Well you started using the "E" word, and I continued not giving it more thought.
It's no secret that Denmark had a large portion of arab immigrants during the 90'ies, and some groups of these (a minority) caused a lot of trouble. I went to school while this was going on, and I've had my share of uncomfortable encounters (although never assaulted), then in the elections of 2000 a socialist right wing party (sounds contractionary, I know) grew to become the third largest party in parliament, as the Danes had grown tired of immigration and integration problems, they are still the supporting party of the sitting center-right wing government.
I voted for this party myself, and neither the EU nor the UN liked that we the people had elected a government supported by such a party, they obviously didn't like that the party knew how to speak its mind about the previous governments failure at limiting immigration and improving integration. The UN call it "hate speech", I call it a wake up call, and even though the tone was harsh at first the message has come through on both sides of the political center, I didn't voted for them in the last election half a year ago, since the situation has improved a lot now, I didn't find it critical anymore. Needless to say the UN and EU appears to have given up trying to force our population to think otherwise.
As for the torture committees findings, we have a very professional police force, something which the state takes pride in. The only place we've come close to "torture" was when an interrogation officer in Iraq said some harsh things to a captive arab.
However they are probably right about the law, but that doesn't mean that our police force tortures people just because there's a gab in the codex, it's competely unheard off! Solidary confinement is used as a punishment as in other nations, but the long hauls (which I think they're questioning here) are there to keep dope dealing criminals from obstructing justice, we have something called "Zero Tolerance" towards dope dealers in the capital.
I do however, remember a video of some southern US police force beating the crap outta some black dude lying on the street, and these police folks got acquitted, which caused a riot. Now that is torture. I wonder if the UN took its precious time to actually look into that? Can you remember this exact story? I don't think it was that long ago.
I can't do that, but neither can you show me a place where I've said that European nations are without problems of their own, however I don't think that any Euro nation, large or small, has as much crime as the US. Police forces here, in Scandinavia at least, are also a lot less prone to shoot, but again this is related to the whole "right to carry guns" issue. "We" don't have that right, nor do we want to have it (most of us anyway).
Depends on where you're living, if you're living on the border then yes you get influenced quite heavily by the neighbour, however the guy living in central Germany is still a lot different from the guy living in Paris. Even though the nations share borders. Here, I can see Sweden from my window, but a strait seperates us, I can tune in to their TV channels if I want to, but I really don't feel like they influence me. (though we might be so much alike in the first place that it's difficult to absorb more influence. However I loathe their hairstyles) "
Me too.
Probably, I'm just trying to find some sense in a disaster such as this, with inept government response and just an endless tide of black people standing around waiting to get rescued. Not to mention that in almost every picture or clip, you see someone with a gun, be they civilians, police or military.
Well from what I understand we still don't know the full impact of the destruction by the hurricane, but you probably know more about this than me.
I though that "welfare" was a nono in the US, a "welfare state" here includes things like free medical care and free education, you have that in some places? Or is it 'simply' the unemployment check kinda welfare?
Possibly.
