Kol "not a fair fight" that is hilarious
I'm not saying I support what Russia is doing, but wtf. I guess the west should've stayed out of Iraq too then, because it had a bigger military than Iraq. Brilliant logic.
And John Kerry:
It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country...You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.
Let's see... Iraq invaded in 2003 bases on the claim that it had weapons of mass destruction, which it turned out to have... Nope, I agree completely with him I guess, USA isn't a civilized country at all.
Some info on privatization in Denmark:
Over the past 25 years, 40 state-owned companies or stakes have been sold.
In the 90's under social democratic government: Tele Danmark sold for 31 billion DKK, GiroBank sold, Copenhagen Airport and the Data Central sold.
Under bourgeois government: Post Danmark (postal service), Scandlines (ferries), State Institution for Life Insurance, Bella Center (congress center) and The State's Car Inspection.
Telephones:
1897: The many regional telephone companies are nationalized, and from then and on, only the state could operate and building telephone lines because of their importance to society.
1990: The telephone operation is centralized in one company, Tele Danmark.
1994: The stakes are expanded and the state's stocks fall to 41% in Tele Danmark.
1996: Tele Danmark lost its monopoly on telephone lines and had to make its infrastructure available to competitors.
1997-1998: Under a social democratic government, all the remaining stakes in Tele Denmark is sold to Ameritech and thus privatization was completed.
2000: Tele Danmark changes name to TDC.
2005: TDC was re-sold to five capital funds for 97 billion DKK - 3 times the amount that the state got.
"2 months after the sale, large stock profits were paid which were 57% of the value TDC had just been bought for. It is a classic way, especially for the big capital funds, to work. You buy companies, public or private, and then extract values from them."
- Stine Brix (Enhedslisten)
Postal service:
1851: Due to common theft of money when sent in letters, the postal service made it possible to give money to one postal office, and receive them at another.
1920: The postal giro office is created, which made it easier to handle the money streams, which was an alternative to the banks' clearing system.
1988: The postal giro service is turned into a state company which was named GiroBank 3 years later.
1993: The state sold GiroBank.
1995: GiroBank fuses with another bank and becomes BG Bank.
2000: BG Bank fuses with Realkredit Danmark into RealDanmark and were then bought by Danske Bank for 27 billion DKK.
Some quotes from former ministers responsible for some of the privatizations:
"Society's values are given away. It almost physically hurts for me to see what's happening.
- Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (Social Democrats) about the sale of Dong Energy
"Today I would probably have kept the state ownerhip of the copper network."
- Mogens Lykketoft (Social Democrats)
"Both Copenhagen's Airports and TDC's copper cables are so vital parts of society's infrastructure that they should never have been sold to private companies. When you sit in a capital fund, you don't think about the wellbeing of the Danish state. You think about your stockholders."
- Brian Mikkelsen (Conservative People's Party)
"Enhedslisten can hardly express it better."
From an article in Rød+Grøn (magazine for members of Enhedlisten)
In the near future, following the wildly unpopular sale of Dong Energy, there are discussions of privatizing cleaning services for elderly people and public buildings etc., more railway lines, and Nets (which I wrote about earlier).
So much for a social democratic government.
