. It is a matter of civil liberties and human rights, not democracy per se.

However, considering that Mr Treki is Libya’s man in the UN—a country ruled by crazy dictator Muammar Qaddafi since 1969—I figure democracy, human rights, and civil liberties are as abstract to Treki as the rainbow colours are to a blind person.

“The anti-gay bigotry spewed by this Qaddafi shill demonstrates once again that the UN has been hijacked by advocates of hate and intolerance,” American Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says in a comment. She is absolutely right. Why people from countries such as Libya are allowed to head international organizations is beyond me.

Christopher Hitchens has some thoughts on liberal humour and its role in American politics.

With more than thirty million people living with HIV, a vaccine would be the ultimate dream solution to this global crisis.

A new vaccine trial shows some interesting result. Researchers suggest the new vaccine could cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 per cent. This could very well be the first step towards the medical breakthrough the world has been waiting for since the AIDS epidemic began in the early 1980s. But we are not there yet. It could still take many years before we have a vaccine.

Who can resist an article with that headline? Turns out it’s quite interesting, too. A Manhattan pornographer makes aliyah.

I failed to get enough votes in the Moderate Party’s primary election to secure my name on the ballot paper in next year’s election to the Swedish Parliament. The official and final decision is not due until 24 October, but with my name near the bottom of the list I don’t expect it to be among the fifteen or so printed on the ballot. However, I stand in two local elections, too. I might succeed better in those.

First we had Swedish politicians deciding that Israeli tennis players should be forced to play without an audience during David Cup. Then we had the Aftonbladet article that suggested Jews in Israel and America are selling body parts from Palestinians. And now Sweden criticizes Israeli settlers while establishing a friendly relationship with Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

According to the US Census Bureau, about 27 per cent of the estimated 564,743 total gay couples in the America say they are in a marriage relationship.

Swedish politicians are far too lenient on bureaucrats and officials who undermine political decisions. This is particularly a problem during those rare years when Sweden has a centre-right government since most bureaucrats and board members of state-run companies tend to be loyal to the socialists that gave them their job. That is why I am pleased to read that the government has decided to fire the board of directors of the pharmacy monopoly because it refuses to accept the new rules for deregulation.

“Exactly one year before the general election, Sweden’s opposition parties stand marginally ahead of the governing centre-right Alliance, according to the latest poll,” The Local writes.

It is fascinating that an opposition without any clear policies—apart from a promised tax increase—manages to be so popular. In a way, this could be promising. Because, if it is less politics and fewer policies the Swedish people want, then libertarian conservatism should be the perfect choice. A government with the ambition to do as little as possible would be the best government for Sweden.

Unfortunately, the opposition parties don’t have that ambition. They are socialists who want to politicize everything. They just won’t tell people before election day.

It’s the Jewish New Year. When the sun goes down tonight, the year 5770 begins.

The heterosexual family is weak and must be protected from homosexuality. If gay people are given the same civil rights as straight people, it will be a threat to the traditional heterosexual family. Therefore, the Ugandan parliament is due to vote on a new anti-homosexuality bill with these objectives:

(a) To protect marriage as that only between a man and a woman in Uganda;

(b) To prohibit homosexual behavior and related practices in Uganda as they constitute a threat to the traditional family;

(c) To safeguard the health of Ugandan citizens from the negative effects of homosexuality and related practices;

(d) To establish progressive legislation protective of the traditional family that can serve as a model for other countries;

(e) To prohibit ratification of any international treaties, conventions, protocols and declarations which are contrary or inconsistent with the provisions of this Act;

(f) To ensure that no international instruments to which Uganda is already a party can be interpreted or applied in Uganda in a way that was never intended at the time the document was created;

(e) To withdraw from any international agreements to which Uganda already is a party, or file reservations to them, which are re-interpreted to include protection for homosexual behavior, or that promote same-sex marriage, or that call for the promotion or teaching about homosexuality as being healthy, normal, or an acceptable lifestyle choice, or that seek to establish sexual behavior, sexual orientation, or gender identity, or sexual minorities as legally protected categories of people; and

(f) To prohibit Uganda from becoming a party to any new international instruments that expressly include protection for homosexual behavior; promote same-sex marriage; call for the promotion or teaching about homosexuality or homosexual relations as being healthy, normal, or an acceptable lifestyle choice; and/or seek to establish sexual behavior, sexual orientation, gender identity or sexual minorities as legally protected categories of people.

This is truly insane. I will never understand why so many straight people are so frightened of gay people.

Box Turtle Bulletin has the full text and more in English. Tor Billgren has more in Swedish.

To complain about your boss on Facebook is not a good idea. At least not if the boss can read your log.

Well, not drugs in the plural. The liberal attitude is restricted to Swedish snus, a highly addictive tobacco product that generate a lot of money in tax revenues. Meanwhile, Sweden continues to criticize the Netherlands, Denmark, Britain, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and most other European nations for being soft on non-addictive drugs.

