Denmark to Increase Defense Spending -- Denmark!

 Wow. 

This is some big change. I mean, does Copenhagen even boast national armed forces? WTF?

It does, it turns out. 

At Politico E.U., "Denmark to increase defense spending and phase out Russian natural gas: Copenhagen latest to join countries around EU rethinking defense strategies in light of Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Caroline Wozniacki

Beautiful family.

Feeling very grateful and blessed! Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours❤️#thanksgiving pic.twitter.com/QqJLNB1O9J

— Caroline Wozniacki (@CaroWozniacki) November 25, 2021

Greenland

This is really a non-troversy, but hilarious nevertheless.

At the New York Times:

“Is this some sort of joke?” a former Danish prime minister asked. It was not. President Trump canceled his meeting with the prime minister of Denmark because she was not interested in selling Greenland.https://t.co/EV6R1sNnC4

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 21, 2019

And the trolling on Twitter. Jon Gabriel got picked up by POTUS and it's awesome.

Greenland in 10 years. pic.twitter.com/akqWowauyu

— jon gabriel (@exjon) August 15, 2019

I promise not to do this to Greenland! pic.twitter.com/03DdyVU6HA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2019

OMG https://t.co/BSlfxzLGYy

— jon gabriel (@exjon) August 20, 2019

Progressive Denmark, the Scandinavian Wet Dream of Leftist 'Democratic Socialists' the World Over, Will Warehouse 'Unwanted' Refugees on Remote Pestilential Island

Seriously, the 2015 international refugees crisis has turned Europe upside down. Now those dang fascist Danes have produced a plan to house their virus-ridden unwanted refugees on some godforsaken island. You couldn't invent this in your most dystopian novel.

At the New York Times, "Denmark Plans to Isolate Unwanted Migrants on a Small Island":

Denmark plans to house the country’s most unwelcome foreigners in a tiny, hard-to-reach island. One of the two ferries that serve the island is called the Virus. https://t.co/BsAP5scxcf

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 4, 2018

COPENHAGEN — Denmark plans to house the country’s most unwelcome foreigners in a most unwelcoming place: a tiny, hard-to-reach island that now holds the laboratories, stables and crematory of a center for researching contagious animal diseases.

As if to make the message clearer, one of the two ferries that serve the island is called the Virus.

“They are unwanted in Denmark, and they will feel that,” the immigration minister, Inger Stojberg, wrote on Facebook.

On Friday, the center-right government and the right-wing Danish People’s Party announced an agreement to house as many as 100 people on Lindholm Island — foreigners who have been convicted of crimes but who cannot be returned to their home countries. Many would be rejected asylum seekers.

The 17-acre island, in an inlet of the Baltic Sea, lies about two miles from the nearest shore, and ferry service is infrequent. Foreigners will be required to report at the island center daily, and face imprisonment if they do not.

“We’re going to minimize the number of ferry departures as much as at all possible,” Martin Henriksen, a spokesman for the Danish People’s Party on immigration, told TV 2. “We’re going to make it as cumbersome and expensive as possible.”

The deal allocates about $115 million over four years for immigrant facilities on the island, which are scheduled to open in 2021.

The finance minister, Kristian Jensen, who led the negotiations, said the island was not a prison, but added that anyone placed there would have to sleep there.

Louise Holck, deputy executive director of The Danish Institute for Human Rights, said her organization would watch the situation “very closely” for possible violations of Denmark’s international obligations...

Oh, like the U.N.' s1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol? Well, doesn't sound like Denmark's too worried about non-compliance or anything, but who am I to critique? (*Eye-roll.*)

Still more.

Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

At Amazon, Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow.

Iceland's First Black Citizen

I love this story.

Hans Jonathan, a Danish slave from colonial St. Croix, was denied his freedom in Denmark and subsequently escaped to Iceland where he lived out the remainder of his life.

Iceland's really proud of this history. Denmark wants to bury it, the freakin' hypocritical "tolerant" Scandinavian progs.

