![\"anker_jorgensen_nej_til_dansk_krigsdeltagelse-214x300\"](\"http:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/anker_jorgensen_nej_til_dansk_krigsdeltagelse-214x300.jpg\")
<\/a>\nI en serie p\u00e5 syv indl\u00e6g vil journalist, forfatter og fredsaktivist Ron Ridenour beskrive det danske samfund og dansk politik. Den aktuelle baggrund er den amerikanske valgkamp, hvor Danmark af Bernie Sanders blevet sat op som et ideal for de mange, der \u00f8nsker et andet samfund. Ron Ridenour gennemg\u00e5r i artikelserien, hvordan Danmark under socialdemokratisk ledelse har udviklet sig til et land i krig og med et velf\u00e6rdssystem under hurtig nedbrydning.<\/p>\n
Af Ron Ridenour<\/em><\/p>\n
Se\u00a0 intro til artikelserien nedenfor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I first met Denmark\u2019s last truly Social Democratic Prime Minister, Anker Joergensen, in his state office, unannounced, in late 1980.<\/p>\n Grethe and I had just been married. We had met the year before in Los Angeles where I had been a \u201cparticipatory journalist\u201d, and activist for social\/racial\/gender equality and against the Vietnam War. I wanted to start a new life with Grethe in her peaceful, social democratic land.<\/p>\n I took odd jobs and did freelance writing for some Danish media, and for progressive media in the US and England. As such, I often walked from Grethe\u2019s centrally located Copenhagen apartment to Christiansborg. The palace is the only building in the world that houses all government branches. The royal palace stood beside the seat of economic power, Denmark\u2019s Stock Exchange (Boersen).<\/p>\n Sometimes I covered official politics from my \u201cpalace playground\u201d, as my new wife quipped. The six-story building is a labyrinth of hard wooden stairs, long hallways and hundreds of offices. On my second trip inside, I ambled about unable to find the stairs that led directly to the balcony reserved for journalists covering the parliament. There were no guards and no signs on most doors. I stopped before a high door and turned the bronze polished handle.<\/p>\n A small man sat behind a large desk. He turned about to look at me, a smile on his face. I flushed and spurted an apology for disturbing what I realized was the nation\u2019s political leader.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s quite alright. No problem,\u201d replied the prime minister unperturbed. His face wrinkled cozily through a black-white mustache and goatee. Thinning black hair was brushed back revealing a partially bald scalp. No guards or assistants appeared as I quietly closed the big door.<\/p>\n Later in the 1980s, I spoke a few times with the unassuming man when he was no longer prime minister yet still the Social Democratic (SD) party leader. We attended Danish union meetings with delegates from unions in Central America, men and women under threat by death squads working with the CIA and US military \u201cadvisors\u201d backing murderous dictatorial regimes.<\/p>\n In 1985, I again met Anker, as he was known by all, standing beside his old-fashioned, gearless bicycle in the dead of winter. I asked him if he would be on standby if we had use for his political influence during the Central American peace-solidarity march. Anker readily agreed, and he did act when our marcher in El Salvador got arrested. (1)<\/span><\/p>\n Anker started his working life as a bicycle messenger, then as an unskilled warehouse worker. He quickly was made a shop steward and worked his way up the union ladder. In the 1960s, he actively opposed the US war against Vietnam. Anker participated in Danish sessions of the Russell-Sartre Tribunal, in 1968. He was a supporter of the oppressed in many parts of the world, and of the 1968 Danish student uproar. It was therefore with sadness for many on the left and the more militant class conscious workers that he decided to support Denmark\u2019s admission to the EU, then called the EF, in 1972. Anker often found himself in the middle of political controversies. <\/span><\/p>\n During his two terms as Prime Minister, 1972-82 (minus 1973-5), he extended the social welfare system, the last state leader to do so. He got the pre-retirement benefits law passed, (at 62 years instead of waiting for old age pension at 67); increased paid vacations to five weeks for everyone; guaranteed pay raises for public employees; guaranteed social assistance, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n In Anker\u2019s time, Denmark was known abroad as a tolerant, peaceful, civil liberties\/freedom-loving land. Its foreign policy was based on peace. Anker supported the so-called \u201cfootnote\u201d foreign policy (1982-8) when Denmark opposed placing NATO nuclear missiles in Europe. The anti-war movement had already convinced the Establishment not to allow NATO military exercises and atomic weapons on its territory. There were several serious confrontations between the US and Denmark because of this.