{"id":4390,"date":"2016-09-09T14:16:16","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T12:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/?p=4390"},"modified":"2016-09-09T14:34:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T12:34:26","slug":"scandinavia-on-the-skids-the-failure-of-social-democracy-denmark-6-rogue-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/ron-ridenour\/scandinavia-on-the-skids-the-failure-of-social-democracy-denmark-6-rogue-state","title":{"rendered":"Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy (6) Denmark – Rogue State"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"venstre_compared-to-nazis\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Af Ron Ridenour<\/em>
\n Artiklen er nr 6 i en serie p\u00e5 syv p\u00e5 p\u00e5 KPnetBlogs<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

English below<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cBor jeg i en slyngel-stat?”<\/em> l\u00f8d overskriften p\u00e5 Mette Fugl\u2019s indl\u00e6g i Politiken\u201d den 4. juni 2016.<\/p>\n

Mette Fugl er et kendt navn indenfor dansk journalistik. Hun har arbejdet for det landets\u00a0 st\u00f8rste TV- og radiomedie Danmarks Radio (DR) i n\u00e6sten 40 \u00e5r, i st\u00f8rstedelen af tiden\u00a0 som udenrigs-korrespondent. Mange ser hende som en foregangskvinde indenfor mainstream medierne. S\u00e5 det er af s\u00e6rlig betydning, n\u00e5r hun fremf\u00f8rer, at\u00a0 hendes traditionelt set harml\u00f8se og hyggelige land,\u00a0har udviklet sig til en principl\u00f8s slyngelstat.<\/p>\n

Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy Denmark: Rogue State<\/b><\/p>\n

(Part 6 in a 7 part series on Scandinavia\u2019s \u201cSocialism\u201d)<\/p>\n

by Ron Ridenour<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDo I live in a rogue state?\u201d Mette Fugl\u2019s column was headlined in \u201cPolitiken\u201d, June 4, 2016.<\/p>\n

Mette Fugl is a major name in Danish Establishment journalism. She worked for the largest broadcast media, Denmark\u2019s Radio (DR), for nearly 40 years, mainly as foreign correspondent. Many view her as a prima donna in mainstream journalism. So it has special meaning that she implies that her traditionally harmless cozy country has become unprincipled, a swindler state.<\/p>\n

Fugl outlines recent political and legal developments that warrant the \u201crogue\u201d characterization.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The so-called \u201crespect package\u201d, which permits the state to punish people more severely who act \u201cdisrespectfully\u201d, including use of violence but also verbal insults, over for official employees. Clamping down on \u201crioters\u201d can cross the line of abusing civil liberties, such as the right to assembly and freedom of expression. The \u201crespect package\u201d includes the un-constitutional public listing of people who make \u201cundemocratic\u201d statements, as determined by the current government. Penalties are as high as eight years in prison.<\/li>\n
  2. The information \u201cblackout law\u201d, as the Freedom of Inform Law of 2013 is commonly referred to, allows the government to deny public access to important information necessary for democratic decision-making. A recent example is the government\u2019s refusal to reveal documents that the former Iraq Commission collected when investigating what occurred in wars in which Denmark participates. Some evidence concerned Danish military allowing prisoners under its protection to be tortured, and that Danish personnel perhaps tortured some themselves. Another controversial issue is that Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had agreed with the US to help it invade Iraq the year before the invasion, and before consulting parliament. When the current government assumed power, in 2015, it shut the commission down.<\/li>\n
  3. Tax laws that ordinary people cannot understand, and tax officials who don\u2019t communicate.<\/li>\n
  4. Politicians who dismiss social critics as liars. Decision-makers who refuse to be held accountable. Officials who scare those who are already scared.<\/li>\n
  5. \n

    Officials who defy international conventions on human rights, and do so with prideful joy. Politicians who virtually stand in front of barbed-wire fences and give the finger to the injured on the other side.
    \nStringent! Harsh! Sour!\u2014is the flavor of the day.<\/p>\n

    Reference here is to the ever-tightening rules and laws that Danish governments make to prevent life-threatened refugees from finding shelter in this rich country, or once here in making their lives as unpleasant as possible: providing tents as residencies, preventing asylum-seeking children from attending schools, preventing couples and their children from joining one another for three years when only part of the nuclear family comes here, confiscating jewelry and cash of asylum-seekers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Refugee Bashing<\/b><\/p>\n

    While many Danes, and most political parties, have become stingy towards and leery of refugees, a good number of ordinary people have helped refugees who have crossed into Denmark from Germany by transporting them to Sweden, especially in September-October 2015. They did this without payment rather because the refugees had relatives or friends there, or because they felt they\u2019d have a better chance of being accepted than in Denmark. These Danes were observed offering help by border police without being stopped. Later, the government decided to punish them as \u201chuman smugglers\u201d. A few hundred have been judged guilty and made to pay large fines. (1)<\/p>\n

