Reeducation – parents and other countries can learn from Denmark.

In Denmark we started to notice that some kids suddenly disappeared from school. Were they taken by phedofiles? Were they traded off to participate in some regional war far from here?

No, the answer was that the parents had become afraid of our youth culture, which I must admit can be rather challenging because it is aimed to produce people capable of choosing for themselves and stop up and start criticizing whenever they observe unjust in their life. We had a lot of parents who made the decision to lure their children on holiday abroad and then lock them up in religious boarding schools where they are taught values very unlike ours. A teaching which make it difficult for them to re-enter our society and function as a productive citizen. In 2004 it was revealed that about 1,000 students were taken abroad on such behavior modification trips.

Our government moved fast to stop that kind of traffic. Of course we cannot expect parents to fully understand our concept of teaching developed in our 1,000 year old culture in a short time. We had to offer them alternatives which allowed them leave their children here and at the same time provide these children a kind of semi-sheltered environment where they only see the light version of our world of free choices.

In Denmark parents can legally detain their children in boarding schools known as “Efterskoler” in Denmark (Continuation Schools in English). The continuation schools are often based on rigid rules where no smoking or consumation of alcohol is allowed even given the fact that 10 years of intense research has resulted in legislation where alcohol with an alkohol percentage of below 22 percent is considered safe for youth under 18 to drink safely without consequences.

But it is a compromise. Given the alternative that the teenagers would have been confined abroad it is a little better that they can settled with being locked up from Monday to Friday. It doesn’t prepare them properly to a life in High School where most of the students socializing and the schools safekeeping is done in the Friday bar, but at least they are given the chance to mature during their weekends.

While the boarding schools are religious they are not only for families of a certain religion. Many teenagers of Muslim parents attend Catholic boarding school because an Atheism society scare some parents more than a strict religious society even if the faith is not the one they believe in.

It is believed that we are in control of this problem right now. Improvements can be made. A number of control mecanisms have been introduced. Every town is responsible for reporting absense of children and suspicion of foreign behavior modification.

Unfortunately it is not so in other countries. When I researched for this article I learned about how some children from England are taken to Africa where they can be beaten in to submission and return to their parents as broken, scared but respectful teenagers.

Also in the United States they have a long tradition to send their children away to boarding schools, boot camps where some of kids die. Some of these schools were located in Mexico, Jamaica, Samoa or Costa Rica but also inside the United States in such states like Missouri or Utah where children are not considered humans before they are 18 (Maybe they are but they have no human rights).

This week I learned of an unusual case from a friend who have seen a poster online. A 17 year old girl ran of from a place called “Circle of Hope Girls Ranch”. I managed to look at their website. Their school work is worth nothing. Of course no Danish school would accept the papers but Danish schools are general of higher standard than in most countries so they don’t accept a year in the United States regardless of the school. But this school is accredited nowhere other than some do-it-yourself online religious school system. I believed that it was special but I soon learned that it is quite common that some of the teenage lockdowns provide this kind of education so those who make it with good grades have to start over entirely once they return home.

Runaways is also an everyday happening over there and I was surprise to learn that these kids are arrested instead of being helped. I mean in Denmark the police hardly bother to look. If they do they locate the teenager and then inform the parents or the social services to get them. The police is not running a taxi service.

But this case is special and thats why I mention it in this blog-entry. This 17 year old girl used to live as a small girl in England. At some point she left and started to live with her father. I don’t know what happened but I have learned enough from bitter exchange students who have returned home that a teenage life in the United States is nowhere close to a life in freedom as we enjoy it here. This girl must have faced harsh opposition and instead of letting her leave for England to live a normal teenage life her parent and step-mother leving in Nevada got someone to take her to this lockdown of a ranch in Missouri.

There she was without legal representation, without any contact to a consulate or an embassy regardless of her British passport. She may have offended the standards and norms of the society she was living in but she was not in court before she was sentenced to a term of unknown time. What other than trying to run could she do?

