from the hip

Is this really the welfare state people wanted in Denmark? Less than 50% of the people in Denmark are now working to provide for the other half – more than 50% now get their income from the Danish state, reposts Danish newspaper Politiken today.

To me this sounds pretty bad. It raises a lot of questions, even if – as is the case with Denmark – everybody are provided for economically. To me, participation in the labor market is an important thing – that 50% is outside the labor market does not sound so good.

Also – how fair is this? How does it feel for the half that provides the goods? Not my kind of welfare state!

Danish newspaper Politiken reports that pre-pubescent Danish girls develop breasts a year earlier than previously. And this seems not to be as a result of their own hormones, according to a new survey from the Rigshospitalet’s Department of Growth and Reproduction. Politiken writes:

“We believe this is a result of environmental factors – hormone disrupting substances that have a strength to develop breasts despite the fact that the girls do not enter puberty. These substances are everywhere – in cosmetics, foodstuffs, paint – everywhere,” says Sr. Lise Aksglæde one of the authors of the report, naming parabenes and phthalates as two of the substances under suspicion.

More than 2,000 Copenhagen girls between five and a half and 20 years of age have taken part in the puberty survey. Half were surveyed in 1992 and 1993 and the rest between 2006 and 2008. Results have been published in the American scientific journal Pediatrics.

Denmark has been hit very hard by the international recession. Private consumption has dropped rapidly. Car sales are hit especially hard. The Danish newspaper Politiken writes:

Car sales are generally a good indicator of whether people are hanging on to their money; In the fourth quarter of 2008 car sales dropped no less than 23.8 percent. Other goods dropped 1.1 percent.
The new figures come the day after new unemployment figures showed an increase for the fourth month in a row. January jobless figures showed an increase of 5,000 with unemployment now at 2.3 percent.

The Danish GDP for the year 2008 as a whole is negative. And, as yet, there a few signs that the drop in the Danish economy is declining.

The Danish newspaper Politiken writes that Denmark now is the most expensive country in the EU as far as consumer prices for goods and services is concerned! They write:

Statistics Denmark 2007 figures show Denmark to have the highest consumer prices for goods and services in the 27 European Union countries – 38 percent above the EU average.

Number two on the list is Ireland with 25 percent above the average. The lowest consumer prices among the old EU countries are to be found in Greece and Portugal where prices are 11-15 percent below the average.

The lowest prices are to be found in the new EU countries, with Bulgaria coming in at 53 percent below the EU average.

Denmark is also the most expensive country in the EU for foodstuffs and non-alcoholic beverages where Danish price levels are 43 percent above the EU average.

I am sure those numbers are correct. The only country in Europe more expensive than Denmark is Norway, which is not a member of the EU and thus not included in these statistics.

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

There has been inrest between the two “independent” republics in Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – for some time.  The conflict, says New York Times, has tensed considerably recently:

The recent violence has been the worst in the region since June 2004, shortly after President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia came to power vowing to reassert the country’s control over South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia.

Also a part of the bigger context of this conflict is that Georgia has expressed a wish to become a part of NATO. A move that is not very popular in Russia and it’s premier, Putin.

Now Russia has sent troops and dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles into the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Also, Russian fighter jets have been shot down by Georgia. Russia is claiming that it is protecting its citizens. However, Tbilisi’s pro-Western Government describes it as an act of war.

More than 1.000 people have so far been killed. This is a very serious conflict. The US is currently sending an envoy to the area. Der Spiegel writes:

European diplomats have been trying to maintain peace in Georgia with financial incentives and promises of partnership. But now that bombs have started to fall, no one in Brussels, Berlin or Paris quite knows what to do.

The Georigian President calls it a perfectly timed attack, and refers to the fact that the eyes of the world are on Beijing and the Olympic Games.

I have a bad taste in my mouth about this. To some extent it reminds me of Hitler’s Germany attacking Poland and excusing the attack with reference to unrest in the border area and transgressions by Poland. I guess we will shortly learn more about what exactly Putin’s reorientation of Russia entails.

I hope the continuation will not be the case as it was in the case of the Germany-Poland conflict!

See also:

• Der Spiegel: Is this the First War between Russia and a Former Soviet State?
• Times (London): Georgia says Russian tanks mean ‘war’ in South Ossetia
• Guardian: Georgia accuses Russia after jets bomb South Ossetia border area
• Der Spiegel: How the Caucasus Erupted
• Politiken (Danmark): En frossen konflikt

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?

The price of oil has now reached a new record high (in US dollar): 129.31.

Some experts think that a continued belief in even higher oil prices among some American investment banks and hedge funds is a major factor in driving the oil price higher and higher.

Also, the new record high for oil has been cited as a major reason for the drops in the major European stock markets Tuesday.

msnbc/AP writes that:

The June contract for light, sweet crude traded as high as $129.60 on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling at $129.07, up $2.02 from Monday’s record high. The imminent expiration of that contract, which ended with the close of Tuesday’s trading, created additional volatility in the market.

They see no reason why oil should not hit 140 dollars a barrel.