At NYT, "Iceland’s 1st Black Citizen? An Ex-Slave and War Hero Denmark Now Disregards":

Iceland’s 1st Black Citizen? An Ex-Slave and War Hero Denmark Now Disregards https://t.co/69fWcPWmKF

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 15, 2018

COPENHAGEN — Long after his death, Hans Jonathan has, at last, gotten some attention. He is the subject of a well-received biography and a groundbreaking genetic study, and is something of a celebrity in Iceland, where he is thought to have been the first black person.

But in Denmark, where Hans Jonathan (he had no surname) was a slave, fought in a war, lost a noted case on slavery, and escaped bondage by fleeing to Iceland, his extraordinary story has not drawn much interest.

An American descendant got a polite rejection when she asked the Danish government to declare him, posthumously, a free man. When people stroll past a five-story mansion that sits less than 100 yards from the royal Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, there is no historical marker to tell of the Schimmelmann family who owned it, or the slaves they kept there, including Hans Jonathan.

“People who speak or write about slave trade and Danish colonialism speak to deaf ears,” said Gisli Palsson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland, and author of “The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan.”

The colonial past has largely disappeared from Danish collective memory. The country has communities of people with historic ties to Greenland and the Faroe Islands, but relatively few residents whose ancestry traces to its former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and India.

Danes’ long-ago status as slave owners and colonial masters rarely appears as a theme in mainstream culture. Today, Danish views of ethnic minorities are heavily influenced by recent tensions over waves of migration to Europe from the Middle East and Africa.

Other western European countries have had trouble squarely facing such history; many Belgians were unaware of the atrocities in Congo under Belgian rule until the past generation. But Denmark, with less of a colonial record to confront than some countries, has had more trouble confronting it, according to Mr. Palsson.

“Somehow it annoys them more than others knowing about this background,” he said.

Hans Jonathan was born in 1784 in St. Croix, then a Danish possession and now part of the United States Virgin Islands. His mother was a black house slave owned by the Schimmelmanns, a Danish-German family, and his father was a white man.

When he was about 7, the Schimmelmanns took him to Copenhagen. In 1801, he volunteered to fight with the Danish navy, and emerged unharmed from a fierce battle with British ships.

“It was crazy warfare,” said Mr. Palsson, whose biography of Hans Jonathan was published in Icelandic in 2014, and in English in 2016. “The ship was bombarded heavily.”

Hans Jonathan earned the support of his superior officers, who spoke on his behalf to the royal household. Denmark’s crown prince and de facto ruler, the future King Frederik VI, wrote in a letter that Hans Jonathan “is considered free and enjoys rights.”

The French revolution had unleashed new ideas about equality and liberty. Like several other colonial powers, Denmark still allowed slavery in the Caribbean, but abolition movements at home were gaining ground, and the status of slaves brought to Europe from the colonies was murky.

Henrietta Schimmelmann tried to reclaim Hans Jonathan and take him back to St. Croix, and he went to court to assert his freedom, in a case that was famous in its time. But he could not produce the letter from Prince Frederik, for reasons unknown, and in 1802, the court dismissed his claim and ordered him to return to the Schimmelmanns, who wanted to sell him in St. Croix...

More.

'Despite heavy censorship by the hopelessly ‘progressive’ government in Sweden the world has learned about the rape epidemic that is being enjoyed by their Muslim immigrant population which has earned the Scandinavian basket case the dubious title of rape capital of the world...'

At Cambrian Dissenters, "American Girl Has a Message for Muslims and the Women of Sweden."

America Must Lead

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark and former NATO Secretary General, is the author of The Will to Lead: America's Indispensable Role in the Global Fight for Freedom.

He's got a great segment at Prager University:

Danes Should Not Become the Minority in Denmark

Well, those racist Danes!

At Breitbart London, "Parliament: Danes Should Not Become the Minority in Denmark":

In some communities Danes are already the minority https://t.co/kozQYW3ZcC

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 15, 2017

The Folketing, Denmark’s unicameral parliament, has passed a resolution stating that Danes should not become minorities in Danish communities, as figures show the migrant and migrant-descended population are now a majority in Brøndby Strand and Odense.
“Parliament notes with concern that today there are areas in Denmark where the number of immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants is over 50 percent,” the resolution states.

“It is parliament’s opinion that Danes should not be a minority in residential areas in Denmark.”