<\/p>\n Anker died peacefully, March 20, 2016, at 93. A people\u2019s man, he lived all his adult life, until he entered a senior\u2019s home, in a modest apartment in a working-class district of the capital city.<\/p>\n Denmark was a vanguard country in sexual freedom and gender equality. Brothels were legal as far back as in the 1870s. For some of 1900s sex for sale was illegal but allowed. Denmark was the first country in the world to legalize pornography, July 1969. Freetown Christiania is a major tourist attraction. It belonged to the military when, on September 4, 1971, the abandoned military area of 34 hectares was occupied by neighbors who broke down the fence. They set up living quarters in abandoned barracks and some built their own housing. Youth House was a legal underground Copenhagen center for music and free lifestyle, mainly used by autonomists and leftists for two decades until 2007. Denmark was also the first country to legalize same-sex sexual activity, in 1933; and legalize homosexual\/lesbian\/transvestite marriage, on June 15, 2012. Since 1977, the consent age for sex of any kind by any gender is 15.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, as a member of NATO and EU, Denmark cooperates with both pro-US institutions, including in war games. Ironically, it was after the fall of \u201ccommunism\u201d and the end of the cold war that Denmark decided to begin its \u201cactivist foreign policy,\u201d based upon following the US into its wars, including breaking up Yugoslavia, the last European socialist state, and warring in the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n Denmark losing its peace and social democracy<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Denmark\u2019s 5.5 million residents support a permanent military force of about 20,000. Although there is a draft, one can choose to perform civil service instead. No one is forced to go to war unless Denmark is attacked, so those who war are volunteer mercenaries and earn more money.<\/p>\n The last Social Democratic Prime Minister, Helle Thorning Schmidt, was the first woman in the post. During her term, October 2011-June 2015, her enthusiasm for war included offering Barak Obama her military for \u201cregime change\u201d in Syria. She seemed disappointed that a war to remove Bashar al-Assad had been averted when Syria turned over all its chemical weapons for destruction, \u201cno thanks\u201d to Vladamir Putin\u2019s input. She declared (September 2, 2014): \u201cDenmark is one of those countries that deliver most. We are at the level with Americans, and in that way we also consider Denmark a strong, active and very solidarity NATO land.\u201d<\/p>\n Obama seemed to echo Schmidt when he welcomed Denmark\u2019s current liberal Prime Minister (PM) Lars Loekke Rasmussen, and the other four Nordic land leaders, to a State Dinner on May 13, 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world would be better if more countries were like the Nordic lands.\u201d \u201cWe share common interest and values\u201d. You \u201cpunch above [your] weight.\u201d He underscored Denmark\u2019s recent decision to increase its military and economic aid to Afghanistan, and expressed thanks for DONG\u2019s wind energy projects in Massachusetts. Denmark\u2019s public television correspondent, Stephanie Surrugue, interpreted this praise as an American receipt for Denmark\u2019s role in the \u201cwar on terror\u201d.<\/p>\n The most important matter discussed that day was US and Nordic governments\u2019 response to \u201cRussian aggression,\u201d reminiscent of 2014 when Russia reclaimed Crimea after 97% of voters there so asked. Denmark had already temporarily sent 6 F-16s and rotating troops to the Baltic and Poland. When PM Rasmussen returned to Denmark after dinner, he sent another 150 troops. NATO will now have 6000 permanent troops in these four countries plus in Rumania and Bulgaria.<\/p>\n In Obama\u2019s dinner welcome, he extended another hand to Prime Minister Rasmussen, whose government and ally parties are known for being anti-immigrant. Obama referred to media critique against the new \u201cJewelry Law\u201d as disproportional. The law cuts way back on immigration and asylum-seekers, even for those fleeing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where Denmark has long had hostile troops. The government even places ads around the continent warning refugees not to come. <\/span>http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2016\/01\/denmark-refugees-immigration-law\/431520\/<\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span> The jewelry law allows police to seize personal belongings worth over $1,450 (jewelry and cash) from those who apply for asylum, reviving memories of how Jews were dispossessed of their belongings. One of the positive aspects Denmark is known for is its rescue of Jews when Hitler gave orders to eliminate them. Danes quickly took them to Sweden, which was neutral.