In 2010, Norway was a prosperous and peaceful country with a population of 4.9 million people. It had the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and an economy heavily reliant on oil and gas exports. Norway was ranked as one of the happiest countries in the world, due to its high quality of life, low unemployment rate, and strong social safety net. The country’s natural beauty was also highly regarded, with its stunning fjords, mountains and glaciers providing spectacular scenery for tourists to enjoy. In 2010, Norway was also a leader in renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric power and wind turbines. This helped to make Norway one of the most environmentally conscious countries in the world; they have even banned production of fossil fueled cars by 2025! Norway also had a vibrant culture that included traditional festivals such as Kristiania Music Festival and Viking Festivals that celebrated ancient Norwegian customs and culture. All of these factors combined to make Norway an attractive place to live in 2010. Check COUNTRYAAH.COM to see all countries starting with N.
Yearbook 2010
Norway. According to COUNTRYAAH, Norway has a population of 5.328 million (2019). Jewish leaders in Norway noted at the beginning of the year harassment and threats to Jewish schoolchildren from Muslim environments. The schools were criticized for not seriously addressing open Jew hatred. In response, Minister of Education Kristin Halvorsen appointed a working group in March to fight racism and anti-Semitism.
In April, Norway and the Russian Federation agreed on a visa-free zone at the common border that would apply to residents within three miles on both sides. Shortly thereafter, President of the Russian Federation visited Dmitry Medvedev Norway and met, among others, King Harald and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. During the talks, an agreement was reached on how the border should be drawn in the fish-rich and probably also oil and gas-rich Barents sea. The border had been a subject of dispute for four decades, but later in the year, the Russian Federation and Norway signed both border and visa agreements.
While Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was named one of two chairmen of the UN Climate Council, he was criticized at home for delaying the major project to store carbon dioxide under the seabed. The decision was postponed and the planned test facility is expected to be completed by 2018 at the earliest.
The Norwegian court opened the idea that Muslim sharia councils could participate in civil cases, such as divorce and inheritance. Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre made a strong reaction. As chairman of the Labor Party’s integration committee, he explained that the legal system must be based on democratic values and that Norway could not have a parallel legal system based on Islamic law.
When the Storting’s Nobel Committee in October decided to give the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident and human rights fighter Liu Xiaobo, China reacted hard. The Norwegian Fisheries Minister’s trip to Beijing had to be canceled, a major Norwegian cultural event in China was stopped and a trade agreement with Norway was postponed indefinitely by the Beijing regime. There was also a debate in Norway where the Nobel Committee and especially its chairman Thorbjørn Jagland were accused of politicizing the Nobel Prize. Critics felt that Norwegian business should pay for the Nobel Committee’s bold choice of award winners. At the awards ceremony in Oslo, China’s ambassador, along with a number of other invited countries’ representatives, failed to appear.
- Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the two letter abbreviation of NO stands for the country of Norway in geography.
In November, it was discovered that the US embassy in Oslo has systematically monitored and registered Norwegians, according to the United States, to prevent terrorist acts against US embassies. The data led to revelations about similar US surveillance in Sweden.
After the downturn the previous year, the Norwegian economy reversed and showed slight growth in the second quarter. Unemployment also fell. The Government Oil Fund grew strongly and reached a market value of around SEK 3 billion during the year.
Norway and the world
The Norwegian economy has been outward since the first capitalist development, but it was not until the 20th century that Norway as a state began to build political relations against the outside world. Unlike the pragmatic trade relations, this process has triggered great strife inward. It is striking for the former peripheral country that it has so much trouble finding a unifying rationale for its relationship with the outside world.
Three times in this century, European market issues – which in everyday trading are a natural thing – have been violently embroiled in Norwegian politics: the prohibition struggle in the 1920s, and the Community dispute in respectively. 1970-72 and 1992-94. The first theme concerned the implementation of the popularly-banned alcohol ban in a world that was more motivated by the fish trade than by ideology; This meeting with Europe led to a heated conflict of interest in which three governments had to resign within a few years. Community strife brought new rapid change of government in an otherwise quiet time, and was like the prohibition struggle marked by full mobilization on an ideological basis.
Security policy is also subject to a broad ideological debate in Norway. The affiliation to the League of Nations after World War I – which had a bearing on security policy – met strong opposition: The labor movement looked skeptically at the “victors’ federation”, and some bourgeois politicians opposed the surrender of sovereignty that was required in principle.