Denmark, like many other European countries, saw a surge in sexual assaults and harassment by migrants after they began to arrive in large numbers.

Rafi Ibrahim, a Syrian who has been settled in Denmark for many years, told reporters that the new arrivals find it difficult to control themselves around Western women.

“If they see a girl, they go nuts. They simply can’t handle it,” he said.

“In Syria and many other countries, it is not normal for a strange woman to smile at you. Those girls who are harassed aren’t necessarily scantily-dressed or drunk. Sometimes it is enough just to be a girl.”

Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg confessed in late 2016 that “integration in Denmark has failed”, following a damning report on criminality and unemployment in thirty-one increasingly migrant-dominated ghettoes...

PREVIOUSLY: "Rotten in Denmark: 'Growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy...'"

Racist Denmark

Remember my post from February, "Rotten in Denmark: 'Growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy...'"?

Well, things are still pretty rotten over there, and racist, apparently. Or at least the Danish have abandoned any pretense of political correctness, instead calling out the massive influx of Islamic refugees as an existential threat to Danish society and culture.

This is a really blunt expose, at NYT:

‘I’ve Become a Racist’: Migrant Wave Unleashes Danish Tensions Over Identity. #Denmark #Refugees #Islam https://t.co/DTnB9l2pVw

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 7, 2016

Nima Sanandaji, Debunking Utopia

What a timely book.

Bernie Sanders supporters said they were looking at "Scandinavia," thinking "that's where we [America] ought to be going..."

But see Nima Sanandaji's new book, Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism.

Rotten in Denmark: 'Growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy...'

Get a kick out of this, from Hugh Eakin, at the New York Review of Books, "Liberal, Harsh Denmark":

In country after country across Europe, the Syrian refugee crisis has put intense pressure on the political establishment. In Poland, voters have brought to power a right-wing party whose leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, warns that migrants are bringing “dangerous diseases” and “various types of parasites” to Europe. In France’s regional elections in December, some Socialist candidates withdrew at the last minute to support the conservatives and prevent the far-right National Front from winning. Even Germany, which took in more than a million asylum-seekers in 2015, has been forced to pull back in the face of a growing revolt from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party and the recent New Year’s attacks on women in Cologne, allegedly by groups of men of North African origin.

And then there is Denmark. A small, wealthy Scandinavian democracy of 5.6 million people, it is according to most measures one of the most open and egalitarian countries in the world. It has the highest income equality and one of the lowest poverty rates of any Western nation. Known for its nearly carbon-neutral cities, its free health care and university education for all, its bus drivers who are paid like accountants, its robust defense of gay rights and social freedoms, and its vigorous culture of social and political debate, the country has long been envied as a social-democratic success, a place where the state has an improbably durable record of doing good. Danish leaders also have a history of protecting religious minorities: the country was unique in Nazi-occupied Europe in prosecuting anti-Semitism and rescuing almost its entire Jewish population.

When it comes to refugees, however, Denmark has long led the continent in its shift to the right—and in its growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy. To the visitor, the country’s resistance to immigrants from Africa and the Middle East can seem implacable. In last June’s Danish national election—months before the Syrian refugee crisis hit Europe—the debate centered around whether the incumbent, center-left Social Democrats or their challengers, the center-right Liberal Party, were tougher on asylum-seekers. The main victor was the Danish People’s Party, a populist, openly anti-immigration party, which drew 21 percent of the vote, its best performance ever. Its founder, Pia Kjærsgaard, for years known for suggesting that Muslims “are at a lower stage of civilization,” is now speaker of the Danish parliament. With the backing of the Danish People’s Party, the center-right Liberals formed a minority government that has taken one of the hardest lines on refugees of any European nation...

Leftists are constantly spewing about how great Scandinavian countries like Denmark are, claiming that their social welfare-state economies are superior to the U.S., blah blah.

Heh, not so much when it comes to Muslim "refugees" though.

Keep reading.

Switzerland Seizing Cash and Valuables from Refugees to Cover Costs of Settlement (VIDEO)

Heh.

I'm sure leftists aren't too pleased with the Swiss government. It's acting less than "welcoming," you might say, lol.

