A neo-nazi alleges a Swedish judge unfairly sentenced him to three months for his role in an anti-gay attack. 23-year old Simon Lindberg and a drunken friend entered gay group RFSL's headquarters last May and attacked several members. Upon receiving a three-month sentence for his role in that attack, Lindberg issued a stern - and nonsensical - statement against the presiding judge, calling the ruling "political":

The lay judges were swayed by who I am, and have not judged professionally. There is no evidence, and in such cases we have a principle of justice which says that one should acquit, not convict.

Someone cue Alanis Morissette.

Neo-Nazi convicted of gay-bashing [The Local]

• British passport authorities refused four-month old Eden Lurie's picture because her hair was deemed "too spiky". To curb the problem, the gave her a digital trim. How thoughtful.

• Meanwhile, another set of British passport authorities have admitted to issuing nine passports to al Qaeda operative, Dhiren Barot. Not only did Barot want to set off a dirty bomb, he also had big dreams of blowing up parking garages with gasoline packed limos. What a chap.

• Another teacher falls prey to anti-gay assaults on free speech. Amy Sorrell of Fort Wayne, Indiana, has been suspended with pay after she allowed students to print a controversial op-ed that included such horrid homo propaganda as: "I can only imagine how hard it would be to come out as homosexual in today’s society. I think it is so wrong to look down on those people, or to make fun of them, just because they have a different sexuality than you."

• Police have finally found the body of Dr Joaquin Leal Bermudez. The Spanish hematologist went missing in Norway back in January. Police soon arrested a suspect found driving Bermudez's blood stained car, but he ain't talking.

• The Russian Orthodox Church still isn't down with gays. The deputy Patriarchate of Moscow says, "The authorities should be acting depending on public opinion which I find quite clear - open propaganda of a gay way of life is rejected by our public, arousing protests and antagonism."

• If Andy Warhol were still alive, he'd be a rich motherfucker. One of the artist's famous Marilyn's (the "Lemon Marilyn", to be specific) may be auctioned for $15 million. It's current owner bought it for $250. Shit, we need to start buying more art...

• Current Swedish law requires all transsexuals be sterilized. Now lawmakers are debating whether to let them freeze their eggs and sperm. Hooray!

• From a reader: "[HX Media owned] In Newsweekly in Boston has informed all of their freelance writers that they will not be paying them for pieces that have already been written and published in the paper. At least one writer immediately removed their column from the paper. They also dumped Q Syndicate which is where they used to get a ton of their freelance material." Note to young homo-journos: look elsewhere for work.

Fred Phelps just got some fuel for his Sweden-hating hellfire. As we reported back in December, The Church of Sweden - a Lutheran denomination - announced plans to allow gay civil unions.

While initially they planned on keeping gay and straight marriages distinct, it seems they may have had a change of heart. The Local reports:

The Church of Sweden's leaders have said that they are willing to allow gay people to marry in church on the same basis as heterosexual couples, although bishops are unsure whether to call the unions marriage.

The decision will make the church the first major denomination in the world to allow full gay church marriage in practice.

We are prepared to carry out partnerships for homosexuals that have the force of law... It is important that the Church of Sweden can be ecumenically weighty by being one step ahead and showing potential pathways. We are first in this context.

Swedish bishops say yes to gay church weddings [The Local]

We all know about love at first sight, but what about love at first listen? It's rare, but it happens. And it definitely happened to us the first time we heard Swedish pop duo, Johan Hedberg (left) and Peter Gunnarsson (right) aka: Suburban Kids With Biblical Names.

You may recall we celebrated our burgeoning aural relationship when we posted their video for "Loop Duplicate My Heart". Well, now we've gone to the next level with a little interview with the musically-inclined chums.

Read what they have to say about nostalgia, their first loves and the correlation between sex and desperation, after the jump.

As if that's not enough, we've included the video for their track, "Rent A Wreak" from their most recent release, #3. Now that's love.

CONTINUED »

We know, we know: we missed Morning Aural. Sorry, but it's President's Day - everything gets all wacky and shit. Don't worry, we'll make it up to you. In the meantime, a reader suggested we post a video from Swedish popsters, Acid House Kings. So, we have.

This here's the video for their twee love song, 7 Days from 2005's Sing Along With The Acid House Kings.

We came across this video of The Legends' "He Knows The Sun" while tooling around Labrador Records' YouTube archive - where you can also find another video from another favorite, Suburban Kids with Biblical Names. There's not much information on the the nine-person musical wonders, so we can only direct you to their MySpace page and the Labrador write-up.