The accession to the UN in 1945, on the other hand, was unanimous, and the work of World Organization # 2 was marked by great loyalty on the part of Norway, for the country to “bridge” between east and west. The UN cooperation had no security policy sides either. They first joined when the NATO issue arose in 1948. All non-socialist opinion in Norway was voted for the NATO agreement, as a continuation of the wartime alliance, but now turned toward the Soviet Union instead of Germany. The labor movement, on the other hand, faced major ideological problems by attaching itself to the United States and capitalism.
The conflict in the DNA (the Norwegian Labor Party) in 1948-49 had certain features in common with the struggle in the labor movement about the connection to Russia and the Soviet Revolution after World War I.
In addition to treaty policy and security policy, after World War II, a new field has been created for Norway’s relations with the outside world: aid policy with foreign aid as a target and trade benefits as a side effect.
According to softwareleverage, Norway’s historical traditions in this area must be sought in the mission business, which has been significant. Only Ireland has proportionately more missionaries posted than Norway. Neither trade nor exploration has previously linked Norway to the present third world. Aid policy is therefore a fundamentally new matter – for both the public and the politicians. Development assistance has also become a moral theme in public opinion by regularly asking all parties questions about the nature of the regime in those countries that, for economic reasons, are considered worthy of support.
However, the moral interpretation of poverty must be regarded as a beginning weakness. Slowly, a precedent and principles are also being built in this field, which will gradually influence the decisions. And it is doubtful whether the moral criticism will be directed inwardly towards Norway’s economic benefits from aid policy.
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, and a country that, because of its economy, is particularly dependent on the capitalist world system. How, from this position, it should be able to help in a morally disinterested sense is a question that the public is not particularly interested in.
Even more recent than aid policy is Norway’s role as an oil producing country. Both the concession awards, trade relations and membership of the producer countries’ bodies weave further into the world. The scope of the new international ties is not very clear today. In practice, oil production seems to give the Norwegian foreign relations a more pragmatic and less ideological feel. The security policy consequences of oil extraction and the consequences of having multiplied Norwegian territory since the 1960s have only to a small extent given ideological results in Norwegian politics.
Norway, the natural social democracy
Norway has a strong state. Norway combines advanced industry with a well-preserved agricultural sector. The country has weak upper class traditions and strong popular movements. The public sector is broad and governed by pervasive egalitarian norms. On a global scale, the country as a social form is probably closer to socialism than any other system.
Yet Norway is not “socialist” in any reasonable sense of this term, and cannot be within the scope of the traditions. The country is a prominent capital importer, a component of the development of Western capitalism, and has been a key player in the development of the West since the 1960s, from energy supply to electronic weapons systems.
As a capitalist periphery, on the other hand, the country seems worthy of being considered a natural social democracy. In European class history, it is a peasant and working country, in economic development a raw material supplier, in internal social development a social democracy which, by the way, corresponds to the classic international ideals. And this regardless of the party color of the sitting government. It is the framework conditions for the Norwegian economy and politics that make society this – not which power group rules. The social reforms, the leveling, the fierce opposition to the nobility, the upper class and government, all this has been unifying in Norwegian politics; The center line, the common denominator. The internal struggle between classes and groups may have modified the immediate implications of this line, but not much. Social democratic development lies in the very preconditions: the geography, the business structure, the outside world economic development. These are factors that the country’s own parties and classes have been unable to do anything about, and which they have instead adapted – preferably in tact.
Denmark
2011 Exit VKO
Last sale day had long since passed when the VKO government in September 2011 was brought down. S, SF, R and Ø got a total of 92 seats, compared to VKOI’s 89. The unit list got 3 times its mandate from 4 to 12. First and foremost as a result of SF’s strong right turn.
Social democracy’s close relations with PET were confirmed during the composition of the ministerial list in September. The prime minister’s politically close ally Henrik Sass Larsen did not receive any ministerial post – on the recommendation of PET. This was allegedly due to Larsen’s close connections to the criminal rocker environment. Only in 2013 did he get a ministerial post in connection with a ministerial rocket. In the 1970’s, Anker Jørgensen kept Ole Espersen away from the Justice Ministry post for several periods because PET could not approve him as minister.