    One of the hateful politicians to which Mette Fugl refers is Inge Stoejberg, the Liberal government\u2019s minister of immigrant and refugee \u201cintegration\u201d. She is a principle lawmaker of the \u201crespect package\u201d law, which includes the right to exclude foreigners, namely and especially Islamic Inmans, from visiting Denmark if they have made statements that the government considers \u201canti-democratic\u201d or \u201cthreatening\u201d to human rights.<\/p>\n

    At the same time Stoejberg prohibits opinions and statements she cannot abide she recently pressed charges against two young native Danish women for calling her a \u201cfascist\u201d when the minister was in a bar. Stoejberg claims such a statement falls under a law that forbids people from \u201ccussing-insulting-harassing\u201d persons who are \u201cin pursuance of official duties\u201d, that is, drinking in a bar. This anti-freedom of expression law can cost the outlaw 6-12 months jail time.<\/p>\n

    \u201cFascist\u201d is a common term frequently used about people who are fundamentally authoritarian and racists. This is how I presume these women characterize Stoejberg, and not without reason.<\/p>\n

    Stoejberg ignores the contradiction concerning of her wish to deny their freedom of expression and the government backing the freedom-of-press right for \u201cJylland-Posten\u201d to publish cartoons depicting Muhammad in a light that most Muslims consider blasphemous and \u201cinsulting\u201d. The 12 editorial cartoons published on September 30, 2005 caused \u201cDenmark\u2019s worst international relations incident since the Second World War,\u201d according to the right-wing Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen then in office. He and Stoejberg are in the same \u201cVenstre\u201d party.<\/p>\n

    Danish products were boycotted by many Muslim majority countries, and attacks occurred on Danish diplomatic missions and Christian churches. Violence between demonstrators and police ended in 200 deaths, in several countries where the cartoons had been reprinted.<\/p>\n

    Last year, the major private bus company, Movia, copied government censorship by removing an advertisement from 35 buses paid for by the Danish Palestinian Friendship Association. The ad depicted two women alongside the statement: \u201cOur conscience is clean! We neither buy products from the Israeli settlements nor invest in the settlement industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The United Nations has condemned the settlements as discriminatory against the Palestinian people, whose lands have been stolen. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an occupying power must not transfer its population into its occupied territories.<\/p>\n

    Yet when a few Jews and others complained about the statement the ad had to come down. The government made no protest. There are 6,300 Jews and 270,000 Muslims living in Denmark.<\/p>\n

    One of the many rules to make immigrants-refugees lives miserable is reversing the rule that all municipalities must offer asylum-seekers medical checkups. This is especially harmful to those persons who have been tortured. According to Dignity, one of the two Danish private organizations that help rehabilitate torture victims, 30 percent of refugees have been tortured and most have traumas that make it difficult to perform their roles as parents or to be effective workers; in fact, to be integrated. Dignity denounces the new rule, saying that it would result in many torture victims not being identified and thus not receiving treatment.<\/p>\n

    Under the pretext of supporting women\u2019s rights, the government now forcibly separates married couples if one is under 18\u2014almost always the female\u2014even when the male is 18 and the female is 17. This causes asylum seekers to cry on a daily basis, to feint, and many have attempted suicide.<\/p>\n

    The tenor of times concerning refugees is so hostile that one can read this: \u201cSeldom is there good news these days. This could have been better but something is better than nothing: About 2500 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean this year. We are only halfway through the year. Much can still happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

    If the highly respected Danish theologian-philosopher K.E. Loestrup\u2014imprisoned in a concentration camp during WWII for standing in solidarity with Jews\u2014were still alive today, he might have said of these warped persons what he spoke in a 1938 sermon:<\/p>\n

    “To be a human being is to be blameful [responsible], or co-blameable,” that is what we must understand, meant Loegstrup, and if we do not understand that, “we are so blunted and hypocritically calcified that we no longer are human beings.”<\/p>\n

    This tenor of immorality has finally woken up some editors and reporters in the mass media, who are sometimes taking a stand for decency, and this is also prompting some otherwise indifferent celebrities to come out of their closets. Sofie Graaboel is one of them.<\/p>\n

    Graaboel is known international for her roles in TV detective series, such as \u201cThe Killing\u201d. When making a production in England earlier in 2016, \u201cThe Guardian\u201d asked the shy star actress what she thought about the squeeze on asylum-seekers in her homeland. I read her remarks in the April 2016 edition of the Danish state train magazine, \u201cUd & Se\u201d (Out and See), which I translated.<\/p>\n