We can say, however, that we're totally in love with them. We're so in love, in fact, that we couldn't decide between this video and the visual representation of another single, "Lucky Star", which you can find after the jump.

You're welcome.

CONTINUED »

It seems Reverend Fred Phelps isn't content sowing his rank seeds of haterade in America. In addition to his nonsensical God Hates Canada website, the bigot's got his alleged Christian sights set on Sweden.

Aside from the fact that Sweden locked up Reverend Ake Green for using his pulpit to spread homophobia, the Swedes are, according to Phelps, "...drippings from the Devil's own penis - a veritable sperm bank for Satan's queers."

Wow. That may be one of the best things we've ever read. And we mean that.

We had actual never heard of Swedish duo Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Johan Hedberg and Peter Gunnarsson - until earlier this week, when Jyoti Mishra recommended we give them a twirl. So we did. And, you know what? We're smitten! At once poppy and maudlin, the boys croon over electronic blips and simple strumming. We haven't heard music this effortlessly penetrating since the The Magnetic Fields.

SKBN's another internet success story - they first started posting their songs on the internet in 2004. With a growing fan-base and favorable reviews, they caught the eye of Labrador Records, who've distributed their self-titled EP. Since then, the boys have recorded a full-lengt album, #3, which features this song, "Loop Duplicate My Heart." Enjoy!

Okay, enough making fun of Mary Cheney.

Let's turn our attention to Sweden, where the Swedish Lutheran Church has decided to bless gay unions. Starting in January 2007, happy homos can march down the aisle and join millions of other committed couples. Don't be fooled, however, the deal doesn't give gays the right to marry, per se. Sweden's The Local reports:

Sweden allows gay couples the same rights as married couples, but the law still defines gay unions as "partnerships", not "marriages".

The Church board said couples who had entered into legal civil unions would be able to hold a wedding-like ceremony in the church, which would not however include an exchange of vows.

Meanwhile, the government's considering removing all gendered language from its marriage laws, which would thus obliterate the final linguistic boundaries between "marriage" and "partnership". Thank heaven!

A new Harvard-endorsed report contends that depsite the nominal success of women's liberation movements and more inclusive politics, not one in 115 survery nations have bridged the gender gap in terms of education, salary, politics or health.

Sweden has gone farthest in eliminating inequality between men and women, followed by Norway, Finland and Iceland. The Philippines is the only Asian country in the top 10 and the United States comes in at 22. Yemen ranks bottom.
...
For economic participation, for example, the researchers measured the proportion of men and women in work, pay gaps and the ratio of women to men among legislators, senior officials and managers.

The study shows the gender gap for health and survival is very narrow across the world. Based on a score of 1 meaning full equality and 0 a complete lack of equality, the range for all 115 countries is just 0.9796 to 0.9227.

But when it comes to political empowerment -- the ratio of women to men in parliament, ministerial positions, and heads of state over the past 50 years -- the best performer is Sweden with a score of 0.5501 but Saudi Arabia is last with zero.

The last posting made us feel all international and shit. Fortuitously, we've just received an email from our friends at Mute Records - the crazy kids who brought us The Knife - announcing that they've just signed twee-pop collective, I'm From Barcelona.

Don't be fooled by the name, though: the 29-strong aural allies actually hail from Sweden, the little country that musically could.

In celebration of this news, we've decided to post the video for "We're From Barcelona" off of the band's debut, Let Me Introduce My Friends. Trust us, you're going to want to know the words when the record drops next spring. Otherwise you'll look like a total loser and you're friends won't introduce you to anyone.

No matter how many times we see this video for Swedish rock outfit The Knife's "Silent Shout", it still manages to disturb our oh-so-delicate sensibilities. But, in the same way we can never get enough slasher flicks, we keep going back for more.

In fact, you could say the same thing for the entire album, Silent Shout: their first US offering from earlier this year.

It may surprise you to know that The Knife first made their impact in Sweden back in 2001 with their self-titled album. Deep Cuts, their 2003 follow-up, bolstered their status as aural wonders.

To celebrate their upcoming two-night gig at the CMJ Music Festival in New York City, Mute Records (the same folks who brought us the new Frank Tovey collection) will be releasing both The Knife and Deep Cut for the first time in The States.

Appropriately enough, they drop on Halloween, meaning you'll have the perfect soundtrack to scare the pants off that certain trickster.