The first half of the SRF’s reign was particularly marked by a civil barrage of broken election promises by the government. It was right for the bourgeois parties to do that, instead of making politics with the Unity List, the government made politics with the bourgeois. The consequence was that:
- SRF did not remove the reduction in the benefit period from 4 to 2 years as otherwise promised in 2010
- SRF opposed the introduction of a payment ring around Copenhagen – with the result that the capital has one of the world’s poorest transport systems
- Still, SRF would not give earmarked maternity leave to men to get more men on maternity leave
- The ceiling on trade union quota deductions was not removed
- Free school food for all school children
- The government did not give the municipalities more money to finance better welfare, after 10 years of VKO tax stops and welfare reductions
In June 2012, the government signed an agreement with the Left that included tax cuts of DKK 13 billion. DKK and a reduction in transfer income of DKK 4 billion. The unit list had thought it was a reform with the government, but the government instead chose Left. The unit list acknowledged that it was no longer a support party for the government. While S and SF in particular crashed into opinion polls as they led bourgeois politics, the Unity List more than doubled in surveys. In April, Social Democracy was down 16.9% of the votes in the polls, while the Left was twice as large. The old working party was now overtaken in size by the Danish People’s Party. SF was sent to count by just 5.7% while the Device List got double.
Even worse, it went for the government in the spring of 2013, when it sent through KL to lock out all of Denmark’s primary and special school teachers. The purpose was to force teachers to accept that they no longer had to retail their work hours. In other words, the SRF government continued the war against Denmark’s teachers, Bertel Haarder had started in 1982. The Ministry of Finance, with Bjarne Corydon at the forefront, wanted to detail the work of the public employees, and now the teachers were reached. For over 40 years, changing governments had bankrupted the teaching staff so that no young person at their full five today wants to become a Primary School teacher. The doctrines were drowned and the government ended up exalting its control over the teachings of law. A study conducted by the DR showed that 75% of the teachers before the conflict voted on the SRF parties. After the conflict, this figure had fallen to 4.9%. Instead, 34.3% of teachers would vote on the Device List. When the reform broke through in 2014, it became clear that teachers were voting. Those who could choose to retire early. Others chose to apply to private schools not subject to reform. In many schools, up to half of the hours were therefore temporary lessons. On the other end, the effect was equally evident. Both in 2013 and 14, there were significantly fewer applicants for teacher seminars. Bertel Haarder’s war on primary school teachers and their union in the 1980’s and Christine Antorini had helped to smash the Danish public school, with the result that it very clearly separated from the school system in the other Nordic countries.
Over the summer, the government also tried to pressure the country’s doctors. These, too, wanted the Ministry of Finance to manage retail within the framework of the new bourgeois management doctrine New Public Management. The doctors initially responded by depositing their outside numbers, and the country could therefore have left without a primary health care after the summer break, but the doctors eventually got cold feet, dropped the deposit and accepted the government’s dictation.
In October 2012, the research institute Epinion conducted a survey of the credibility of various professional groups. For the fourth year in a row, the credibility of politicians, journalists and spin doctors was at stake. At the top were school teachers. The year after the two politicians took vengeful revenge and implemented a school reform that would expel school teachers.
The SRF government’s bourgeois policy led to both S and SF crashing into the polls. In the fall of 2012, Villy Søvndal resigned as head of SF. The party conducted a ballot among its members and ended up electing Annette Vilhelmsen as new chairman. It did, however, stop far from R and S’s pushing of the lot, which went up more and more into the glue. In October Thor Möger Pedersen quit as Minister of Taxation. In June 2013, he became a Social Democrat. For others, it went even faster. The party’s young hope and vice-president, Mattias Tesfaye, became Social Democrat as early as January. In just 8 years he had moved across DKP-ML to the Unity List and on to SF and the Social Democracy. Political Mayor Jesper Petersen in March became Social Democrat and quickly became the new party’s financial mayor. The EU parliamentarian Emilie Turunen also switched to the Social Democracy in March and so did Nanna Westerby. Only remaining member of SF ‘
In April 2013, the government entered into a so-called cash assistance reform with the bourgeois parties. All but the Unit List were included in the settlement, which means a decrease in cash assistance for the 25-30 year olds. The government’s desire for reform was to motivate young people to look for work. It simply forgets that the problem is not the young people, but the employers who will not hire them.
