Recently in Denmark Category

With Obama in the White House and Holder at the Justice Department, the Danes are on their own, and they know it. "Danish Politicians Want Stricter Checks on American Travelers," from Politiken via Spiegel, November 20 (thanks to Joel):

Although Danish police are currently able to require airlines to provide passenger lists, the Danish People's Party wants a more intensive cooperation with American authorities.

Two parties in Denmark's parliament are calling for stricter checks on American travelers to the country out of terrorism concerns. Danish Justice Minister Brian Mikkelsen agrees that restrictions may be necessary.

The conservative Danish People's Party and leftist Social Liberals in Denmark are calling for increased checks on Americans wishing to travel to Denmark, including the introduction of visa requirements and pre-travel disclosures.

"We have had to admit that the Americans have not been as effective in their anti-terrorism efforts as we thought and that the threat against Denmark has grown," says Danish People's Party Justice Spokesman Peter Skaarup.

According to Visit Denmark almost 500,000 Americans visit the country each year. One of those who twice this year availed himself of easy entry into the country was a man recently arrested in Chicago on charges of conspiracy to carry out an attack on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper....

This idea was floated by the Sarkozy government in France some months ago, but I don't think anything came of it. In any case, it's nice work if you can get it. I expect that it will create a revolving-door growth industry, with unassimilable immigrants getting paid, going home, coming back, getting paid again, going home again, etc. Still, this is positive -- it is among the first official recognition that there is any problem at all with immigrants who won't assimilate.

"Denmark to pay immigrants £12,000 to go home if they 'can't or won't' assimilate," by Allan Hall for the Daily Mail, November 10 (thanks to all who sent this in):'

Denmark is boosting cash incentives to entice immigrants to return to their homelands if they 'can't or won't' assimilate into society.

The offer now on the table is close to £12,000 for every person who takes up the offer to leave.

Critics of the measure say it sends the wrong message to foreigners but the centre-right government in Copenhagen is forging ahead with the plan.

The financial carrot is ten times more than that previously offered under a scheme which as been law since 1997.

'We thought it was important to substantially increase this aid so that immigrants who want to return home because they are not able to adapt to Danish society have a strong financial basis to start a new life,' said foreign affairs spokesman Soeren Espersen of the far-right Danish People's Party....

The mysterious raid on the halal meatpacking plant, which I noted here last week, turns out to be connected to this plot to kill the Danish Motoonist Kurt Westergaard -- "the Mickey Mouse Project." "Two Chicago men charged in terror scheme," by Natasha Korecki for the Chicago Sun Times, October 28 (thanks to Pamela):

When FBI agents at O'Hare arrested David Headley en route to Pakistan earlier this month on charges he plotted to kill a newspaper cartoonist in Denmark, authorities say he held an additional airline reservation - to Copenhagen.

He was to depart Thursday.

Headley's friend, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who shared an extreme hatred for cartoons that depicted the prophet Mohammed, arranged for the flight, authorities said.

Any depiction of the prophet, even a favorable one, is forbidden by Islamic law as likely to lead to idolatry.

The Chicago men, who knew each other from a military school in Pakistan, on Tuesday were accused of an international plot dubbed "The Mickey Mouse Project" that since late 2008 included scheming with others to "commit terrorist acts against overseas targets," according to federal criminal complaints made public in Chicago.

The North Side men are accused of plotting to target employees of the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, which published cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005, sparking violent riots across the Muslim world.

The most controversial of the 12 cartoons depicted Mohammed wearing a bomb with a lit fuse as a turban. That cartoon was drawn by Kurt Westergaard, 78 - who was targeted for assassination, authorities said.

But Headley's phone calls were wiretapped and his e-mails were under FBI review. When he tried to board his Pakistan-bound O'Hare flight Oct. 3, the FBI arrested him.

Headley, 49, then confessed to agents about the plot, authorities said. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts involving murder and maiming outside the United States and one count of conspiracy to provide material support to the alleged overseas terrorism conspiracy.

Rana, 48, a native of Pakistan and a Canadian citizen, was arrested Oct. 18 at his West Rogers Park home. He was charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy that involved Headley.