I don’t object to the proposed Europe-wide legalization of snus. What bothers me is the hypocrisy. When I lived in Amsterdam, I often heard annoyed officials complain about the obnoxious behaviour of Swedish politicians opposed to legal cannabis. Snus is illegal in the Netherlands, but if the Swedish government gets its way, this new soft drug would be introduced on the Dutch market. I cannot stop wondering what the reaction would be if the Dutch argues the same case for their home-grown marijuana.

The Local has more.

Arthur Allen makes the case for male circumcision.

An animal-rights group wants to rent an old prison building and turn it into America’s first chicken empathy museum. A spokesperson says that a former prison is the ideal setting for exhibits on the mistreatment of chickens raised for slaughter.

Wouldn’t a closed-down poultry farm or restaurant be a better setting?

A Swedish terrorist—who looks like something from Planet of the Apes—has been sentenced to life imprisonment by an American court. He was found guilty of planning to set up an al-Qaeda training camp in Oregon.

An example of multi-levelled stupidity at work.

Hillary Clinton is right. Venezuela’s arms deal with Russia is a cause for concern.

On Friday evenings, ultra-Orthodox residents in Jerusalem smear raspberry syrup on all public seating areas in order to prevent young people from sitting on the benches and engaging in conversation on the Sabbath.

According to a new study, 43 per cent of young Swedes think that being paid for sex is acceptable, as long as the parties involved agree. There’s hope for the future. Young people are definitely more libertarian-minded than Swedes of my middle-aged generation.

A new British film about Charles Darwin cannot find a distributor in America because it is considered too controversial:

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. His “half-baked theory” directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”, the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as “a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying”.

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

“That’s what we’re up against. In 2009. It’s amazing,” he said.

I agree. It is amazing that so many Christians in one of the world’s most developed countries continue to question evolution.

Madonna is number one on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play Chart for the fortieth time. And it’s an impressive list of number-ones:

1. Holiday/Lucky Star (1983)
2. Like a Virgin (1984)
3. Material Girl (1985)
4. Angel/Into the Groove (1985)
5. Open Your Heart (1987)
6. Causing a Commotion (1987)
7. You Can Dance (LP Cuts) (1988)
8. Like a Prayer (1989)
9. Express Yourself (1989)
10. Keep It Together (1990)
11. Vogue (1990)
12. Justify My Love (1991)
13. Erotica (1992)
14. Deeper and Deeper (1993)
15. Fever (1993)
16. Secret (1994)
17. Bedtime Story (1995)
18. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina (1997)
19. Frozen (1998)
20. Ray of Light (1998)
21. Nothing Really Matters (1999)
22. Beautiful Stranger (1999)
23. American Pie (2000)
24. Music (2000)
25. Don’t Tell Me (2001)
26. What It Feels Like For A Girl (2001)
27. Impressive Instant (2001)
28. Die Another Day (2002)
29. American Life (2003)
30. Hollywood (2003)
31. Me Against the Music [Britney Spears featuring Madonna] (2003)
32. Nothing Fails (2004)
33. Love Profusion (2004)
34. Hung Up (2005)
35. Sorry (2006)
36. Get Together (2006)
37. Jump (2006)
38. 4 Minutes [featuring Justin Timberlake & Timbaland] (2008)
39. Give It 2 Me (2008)
40. Celebration (2009)

A rabbi blows the shofar when the family dog decides to add his voice.

Evidence from clinical trials in Africa has proved that male circumcision could cut down heterosexual HIV transmission by as much as 65 per cent, so why not bring mass adult male circumcision to the rest of the world?

Jeffrey Goldberg speaks to Quentin Tarantino about his new film Inglourious Basterds and finds “a story of emotionally uncomplicated, physically threatening, non-morally-anguished Jews dealing out spaghetti-Western justice to Nazis.” In short, a Jewish wet dream.

Cato makes it simple. Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha!

Mehdi Ghezali became famous in Sweden as the “Guantánamo Swede” when he, in December 2001, was arrested by Pakistani police on suspicion of terrorism and handed over to American troops for transport to the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba. The Swedish government at the time negotiated his release and Mr Ghezali returned to Sweden in July 2004.

Now Mehdi Ghezali has again been arrested in Pakistan on terror suspicions. It seems old habits die hard. And I guess that will prove the case for the Swedish left-wing media as well. In a few days, the leftist press will be filled with sob stories about Ghezali being the victim of American imperialism and a global Zionist conspiracy. It’s all so predictable.

British envoy John Terry was killed in Jamaica on Wednesday. Police have now revealed that they found a note was beside the body. It read, “This is what will happen to ALL gays.”

The “I’m With Joe Wilson” T-shirt is here.

Someone ought to tell Brian Brown, head of the National Organization for Marriage, that people who pride themselves on being rational and sane don’t spend their time crusading against equality under the law. Only the truly irrational think that gay families are a threat to heterosexual families.

I guess congressman Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” was the most interesting that come of Barack Obama’s health-care speech in Washington yesterday. Megan McArdle writes in a comment:

“The speech, overall, was dangerously wonky. I’m guessing a lot of people tuned out well before the end, and more probably can't hold the details in their head. The speech won’t change much; this is going to be fought out in sound bites and attack ads.”