Despite the Left Partyno longer in government was it still deliverable in scandals. In 2012 and 13, the Investigative Commission to investigate left-wing politicians’ interest in Helle Thorning Smith’s tax situation revealed that both former left tax minister Troels Lund Poulsen, former left tax minister Kristian Jensen and former prime minister Lars Løkke had vividly interested in the case and had intervened directly in the case. to make it difficult for their political opponent. In October 2013, it was revealed that Lars Løkke, as chairman of the South Korean fraud organization GGGI, had traveled in the first class, driven in limousines and lived in hotels for a total of more than DKK 1 million. DKK over a one-year period. He had also spent GGGI money to fund his daughter’s travels – in 1st grade. The party chairman was merely an extension of his consumption as prime minister. The extra problematic from a Danish point of view was that GGGI was partly financed by Danish aid with DKK 90 million. Especially Loke’s luxury consumption led to a temporary decline for the Left and that the Social Democracy did not decline as much during the municipal and regional elections in November. The party only went down 1.1% to 29.5%, while the Left went 1.8% to 26.6%. While SF went back 8.9% to 5.6%, the Device List tripled to 6.9%. In Copenhagen, the Unity List became the second largest party with 19.5% of the vote.
The scandals surrounding the Left continued into 2014 when it was revealed that he received significant grants from his party for the purchase of underpants and other clothing so that he could be representative. In addition to the furore scandal it gave rise to, it had an illegal element, since Lars Løkke had forgotten to give up the grants received to the tax system, which or statutory under the Taxation Act. In the middle of the year, the President’s scandals became so embarrassing, even for tanned politicians who had won little of each in the Left. At an extraordinary national meeting of the party, they tried to overthrow him and have him replaced by the Vice-President. However, the palace coup failed.
Denmark continued its role as the United States’ Armed Forces when it was revealed in mid-2013 that the United States through the NSA is conducting almost total Internet surveillance, the EU is intercepting the Commission in Brussels and intercepting at least 40 of the world’s heads of state. This includes France, Germany, Mexico and Brazil. After each new discovery of the US assault, the Danish Prime Minister moved out and defended the NSA because “NSA interception is necessary to prevent terrorism”. However, the fact was that the NSA had not prevented a single terrorist act with its surveillance, nor was Thorning Smith able to clearly explain how the interception of Germany’s Angela Merkel or the EU Commission prevented terror. In September, the Social Democratic Party declared itself willing to bomb Syria and that the party would “fuck up international law”.
In January 2014, Information was able to reveal that the NSA gained access to the documents negotiated during the COP15 summit in Copenhagen in 2009. It is not allowed to spy on the UN, but the espionage did not concern the Danish government. In June 2014, the daily newspaper was able to document that NSA in Denmark taps the fiber cables that carry Danish and foreign data from east to west. It was the Danish state itself that had granted NSA access, but the total NSA espionage against Danish telecommunications and data communications did not give rise to consideration in the government – despite the fact that it was banned. In November could Informationfurther reveal that the British espionage organization GCHQ was actively listening to the delegations during the COP15 summit. Nor did it give rise to considerations in the government. The conclusion was that the Danish state has at some point abandoned maintaining Danish sovereignty over espionage from at least the UK and the US. The Danish government had laid flat on his stomach and smiled with his tail.
In January 2014, the Danish Parliament passed a new public law (aka the “blackout law”) which, on a number of crucial points, impaired the public’s – including journalists’ – insight into public decision-making processes. The law met widespread criticism from journalists and human rights activists.
In January 2014, the SRF government sold Dong to the criminal capital concentration Goldman Sachs. A strong popular movement, the trade union movement, even many Social Democrats with Poul Nyrup Rasmussen at the forefront were opposed to the sale, but it was implemented in any case. Dong’s top management even earned hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Goldman Sachs even figured to make $ 8 billion DKK on his investment. As a government party, SF voted in favor of the sale, but then went through a fierce internal crisis that led the party to withdraw from the government and switch women.
With the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the West decided to define a new enemy. The new enemy became Russia, which the EU and the US began to impose sanctions from in the spring of 2014. Denmark probably followed suit. By the end of the year, Danish agriculture was in deep crisis. The sanctions imposed by Russian counter-sanctions had halted Danish agricultural exports to Russia for several billion DKK annually.
