This fall has been awful
It has not been a good fall for the Danish citizen. The people, who properly suffer the most in the world, were tested once again.
The Camilla Broe-case:
First they really extradited Camilla Broe. She is starving in a prison in Florida where family members are trying to see to that she can get some food so she can be alive to the show trial in December. However the trial can be delayed because the prosecutor wants to go on honeymoon.
The extradition process was expected to attract a lot of media attention but in order to prevent her case to become an issue for the ordinary Dane, they surprised everybody by deporting 22 people to Iraq only a couple of days before. It was a decision most Danes supported, because Denmark had suffered by the burden to house refugees. We cannot even give hardworking and worn down people early retirement anymore. The removal of the early retirement made it possible to claim that they took our status status as a welfare society away from us.
The strategy the authorities picked worked. She could be sent to Florida without protests hitting the streets. The charges they have dealt with in Danish courts were altered so she faced another set of fabricated charges in Florida. She was sacrificed and it remains unclear what kind of payment Denmark received in exchange for her.
Next a group of extremist Christians wanted to change a number of things in Denmark:
Ban of the sex-workers:
First they wanted to punish customers who seek a prostitute. The association of sex-workers is protesting this ban on their right to choose a way of living. Everyone wants to stop human trafficking. It is awful that some people can exploit others in that way. The sex-workers cannot earn a descent income when others are being smuggled into Denmark, so they want it stopped. But to forbid prostitution at all would only move the business over the border to Germany.
The main reason for Denmark to have a rather large sex-industry is that Norway and Sweden are not taking responsibility to see to that the demand in their own home market is covered. However it is only one out of many areas where they send their problems to Denmark. They don’t educate people to their health care department either but ships their students to Denmark, where we pay for their education so they can get cheap labor to their hospitals. It is a kind of development aid to undeveloped countries we are not speaking loud about.
There is no reason to feel sorry for these students. They enjoy a way better student environment, where youth socialize instead being isolated and angry on the world like they do in Finland. In 1993 Denmark saw a tragedy when students became victim of a school shooting. We decided that it never should be repeated so we created Friday bars in our colleges and high schools, so the students learn each other to know better and it have worked.
But to take the path as they did in Sweden and Norway does not stop human trafficking. These people have a hidden agenda. We know that the Climate Summit we got as a part of a dirty deal with India will result in an increased demand for purchase of sex. Maybe some are envious on Denmark due to our success to attract a number of International summits where decisions are actually made where a lot of other summits abroad have been coffee breaks for the politicians. I don’t know, but to forbid people to take a job they want is not acceptable.
Attack on our alcohol culture:
Week 40 is a week where our department of health attacks what they think is killing Danes before time. The main reason is that our politicians want to increase the pension age, so we can pay taxes for a longer time. Danes pay more than 50 percent of their income in taxes, so we are talking a lot of money our politicians can use to eat and drink expensive wines for (now limited by court decision to DKK 1,000 per meal. There was no limit before), unlike most countries to pay the corrupt United Nation or send abroad as development aid.
This week they attacked our alcohol culture. Some have been abroad and seen what kind of prison the United States is for teenagers. The politicians know from foreign experiences that you have to break the morale of a population early and it is easy to state that a population which accepted Bush for 8 years and a stricter gun control when armed criminals kill a lot must be broken.
They want to increase the purchase age for stronger alcohol to 18. Some want a total ban on alcohol in firms making it very difficult to both attract employees and maintain a proper human resource policy inside the firms. A lot of the Friday bars are financed by private firms so they can get the best students when they graduate. I guess that it would be difficult to run a firm at all if all kind of human relations activities are banned.
But the attack on our alcohol culture is only a part of a larger battle!
The war against youth in Denmark
It is difficult to be teenager in Denmark. It has never been harder. Never before has there been so many ideas of how to punish youth for being innovative and open to meet people and socialize with them. I have searched the Internet and want to tell this story from a village outside Copenhagen, which illustrate how our politicians think. The youth in Stenloese complains about the fact that they cannot enter nightclubs as they used to do in the old days. They have no option but to travel all the way to Copenhagen when they want a night in town. I would have to state as a parent that I would be very scared about sending my children in the nightlife in Copenhagen, if I lived in this village. I would prefer that they remained in the local community. I know that they think that having a nightclub, teenagers can attend would result in more youth drinking alcohol, but really who cares when a ban on alcohol is a path towards drug use and violence as we have seen it in Copenhagen where not even news media can report from a local church in broad daylight with taking the same precautions as they do when they report from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The hate against the Danish youth culture which the town council of the county Egedal shows it totally irresponsible and an insult against the parents which by the case are the voters too. I hope that this issue will be a part of the upcoming elections to the town councils.