<\/p>\n A few days after Obama justified Denmark\u2019s grim treatment of refugees fleeing wars, Syrian families seeking exile started legal action against a new law that forbids the joining of family members for three years; it had been one year. Thousands of exiles are split from their closest ones due to civil conflicts where they come from.<\/p>\n The refugees have a good chance of winning the court case especially as it was filed the day after the European Human Rights Court judged Denmark in violation of human rights regarding a law that discriminates against immigrants. An immigrant who marries someone living in another land cannot bring his\/her partner to Denmark before they are 24 years old. This law is connected to another that only allows equality of natives and immigrants once the immigrant has been a citizen for 26 years. The main lawmaker considered these laws as making Denmark Europe\u2019s \u201cpioneer\u201d in \u201chardening laws\u201d against immigrants-refugees.<\/p>\n The current Foreign-Integration Minister, Inger Stoejberg, expressed disdain for the Court\u2019s decision. She said that she would find a way to maintain and extend tightening immigration-refugee rules. \u201cIf we can\u2019t do it one way, we\u2019ll do it another.\u201d<\/p>\n On the occasion of the White House State dinner, the five Nordic nations signed a \u201csummit joint statement\u201d with the US reaffirming \u201cour deep partnership on shared fundamental values\u201d that include strengthening NATO, backing the Baltic States and Poland with weaponry, aircraft and troops, pressing Russia on many fronts, \u201cstabilizing\u201d Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other areas.<\/p>\n Finland and Sweden also planned to end their neutrality and join NATO, where Denmark, Norway and Iceland already sit. Sweden signed a Host County Agreement with NATO after the dinner giving the war alliance rights to military troops and exercises on Swedish territory and even the right to war on Swedish territory \u201cif a crisis\u201d warrants it. Finland signed a similar agreement. Danish PM Loekke Rasmussen diligently prepared to please his host.<\/p>\n Since 9\/11 all the Danish governments (so-called blue\/conservative and red\/liberal block coalitions) support the many regime shifts outlined by the first George Bush government, about which I will write in future pieces. During the April 2016 Danish parliament debate to invade Syria and extend Denmark\u2019s military capacity in Iraq, the foreign minister, Kristian Jensen, made no bones about it<\/span>: \u201cOur goal is quite simple. In relationship to Syria our goal is to remove Assad, as one of the worst dictators in the world at this time.\u201d<\/span><\/span> He also stated that Denmark will fight the Islamic State. <\/span><\/p>\n According to United Nations law, as well as Denmark\u2019s own constitution, war must not be waged if: there is no UN mandate, or the country in question is not attacking the nation. With Syria, no specific plans are stated about directly attacking government forces. However, the Syrian government has not asked Denmark or the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d to aid it in its defense against IS, and thus the invasion is illegal.<\/p>\n Pleasing the United States before dinner<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n 1. April 19, Denmark\u2019s parliament voted 90 to 19 to send 460 military instructors and technicians, including 60 Special Forces soldiers, to Syria and Iraq, along with seven F-16s, and a C-130J transport aircraft. Why did 40% of the parliament (70 highly paid members) not vote on the most important question: whether to kill people and do so against international law?<\/p>\n 2. May 10, parliament decided to send16 more soldiers to Afghanistan bringing their numbers to 100. This came after the US stated it will increase its troops there by 7-800. It now has about 10,000. The tiny country also did the US\u2019s bidding against Libya in 2011 with 6 F-16s and 120 soldiers. As the US discusses the possibility of warring there once again, Denmark is ready.