The European Parliament elections in June 2014 were a big victory for the right-wing DF, with 26.6% becoming the largest party. An increase of 11.3 compared to the previous elections in 2009. The party’s major support was, among other things. an expression of the ongoing scandal in the Left about the president’s underpants consumption and former Social Democratic voters who had abandoned their old party. At the same time, a referendum was held on the “European Patent Court”. As with the previous EU referendums, voters did not know what they were voting for. 62.5% voted in favor, 37.5% voted against. The EU is such a dangerous topic for the EU supporters’ parties, which is out of step with their constituents at this point, that the political rulers completely fail to inform about the EU.
In June 2014, the West was given the opportunity to define yet another enemy when Islamic State (IS) in Iraq/Syria sent another of the West’s war adventures – the occupation of Iraq – for count as the movement during a lightning war (after German example) took it western Iraq and conquered huge quantities of heavy North American weapons. From September, the West launched bombings of IS, which Denmark immediately joined. Two months later, the West had created an Islamist lighthouse in the Middle East, which was supported by rebel groups in North Africa across the Middle East to Pakistan, to which tens of thousands of young people sought admission. to fight the common enemy of Islam and the West: Bashir al-Assad. The young people now joined the IS in droves. Both the government and the bourgeois opposition developed a number of imaginative proposals to deal with this situation, which had in common that they were almost all in conflict with the conventions Denmark had signed. They went on to deprive the young people of their passports or deprive them of their citizenship.
In the spring of 2014, the European Court of Justice issued a decree marking the logging of citizens’ data on the Internet as being in violation of fundamental human rights. The ruling was immediately ignored by the Danish authorities despite the fact that the police logging of metadata on the Internet was the most comprehensive in Europe. But in the summer, the Justice Department announced that logging would be discontinued. Not because of the human rights violation as determined by the European Court of Justice, but because it “had not produced sufficient results”. However, the Danish state’s compliance with citizens’ human rights in this area lasted briefly. In late summer, the government decided to establish the Center for Cyber Security (CFCS) under the Defense Intelligence Service. CFCS was thus evaded from general supervision and at the same time gained far-reaching powers for electronic surveillance and access to the telecommunications companies’ premises, at any time and without judicial notice. A few months later, the government announced that logging of people’s use of telecommunications and the internet would be reintroduced – just on a more massive scale than before. Where previously only 1 out of 100 packets were logged, all packets should now be logged. At the same time, the entire population should be permanently located on the basis of the mobile phone identification of the broadcasters. Finally, in 2014, the police decided to purchase equipment that can automatically recognize license plates. The total surveillance of the population and the police state was a reality.
In a bid to overtake the right-wing right-wing rhetoric, the government declared in November that it would send Syrian refugees back to Syria. It was forbidden according to. the torture convention that prohibits extradition to torture.
In December 2014, the Frederiksberg district court confirmed that freedom of expression no longer existed in Denmark. It happened then that sentenced Sam Mansour to four years of unconditional imprisonment for expressing sympathy for the al-Qaeda movement and its branch in Syria, al-Nusra, in Facebook updates. Up to the sentencing, a number of parliamentary politicians, with Left’s political mayor Inger Støjberg, demanded that the court, in addition to the prison sentence, deprived Mansour of his citizenship. Mansour’s lawyer subsequently reported the politicians, which came out of nothing.
In December, the United States Congress published a 600-page extract of a 5,000-page report on the CIA’s torture program. The excerpt showed that Denmark had also participated in the program – probably by allowing a stopover of the CIA’s torture aircraft in Greenland. Despite the report’s documentation that Denmark had violated the torture convention, no Danish investigation was initiated.
In January 2015, the country’s bourgeois media and politicians went self-inflicted after 2 armed men’s killings of 12 magazine articles, journalists and security people at the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Media and politicians described the killings as an attack on freedom of expression. A freedom the same politicians otherwise gave tight conditions in Denmark, where the TV station Roj shortly before had been closed by the state and a bookseller sentenced to 4 years in prison for statements on Facebook. After the killings, the state sued a number of Danes who had spokensympathy for the killers. The politicians’ interest in the case was not due to the defense of freedom of speech, but the chance to intensify 15 years of political and legal struggle against Islam and Muslims. An apartheid state in action whose politicians outbid each other with proposals for more police state. For the rulers, freedom of speech was equal to their right to harass and scorn minorities, while the people were not entitled to retaliate.
