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Syndicated News from DenmarkNew report gives Danish universities high marksDate Added: Fri, 18 May 2012 08:49:21 GMT
Where one aspires to be the squireDate Added: Fri, 18 May 2012 09:53:11 GMT
Denmark fourth largest burden on earth's resourcesDate Added: Tue, 15 May 2012 09:49:06 GMT
Olsen selects his gladiators for the Group of DeathDate Added: Wed, 16 May 2012 20:42:38 GMT
Products from Israeli settlements should be labelled, Søvndal saysDate Added: Fri, 18 May 2012 09:31:11 GMT
Danish delight in Stockholm showdownDate Added: Tue, 15 May 2012 09:52:26 GMT
Tackling Europe's growing painsDate Added: Wed, 16 May 2012 08:58:12 GMT
Former minister compares gays to slugsDate Added: Wed, 16 May 2012 10:42:41 GMT
A win for Denmark finally? Nein dankeDate Added: Mon, 14 May 2012 09:24:42 GMT
Danish Crown closing in EsbjergDate Added: Fri, 11 May 2012 10:02:51 GMT
Results 1 - 10 of Headlines for Denmark
Denmark HeadlinesResults Page:SOMETHING ROTTEN IN DENMARK?Date Added: Monday, August 26th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
A Muslim group in Denmark announced a few days ago that a $30,000 bounty would be paid for the murder of several prominent Danish Jews, a threat that garnered wide international notice. Less well known is that this is just one problem associated with Denmark’s approximately 200,000 Muslim immigrants. The key issue is that many of them show little desire to fit into their adopted country.
For years, Danes lauded multiculturalism and insisted they had no problem with the Muslim customs - until one day they found that they did. Some major issues: * Living on the dole: Third-world immigrants - most of them Muslims from countries such as Turkey, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Iraq - constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending. * Engaging in crime: Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark’s 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country’s convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes. * Self-imposed isolation: Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane. * Importing unacceptable customs: Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death - are one problem. Another is threats to kill Muslims who convert out of Islam. One Kurdish convert to Christianity, who went public to explain why she had changed religion, felt the need to hide her face and conceal her identity, fearing for her life. * Fomenting anti-Semitism: Muslim violence threatens Denmark’s approximately 6,000 Jews, who increasingly depend on police protection. Jewish parents were told by one school principal that she could not guarantee their children’s safety and were advised to attend another institution. Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish riots. One organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to "kill all Jews . . . wherever you find them." * Seeking Islamic law: Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark’s Muslim population grows large enough - a not-that-remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will be Muslim. Other Europeans (such as the late Pim Fortuyn in Holland) have also grown alarmed about these issues, but Danes were the first to make them the basis for a change in government. In a momentous election last November, a center-right coalition came to power that - for the first time since 1929 - excluded the socialists. The right broke its 72-year losing streak and won a solid parliamentary majority by promising to handle immigration issues, the electorate’s first concern, differently from the socialists. The next nine months did witness some fine-tuning of procedures: Immigrants now must live seven years in Denmark (rather than three) to become permanent residents. Most non-refugees no longer can collect welfare checks immediately on entering the country. No one can bring into the country an intended spouse under the age of 24. And the state prosecutor is considering a ban on Hizb-ut-Tahrir for its death threats against Jews. These minor adjustments prompted howls internationally - with European and U.N. reports condemning Denmark for racism and "Islamophobia," the Washington Post reporting that Muslim immigrants "face habitual discrimination," and a London Guardian headline announcing that "Copenhagen Flirts with Fascism." In reality, however, the new government barely addressed the existing problems. Nor did it prevent new ones, such as the death threats against Jews or a recent Islamic edict calling on Muslims to drive Danes out of the Norrebro quarter of Copenhagen. The authorities remain indulgent. The military mulls permitting Muslim soldiers in Denmark’s volunteer International Brigade to opt out of actions they don’t agree with - a privilege granted to members of no other faith. Mohammed Omar Bakri, the self-proclaimed London-based "eyes, ears and mouth" of Osama bin Laden, won permission to set up a branch of his organization, Al-Muhajiroun. Contrary to media reports, the real news from Denmark is not flirting with fascism but getting mired in inertia. A government elected specifically to deal with a set of problems has made minimal headway. Its reluctance has potentially profound implications for the West as a whole.Results Page: DENMARK: NEW EU PRESIDENT FOCUSING ON ENLARGEMENTDate Added: Thursday, July 4th, 2002Contributed by: RCN Administrator
Latin America enjoyed a high profile in Europe during the first half of 2002, as Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar leveraged his country’s first ever turn in the European Union’s six-month rotating presidency to lobby his colleagues for closer EU-Latin American relations. However, when Denmark assumed the EU’s presidency on July 1, Latin America dropped off the list of important priorities.
Unlike Spain, Denmark has no cultural or linguistic ties to Latin America, and Danish investors are not heavily exposed in the region. Instead, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen will focus on EU enlargement and immigration, and likely will pay little or no attention to issues involving Latin America. Denmark is supportive of EU enlargement and will employ its turn as president to try and conclude negotiations with all 10 of the countries seeking accession to the EU before a Dec. 12-13 summit in Copenhagen. But Denmark is also anti-federalist and wary of a stronger EU, and it will work to water down a proposal by Britain and France to install a powerful new EU Council president -- preferably a recently retired head of state with a mandate to give the group more political direction. On the issue of accession, Denmark June 28 warned the candidate countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus) that their expectations of joining the EU could be held up for several years if they don’t close a deal at the Copenhagen summit. Danish government officials also said the EU’s enlargement would not be delayed for the sake of any country that fails to wrap up negotiations by Dec. 12. These warnings were aimed mainly at Poland, the largest of the 10 candidates. Polish Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said earlier that Warsaw would rather delay its accession to the EU than accept unfavorable terms, but Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller said Poland’s window of opportunity would close in December. However, Poland’s recalcitrance is only one of the potential roadblocks to Denmark’s hopes of locking in enlargement agreements with all the candidate states before the EU presidency passes to Greece in January 2003. For example, Germany’s new government will have been in power only six weeks before the Copenhagen summit begins, which may not be enough time to settle all of the new German government’s concerns about the likely costs of enlargement. Also, over the next six months, Irish voters might choose for a second time to reject the Nice Treaty, which establishes the minimum federal rules with which candidates for EU membership must comply. The Nice treaty needs to be approved by all 15 of the EU’s current members before new members can join. Moreover, thorny disputes over EU farm- and regional subsidies likely will not be settled during Denmark’s turn in the presidency. The pressure to conclude enlargement negotiations during the second half of 2002 means that immigration will become a more contentious issue. The EU needs to agree soon on a common immigration policy that would include provisions for how soon Eastern Europeans from the new member states would be allowed to travel and work freely throughout the other EU countries. Rasmussen, who was elected seven months ago on a platform that included tougher controls on asylum-seekers and foreigners benefiting from Denmark’s generous welfare system, may support a common policy on immigration -- particularly with regard to external border controls -- despite Denmark’s history of anti-federalism within the EU. |