But the war against Danish youth culture is far more than a war on alcohol use among youth. A lot of Danish youth became exchange students in their own country this summer when a lot of the youth were told that the town they lived in had to room in the school so they could receive education. They had to leave their family and local network of friends, jobs and in some cases their boyfriend/girlfriend to live in remote villages like Slagelse, Odense or Esbjerg for years.
In some way it is positive that they are exchange student in their own country rather than a foreign country where so many things can go wrong. We are not talking of legal dilemmas which can haunt their future for the rest of their lives like Camilla Broe is a living proof of. We are talking of the fact that some exchange student agencies are hidden contact agencies where host families with a child who was last in the line when looks where handed out can get a chance to get their child married if they become host families.
But even moving to another part of Denmark can be tough on any person. While Denmark is a small country it is maybe the largest country in the world when you move. I am talking about the fact that speed limits were invented on Zealand to the distance can be felt longer. I am talking about the fact that you as a newcomer to a community have to prove yourself. The Danish citizens have been hurt too often by outsiders so everybody is measure on the actions of their parents. I moved across the country to settle in a small village, I would be the stranger for the rest of my lives and my children would be the children of the stranger. Maybe my grandchildren will be regarded as one their owns.
I believe that it is a shame that our government has not seen to that schools are to be found where people live rather than making the department of education into a tool for providing area development.
Then people began to speak about how many who drops out of boarding schools - the so-called continuation schools (Efterskoler). I believe that it is the parents who are too blame. They are too busy with their own careers to guide their teenagers through an important period in their life so they choose to outsource this task to a far-away boarding school. I have to ask the parents: What good is there about having children if you don’t want to go all the way. Children under 18 should not live outside the family unit. I believe that the continuation schools are over-rated. I believe when you can see that about 25 percent drop out of about 20 percent of the schools should make the families think long and hard about the reason for banishing their own child to a place with strangers for a year is the right strategy if you really want to remain a family in the long run.
I am happy that I didn’t have to face such difficulties when I was a teenager. I fear for the future of my children, but there are other fears in Denmark year 2009!
The police state Denmark
When I leave my house I am not afraid of being shot even given the fact that I sometimes don’t shave and I am a well-built weighing about 200 pounds. I might look like a biker and for some on unknown reason they are target for one-sided attacks by youth gangs.
But I am not afraid of them. They are few. If the Danish IRS teamed up with the police for real and confiscated all they did not buy by earning their money in a way which is legal, those youth gangs would be out of business in months.
I am afraid of our police due to the new weapon law. We really need a Charlton Heston and an organization like the National Riffle Association in Denmark. I have a lot of projects on my house which I would like to start, but I cannot not go down in a shop and buy a simple Stanley knife without risking being stopped by the police and given 7 days in jail. I forgot a Chain saw in my trunk the other day because I went home to bed after having helped my father in law. My wife exploded on me. You can only imagine a jail sentence I could have risked with a chain saw in my car, when you get 7 days in jail.
The police are everywhere and they can put you in jail for 6 hours without charging you. They do this every weekend with soccer fans. Some politicians have suggested that the 6 hours should be extended to months, so they could deal with youth gangs and stop arresting the same soccer fans every weekend.
In selected areas they can also search you without properly cause and they use this to harass the poor people.
So the answer right now to the fears of an arrest is to remain at home as much as possible and only rarely leave the home. I just got a mail from the company. They want to lower the expectations of the next week because the police wants to reduce the overall speed on our highways by 10 percent in week 42. It might result in more jobs lost. I hope that we can avoid it, but next week won’t be a happy one.
Will it change?
I hope that the weapon law will be abolished. It is a failure and made in panic over a terrible but few killings.
But in december we have the climate summit in Copenhagen and I guess that both the politicians and the police want too strict laws in affect until the summit is over. All people is worried about the violence expected in relationship with the summit and the Danish police unfortunately doesn’t have a legendary person like the French former police cheif in Paris Maurrice Papon to take care of riots in a classic way.
But I keep a small hope…..