I second that. I went to bed just before Obama finished speaking.

From the White House transcript:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You lie! (Boos.)

THE PRESIDENT: It’s not true.

“Would Jesus Discriminate?” is the question asked by a new anti-homophobia campaign in America. And according the campaigners and a growing number of Christians, the answer is no. Jesus wouldn’t discriminate against gay people. In fact, some even suggest there are biblical evidence of Jesus affirming a gay couple in Matthew 8:5-13.

Beatrice Fredriksson thinks it’s wrong that taxpayers’ money funds feminist pornography:

Thursday September 3rd sees the premiere of Mia Engberg's ‘Dirty diaries’, a feminist porn movie funded by the Swedish Film Institute. Engberg received 500,000 kronor ($69,000) from the Institute to make the movie. [...] If a man had sought and received similar funding for ‘regular’ porn, it wouldn’t have taken long before there was an outcry from supporters of equality between the sexes.

What annoys me the most is the prevailing idea among many Swedish feminists that everything involving women must receive state funding. I think this is the cause of much of the remaining inequality between the sexes. Men work for privately owned companies and are driven by profit whereas women are taught to stay in state-funded organizations and work out of a sense of altruistic duty to society. The feminists are only establishing women’s dependence on men and society by turning to government institutions for funding of their projects. Why not do something genuinely radical of feminist pornography by adapting it to actual demand and market it for profit?

Europe’s silliest prime minister in a cartoon by Peter Brookes.

The Chávez regime plans to pull the plug on twenty-nine more radio stations, and it threatens to close over a hundred stations in total. The message from the regime is clear: Don’t even dare to criticize Venezuela’s top dog!

Once my favourite Swedish blogger, now Blogge Bloggelito gives up blogging.

This is sickening:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received a movie star welcome Monday at the Venice Film Festival, where he walked the red carpet with director Oliver Stone for the premiere of the documentary “South of the Border.”

Hundreds of admirers, some chanting “president, president,” gathered outside of the Casino for the leader’s arrival. A few held up Venezuelan flags and a banner in Spanish that read “Welcome, president.”

Chavez threw a flower into the crowd and touched his heart, and at one point took a photographer’s camera to snap a picture himself.

Europe never learns. Totalitarianism is as hot as ever in leftist circles.

One of America’s coolest magazines tells the story of one of Australia’s hunkiest men.

Swedish blogger Michael G. Helders says the Bible is clear about what a marriage is, that it could never be anything but a union of one man and one woman. I beg to differ. Let us take a closer look at 1 Samuel 18:1-4:

After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day, Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father's house. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.

What is described here is a wedding ceremony. Jonathan—the son of Saul—and David are in love and make a covenant with one another. Saul decides that it would be wrong to send David back to his father’s house now that the young man belongs to the family. As is the case of most marriage contracts, the covenant of Jonathan and David is confirmed by physical intimacy, which is implied by Jonathan undressing in front of David, an act that goes far beyond any kind of non-sexual friendship.

(Seen in the picture are three Christian icons portraying David and Jonathan.)

The Venezuelan de facto dictator is on tour, visiting his anti-democracy friends in Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus, and Russia. While on a cosy sleep-over at Bashir Assad’s place in Damascus, Hugo Chávez accused Israel of being part of imperialist efforts to divide the Middle East. “Why was the state of Israel created?” he asked rhetorically. “To divide,” he answered himself. “To impede the unity of the Arab world. To assure the presence of the North American empire in all these lands.”

There you have it! Zionism has noting to do with a refuge for the Jewish people in its old homeland. The Holocaust and the Second World War played no role in the creation of the modern state of Israel. It was simply set up to annoy the Arabs and please the Americans.

Hugo Chávez is a complete idiot.

Sometimes I wish I had a button like this. Erase and rewind.

(Via Urban Prankster.)

Brent Don helps you to quickly identify fraudulent election results.

On Tuesday, 8 September, I will present myself to local members of the Moderate Party and ask for their vote in the ongoing primary election. Come by the office on Hans Michelsensgatan 9 in Malmö if you are a party member.

About forty people are expected to march in Keetmanshoop on Saturday. A true milestone!

In a public hearing on 11 August, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi was asked if it all right for an interrogator to rape a prisoner in order to obtain a confession. The ayatollah answered,

“The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed.”

When asked if the rape of men and young boys should be considered sodomy, the ayatollah answered,

“No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape.”

I think it would be hard to find a religious leader more wicked and perverted than Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi.

Read Nissan Ratzlav-Katz’s report in full here.

At least a hundred gay men has gathered to protest police efforts to keep homosexuals out of the People’s Park in Guangzhou.

Newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet continues to investigate how religious communities in Sweden treat gay people. Today, it runs two articles about the Muslim community. First, an interview with Ardeshir Bibakadabi, a brave gay Muslim who tells a horrific story about abuse and discrimination. And second, an interview with Ayoub Chibli, an imam in Malmö who says loving someone of the same sex is evil.

The Muslim world is in desperate need of a reform movement.