Quickies

1. Wind will power fossil fuel-free Denmark in 2050
Mot ett Danmark utan kol och olja (in swedish)

2. List of famous danes.

3. New Mohammed cartoon book out in Denmark

4. A Demonstration Against the “Rot” in Denmark

Denmark ‘lobotomized mentally handicapped’

Many mentally handicapped Danes, including children, were lobotomised between 1947 and 1983, and many died from the operation, a historian behind a soon-to-be-published book on the topic told Danish media.

"Doctors did not count on curing them completely, but wanted to pacify them, perhaps to better their condition," Jesper Vaczy Kragh (link in danish) told the Christian daily Kristeligt Dagblad (link in danish).

"What happened with people with mental handicaps is worse than what happened with psychiatric patients," he said, referring to many operations performed on children as young as six years of age, even though their brains were not yet completely developed.

Official figures show that between 1947 and 1983, when conducting lobotomies was outlawed in Denmark, around 4,500 Danes had the operation.

"Those were highly educated people (doctors) who were taking advantage of defenseless people without being sure of having the slightest positive result," she told Kristelig Dagbladet.

Health Minister Bertel Haarder said he thought it was good to shine the spotlight on the cases.

"The explanation is that, for a long time, mentally handicapped people were not regarded as equal. Their lives were considered to be without value," he said.

More at Discovery News
The Raw Story
Udviklingshæmmede børn fik det hvide snit (link in danish)

Brigitte Bardot pleads to Denmark in dolphin 'slaughter'

Actress-turned-animal rights campaigner Brigitte Bardot is taking aim at the Danish royal family over the slaughter of pilot whales in the country's waters, urging the queen to help end the barbaric practice.
Her attention has turned to the killing of pilot whales in the Danish-held Faroe Islands - she is outraged over the annual cull of the marine creatures which sees them driven to shore and killed with knives.
She has now written to Denmark's Queen Margrethe II, urging the royal to step in and end the slaughter.
Bardot writes, "This macabre spectacle is a shame for Denmark and the Faroe Islands. This is not a hunt but a mass slaughter. (It's an) outmoded tradition that has no acceptable justification in today's world."
The Bardot foundation and Sea Shepherd pointed the finger at Denmark.

Sources:
imdb AFP

References:
Did you ever see a real red sea?
Help Stop the Faroe Island Dolphin Drive

Alien skull discovered in Denmark?

The July 2007 discovery of the skull in Ølstykke (map) on the Danish island Sealand did however not make headlines and remained largely ignored by science until 2010. The researchers who in 2008 examined the skull at the Veterinarian High School in Copenhagen merely concluded that “Although resembling a mammal, certain features make it impossible to fit the animal into Linnaean taxonomy”.
Dug up during the replacement of old sewer pipes, the finder at first believed that it was some horse bone, as the house formerly belonged to a horse butcher, and the garden is full of remains. It was not until refilling the trench that he noticed its humanoid shape. Later excavations at the site have not uncovered further remains with connection to the creature, only identifiable animal bones, stone axes and other Neolithic tools which are common to the area. The fact that the skull was found among Neolithic remains does however, not reveal its age. Carbon 14 dating at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen has shown that the creature lived between 1200 and 1280 AD. Furthermore, the skull was found above the old pipes, whose age suggests that it wasn’t buried until after 1900. Also the absence of other skeleton parts of the creature, together with the skull’s state of preservation, has led the scientists to suspect that it has not been buried for long, probably only a couple of decades.
The Sealand Skull is about one and a half times larger than a male Homo sapiens cranium. Especially the eye sockets contribute to its size. Its smooth surface reveals that the creature was adapted to cold climate, and its relative eye size that it was either a night creature, lived underground or on a planet orbiting a remote or dim star, probably an orange or red dwarf.

Read more at Unexplained Mysteries
Ray Alex Website

Petitions

1. Ban import of Foie Gras in Denmark
Geese in France are subjected to extreme cruelty of this "delicacy" is produced.
Foie Gras is a delicacy for the Danish Royal Family and the higher Society.
The Queen who is Patron for Animal Protection. On her birthday was serving “foie gras terrine with lentils and artichokes” for 250 guests.
At the annual New Year's sheds at the Queen for MPs and Pings in business is serving Foie Gras.
Furthermore the Prince Consort who is President of WWF Denmark has written a book on his favorite dishes including Foie Gras.
Several restaurants serving Foie Gras and many supermarkets, department stores and merchants selling Foie Gras.
Two well-known chefs on Danish television have promoted for Foie Gras.
Read more

2. Stop the use of experimental animals in Denmark
The number of animals in Denmark used in experiments has since 2000 remained constant at around 350.000 a year.
The number of animals are not, despite goals from both industry and public research to reduce as much as possible and efforts to find alternatives, such as computer simulations.
There are nevertheless been an increase in research activity, which means that on average used fewer animals per study. Thus, there are currently conducted several studies on the same experimental than previous years.
The statement shows that about. 220,000 of the animals have been used in medical research. It is 48-69 percent was spent for research in nervous and mental managements of which 95 to 100 percent have been rodents.
Read more

Bathroom rules

This sign is on bathroom door at Hard Rock Cafe in Copenhagen.

An ill wind blows for Denmark's green energy revolution

Denmark (...) it has become one of the first countries to turn against the turbines.
(...) Denmark's giant state-owned power company, Dong Energy, announced that it would abandon future onshore wind farms in the country. "Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a negative way and we had a lot of criticism from neighbours," said a spokesman for the company. "Now we are putting all our efforts into offshore windfarms."
(...) But it is in Denmark, the great windfarm pioneer, where some of the most interesting changes are taking shape. In 1980, the Danish government was Europe's first to bring in large-scale subsidies - on which, just as in Britain, the wind industry depends.
The results have been dramatic. According to the Danish Wind Energy Association, there are more than four thousand onshore turbines – two-thirds more than Britain - in a country a fifth the size. Nowhere else has more turbines per head, and Denmark is also a global centre of wind turbine manufacturing – with Vestas, the world's leading turbine firm, based in the country.
Unfortunately, Danish electricity bills have been almost as dramatically affected as the Danish landscape. Thanks in part to the windfarm subsidies, Danes pay some of Europe's highest energy tariffs – on average, more than twice those in Britain. Under public pressure, Denmark's ruling Left Party is curbing the handouts to the wind industry.


"Since 2005 alone, 5.1 billion kroner [£621 million] has been paid to the wind turbine owners. That cost has been borne by businesses and private consumers," says the party's environment spokesman, Lars Christian Lilleholt. "It seems to have become a political fashion to say that there should be more support for wind. But we have to look at other renewables. We cannot go on with wind power only."
The subsidy cuts are almost certainly the main reason behind Dong's move out of onshore wind. But public anger is real enough, too. Until recently, there was relatively little opposition to the windmills. But now a threshold appears to have been crossed. Earlier this year, a new national anti-wind body, Neighbours of Large Wind Turbines, was created. More than 40 civic groups have become members.
"People are fed up with having their property devalued and sleep ruined by noise from large wind turbines," says the association's president, Boye Jensen Odsherred. "We receive constant calls from civic groups that want to join."
In one typical battle, in the central city of Svendborg, the local council set height and number limits on turbines under heavy pressure from locals. "The violent protests and the uncertainty about low-frequency noise means that right now we will not expose our citizens to large windmills," said the deputy mayor, Lars Erik Hornemann.
There has also been growing scrutiny of the wind industry's macro claims. Though wind may indeed generate an amount of electricity equal to about a fifth of Danes' needs, most of that electricity cannot actually be used in Denmark.

Article in full at The Telegraph