At the Washington Post, "Switzerland criticized for also seizing cash and valuables from refugees":

LONDON — Only days ago, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) sharply criticized Denmark for an immigration bill that includes a series of changes that would allow police officers to seize valuables from refugees. The agency feared the bill "could fuel fear, xenophobia."

Now, the Geneva-based organization might have to focus its criticism on the country where it is based: Switzerland. The nation also allows state authorities to seize cash and valuables from refugees, several media organizations reported on Thursday and Friday. The little-known practice has been part of the country's asylum law for almost two decades, according to Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Denmark's current debate on a similar law had led to international criticism, but Switzerland's practice started to make headlines only after the country's public broadcaster reported on the case of a refugee who  entered the country with about $2,000. Consequently, $1,000 were seized by authorities. The TV station aired a copy of a receipt he received from authorities in return.

The Swiss law allows authorities to seize any cash or valuables above the threshold of $1,000.  However, unlike the proposed Danish law, Swiss authorities usually seize money or valuables previously declared by refugees, rather than searching them for such items or cash amounts as they arrive...

It's hard out there for a refujihadi!

Still more.

Mass Muslim Immigration Will Bring Islam's Problems Here

From David French, at National Review:

To hear the Left tell it, the debate over mass Muslim immigration — especially from conflict zones — is a simple contest between compassionate tolerance and cowardly xenophobia. They claim their opponents are cowards because the percentage of refugees or immigrants who are terrorists is very small (your bathtub is more dangerous than a Muslim immigrant), and they’re xenophobes because they have no understanding or appreciation for the blessings and benefits of diversity. Conservatives are all fear and no heart.

According to the rules of this debate, there are but two kinds of Muslim immigrants — the tiny few terrorists and the overwhelmingly deserving, suffering majority. Question this narrative, or call attention to the vast cultural gaps between the refugees and the Western nations they’re fleeing to, and you’re a racist. After all, our cultural elite understands the Muslim world better than you do. They went to Harvard with Muslims, and the Muslims they know have great accents, cool customs, and — most importantly — tales of imperialist oppression that turn the leftist heart to mush. What’s not to love?

The recent events in Cologne and other German and Austrian cities represent a necessary, reality-based corrective to this absurd binary thinking...

Well, that's for sure.

Still more.

And previously, "Cologne's Muslim Rape Gangs Spark Bitter Debate on Refugees in Germany (VIDEO)."

Germany's 'Right-Wing Extremists' Reinvent Themselves as Grassroots Activists

It's always right-wing political groups who're branded as "extremists."

Far left-wing Stalinists are "liberals," to hear the idiots in the mainstream press.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Tapping Fears Over Migrants, Germany’s Far Right Expands Influence":

#WSJ Migrant Crisis Re-Energizes German Far Right: After failing at the ballot box, Germany’s right-wing extre... https://t.co/0SEBl6QHk5

— guynextdoor (@guynextdoorRVA) December 29, 2015

BERLIN—For years, Klaus Armstroff, head of an obscure German far-right party that calls for sweeping nationalizations, the death penalty and the return of lost pre-World War II territories, struggled to market his ideas. Now he can hardly keep up with demand for his “propaganda material.”

“People call us who have nothing to do with our party. But they order material to wake up their neighbors,” said Mr. Armstroff, who founded the party, called The Third Way, in 2013. Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said, “is playing into our hands.”

Public angst about the government’s decision to open the country’s doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants and the absence of a counterproposal from Germany’s mainstream parties have energized a far-right scene that, until recently, had appeared on the verge of political extinction....

Ballhausen, in the eastern German state of Thuringia, is one of many towns and villages where far-right activists have harnessed anxiety about the migrants to push their agenda, as Dorothea Schröder, a 59-year-old social worker, found out recently.

When Ms. Schröder and her local church decided to help refugees this autumn, she first turned to neighbors in Ballhausen for support. But it wasn’t forthcoming. After she and the local parish announced that they would host a migrant family in a house owned by the church, Ms. Schröder and her few supporters found stickers from The Third Way opposing refugees on mailboxes and doors. The village’s bus stops are currently daubed with a swastika and the runes of the Nazi Waffen-SS unit.

Known far-right activists turned up at a meeting on the issue that the church organized last month. The gathering soon descended into a shouting match, and police had to intervene to restore order.