    \u201cEvery morning when I passed by the big TV in the hotel lobby I could see the story tick in from home\u2026It seemed so fierce to me that it was that impression that was put out in the world\u2014that Englishmen suddenly got the unequivocal picture of Danes as people who just wanted to build a wall and frighten others away. This is not the [total] reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Graaboel told the newspaper reporter that she wanted to be proud to be Danish but it was difficult with the current political steps taken regarding refugees.<\/p>\n

    One of many reasons for the tone of hostility towards refugees and non-white, non-Christian immigrants is the fact that the traditional workers \u201csolidarity\u201d party, Social Democrats, has joined forces with the two other major parties, the blue Liberals and the blue social democrats, as former PM Fogh Rasmussen calls the Danish People\u2019s Party (DF). All of them have made rules and laws limiting admission of these immigrants-refugees and reducing their rights and benefits once here.<\/p>\n

    The former S.D. spokesperson on foreigners, Mette Reissmann, called them \u201cunwanted guests\u201d.<\/p>\n

    Denmark\u2019s People\u2019s Party was made kosher, in fact, by the Social Democratic party, its PM in 2001, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, and by S.D. leaders of LO, the major union alliance.<\/p>\n

    Then a member of one of LO\u2019s unions, I attended a conference, in 2002, concerning social dumping. The major union ideologue, Harald Boersting, was present when I spoke from the podium. I pointed a knarred finger at him, and harshly said:<\/p>\n

    \u201dBy your reaching out to the Danish People\u2019s Party recently, by proposing cooperation, you have made them in from the cold. You have thereby accepted their major premise for existence: racism and foreign-hatred, splitting the working class. You send out a wrongful, immoral signal to the entire people.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf we do not throw out Boersting and the other career opportunists in leadership, then we workers who know what our interests are must form our own unions. Part of my life was in the US, where race discrimination and war enthusiasm ruled the AFL union alliance. This was a major reason why part of the coalition formed their own unions (CIO). Discrimination within our ranks only supports big capital\u2019s divide-and-conquer strategy, and they laugh at us when we are weak.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI can only call what LO\u2019s top is doing as treachery!\u201d A major Danish daily (Ekstra Bladet) and the union magazine \u201cFagbladet\u201d even printed parts of my speech.<\/p>\n

    There was a quite a bit of applause, but Boersting later became LO\u2019s chairman, and DF\u2019s chairwoman and founder Pia Kaersgaard was given the honorable position of parliament chairperson. The Danish People\u2019s Party (DF) and the Social Democratic party are currently speaking for the first time of joining forces to form a coalition government, if they gain the majority next election. In July 2016, a DF major theoretician and an outspoken anti-Muslim, Luthren preacher Soeren Krarup came forth in the media with the proposition that his party could cooperate with the traditional Social Democrats, thus advancing the notion of a coalition government.<\/p>\n

    Something Rotten in Denmark<\/b><\/p>\n

    Danes cannot remember when or if it has ever been revealed that so many civil servants had taken bribes. In June 2015, government auditors charged 13 civil servants with receiving gifts of up to $10,000 each from an IT business, Atea, which sold them equipment for the institutions they represent. Two of the gifts for two government employees who could decide what equipment to buy and from which company received $50-70,000 trips to Dubai and USA. A year later, another 32 civil servants were charged with the same crimes of receiving brides from the same company. We\u2019re talking about major government institutions: national police, foreign ministry, military secret service, state transportation, and even the criminal justice system, including public prosecutors.<\/p>\n

    A popular blogger, Anne Sophia Hermansen, reminded us that there have been individual cases of gift-taking by individuals in state institutions, including leaders of the Treasury Department and a Conservative business minister, not to mention the Royal Family, but not so many at the same time.<\/p>\n

    In one case, it was not a matter of just receiving gift bribes, but of a police service employee giving two friends work orders amounting to $4 millions without allowing bidding for the jobs.<\/p>\n

    Hermansen thinks that Transparency International\u2019s usual ranking of Denmark as the least corrupt country is in danger of being replaced by the label \u201cBanana Republic\u201d. And she points the figure to the key cause: the neo-liberal farming out of public tasks to private firms and the privatization of public companies. She especially points a finger at the energy company DONG, part owned and primarily directed by Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n

    Goldman Sachs is currently defending itself in a court case in London, in which Libyans claim GS illegally hid state monies from the public during Gaddafi\u2019s regime, in 2010-11.<\/p>\n

    All readers have heard of the Mossack Fonseca law firm from the famous Panama Papers, and I have already mentioned this scandal as the reason for Iceland\u2019s PM leaving office so I won\u2019t go into any depth. But some Denmark bankers and many of the wealthiest Danes have been major players in this fraud, in which 300,000 so-called off-shore companies were set up as shells for tax evasion.<\/p>\n

