Yearbook 2011
Denmark. In February, the Folketing decided that the new road link to Germany should be built in the form of a tunnel under the Fehmarn belt instead of a bridge. The tunnel construction is scheduled to start in 2014 and is scheduled to be completed by 2020. The train journey between Copenhagen and Hamburg will thus be shortened, by one and a half hours, to three hours. Visit ABBREVIATIONFINDER for the acronym of DMK that stands for the country of Denmark.
In February, a 29-year-old Somali was sentenced to nine years in prison for attempting to murder the Danish Muhammad cartoonist Kurt Westergaard at the New Year one year earlier. According to the security police, the Somali had ties to the Islamist al-Shabab movement.
According to Countryaah official site, the refugee Christiania in Copenhagen lost a multi-year legal dispute in February when the Supreme Court declared that the Danish state’s decision-making law and laws apply in Christiania, where residents, among others, traded in drugs and refused to pay rent and municipal fees. To secure their future in Christiania, the approximately 750 residents decided to form a mutual fund to buy off the area’s properties that the government wants to privatize.
After fierce criticism from the opposition, the contentious Minister of Integration Birthe Rønn Hornbech was forced to resign in March. Denmark had rejected applications for citizenship from 36 stateless Palestinians born in Denmark in contravention of UN conventions. Søren Pind became the new Minister of Integration.
The government’s support party The Danish People’s Party demanded in the spring that Denmark should reintroduce border control, which was abolished in the Schengen cooperation. The motivation was to stop increased cross-border crime. The proposal met opposition in the EU, and the press became fierce on Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who needed the Danish People’s Party’s support for unpopular and long-term budget savings in a situation when Denmark’s economy was getting worse. An agreement was reached to shorten the so-called early salary from five to three years and gradually increase the age for national pension from 65 to 67 years. The price for the settlement became a contentious tightening of border control against Sweden and Germany, which in the EU was seen as a violation of the Schengen agreement and free movement within the Union.
The continuing negotiations on economic policy between the government and the Danish People’s Party broke in August in disagreement over a so-called growth package. The prime minister then announced parliamentary elections at short notice until September 15.
The opinion polls showed the takeover of the opposition, led by the Social Democrats (S) and the Socialist People’s Party (SF), who accused the government of failing economic policy. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the strong Danish economy had weakened, the budget deficit grew and since 2008 the government had taken over nine banks that had failed to manage the crisis. S leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt promised increased government stimulus in the economy, announced increased taxes and fees to strengthen the budget and proposed a twelve-minute longer working day for economic growth.
After a decade of bourgeois rule, the election led to a shift in power. S and SF together with the middle party Radical Venstre (R) and the left-wing radical Enhedslisten (EL) gained a majority in the Folketing with 89 seats against 87 for the bourgeois parties.
R and EL were the big winners, while SF went back strongly. S also made a bad choice and lost a mandate. The outgoing Prime Minister Løkke Rasmussen’s party Left remained the largest in the Folketing. Despite this, S leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt (44 years) was able to start negotiations on a new government coalition, where she became Denmark’s first female prime minister.
The new government took office in October. It consisted of eleven S ministers and six from each R and SF. New Foreign Minister became SF leader Villy Søvndal, while Social Democrat Bjarne Corydon (38 years) became new finance minister. The tripartite government had 77 of the Folketing’s 175 Danish mandates but had the support of the twelve members of the Enhedslist and of three members from Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt said in his government statement that cross-border crime would be combated within the Schengen cooperation, which meant an end to the EU-criticized stricter border control.
On October 1, Denmark, as the first country in the world, introduced a special tax on food containing more than 2.3% saturated fat. The decision had been made by the outgoing government but was supported by the new coalition, which planned to raise the fat tax.
A protracted debate over Thorning-Schmidt’s and her husband’s tax affairs in December resulted in a commission of inquiry. The question then was whether the former prime minister’s head of press before the election leaked confidential information about the opponent Thorning-Schmidt to the press. When the Commission was appointed to the police, the former press officer was notified by the Ministry of Taxation.
Political opponents. You just ban them
Left integration mayor Karsten Lauritzen declared in September 2009 that the Kirkeasyl association should be banned and there was agreement on this in the VKO government. The young leftist politician started by revealing his lack of knowledge of the Constitution. Lauritzen believed that VKO could simply pass a law and prohibit Church asylum, while Section 78 of the Constitution states that associations can only be dissolved by judgment. Lauritzen placed himself in a fine right-wing company. The last time an association was dissolved in Denmark was when the Folketing in 1941 violated the Constitution and illegally dissolved DKP. Associations had only been dissolved twice before: when the right-wing national in 1871 dissolved the Social Democrat’s predecessor, the International Workers’ Union, and when in 1924 homophobia dissolved the association Nekkab.