“Some said the migrants should all drown in the Mediterranean, they should all be put into mines and be buried, or that they should fight in Syria and help to rebuild their country just as the Germans did after 1945,” Ms. Schröder said.

The NPD, the most well-known of Germany’s few, small extreme-right parties, had limited electoral success regionally in the past decade but has since become marginalized. Now, local politicians say, its former and current leaders are often among the organizers of the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim protests that have popped up across the country this year, particularly in the former communist east. And police said they suspected neo-Nazi activists of coordinating a rising wave of attacks against refugee shelters, which have quadrupled to more than 800 this year from 2014.

Cologne's Muslim Rape Gangs Spark Bitter Debate on Refugees in Germany (VIDEO)

Here's the headline at the Telegraph UK's front page, "Anti-Islam protest as Merkel warns Germany will deport migrant sex attackers and police admit 'majority' of suspects were refugees."

Heh, sexual savagery in Germany is fomenting a major backlash.

Here's Der Spiegel, "Chaos and Violence: How New Year's Eve in Cologne Has Changed Germany" (via Memeorandum):

New Year's Eve in Cologne rapidly descended into a chaotic free-for-all involving sexual assault and theft, most of it apparently committed by foreigners. It has launched a bitter debate over immigration and refugees in Germany -- one that could change the country.

A lot happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined. Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying. In its entirety, the events of Cologne on New Year's Eve and in the days that followed adhered to a script that many had feared would come true even before it actually did. The fears of both immigration supporters and virulent xenophobes came true. The fears of Pegida people and refugee helpers; the fears of unknown women and of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even Donald Trump, the brash Republican presidential candidate in the US, felt it necessary to comment. Germany, he trumpeted, "is going through massive attacks to its people by the migrants allowed to enter the country."

For some, the events finally bring to light what they have always been saying: that too many foreigners in the country bring too many problems along with them. For the others, that which happened is what they have been afraid of from the very beginning: that ugly images of ugly behavior by migrants would endanger what has been a generally positive mood in Germany with respect to the refugees.
As inexact and unclear as the facts from Cologne may be, they carry a clear message: Difficult days are ahead. And they beg a couple of clear questions: Is Germany really sure that it can handle the influx of refugees? And: Does Germany really have the courage and the desire to become the country in Europe with the greatest number of immigrants?

The first week of 2016 was a hectic one. Tempers flared and hysteria spread. It should be noted that an attack would have triggered similar national emotions, or the murder of a child in a park or any other crime that touched on our deepest fears and serviced our long-held stereotypes -- any crime in which a foreigner was involved. On New Year's Eve in Cologne, it was -- according to numerous witness reports -- drunk young men from North Africa who formed gangs to go after defenseless individuals. They humiliated and robbed -- and they sexually assaulted women.

Their behavior, and the subsequent discussion of their behavior in the halls of political power in Berlin, in the media and on the Internet, could easily trigger a radical shift in Germany's refugee and immigration policies. The pressure built up by the images and stories from Cologne make it virtually impossible to continue on as before. That, too, is a paradox: The pressure would be no less intense even if not a single one of the refugees and migrants who arrived in 2015 were among the perpetrators...

You gotta love how Spiegel's all trying to be even handed. The fact is conservatives predicted these very outcomes from the beginning. For the left, they think the conservative reaction confirms their warning of "fascism." In the end, it's the voters who get to decide. Angela Merkel's gonna find out she made a huge mistake. Epic.

But keep reading.

Germany's Gender Quotas for Corporate Boardrooms Get Collective Yawn

They're so progressive over there (*cough, cough*).

At Der Spiegel, "Boardroom Quotas: The Slow Pace of Gender Equality in Corporate Germany":

Germany's statutory gender quota for supervisory boards took effect at the beginning of the year, yet the ratio of women to men is still alarmingly low. Many companies don't even seem to realize that the new law applies to them.

Sometimes, in cases when the present seems less than appealing, remembering the past can be helpful. Take the year 2001, for instance. Deutsche Bank's then-CFO and eventual supervisory board chairman Clemens Börsig was appearing before a congress of European businesswomen when he took the liberty of advising the approximately 1,000 participants to orient their career ambitions not only vertically, but "horizontally" as well. There are plenty of positions to be had in middle management, he said, women don't always have to set their sights on the highest positions.