The June 2015 election provided a glaring electoral victory for the radical right wing. Due. however, the many scandals in the Left Party had to see this overtaken by the Danish People’s Party, which became the second largest election after the Social Democracy. Still, it was the Left who came to form government, but no other party wanted to join it. The party therefore had to scrape the bottom to find ministers who in turn were quickly replaced:
- Carl Holst was brought in from the post of Regional Council Chairman in the Region South and made Minister of Defense. He only lasted for 3 months when it was revealed that he had used the region’s officials and funds to lead the election campaign and had also taken with him $ 833,000 as “allowance” from Region South – on top of the ministerial salary. The pressure continued against Holst, even after his departure, and he eventually sent on leave. In order to subsequently be able to put up with a defense minister, the party had to bring in Peter Christensen, who had not even got enough votes to get into the Parliament.
- Eva Kjer Hansen became Minister of Food and Manure. During the winter, she worked out a plan that would significantly rescue the crisis-prone agriculture (the crisis due to the economic sanctions against Russia) by allowing a significant increase in the manure spread on the Danish fields – and at the same time increasing pollution of streams and groundwater.. In dealing with the bill, it emerged that the minister had led both Folketing and conciliation support by manipulating information on the consequences of slurry pollution. In March 2016, she was forced to step down as a result of the scandal.
- Esben Lunde Larsen became Minister of Education and Research. For the first time in over 100 years, Denmark received a higher education minister who believed that Darwin was wrong and that God created man 5000 years ago. Larsen was subsequently taken into not being university educated, but graduated from a priesthood seminary in Norway, and incidentally partly to have plagiarized his thesis.
- Hans Christian Schmidt was made Minister of Transport. He had a past in the first Fogh government in 2001, where, as Minister of the Environment, he had been scammed with public funds in the form of cigar boxes he had independently distributed to his friends. As Minister of Transport, he made it his brand case to maximize Denmark’s CO 2 emissions. He increased the subsidy for domestic air traffic; reduced the weight charges to raise the car case, but reversed the subsidy for the purchase of electric cars, with the result that sales of these from the end of 2015 had stopped completely; lowered the age for driving licenses from 18 to 17 years to get even more motorists on the roads.
- Traktor Troels was made Minister for Business. It happened after the Tax Commission had documented that, as Minister of Taxation in 2010-11, he had interfered in Skat’s work to make it difficult for the then Democratic Socialist Helle Thorning Smith.
- The government’s most unpopular, however, was Minister of State and Underpants Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
The focus of the new right-wing government was initially to help the peasants – who eventually cost Eva Kjer Hansen her post of minister; increased CO 2discharge; drastic cuts in municipalities forced to reduce welfare by 1% per year for each of the following 3 years (the result was higher class quotas, that schoolchildren could no longer attend camp school and that elderly people could only be washed every 4 weeks); drastic cuts in foreign aid which in 2016 brought aid down to 0.49% of GDP. However, the most important thing – and therefore the government’s first act – was to hide the truth about the Danish wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the ’00’s, which had cost more than $ 15 billion. more than 50 Danish soldiers killed, thousands of war-traumatized soldiers and thousands killed Afghan and Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi and Afghan Commission to uncover the wars were immediately put down by the government’s accession.
Another key focus area was the settlement of the «Green transition», which was instead turned into a Black transition under the leadership of CO 2 Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt:
- The reduced registration fee for electric cars was removed, with the result that sales of electric cars in 2016 fell to almost 0. By comparison, almost every fourth car sold in Norway was an electric car
- The travel allowance on domestic flights was increased to increase air traffic
- In 2016, the government vetoed a number of projects for coastal wind farms that had otherwise been put out to tender. The government preferred coal power and was generally opposed to electricity generation from wind turbines
- In late 2016, the PSO tax on electricity was abolished. The tax should have been used to finance renewable energy production
- At the start of 2017, registration fees for electric cars doubled. Growth in Danish electric cars was now negative. The electric cars will be removed from Danish roads to make room for CO 2
- The government removed the goal of phasing out coal from energy production by 2025 and the goal of removing gas by 2030. Despite the government’s black target, Dong declared that it would continue to remove coal by 2025
The attacks on the energy conversion were one of the most extensive since the Fogh government closed down the Ministry of the Environment and Energy in 2001, which was the crunch in the conversion of Danish energy consumption to renewable energy.