    Journalists digging into the 11.5 million documents released by yet another whistle-blower estimate that $6 trillion (yes trillion<\/i>) are hidden away in multiple tax havens. The Danes\u2019 \u201cshare\u201d is calculated at between $20 and $30 billion. One of the world\u2019s largest banks is the Scandinavian Nordea. It is a prime culprit in assisting its rich customers in hiding their wealth from tax collectors.<\/p>\n

    Of the 543 banks throughout the world associating with this fraud in Panama, Nordea ranks 11th<\/sup> in creating the largest numbers of false companies between 1977 and 2015, and number six since then\u2014tens of thousand shells in all. Nordea is listed in 10,000 Mossack Fonseca secret documents.<\/p>\n

    The media has also revealed that at least one of its vice-directors has enriched himself. He smuggled over one million dollars white-washed through an anonymous account in a Luxembourg branch. He is one of the top executives having assisted many wealthy Danes do the same, none of whom have been charged with any crime.<\/p>\n

    One example of how Nordea operates concerns associate Vianca Scott. She was selected as the chief executive officer of several hundred companies falsified by her employer, Mossack Fonseca, many of them for Nordea. She also managed 30 shells for eight years after her death, in 2005.<\/p>\n

    Nordea has also falsified dates and names to hide wealth from government tax authorities.<\/p>\n

    Governments have known about at least some of Nordea\u2019s illegal activities for some time. Swedish finance inspectors caught Nordea at this tax-cheating game at least twice and fined it $10 million in two cases. But the bank is so rich it can afford to pay fines and continues business as usual.<\/p>\n

    Besides the tax shelters, the Danish tax department has lost several billions of dollars through its inability to collect taxes from people they know owe them money. Part of the reason for this inefficiency is because the government has cut back on tax staff.<\/p>\n

    The breakdown in public confidence for United States and European governments and the major political parties has reached Denmark. The chief editor of \u201cPolitiken\u201d, Bo Lidegaard, is one of those journalists who now dares to write the truth about how \u201csmall groups have become incomprehensibly rich\u201d, how \u201cglobalization stands weakened in voters eyes,\u201d how ever-growing \u201cinequality is the big sinner,\u201d as he wrote April 10 and June 5, 2016.<\/p>\n

    Lidegaard is concerned that the very roots of the Constitution are in danger, because some contemporary laws threaten its 19th<\/sup> century authors\u2019 vision\u2014that of humanism opposed to authoritarianism, the very notion of free-mindedness, tolerating various points of view in open debate in which opponents listen to one another.<\/p>\n

    Next: <\/b>Denmark: Return of the Vikings
    \n\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.<\/b><\/p>\n

    Notes:<\/p>\n

    1) Sweden had been quite open in accepting refugees. 162,000 came in 2015. Those accepted were granted asylum permanently. This year, lawmakers have tightened the law and stopped refugees from entering without having gone through procedures prior to arrival. Now, once asylum is granted it is only for three years. The state seeks to deport 80,000 asylum-seekers. Only 20,000 refugees came to Denmark last year, 11,500 from Syria; many of the rest from lands Denmark has bombed.<\/p>\n

    Ron Ridenour<\/i> is the author of six books on Cuba, (\u201cBackfire: The CIA\u2019s Biggest Burn\u201d) plus “Yankee Sandinistas”, \u201cSounds of Venezuela\u201d, \u201cTamil Nation in Sri Lanka\u201d. He has lived and worked in Latin America including in Cuba 1988-96 (Cuba’s Editorial Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed and Prensa Latina), Denmark, Iceland, Japan, India. www.ronridenour.com<\/a><\/u>; email: ronrorama@gmail.com<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n

    Tidligere indl\u00e6g i serien
    \nScandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy \u2013 Roots to social democracy\/capitalism, socialism (nr 1)<\/a><\/p>\n

    Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy \u2013 Sweden-Finland-Norway Globalization Blues (nr 2)<\/a><\/p>\n

    Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy \u2013 Sweden-Finland-Norway Globalization Blues (nr 3)<\/a><\/p>\n

    Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy \u2013 Iceland, this is where bankers go to jail (nr 4)<\/a><\/p>\n

    Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy\u00a0 \u2013 Denmark: Bernie Sanders for Prime Minister (nr 5)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Af Ron Ridenour Artiklen er nr 6 i en serie p\u00e5 syv p\u00e5 p\u00e5 KPnetBlogs English below \u00a0\u201cBor jeg i en slyngel-stat?” l\u00f8d overskriften p\u00e5 Mette Fugl\u2019s indl\u00e6g i Politiken\u201d den 4. juni 2016. Mette Fugl er et kendt navn indenfor dansk journalistik. Hun har arbejdet for det landets\u00a0 st\u00f8rste TV- og radiomedie Danmarks Radio … L\u00e6s videre Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy (6) Denmark – Rogue State<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p451d4-18O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4390"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4405,"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4390\/revisions\/4405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpnet.dk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}