When the women in the audience started laughing, Börsig apparently didn't even understand why.

It's comforting to think that no board member at Deutsche Bank -- or any other major industry player for that matter -- would dare suggest such a thing today. It goes without saying that women are as deserving of a place in the upper echelons of Europe's largest economy -- and that they are as qualified academically and as esteemed -- as their male counterparts. Political and societal pressure is just too great to deny women's access to leadership positions, top jobs and, consequently, power.

Oh, really?

In May last year, the so-called "Law on Equal Participation of Women and Men in Leadership Positions in the Private and Public Sector" came into effect. It was meant to ensure that at least 30 percent of all supervisory board positions in Germany's largest companies are held by women. Since Jan. 1 of this year, these firms must fill vacant board positions with women until that 30 percent threshold is reached. Furthermore, around 3,500 other public companies are also required to present a strategy for getting more women into top jobs.

It's a law that above all shows one thing: Not a whole lot has changed since Börsig's revealing remarks about the advancement of women. It has been known for two years that a binding quota was imminent, yet the ratio of female to male board members at the 102 companies that are either listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange or that have employee participation in decision-making still stands at 23.1 percent. For all the talk of inclusion in the last year, that number has risen by only 1.8 percent...

Well, I'm sure they'll have plenty of Muslima refugees flooding into the workplace pipeline in no time. I mean, isn't that the intent of the whole "welcoming" thing, to relieve the stress on the German economy from declining population ratios?

Actually, who knows? Everything's all pretty much fucked up nowadays, thanks to radical leftist ideology and craven political correctness.

But keep reading, FWIW.

Cologne Mayor's Advice on Mass Assault Stirs Outcry (VIDEO)

Following-up from Tuesday, "Cologne, Germany, Shocked — Shocked! — by Dozens of Sexual Assaults on New Year's Eve (VIDEO)."

At NYT, "Cologne Mayor’s ‘Arm’s Length’ Sex Assault Advice Stirs Outcry."

Not so thrilled about all those "vulnerable" refugees now.

More at RT, "'At arm's length' Cologne mayor proposes code of conduct for women after NY attacks."

Cologne, Germany, Shocked — Shocked! — by Dozens of Sexual Assaults on New Year's Eve (VIDEO)

At Deutsche Welle, "A 'new dimension' of sexual assault in Cologne."

And at Der Spiegel, "New Year's Eve Attacks: Dozens of Women Sexually Assaulted in Cologne":

Dozens of women celebrating New Year's Eve in Cologne have said they were the victims of sexual assault. With a group of men with North African and Middle Eastern appearances under suspicion, the incident threatens to augment growing concern over Germany's refugee policies.

German politicians and officials are voicing concern on Tuesday over reports that dozens of women were harassed and groped in the heart of Cologne on New Year's Eve by a large group of men on the crowded square in front of the city's main train station. According to police, many also had personal items stolen and fireworks were also fired into the crowd of revelers. According to police, some 90 complaints had been filed by Tuesday morning, with witnesses saying that the perpetrators were young men between 15 and 35 years old and appeared to have migrant backgrounds.

"We will not tolerate such cowardly and abhorrent attacks," said German Justice Minister Heiko Maas on Tuesday. "This is apparently an entirely new dimension of organized crime." All of those involved, Maas demanded, must be "identified and made accountable."

At a press conference on Monday evening, Cologne's police chief, Wolfgang Albers, said that a quarter of the complaints made were related to sexual harassment or groping, with many others pertaining to theft of purses, wallets and mobile phones. He said that smaller groups of men repeatedly emerged from a crowd of about 1,000 young men to surround women, harass them and steal from them. According to the Cologne daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, many of the presumed perpetrators are suspected of being from a large group of men that has attracted the attention of police in the past several months. Prior to New Year's Eve, the group had been involved in theft and petty crimes in Cologne nightlife districts.

"The entire square was full of almost exclusively men with just a few fearful women among them being stared at," says Anne, a 27-year-old who was at the scene on New Year's Eve and who spoke to SPIEGEL ONLINE. "I can hardly describe it. I felt very uncomfortable." She says that she was groped soon after arriving to the square.