As a result of the refugee disaster in the Middle East, the focus was already shifted to refugees and immigrants from August. Over 10 million Syrians were internal and external refugees from the war West (including Denmark) and the Gulf states triggered in the country in 2011-12. As a result of Turkey’s harsh treatment of the Kurdish refugees in particular, this refugee stream in 2015 was oriented towards Europe. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Inger Støjberg, therefore, started designing ads, which were subsequently published in, among others. Lebanese newspapers intended to scare refugees from searching for Denmark. The ads were followed a few days later by other ads, financed by private Danes, who portrayed Denmark as a democratic and open country. However, the battle between good and evil could not hide the fact that Denmark had become Europe’s most xenophobic country.
During the fall, the government decided it would confiscate the refugees’ money and valuables. Parallels were drawn to Nazi theft of the Jews’ possessions in the 1930’s and 40’s. After all, the refugees who came were housed in tents where they had to cope through the winter. However, the state terror against refugees and immigrants also triggered a backlash in the form of extensive and spontaneous solidarity with the refugees. The Movement Friendly Residents spread at record speed and during the winter got 50-60,000 active who sought to compensate for the state’s inhumane politics. Others helped the refugees through the country and on to Sweden – those who wanted it. The state cracked down on this traffic – which the Nazis and their Danish counterparts during World War II cut down on the Danes who helped the Jews to Sweden – and called the activists “human smugglers”. One of the first states convicted of “trafficking in human beings” was former woman councilor Lisbeth Zornig. As an expression of the deep abyss that had developed between state and population, thousands of Danes collected money within a few days to cover her fine, the costs of the case and to cover the fines for other convicts.
In January 2016, as a consequence of the Danish confiscation law, the world-famous Chinese system critic and artist Ai Weiwei decided to close his exhibition in Denmark. Weiwei was at this time visiting the Greek island of Lesbos to conduct research on the European refugee crisis. He declared:My moments with refugees in the past months have been intense. I see thousands come daily, children, babies, pregnant women, old ladies, a young boy with one arm. They come with nothing, barefoot, in such cold, they have to walk across the rocky beach. Then you have this news; it made me feel very angry. The way I can protest is that I can withdraw my works from that country. It’s very simple, very symbolic – I can’t co-exist, I can’t stand in front of these people, and see these policies. It is a personal act, very simple; An artist tries not just to watch events but to act, and I made this decision spontaneously.
After more than 100,000 refugees had come to Sweden in 2015 (against a few thousand to Denmark), Sweden introduced border control at the beginning of 2016 against Denmark. Denmark used the opportunity to introduce border control against Germany at the same time. The Nordic passport union was temporarily laid in the grave.
In December, the government and the EU’s parliamentary parties sent the reservation of reservations to the EU for a referendum. The supporter parties basically wanted the reservation completely abolished, but considered that they could not get a majority for it in a referendum. Instead, they sent a motion for a vote which meant that part of the 1993 reservation was abolished and the rest could be abolished ad hoc, simply by a simple majority vote. It did not buy the voters. 53.1% voted no. As in previous EU polls, it was very much a class choice. The bourgeoisie and parts of the middle layers – especially the higher parts – voted yes, while the working class and the lower parts of the middle layers voted no.
The new right-wing government continued the civil war policy of the ’00’s. In November 2015, it decided to send hunter soldiers and a transport aircraft to Mali. Allegedly because the UN mission in Mali had asked for it, but the UN had not asked for hunter soldiers or transport aircraft. In April 2016, the Folketing decided to start a war against Syria. In violation of international law, hunter soldiers were sent into the country and fighter jets began to bomb. US bombing of IS from 2014 had created the world’s strongest terrorist association. Denmark should now help make it even stronger – while the UN tried to make peace in the war-torn country. In January 2017, the government decided to send additional hunter soldiers to Syria, together with Denmark’s NATO partner Turkey, to fight the Kurdish YPG militia, which until 2016 had been the most effective weapon against IS.