In October 2008, Headley used his birth name, Daood Gilani -which he changed in 2006 to avoid suspicion while traveling - when posting a message to a Yahoo group called "abdalians," authorities said.

"Everything is not a joke . . . We are not rehearsing a skit on Saturday Night Live," Headley said in the posting. "Call me old-fashioned, but I feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties."...

Headley told agents the plot recently focused on Westergaard and the paper's cultural editor, Flemming Rose, "whom Headley felt were directly responsible for the cartoons," the criminal complaint states.

He also allegedly told agents he was trained by a terrorist organization called Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to his criminal complaint.

Authorities say Headley reported to Ilyas Kashmiri, the operational chief of what the FBI describes as a Pakistani-based terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida, according to the complaint. Headley was headed to Pakistan to report to Kashmiri when the FBI foiled his plans, according to charges.

When he was arrested, FBI agents found a memory stick on him that contained 10 surveillance videos, including footage of the newspaper office and Danish military barracks, the complaint said....

Rana owns several businesses, including First World Immigration Services, which has offices on Devon Avenue in Chicago, New York and Toronto, as well as a meat-processing plant in Kinsman. That plant is used to slaughter goats and sheep per Muslim religious requirements.

Extensive means were used to carry out a search warrant of the plant earlier this month. Witnesses said about 100 agents were on the scene. Helicopters, trucks and SUVs could be seen in front of the building during the raid....

Mickey Motoon thanks to Henrik.

In "Tingbjerg: one neighborhood's nightmare" at Human Rights Service, October 26, Bruce Bawer gives a glimpse of the kind of thing that will be happening in the United States before too long, unless there is some drastic change in numerous policies:

Few people outside of Denmark have heard of Tingbjerg. It's a residential neighborhood in northwestern Copenhagen. About 6500 people live there, down from about 10,000 in the 1970s. Today the great majority of those residents are Muslims. As the neighborhood has become increasingly Muslim, it's also been increasingly plagued by gang violence, burglaries, car-burnings, vandalism, and other offenses. Over the years, the members of Tingbjerg's non-Muslim minority have come to feel increasingly vulnerable and ill at ease in their community. Many have moved out.

Among the latter is Ulrich Vogel. He is German and gay - and until recently he also happened to be the pastor at Tingbjerg Church. But now, after seventeen years in that position, he's fled - moved out of the church residence, gone underground, taken sick leave, and begun psychological treatment.

Why? Because in recent years Vogel has been the repeated target of crime and harassment by local Muslims. Vogel refused to discuss his situation with Uwe Max Jensen, who reported on the story for sappho.dk on October 6. But Jensen found police reports in local newspapers that describe acts of vandalism at the church on March 26 and August 5 of this year and a break-in at the church residence on August 16. The latter crime involved the destruction and robbery of much of Vogel's personal property, including his computer. And this is apparently only the tip of the iceberg: a member of the church congregation told Jensen that the residence has been broken into "countless" times.

In any case, Vogel has given up. And so, apparently, has the church council: instead of opening up a search for a substitute pastor who's willing to live in the church residence at Tingbjerg, they've decided to sell it.

For days, the rumor circulated that Vogel was tormented by the young Muslims because he's gay. Then, on October 17, Lea Holtze and Jannie Iwankow Søgaard of Kristeligt Dagblad reported that Vogel had broken his silence in order to deny that rumor. No, he insisted: he was tormented not because he's gay but because he's a pastor, and thus "a picture of an institution and a normality that is not welcomed by this group of young people." Vogel also noted, truthfully enough, that he was hardly the only person in the neighborhood who had been victimized by local youth.

"It's a whole neighborhood that's been taken hostage," Vogel said of Tingbjerg, complaining that "one is left to fend for oneself" there because "the police don't do enough." The problems, he said, can't be dismissed as ordinary teenage hijinks: "It feels like pure malice." The pastor recalled that last March, after local youths threw rocks at buses, resulting in a disruption of the public transport system, he spoke out in a local newspaper and on the TV news about the neighborhood's ordeal - an action which, he suggests, may help explain why he appears to have been singled out for repeated victimization....

Read it all.