Careful Calibration

The attacks occur at a time when sentiment toward Muslims and foreigners in Germany appears to be becoming increasingly antagonistic. Even as the numbers of refugees arriving in Germany has slowed with the onset of cold weather, those critical of Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of welcoming refugees fleeing war and violence have become more vocal. Indeed, groups critical of Islam and foreigners have been quick to seek to appropriate the events in Cologne for their own purposes. Pegida, for example, the Islamophobic movement that got its start in Dresden, has posted several comments about the Cologne attacks on its numerous Facebook sites, with supporters responding in a predictably offensive manner.

Many German politicians commenting on Tuesday about the events in Cologne have been careful to calibrate their responses so as to avoid playing into the hands of right-wing Islamophobes. "We will not tolerate organized groups of men from North Africa that debase defenseless women with brazen sexual attacks," said Ralf Jäger, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He added, however, that the authorities will do everything in their power to ensure that such attacks are not repeated. "We owe that to women as well as to those North African refugees who want to live peacefully among us."

Germany's integration commissioner, Aydan Özoguz, demanded a rapid investigation "because on the one hand, the women need clarity and on the other, refugees and foreigners are quickly becoming the focus of broad suspicion."

Despite such urgings, however, it will likely take some time before any of the perpetrators can be identified...

More at Pamela Geller's, "VIDEO Shows WILD MUSLIM CHAOS on New Years in Germany, Sex Attacks, Fireworks THROWN at Crowd."

Denmark and Sweden Tighten Border Controls to Staunch Tide of Jihadist 'Refugees' (VIDEO)

I don't know. Perhaps even some of the Scandinavia social justice loonies are starting to wake up. Of course, the prospect of being beheaded on the streets has a bracing effect.

At the New York Times, "Sweden and Denmark Add Border Checks to Stem Flow of Migrants":

LONDON — The continued flow of people along Europe’s migration trail, from Turkey and Greece to the Balkans to Scandinavia, faced new impediments on Monday as two of the northernmost destinations further tightened border controls in response to political, economic and logistical pressures.

Sweden, once one of the most welcoming of nations for refugees, introduced new identity checks on Monday for travelers arriving from Denmark. Fearful that migrants who otherwise would pass through on their way to Sweden would now be unable to leave, Denmark swiftly moved to impose new controls on people traveling via its border with Germany.

The moves by the two Scandinavian countries represented another step in the erosion of the ideal of borderless travel across most of the European Union, amid rising concerns about the costs imposed by the tide of migration and fears that terrorists are seeking to enter Europe masquerading as refugees.

In recent months, Scandinavian countries, like other countries in Europe, have expressed increasing concern about the scale of the influx of migrants seeking to reach prosperous Northern European countries known for their generous welfare systems and for relatively welcoming attitudes.

The arrival of migrants — roughly one million reached Germany last year alone, though a significant minority were from other parts of Europe rather than from Syria, Iraq and other conflict-ridden nations — has gradually led European countries from south to north to seek to stem the tide.

Hungary built a razor-wire fence along its border to keep migrants out. Denmark has cut benefits to new arrivals by about 50 percent and has introduced tough language requirements for those seeking permanent residency. Finland has issued news releases in Arabic detailing additional restrictions, apparently with the aim of warning would-be asylum seekers that the country is not a paradise.

Under the temporary border controls introduced Monday in Sweden, travelers to Sweden from Denmark will have to show valid identification with a photograph, like a passport, for the first time in more than half a century. The move raised the prospect of continuing delays in travel between the two nations, especially on the Danish side of the Oresund Bridge, a major link between Copenhagen, the Danish capital, and Malmo in southern Sweden, a popular gateway for migrants seeking to enter Sweden.

The new border controls in Sweden are likely to present a hurdle to thousands of would-be asylum seekers, many of whom lack official documents. (The Oresund Bridge has also gained a foothold in popular culture, being at the center of the hit Scandinavian crime television series “The Bridge,” which starts with detectives from the two countries teaming up to investigate the murder of a woman whose body is found on the structure.)

Still more.