This hardly makes me proud of being Danish

The Times has an article title Denmark ‘has failed friends too’. It's the story of the Iraqi interpreter Mohammad who worked for first the British troops and later the Danish troops before fleeing to Denmark.

He fled to Denmark with his family earlier this year under protection from the Danish military, whom he had served for 18 months.
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Mohammad, who is 40, expected job opportunities as an English teacher, schooling for his children and, perhaps, a modest home where necessities were a stroll away. Instead he was given a halfway house, granted an 8,000 kroner (£850) monthly government payment and told to sort out the rest of his affairs on his own. “If I had thought life was going to be like this, I would not have come here,” he said in an interview conducted in Arabic. “I would prefer to live in danger in Iraq than to live here.”

I know that among many people, Denmark has a reputation for tolerance, but that's a thing of the past, if it ever held true. The Danish political environment has become more and more anti-immigrant. Not only has parties like Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People's Party) gained more and more influence, but other parties have kept busy trying to catch up on their anti-immigrant politics, to avoid using votes. The current Danish government, is entirely dependent upon the support of Dansk Folkeparti (DF) to stay in power, which has the natural consequence that DF rules the day, when it comes to their core issue - anti-immigration.

I had hopes that the Minister of Refugees, Immigration and Integration, Birthe Rønn Hornbech, would show a little backbone, as she has shown herself to be principled in the past, but it seems that she doesn't have the political courage it takes.

The very fact that we actually have a minister of Refugees, Immigration and Integration, shows how much these issues dominates Danish politics.

Jörg Haider killed in car crash

Right-wing politician Jörg Haider, who shocked the world when he became te leader of the Austrian government in 2000, has been killed in a car crash.

While his family has my condolences, I cannot find it in myself to feel sorry for the death of another bigoted politician.

BBC story
LA Times story

Election time

There have been a couple of elections in Europe lately.

In Poland Jaroslaw Kaczyński lost, and a more sane government is expected to form. You know that you're unpopular when both Russia and the EU is happy that you lost. Unfortunately, his twin Lech Kaczyński is still the president of Poland.

Switzerland also held elections, with the rightwing Swiss People's Party as the big winner, getting 30% of the votes. The largest block ever received by a Swiss political party. They have stated that they are going to form a broad coalition government, but there is no doubt that the result will pull Switzerland to the right, and towards harsher anti-immigrant measures.

And today the Danish prime minster announced that Denmark will have an election on November 13th. This was not unsurprising, as the government has risen in recent polls, and stands to win the election, with the help of their support party, Dansk Folkeparti.

Danish politics are quite confusing to outsiders, with parties spanning from the Anarcho-communist Enhedslisten (the Unity List, a coalition of a number of far-left parties), over the more traditional socialists, social democrats and conservatives parties to the right-wing, anti-immigrant Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples' Party). However, the current political situation can be briefly be summed up thus:

Normally Danish politics is formed by consensus across a broad political spectrum, but during the current government, Danish politics is best characterized as block politics, with the right-winged government parties Venstre (literately translated as Left), a typical liberal party in the European sense, and Det Konservative Folkeparti (the Conservative Peoples' Party), being supported by the anti-immigrant populist party Dansk Folkeparti.

Against them stands a coalition of 4 center-left parties, will try to get the leader of Socialdemokraterne (the Social Democrats) elected as prime minister. There are some very big differences between the parties in this coalition, and if they win the election, it would probably mean that the new government would have to form consensus across the middle to the two current government parties on a number of issues.

Personally, I just about don't care what the results will be, as long as Dansk Folkeparti looses their influence. I consistently vote against them, and try to optimize my vote to have the greatest negative impact on their power. I'd rather have the far-left people in power, even though I'm pretty sure it would lead the country to bankruptcy if kept up for too long.