I find it extremely harsh to give a person a sentence without setting a timelimit on it. There is no hope left for this person to plan a life once freed. That’s why we in Denmark only give such sentences when a life has been taken.

But back to the subject. Is it normal that British kids are shipped off to whatever solution the parents can find abroad? Africa was mentioned above. With a little research I also discovered that kids were send to Mexico before the drug war overthere started. In fact a school is mentioned which later closed due to suspicion of child abuse. We are talking Casa by the Sea – the very same school attended by the son of Farrah Fawcett where he developed the basis for a drug addiction while he was placed there for behavior problems only. The program Banished to Boot Camp told a story about a mother in England who made the decision to find a program as far away as possible from her so others could conduct this kind of outsourced parenting. Based on the comments made on the homepage of BBC, I could see that several parents did the same as her.

I find it odd. England has developed a fine youth culture with plenty of solution at hand for parents. But what is common for these solutions is that the parents have to involve themselves in the process.

It is here I hope that families in other countries could learn from us.

First alcohol with a percentage below 22 is not a health danger if males keep it under what equal 21 beers per week and women 14 beers per week. It is the standards we are aiming at in Denmark and we have not become instint due to our strategy in this area. In fact people live just long enough so they don’t join the so-called burden of elderlies for too long.

Second introduce local alternatives to banishment. We have our continuation schools. It is not a good solution but it is the best solution possible. It is a compromise.

Thirds as parent you must accept that your child will not grow up in the 1970’s. We are talking year 2010 here. Children of today must have some kind of access to alcohol. Otherwise they will turn to drugs. We as parents lay the foundation for their need as we allow them to learn of whatever earth queke, war or something other out in the world where people have lost their lives or suffered. We adult can stand watching deaths in the news and still enjoy our food, but teenagers have not our life experience. They have not learned the Lesson of life number one: “Don’t take life serious, you will die due to it anyway.” They take the suffering of other people too serious and need something to lower their bad conscience and concerns with.

So parents: Look at Denmark and how we are doing. Protect your children. Keep them close to you, even when they are causing your problems. Remember when you are sitting in your diaper already used one time for number 1 then who is going to turn it? The staff? You must be joking. In a welfare society on decline that job belongs to your children.

The state will control the upbringing of Danish children

After a week of illness I am back and this time my essay is about the Danish state which is working to take over the job of parenting.

Of course most would state that it is already the case when more than 80 percent of all children aged below 5 are in daycare.

However this time they want to endanger our teenagers.

Every year about 4 people aged between 15 and 29 die when they drink too much. While it is a pleasant death for the individual who is spared a life without early retirement, of course it is a tragedy for the relatives. So we must conclude that 1 out of 1,250,000 people die from alcohol poisoning in a society where you legally can buy alcohol once you have turned 16.

But our politicians want to raise the age limit to 18. I find that is a problem.

First the survey they base their conclusion on is not covering the age group they want to protect. It doesn’t show whether the persons who die from alcohol poisoning is an adult or a minor. When they allegedly come to the conclusion that teenagers under 18 need a certain level of protection from ordinary method of socializing and refers to a survey which gives no basis for introducing any kind of restriction on alcohol purchase. 25 deaths are tragic, but we are talking 25 deaths over 7 years out of a population of 5,000,000 people. I could name at least 25 things that kill a larger number of Danes than alcohol poisoning.

Second we must remember that we are at war. The Danish Institute for finer Cuisine wrote a blog-entry about how the risk of shoot shootings are minimized in Danish High Schools. There have been some focus of bullying in high schools and right now they have a high profile case in the United States where a student named Phoebe Prince was bullied to deaths. Students were arrested. One kid is death. Several will have their lives destroyed regardless if they are found guilty or not. All that is not necessary. Instead they could have established Friday bars in the high schools. First those bars make the student attend school. Truancy is minimized. Second bullying is minimized because a beer makes the student socialize. Finally our soldiers returning from Afghanistan tell us that suicide bombers don’t drink so the students can remove themselves from a potential dangerous situation when they spot a sober student.