See also (for a little fun): The Coming Oil Crash (LOL)
An Overview of Oil Prices from DOE
The Oil Price Conspiracy

PS: For the record – I share the view expressed in the first of these postings – about the oil crash – that oil prices will crash. But not in the very near future, I think. And only when the dollar starts to rise against other currencies, and then as a function of the strengthening of the dollar!

The case about Josef Fritzl, the Austrian that kidnapped his own daughter and kept her in a small underground apartment, behind seven locked doors, for 24 years while he abused her both sexually and in other ways, represents, to me, evil in a pure, undiluted form. Not only bad, evil acts, but systematic, organized evil.

As the full extent of his actions has been revealed – the torment to which he exposed his daughter for almost a quarter of a century, raping her and fathering her seven children in that little cave – I have become more and more perplexed. How can this be? How is such behavior possible in our time and age? How can a man become such a monster? And at a more practical level – how could a thing like this go on in a civilized, well-regulated society for 24 years?

A man claiming to be protecting his family, but obviously also a man who knew this his style of protection was more than a little at odds with socially accepted forms of protection. While his lawyer may be able to see good things in Fitzl, I really do not.

We are starting to learn a little bit about his past. It sheds considerable light on the question of how he became the monster. It offers, possibly, at least the beginnings of a seemingly plausible psychological explanation for his monstrous crimes. The Independent writes:

In an interview, the sister of Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, a woman identified as 56-year-old Christine R said that Fritzl had been brought up by a single mother with an explosive temper who resorted to violence to control her child.

“Josef grew up without a father. His mother raised him with her fists,” Mrs R said. “She used to beat him black and blue almost every day. Something must have been broken in him because of that. He was unable to feel any kind of sympathy for other people. He humiliated my sister for most of her life.”

He grew up being systematically subjected to and controlled by violence. But even so, the case still makes me perplex. The reason is that Josef F. at the same time was so much more than a monster, in other settings, with other people. He was evil incarnate, but also a smiling, respected, and somewhat successful businessman who amassed a fortune of 4 million dollars or so.

Over the years, more than 100 people have rented rooms and apartments from him. Seemingly without having much of a clue as to what went on. Apart from one person, that is, who has admitted to knowing about sexual abuse. But he was scared of Josef F. and did not dare to report it to anyone. Also, it has become known that Josef’s brother had a key to the basement.

Lately, after the case has become public, we have also seen a number of old, unsolved crimes resurfacing. An unsolved murder, several unsolved rapes. So far, the ties to Josef F. are speculative. But it would not, I guess, be very surprising if they turned out to be real. According to Der Spiegel, he raped his own daughter in front of her his and her children. So why should anything be a surprise?

So there was Josef F. the beast, and there was Josef F. the family man, and Josef F. the businessman. Possibly Josef F. the murderer and rapist. The multiple faces of Josef F. And the smiling face with the evil behind.

The little we know about his background, so far, may perhaps begin to explain, partly at least, the monster. However, explaining how the monster could coexist, seemingly with easy, with the other faces of Josef Fritzl, is a bigger challenge.

More about this case:

The Independent: The Making of a Monster

No need to be surprised when a house of horrors turns up on a quiet provincial street

Josef Fritz in the news

New York Times: Austria Stunned by Case of Imprisoned Woman

Painting a portait of Austrian incest suspect Josef Fritzl

Guardian (UK): How many more of our missing are stuck in some underground prison? (Expert view)

‘Every little thing she did, her father would hit her’

The minister of justice in Norway has proposed criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. The law proposes imposing fines and up to six months in jail for anyone convicted of paying a prostitute for sex. The law is in line with a “Sex Purchase Law” passed by neighboring Sweden in 1999, which has been the subject of intense interest in Europe and elsewhere.

Justice Minister Knut Storberget said in presenting the proposed law: “People are not a commodity and criminalizing the purchase of sex would make it less attractive for human traffickers to look to Norway.”

I am not sure I like the law. I don’t really know how smart it is to criminalize people for buying sex. But at least that part of the law I respect. The part I have strong objections to, is the part that says that the law should apply to Norwegians visiting other countries as well. This is strange as a legal principle.

I mean, if a Norwegian drive a car at 160 km/hour on a German highway, this is legal in Germany but illegal in Norway. But people do not get punished for it when they return home to Norway. Same for smoking cannabis in Amsterdam. And so on. But now the government proposes that when a Norwegian does something in a foreign country that is legal in that country, he is to be punished when he returns home?

And, in addition to the very strange legal principle involved, there is also the almost impossible situation with respect to implementation. Are Dutch policemen supposed to look out for Norwegians buying sex, when that purchase is legal in the Netherlands? And the same in other countries, of course.

So, seems to me, the only people who will be punished for this are the ones admitting to have done it – some honest guys – and people who are informed about by friends that can’t be trusted or enemies, and then some few others more or less randomly.

To me it seems strange and not very smart to put in place a law that punishes the honest and rewards informers. Is that how the socialist government in Norway wants Norway to become?