<\/p>\n 3. May 12, the day before the Nordic state and foreign ministers were to eat at Obama\u2019s table, Denmark\u2019s government decided to buy 27 F-35 jet fighters before they were built by the world\u2019s largest weapons company, Lockheed-Martin. The initial cost of 20 billion kroner ($3 billion) is the largest military expense in Danish history. Danish defense experts estimate that the real cost will run between three and four times that with upkeep and 30 years \u201cnormal\u201d use. (Note: Canada\u2019s new government just cancelled its order for F-35s, saying it wanted planes that were cheaper and that were known to actually work.)<\/p>\n The government ignored 53.3% of Danes, who opposed buying more bomber jets; 30.8% in favor. The poll was commissioned by a right-wing daily. Last year, a Gallup poll found the same percentage opposed the proposal. <\/span>http:\/\/jyllands-posten.dk\/indland\/ECE8600526\/danskerne-takker-nej-til-kampfly-for-flere-milliarder\/<\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 4. On the same day, Denmark’s energy company DONG stated it plans an initial public offering (IPO) of at least 15 percent of its shares on the Nasdaq Copenhagen stock exchange this summer. The estimated value is around $11 billion. This will be the largest IPO in Danish history.<\/p>\n The state-controlled utility said the move would reduce the government’s stake in the company from 58.8 percent to 50.1 percent, and the government could sell more of its share in 2020 and lose control. It was originally all state-owned. In 2014, Goldman Sachs, the world\u2019s most powerful and infamous investment firm, bought 18 percent of DONG for $1.2 billion. But it wasn\u2019t even the New York GS company, rather a subsidiary in Luxembourg <\/span>owned by a shell company tax haven in Delaware and Cayman Islands<\/span><\/span>. With its minority ownership, GS insisted on determining Denmark\u2019s energy company\u2019s leadership. It then pushed DONG to go IPO, and threatened to shut down renewable energy sources if the government didn\u2019t increase its subsidies. <\/span><\/p>\n Eighty percent of Danes opposed the sale; 200,000 signed petitions. Nevertheless, the Social Democrat government refused to explain why it did not sell those shares to Danish pension fund companies which made offers. SD\u2019s junior partner Socialist People\u2019s Party (SF) quit the government over the scandal. The deal was so undemocratic that Goldman Sachs hired the former prime minister and ex-NATO general secretary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as its PR man in Denmark to smooth over the controversy.<\/p>\n Just days after the White House State Dinner, the stock exchange valued DONG to be three times its underrated value in 2014, from about $5 billion to $13-15 billion. The \u201cincentive plan\u201d for DONG leadership garnered them $70 million, which raises suspicions that the company\u2019s worth was deliberately undervalued. And the $1.2-$1.5 billion profit that Goldman Sachs plucked could have benefited Danish society had the shares been sold to Danish owned workers pension fund companies. The Social Democrat government\u2019s finance minister at the time, Bjarne Corydon, is seen as the bourgeois\u2019s Trojan Horse.<\/p>\n The May 27, 2016 editorial in \u201cPolitiken\u201d, a liberal capitalist daily, called the course of events \u201cugly\u201d, which has \u201cincreased mistrust\u201d, so much so that a staff writer wrote \u201cThis is the stuff that makes ordinary people turn their back on the powers that be and look towards Donald Trump\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n While half of DONG\u2019s electricity and heat generation comes from renewable sources, it also buys coal mined in Colombia where death squads operate. In December 2015, Danish and international media revealed how DONG and Sweden\u2019s government-own Vattenfall bought coal from the murderous Prodeco mining firm owned by Glencore. BBC reported (2012) that Prodeco paid for the murder of ten residents, in 2002, so it could take their land.<\/p>\n In 2014, PAX NGO documented (including with testimonies of nine former paramilitary members) that Prodeco and another mining company had paid death squads for murdering 3000 people\u2014workers, local residents and milieu activists\u2014between 1996 and 2006; \u201cdisappearing\u201d 200 people, and forcing 55,000 to leave their homes. Colombian authorities merely fined and temporarily locked down Prodeco for causing serious environmental damage. (See:\u201d The Dark Side of Coal\u201d report. <\/span>http:\/\/www.paxforpeace.nl\/stay-informed\/news\/danish-media-and-politicians-take-interest-in-dongs-ties-to-blood-coal<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span><\/span>, and Glencore\u2019s reply: <\/span>http:\/\/www.glencore.com\/public-positions\/related-information\/<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span><\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n One-third of Danish electricity comes from coal\u20144.5 million tons in 2014\u2014half of that comes from Colombia. DONG bought 950,000 tons from Prodeco, in 2014, and 160,000 tons in 2015, after exposure about its murders. As of this writing DONG has not severed ties with Prodeco, and it is hard to find workers who still believe the Social Democratic party represents workers.