In December, the UN Climate Conference COP15 was held in Copenhagen. The choice of capital is surprising, since the VKO government, since the takeover of power in 2001, had denied the existence of climate change and had fought all climate measures. VKO started in 2001 to shut down the Ministry of the Environment and Energy. The energy part was officially transferred to the Ministry of Business, Bendt Bendtsen, where it was closed. Grants for the introduction of renewable energy sources were discontinued, and the Finnish police officer stated that there were too many wind turbines in Denmark. No more of them. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen created an institute for his intimate friend, Bjørn Lomborg, who, on behalf of the state, was to propagate that there was no connection between energy consumption and climate change.
Up to the Climate Conference 7-18. By December, government and police had declared demonstrations would be attacked, and protesters put in a condo camp set up in Valby with the option of 40 days in jail. In preparation for the State Violence Organization, police from all over the country had been mobilized and equipment from all over Europe imported. The largest demonstration took place on December 12 with the participation of over 100,000 people and police attacked as promised, capturing in a pinch maneuver 1000 random protesters who, after sitting in their own is for 4 hours on icy asphalt, were transferred to police concentration camp In Valby. The state violence body cemented Denmark’s international status as a police state. In comparison, the UN Social Summit held in Copenhagen in 1995. It had a similar scope, but was implemented without violence from the police. 250 of the abused protesters complained to the police, and in December 2010, the Copenhagen City Council issued a warrant awarding each of the 250 demonstrators DKK 5-9,000 in compensation. In its ruling, the district court also confirmed that the police had violated the UN Convention on Human Rights. The convicted thugs from the Copenhagen Police received immediate support from civilian politicians who confirmed that they did not want to comply with neither the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of demonstration and assembly, nor the UN Convention on Human Rights. In January 2012, the judgment of the Copenhagen Police was sharpened in the High Court and the damages were increased. At the same time, the court ruled that the police had violated Sections 3, 5, 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Civilian politicians with the Left Carsten Nonbo at the head declared that the legislation had to be changed when the victims could be acquitted and the police convicted. Nonbo stated that protesters should expect to be attacked by police during demonstrations.
Also in December 2010, footage of the December 2009 police radio was unveiled, with the police chief of police directing his troops to the riot bank. On the recording, the inmate is heard saying: “Then I will fucking see that stick there, so it will be red-hot when we get up and grab that car. Full screw through that shit… There is pressure between the cars. They must have the same turn ». The top management of the police and civilian politicians immediately blamed the teaser team. Amnesty International found that the orders simply contravened the police’s own rules. The police gang and violation of their own rules were managed by Politigården by Per Larsen, who, as operational head of PET in the 1980’s, had directed the intelligence service attacks and abuses against trade union movement, peace movement and BZ. In 2009, police had been backed by then-Conservative Justice Minister Brian Mikkelsen, whose role model was racist South Africa in the 1980’s. In the fall of 2009, Mikkelsen adopted the so-called “rubbish package”, which was to create the “legal” basis for breaching the Constitution and Human Rights.
State violence also affected attendees at the summit, who were beaten by police as they tried to engage in protests with protesters outside the Bellacenter, where the summit’s main conference was held. The domestic violence led to demonstrations against Denmark in 9-10 countries in Europe and several official complaints about Denmark to the UN.
Even worse, it went inside the walls of the summit itself. The main view of the poor world was that it is the polluter who has to pay: it is the rich western world that has created the global warming that has to pay. In contrast, the rich countries felt that everyone should help pay for their CO2 pollution. The summit therefore collapsed and ended without results. The Danish government subsequently talked about a so-called “Copenhagen Declaration” (“Copenhagen Accord”), but the summit did not adoptany statement. It requires unanimity in the General Assembly and 5 countries would not vote for the so-called declaration, which merely expressed the world’s unwillingness to act on the impending disaster. The 5 countries were: Tuvalu, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared that if only the climate had been a bank, it would have been saved long ago. Worldwide, in 2008-09, over US $ 2 billion was spent on saving banks, but there was no money to save the globe from global warming.
There were 3 main reasons for the summit’s collapse: the unwillingness of the rich world to pay for its CO2 pollution, strong opposition from the old-fashioned but strong oil and gas lobby, and the meeting’s leadership. As a host country, Denmark was the leader of the meeting, and Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen emerged as a totally incompetent international leader. Rasmussen seriously believed he could strike a deal with the United States and use the superpower’s military power to push it down the rest of the world, and when US President Obama finally arrived at the meeting, Rasmussen Obama let 10 speakers over and come first. This is not how the UN system works, but the shape ensured that the summit ultimately collapsed completely.
The Left Party continued its policy of denial against climate change. The parliament’s “chairman” Thor Petersen declared the week before the summit that climate change was not taking place, and the government revealed that it spent 138 million DKK in the period 2002-2012. Bjørn Lomborg, who propaganda that global warming is not taking place – and if it does, it is worthwhile to do something about the problem.
Following the collapse of the summit, Danish politicians threw themselves on more important issues such as packed lunches in primary schools and bureaucracies.