Finally I am worried about the number of drivers who are putting us all at risk when they choose to drive under influence. Today this number is low compared with the United States. Even taken into consideration that we have not an adult BAC level but the lower level of 0.5 due to the Oresund Bridge which have meant that an increased number of drivers with a low tolerance towards alcohol have entered the Danish roads so the BAC level had to be lowered even when it damaged the human resource work in our firms. But the reason why we have few cases of DUI is that new drivers are well aware of the risk of alcohol in relationship with driving. They know in advance how alcohol affects their bodies.

I fear that a combined introduction of alcohol and a driver license will increase the number of DUI cases because they have to learn about both things at the same time.

I believe that they should consider either to lower the age limit to 15 or removing it. The families give their children alcohol in relationship with the confirmation as they have done for at least 200 years. By having an age limit they tell the parents not to discuss alcohol consumption because it is a state matter. Then the teenagers will go out without any adult guidance to make their own experiences and properly also mistakes.

I see this step taken by our government to be a step on a road towards to a society where the state takes over the children from the minute they are born. No birthdays etc. with the parents. The child is removed from the care of the family.

I hope that this development can be reversed so Denmark can be a country of free people once again.

Extradition to India – a failure repeated ?

Today we learned that our department of justice decided to celebrate the anniversary of the Operation Weserübung by teaching our population that we are no longer masters in our own house. This time it is an author and humanitarian named Niels Holck, they want to extradite to India.

Some might ask why they want to scare our population a second time when they failed to completely in the Camilla Broe case.

First several newspapers have written how the extradition case was a part of a deal which should secure that COP15 should be held in Copenhagen. We got our meeting but most people would state that India did not keep their end of the bargain. They teamed up with some countries from the third world and the meeting was more about extortion of money from the developed world than the climate.

More important India can solve a problem for us. Denmark have a large merchant fleet. New ships are added and old ones are phased out. India has a huge knowhow in the ship breaking business. Such a task should be dealt with by experts as it could end up in an environmental catastrophe. Second based on hard learned lessons in the Madhya Pradesh region they are also experts in the chemical and polymer business.

So without allowing this extradtion procedure, Denmark could face the risk of housing industry which could be more productive in India. We are members of the World Trade Organization. We work with this organization to liberalize international trade. Our ships should go down there once they are finished as cargo ships or ferries as it has already happened in a lot of cases.

We can loose jobs, we can get more pollution in our country. The case has to go on.

But is he a terrorist?

Some might believe so. The question about if he is a terrorist or a freedom fighter cannot be answered in our lifetime. We are some Danes who are well-educated in our history. A former prime minister Wilhelm Buhl criticized the resistance movement in 1943 and represenatives for the predecessor to the present European Union characterized the Danish freedom fighters as terrorists. Of course once the war was over, Wilhelm Buhl was reelected as prime minister and the criticism was forgotten. Today none would call the Danish freedom fighters for terrorists. It is the winner who write history, not the loser.

When we are talking war crimes the winner also decide what act is a crime and what act which is not. Using airplanes to remove entire cities like both sides did during world wide 2 was only condemned as war crimes for the loosing party.

In newer conflicts the Serbia leaders during the civil war was war criminals and people like Franjo Tuđman were heros.

Personally I believe that Mr. Holck as he calls himself right now should have refrained from any concern for people outside Denmark.

I have chosen to do so. I do not want to risk an arrest for trading a T-shirt where the profit ends up at a terrorist organization. I didn’t support the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. They have already thanked the world by arresting U.S. rescue workers and in fact they have recently asked that the world discontinue some of the help.

The minister responsible for handing aid out to the third world has resently stated that a huge part of our aid will go to bribes. It can simply not be prevented and we should accept it as part of the game.

I don’t mind if he is guilty but what did the department of justice learn from the Camilla Broe case?

It is another extradition agreement they use for this case. They have learned something.

• First he has to be returned to Denmark only 3 weeks after they have made a decision in the show trial in India. Had Camilla Broe been convicted she could have waited for 6 months.
• Second the death penalty is out of the picture. It is some disappointment in a country where they love necktie parties.
• Third Denmark demand a certain standard of the prison they put him in. It was also a lesson learned from Florida where everybody could see that Broe had lost 15-20 pounds during her time in Florida because she had to settle with the food visitors bought for her.