<\/p>\n Denmark comes to dinner<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen came gleefully to dinner bearing those many gifts for America, and he thanked his world leader host for the \u201clucrative export contracts for Danish businesses.\u201d These war-profiteering \u201cgifts\u201d offered to the world\u2019s policeman belie Bernie Sanders portrayal of Denmark as socialist and humanitarian as he has so often proclaimed during the long US Democratic Party primary campaign.<\/p>\n Sanders is a social democrat, who mistakenly yet bravely refers of himself as a socialist. He thinks well of Scandinavia because, after class struggle there like in all of Europe, it introduced social benefits: \u201cproviding health care to all people as a right\u201d and \u201cmedical and family paid leave,\u201d as he repeatedly says.<\/p>\n A few days after he initiated this postulate early in the primary campaign, the Danish prime minister set Sanders straight, saying, \u201cI know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy\u2026with a flexible labor market that makes it easy to hire or fire.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n (1) As an organizer and spokesperson for the Central American peace-solidarity march being planned, I asked him to be on standby if we had use for his political influence. The six-week march (mostly in buses in 1985-6) from Panama to Mexico supported the Contadora peace process devised by regional leaders to pressure the US to end its war against Nicaragua, and its backing of military regimes massacring people in El Salvador and Guatemala. Anker Joergensen was useful when one of our marchers was arrested in El Salvador. Through his calls and those of other European leading figures, we forced the government to release the worker. I en serie p\u00e5 syv indl\u00e6g vil journalist, forfatter og fredsaktivist Ron Ridenour beskrive det danske samfund og dansk politik. Den aktuelle baggrund er den amerikanske valgkamp, hvor Danmark af Bernie Sanders blevet sat op som et ideal for de mange, der \u00f8nsker et andet samfund. Ron Ridenour gennemg\u00e5r i artikelserien, hvordan Danmark under socialdemokratisk ledelse har udviklet sig til et land i krig og med et velf\u00e6rdssystem under hurtig nedbrydning.<\/p>\n Den aktuelle anledning er den amerikanske valgkamp, hvor pr\u00e6sidentkandidat Bernie Sanders stillede op for Demokraterne p\u00e5 en venstreorienteret politisk linje og vandt stor tilslutning med sin vision om socialisme som fremtidens samfund. Han fremh\u00e6vede Danmarks som et land bygget p\u00e5 socialistiske principper, et idealsamfund med lighed og velf\u00e6rd for alle. Heri l\u00e5 ogs\u00e5 en dr\u00f8m om at socialismen er mulig gennem skabelsen af parlamentarisk flertal for et socialdemokratisk parti. Desv\u00e6rre er dette ren illusion. B\u00e5de hvad ang\u00e5r Danmark som en velfungerende velf\u00e6rdsstat og forestillingen om vejen til et socialistisk samfund.<\/em><\/p>\n Ron Ridenour vil i syv blogindl\u00e6g freml\u00e6gge sit syn p\u00e5 det danske samfunds indretning, herunder Socialdemokratiets udvikling og rolle. Et Danmark\u00a0 i t\u00e6t alliance med et krigsophidsende NATO,\u00a0 hvor skiftende regeringer – ogs\u00e5 under socialdemokratisk ledelse – i hurtigt tempo nedbryder velf\u00e6rdsrettigheder med en benh\u00e5rd nyliberal og EU-styret politik. Ogs\u00e5 de \u00f8vrige nordiske landes plads i den globale oprustning vil blive behandlet.<\/p>\n Det er sp\u00e6ndende l\u00e6sning skrevet med en personlig vinkel p\u00e5 baggrund af Rons oplevelser som aktivist og skribent i b\u00e5de Danmark og USA. Blogindl\u00e6ggene bringes l\u00f8bende i amerikanske medier.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I en serie p\u00e5 syv indl\u00e6g vil journalist, forfatter og fredsaktivist Ron Ridenour beskrive det danske samfund og dansk politik. Den aktuelle baggrund er den amerikanske valgkamp, hvor Danmark af Bernie Sanders blevet sat op som et ideal for de mange, der \u00f8nsker et andet samfund. Ron Ridenour gennemg\u00e5r i artikelserien, hvordan Danmark under … L\u00e6s videre Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy Denmark: SOS Save Our Sovereignty<\/span>
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\nNEXT: Roots to social democracy\/capitalism, socialism<\/i><\/span>; email: <\/span>ronrorama@gmail.com<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/u><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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