What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
An opinion piece in Berlingske Tidende on Sunday raises some interesting questions about the future of the war in Ukraine, some of which are stated directly and some of which are merely implied. Will we still say “Slava Ukraini” if the US pulls the plug?Adam Holm, Berlingske.dk, May 21 The subhead or lede of the…
Tom Jensen is the editor in chief of Berlingske Tidende. He uses a column on its editorial pages as his “center-right” (borgerlig) newsletter. I’ve covered some of his previous “newsletters” in the past. Have you almost forgotten about the war in Ukraine? Be careful with thatTom Jensen, Berlingske.dk, April 27 The upshot of this one…
In case you missed it, last weekend a person said some things. The person was French President Emmanuel Macron. The things he said were during a state visit to China and then in an interview on the airplane home. Some of the things he said were published Sunday in Politico. Europe must reduce its dependency on…
Yesterday—Saturday, April 7—I posted a Substack article about something that had been gnawing at me for a long time: the destructive force of feminization in western politics and culture. It’s not a misogynistic perspective—I bent over backwards to make that clear—just a sense that the stigmatization of masulinity and maleness is wreaking havoc on our…
The Nord Stream pipeline sabotage is back in the news. Media: German police have located mysterious boat on Christiansø. Was used for attacks on Nord Stream, they claimMikkel Danielsen, Berlingske.dk, March 8 Long story short: five men and a woman using false passports rented a boat from a Polish boat rental agency in Poland. The…
It’s commonly believed that on September 26—more than three weeks ago—the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged. Three weeks isn’t a lot of time in most circumstances, but in warfare it’s an eternity: time enough to fight the whole Six Day War three times and take a long weekend. New Yorkers woke up to a beautiful…
It’s still a truth universally acknowledged that nobody knows who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines earlier this week, but the vaporous fog of ignorance has been coalescing into two general assumptions in the establishment media. The first is something like “We still don’t know who’s responsible, but it was obviously Russia.” The second: “Anyone who…
Things are getting kinetic in the Baltic Sea. On Monday, two underwater explosions caused three leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Europe. The explosions and leaks occurred to the northeast and southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Quoth Danmarks Radio (DR): According to…
Some things are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them.—George Orwell (apocryphal) Sovereignty is irrelevant.—Intellectual The new think pieces are here, the new think pieces are here! American professor: The Danish yes is part of a new world orderSolveig Gram Jensen, Berlingske.dk, Jun 2 Yesterday, as expected, Denmark voted overwhelmingly (roughly 2:1) to drop…
The EU wants to punish Russia for invading Ukraine by blocking all imports of Russian oil into the union. Toward that end it developed a sixth package of economic sanctions against Russia, and this package includes what would amount to an official oil embargo: a European ban on the import of Russian oil. Hungary has…
On Wednesday we Danes will be voting on a referendum to answer the following question, which I’ll provide in the original Danish first: Stemmer du ja eller nej til, at Danmark kan deltage i det europæiske samarbejde om sikkerhed og forsvar ved at afskaffe EU-forsvarsforbeholdet? In English: Do you vote yes or no to Denmark…
Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday Night. To nobody’s surprise, they racked up the most points of any country in the history of the competition. To my own surprise, however, the Danish media have been very transparent about the fact that the Ukrainian song wasn’t very good and that this was obviously a…
Having been a resident of New York on 9/11, I’ll always think fondly of Rudy Giuliani. His performance as mayor that day—ironically enough an election day on which his successor was to have been chosen—is surely remembered warmly by everyone else who lived in New York City at the time. Amidst all the confusion and…
The big news over the weekend was the lack of assaults at the Grammy Awards. Also interesting: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stunned the Grammy Awards on Sunday night with a surprise message in which he told the audience to “fill the silence with music.” DR has roused itself to meet Zelensky’s challenge: they’ve prepared a…
Ole Puddinhead outdid himself last week. His visit to Europe to attend the NATO summit in Brussels and deliver an address on NATO’s eastern flank in Warsaw presented an excellent opportunity to lay down some serious foreign policy markers and persuade Vladimir Putin that Russia is still welcome back in the community of nations if…
I always figured kids had a pretty easy time of it during war. Thanks to TV2 News, my eyes have been opened. A kid’s-eye view of war: “It’s all Putin’s fault”Sofie Synnøve Herschend & Alexander Østerlin Koch, TV2 News, Mar 19 Herschend & Koch are only writing about one particular set of children whose experiences…
“This was the story of Howard Beale,” announces the narrator at the start of the movie Network, “the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.” Apparently the only thing more dangerous than lousy ratings is excellent ratings. Tucker Carlson is by far the most popular host on American cable…
Former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich is almost unquestionably the hardest-left Clinton-era Democrat still maintaining a public profile. His politics are a shrieky and hysterical blend of far left dogmatism topped with an apocalyptic foam of raw hatred for conservatives and conservatism. That all-consuming hatred and obsessive fanaticism, coupled with his stunted size, bring to…
I wrote last week about my reservations about our apparent strategy of winning a war without fighting a war. Today’s Berlingske has an article that’s kind of an update on that theme: Now the West wants to hit Russia on oil and gas: “They have a hard time retaliating”Emil Eller, Berlingske.dk, Mar 9 The article begins…
Flanked by the leaders of four other parties, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held a press conference last night to announce that a historic, cross-bloc political agreement had been reached. “Given the gravity of the current situation in Ukraine,” the Prime Minister said, “the government and our partners in the four parties represented here tonight have…
