from the hip

The little, otherwise relatively liberal country of Denmark, known perhaps especially for its liberal attitudes towards pornography,  may well be one of the most control-oriented states  in the world as far as the Internet is concerned.

Since 2005, the Danish state has monitored everything everybody has been doing on the Internet. The Danish newspaper Politiken writes:

According to metroxpress, the state is monitoring everyone’s behaviour on the internet as a result of legislation that requires all user names and passwords to be lodged with the State and University Library and the Royal Library. The libraries file everything from children’s scribblings on Arto.dk to love letters and profile pictures on Dating.dk.
The technology is known as Internet Harvesting and the Net Archive currently harvests all Danish sites four times per year.
However, some news, dating and other social network sites are harvested daily, according to Eva Fønns-Jørgensen of the Net Archive at the State and University Library in Århus.

Code release
“Danish sites have a legal duty to provide access codes and we have been harvesting text, pictures and audio since 2005,” she says.
At the moment, researchers are the only ones allowed to see the extensive personal material grabbed through Internet Harvesting. But 70 years after the death of, for example, a person with a dating profile, all information comes into the public domain.

The thinking behind this is that people themselves have chosen to place materials on the Internet, and that once it is one the net it is publicly available.

So there we go. Public nudity and liberal rules about pornography. But Big Brother is watching. And letting others watch as well!

1984 has come and gone.

See also: Inventor of the Internet warns against ‘Big Brother’ systems that track the sites you visit

Iceland, which is currently in an economic meltdown, will be getting  help from its Nordic neighbors. The Danish newspaper Politiken writes that:

Iceland’s Prime Minister has been in contact with his Nordic counterparts ‘for some time now’, according to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and Nordic help may be on the way to the beleaguered Icelanders.
The prime minister’s comments came as the benchmark Icelandic index, which has been closed for business for some days, reopened and plummeted a full 76 percent. Trade in Iceland’s three largest banks, which have been taken over by the state, remain suspended.

Elsewhere in the paper, Politiken reports that Iceland will be receiving a borrowing facility for 500 mill. Euro from the Danish national bank. The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, on the other hand, reports that the loan is 400 mill Euro, and that the borrowers are Denmark and Norway, both with 200 mill.

See also:

• Times - Iceland secures €200m from Norway, Denmark
• New York Times - Iceland Turns to Neighbors to Prevent a Collapse

Paris Hilton is in Copenhagen today and for a few more days. She is apparently promoting her line of products (bags produced in her name by PH Europe, to be sold in more than 80 countries worldwide) at some fashion event in Copenhagen. She is together with Benji Madden, her rocker boyfriend.

And Copenhagen seems to love her. She creates chaos, says the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. Especially the media are wild. They are all full of pictures and articles about Paris Hilton, and the TV-stations have shows going where Paris Hilton says “I love Copenhagen” (I think that is about all she has said, so far), and where spectators are interviewed about why and how much they love Paris Hilton.

It is all slightly insane. I mean, so far she hasn’t done anything, and hardly said anything?

I wonder: Will the city remain standing if she shows up tomorrow without her undies?

In Denmark, body paint is becoming fashionable among pregnant women. They go and get their bodies painted, and then, next, get themselves photographed. This is a nice way to create very special and sometimes even spectacular memories of their pregnancies.

I think the pictures are stunning. Very beautiful, and with some very intriguing designs also!

(more…)

Corruption seems to be everywhere. Now a corruption case is shaking little Denmark as well. On Greenland, it turns out that the Greenland Government (”Grønlands Hjemmestyre”) sold houses to politicians and top bureaucrats for roughly half their real value.

A legal report, by Nuna Advokernes, concludes that this practice was unlawful. Big surprise. The report concludes that the selling of public property to individuals has to take place at the real market value.

For a while the Government at Greenland sought to block the investigation. Now that it’s on the table, the opposition in Greenland demands the resignation of the sitting government.

They should.

Or so they claim. The Danish newspaper BT writes that more than every second Dane, 54%, have had sex in the kitchen according to a representative survey. And sex in the kitchen is even more frequent among the people living in Copenhagen than in the rest of the country - six out of every ten in Copenhagen.

According to the Danish newspaper, this almost makes them the world champions of kitchen sex. However, they are not quite on the top, the Japanese and the Swedes both beat them by a narrow margin. But the Danes also proudly announce that they are way ahead of the British - only 40% in the UK have ever done it in the kitchen!

I trust the Danes will strive to improve their position in the future.

Swedish and Danish women are still fighting for equal rights. Scandinavian women have in many ways been in the forefront in women’s struggle for equality between the sexes. And much has been achieved. A number of studies indicate that wage discrimination has more or less disappeared in Scandinavia. And the women have won a number of other important victories as well.

Now a group of women are fighting for the right to bath and swim topless in public swimming facilities. The city of Sundsvall in Northern Sweden granted women this right after a bare-breasted protest a while ago. And now Copenhagen has permitted topless swimming as well.

Another victory for Scandinavian women.

Actually, for the men as well, I guess?

The Sun (UK) wrote about this today (03/29):

Campaign leader Astrid Vang, 20, who took her top off with others to protest at a leisure centre at Christmas, said: “We women would like to decide by ourselves when our breasts should be sexual and when not.”In swimming pools they should not and that is why the breasts should not be covered - We will bathe topless just like men.”

The Danish campaign was inspired by a Swedish group called Just Breasts, which was formed after two women were asked to cover up their breasts by a lifeguard at a public pool near Stockholm.

Swedish protesters carried out several full-frontal marches in their country but their tireless topless fight will not stop at swimming pools — the perky sufferagettes want to show tops the red card at football matches next.