In the autumn of 2016, Minister of Justice Søren Pind presented a body of bills that would legalize PET’s otherwise criminal activities. For more than 10 years, the service had illegally obtained information from the Tax on Danes’ foreign trips. This illegal practice now had to be legalized. The service only deletes exceptionally 10 year old registrations. With the PET Act of 2013, it was otherwise decided that the service could only exceptionally avoid such deletion. Yet PET does not erase – contrary to the law. Søren Pind therefore made a bill that it was entirely up to PET to decide whether to delete. A study conducted by the weekly magazine The Engineer revealed that PET over the last year was listening to 2,200 Danes’ phones and constantly intercepting 1,000 Danes.the journey of all Danes. This was technically possible because the telecommunications companies already register which telemast is closest to each mobile phone. The old information is not stored, but that is what Søren Pind, with the new law, would now force the telecommunications companies. As a curiosity, TDC admitted that it actually already stored information about each of its 3 million mobile phone customers.
A study by the Labor Movement’s Trade Council showed that the gap between the richest and poorest Danes’ income has increased dramatically during the period 1994-2014. The gap between the 10% richest incomes and the 10% poorest has increased by almost 50% during the period. The statistics show that the poorest 10% up to 2002 followed somewhat the average in income development, but after joining the bourgeois government in 2001 and subsequently extensive tax cuts for people in work and especially the richest, the poor intentions dropped. This group mainly includes pensioners, unemployed, education seekers and others on transfer income. The richest 10% are favored by speculation income (equities and real estate) as well as the tax cuts of civil governments.
While the richest organizations with Danske Industri and the neoliberal think-tank Cepos welcomed the development, the federation 3F declared that any talk of further tax cuts to the rich must now be silenced. Tensions between the richest and poorest are increasingly creating a ghettoized society, where the rich wall themselves in exclusive supervised enclaves while the poor become homeless or have to hustle through. (20 years of tax cuts: So much has the gap between rich and poor grown, The Labor Movement’s Business Council, Weekly Letter A4 13/12 2016).
In December, 2 Danish women once again affirmed the country’s fire as right-wing radical. In The Guardian daily, Lisbeth Zornig told Andersen about the verdict on her and her husband for helping Syrian asylum seekers in 2015 – first in court in Nykøbing Falster and then in the Eastern Lands Court. The same “judiciary” who convicted Danes during World War II for helping the Danish Jews flee to Sweden. Likewise in the Guardiantold 23-year-old Joanna Palani about how she had been remanded in custody by the Copenhagen City Court and subsequently imposed a restraining order because in Syria she had fought the Kurdish YPG/YPJ against IS. The Danish state has a long tradition of supporting Turkey’s struggle against Kurds and most recently to support IS. Denmark is the only European country that carries this policy towards people who want to fight IS.
In January 2017, the Council of Europe’s Anti-Corruption Unit Greco placed Denmark together with 5 other countries at the bottom of the Council’s political corruption index, which covers its 49 member countries. This was due to the wide framework of political corruption that exists in the country. The political right wing is far and away exploiting the opportunities for political corruption. Only grants from private government, companies or business clubs in excess of $ 20,000 must be made public, but major contributions can only be split up between several politicians so that they each come under $ 20,000. In both the Left and the Conservatives, there is also a long tradition of “forgetting” to give up contributions. Social Democratic Party also receive contributions, although they can by no means compare with those of the right wing. They stem from the trade union movement. Political corruption can also be paid late. As a business minister in 2009, the conservative Bent Bendtsen made an exceptionally favorable agreement on hydrocarbon taxation with Maersk, which the group will earn 350 billion. As a thank-you for the gigantic theft of government funds, Bentdsen was, after his resignation as minister, rewarded with a large number of high-paid board positions in Maersk companies.
In August 2017, the government adopted its so-called Lamborghini reform, which provided $ 23 billion. in tax breaks to the richest in the form of tax breaks on cars (especially the most expensive ones) and removal of the ceiling on the employment tax deduction.
In Denmark, police regularly bribe protesters. In December 2017, it went beyond the Danish-Palestinian Tarek Adlouni. Along with several hundred others, he demonstrated in front of the United States Embassy in protest at the announcement by the President of the United States of the relocation of the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. When Tarek shouted “Fuck Donald Trump” during the demonstration, freedom of speech nevertheless went too far. He was attacked by 7 officers who gave him a cushion and afterwards threw him into a police car. They also took the opportunity to fire a number of racist statements by: “perks”, “muslim pigs” and “stupid muslim”. When his mother, Iman Adlouni was supposed to pick up her son at Station City on Vesterbro that evening, she was also arrested, undressed and body-sighted in front of male officers.