WRECKAGES OF CREATION

BACKGROUND

How can strong belief be built without evidence? Michael sings these words at 4.48 into the video and as you may have guessed, the question is aimed at everybody who thrives on fake news and polarisation.

Politicians and religious leaders have built entire careers on fearmongering. TV-stations, newspapers and social media have received lots of attention, whenever they add fuel to the fire. However, little is mentioned about the fatal consequences of lies and half-truths.

In Europe, few topics have attracted more clicks than the escalating conflicts between Muslim extremists and people with other religious convictions. But how can strong belief be built without evidence?  Judge for yourself:

THE TYPICAL NARRATIVE:

Succesful opinion makers don't overcomplicate things. They usually have a simple and convincing punchline. For instance it has often been claimed that the religious conclicts are the consequence of opposing views upon the Freedom of Speech.

If you know just a little about our home country, Denmark, the sequence from 4.03 to 4.14 in the video needs no further explanation. Unfortunately, it is not a lie that several islamic extremists have tried to carry out terror attacks against Denmark. First, their fury was  flamed by the so-called Muhammad cartoons controversy, later by a few persons who publically desecrated the Quran.

Obviously we have no love lost for terrorists, but we would appreciate if the public opinon was less influenced by opinion makers with ulterior motives. Few people in their right minds can argue that the Freedom of Speech is not worth defending. But ideological differences of opinion is only a small part of a bigger problem ...

THE BRUTAL NARRATIVE

In 2022 the Danish Governments security policy analysis group published a report, which presented an overview of the expected threats against Denmark. What is not clear in Chapter 2.4 (which focus on terror threats) is the fact that Denmark has been military involved in many of the mentioned areas. 

For instance F-16  airplanes from Denmark participated in 593 missions and dropped 923 bombs over Libya in 2011. Before then, there was almost no threat against Denmark from African terrorists. This changed as Libya collapsed into a state of Civil War at the same time as the terror organisations al-Qaeda and the Islamic State gained terrain in the neighbouring Sahel-countries.

In other words: After participation in recent wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, it is not difficult to imagine why some Muslims have begun to consider Denmark as the aggressor. Not as the victim.

Luckily for us, this narrative neither presents the full story ...

THE BALANCED NARRATIVE

A lot would appear differently, if opinion makers had been honest about the link between the current terror threats and the Danish war efforts in Libya. 

If the full story had been told in due time, everybody would know that the Danish F-16 crews were invited to Libya by the Arab League  in order to participate in a multi-state NATO-intervention.

The purpose was to bring an end to the crimes against humanity by the Libyan dictator,  Muammar Gaddafi. In other words: NATO  soldiers did their best to help the civil population of Libya ... and they were asked to do so by a joint coalition of Muslim leaders. Not exactly a sign of a global conflict between different religions, right?

Furthermore, it is pretty clear that religious extremism is a minor problem compared to other threats ... 

CORRUPTION

There's nothing more stupid than placing a target on your own back ... which is exactly what the Danish banks have done with their participation in money laundering. Not only have they participated in illegal financing of weapon dealers. They have also financed terrorists and other serious threats against the Western Society.

And what about the response from the Danish authorities? When the first investigations was concluded, the responsible authority (Finanstilsynet) came to the conclusion that there was no basis for a police investigation. This response seems rather vague ... in contrast to the findings during the actual police investigations and the fact that  Danske Bank pled guilty and payed a 2 billion US dollar fine.

The scandals didn't even end there. The second biggest bank in Denmark, Nordea, has also been caught in money laundering and for a period seven banks were under police investigation simultaneously. For these reasons it seems fair to describe money laundering as a systemic problem in Denmark. A problem which is far from solved ...

ESCALATION

The President and Defence Ministry of Azerbaijan money laundered more than 2 billion euros in Danske Bank just before Azerbaijan went to war with their neighbours from Armenia in a conflict that is known as the war that showed the entire world the benefit of investing in relatively cheap drones.

Is the timing a coincidence? We will probably never know. But smart leaders would learn from such disclosures  and do everything to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Instead the leaders of the Danish Government found it meaningful to invest in weapons from Israel in the beginning of 2023. Such a purchase is controversial for a zillion of reasons, and it didn't help that the purchase was carried out in hush-hush style - without  proper respect for the Procurement legislation. 

We take no pleasure in pointing out these facts, but enough is enough. Scandal after scandal has haunted the danish military. Perhaps it's time to put more pressure on those who close their eyes?

WHY DO WE CARE?

Like it was the case during The Cold War, several proxy wars are haunting the 2020s. One of them have spread from Libya to the neighbouring Sahel-countries, and chances are pretty high that there will be actual confrontations in Africa between large companies of battle-trained troops from Russia against less prepared troops from NATO countries.

We would prefer to believe that all this have nothing to do with Denmark, but that's a fickle hope according to the abovementioned report from 2022 by the Danish Governments security policy analysis group. It is more likely that someone will remind the Danish politicians that they have spent hundreds of millions on unstable regimes in the Sahel-belt of Africa. Several of these regimes have later been haunted by military coups. In other words ... money from Danish foreign aid is now at the disposal of the wrong people.

SO ...

This was an update from Denmark - the least corrupt country of the world according to the highly acclaimed Transparency International index.

We hope there's something wrong with the definition of corruption, but how are things actually in YOUR country? We intent to make similar videos in the future, and we would love to know how things are perceived by our metal brothers and sisters abroad. Does YOUR country get the credit it deserves ... or is the State of The World really as gloomy as the corruption index indicates?

Feel free to share your thoughts in a message to us at: 
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