Still they have to let the Danish courts decide if his actions were a crime based on the criminal laws of 1995. If he had done a similar act today it would be the case, but back in 1995 it was only a crime to attack Danish interests abroad. This was changed in 2002 but should a law of today apply even if the act was not a crime when it occured?

I will be following this case. Once again I can say to my children that the ordeal and torment for the people living abroad should be of no concern for them. I believe that there is a lot to learn as the case progresses. Especially for future generations.

I am worried for the future of Denmark too

I saw that our prime minister is worried about the future for our country. I would be worried to. In connection with my job I mentor a lot of youth. Working with younger people can be a blessing. Their energy infects the entire organization.

However a part of my job is also to guide them into thinking like we do. We have to communicate our life experience so they can avoid doing some to the mistakes we have made while we built this welfare society.

One of the messages we communicate is that they have to avoid taking chances. There will be no early retirement called “efterloen” waiting for them once they are worn down after decades of hard work. “Efterloen” was the key component holding our welfare society together and now it is gone. They have to learn to watch out for themselves and start saving up money for their retirement from day one they leave their schools and take a position in a firm. This necessary focus on future survival has been heavily criticized by the well-known author Davidsen.

It is a difficult message for youth in the early twenties to understand. At that age most young people believe in immortality. Many of them have the mindset of a teenager where there is no past and no present. They live of decisions made for incidents just now.

It was not always like this. I remember a youth more political and concerned for their future. I remember how the empire of evil still existed behind the iron curtain and how we had to endure a full year of our life as soldier trying out for a war which would be over in second once it could be started because the Russians properly had to nuke us in order to avoid wasting time fighting us so their fleet could pass Danish waters as quick as possible. Of course we were worried about losing a year of our life for no good. Of course we were worried about the enemy already being here. So-called humanitarian organization supported projects of the enemies in the third world. As past they try to hide even today when they ask our high school students to volunteer a full day every year. Lucky for our youth community service is considered to be a punishment given in court and not something you will do unless you are forced to it.

How did it change?

First the teenagers are not allowed to be teenagers like they were in the old days. Once Danes have been confirmed they also start to drink alcohol. However there are many restrictions of alcohol consumption for our youth. While they can buy alcohol in shops at age 16 and they can enjoy a glass of beer or wine at the Friday bars in our high schools, they cannot enter night clubs before they are 18. They don’t meet people outside their own age group on social terms.

I believe that we have to change our ways. We cannot prepare our youth for the future if we create a kind of curling society where we adults walks in front of your teenagers and use our brooms to sweep every kind of opposition away from the path the teenagers are going. The world could be more dangerous for them so they could discover that there is a world outside their high school environment.

Second they should be allowed to take chances and in order to make them do that we have to have the safety net called “Efterloen”. We have to provide early retirement for those who are worn down or hit by an accident in the working environment. How can we else let them drive 150 miles per hour on the German high ways on to the export markets?

A third area we could work on is to make it easier to found their own companies and in order to make that happen we have to attack the present industry so they cannot create cartels and deals where you have to be a certain number of persons with a certain kind of private education to be in business.

If you restrict access to found firms in a sub-market you create the foundation for price fixing which can hurt the society but you also prevent young people from creating innovate firms which can develop new products for the good of both customers and the society.

I have information about that such a cartel is being set up in the Danish market for Enterprise Resource Planning programs during these months. Within a year you might be paying too much if you seek a program for book-keeping, stock-keeping or trading.

Such a cartel will damage not only the Danish Industry as general. It will also prevent young adults from taking work in this line of business as they can see that they would have little chance one day to become manager of their own little firm and second that the cartel will prevent them from being hired as one of the goals with the cartel is to make the price for consultant work raise back to more than 1,000 DKK per hour.

Yes, I have to agree with our prime minister.

I am very concerned for the future of Denmark too.