The Danish Government will announce a significant increase in its military commitment in Iraq and the War in Terror tomorrow, EiNY has learned.
Four of the Danish army’s Hans Christian Tanken armored personnel carriers will be flown to the Gulf on Monday where they will be handed over to British troops for deployment in Basra.
Although generally regarded as an aesthetic failure, the H.C. Tanken’s interior boast the latest in Danish design, including chairs and lighting by Arne Jacobsen and Verner Panton, and tableware by Royal Copenhagen and Georg Jensen.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is also expected to announce a doubling of Danish troops in Afghanistan.
A special ceremony was held outside the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen yesterday to decide which of Queen Margrethe of Denmark’s elite infantry regiment Den Kongelige Livgarde would be sent to Kabul later this week.
After a tense musical playoff four troops were selected for the mission bringing the total number of Danish military musicians stationed in Afghanistan to eight.
Links for today:
Is fatherhood forcing Simon’s Brain to contemplate aging?
The BBC’s Washington correspondent Justin Webb has gained a new fan following his defense of the United States on Radio 4’s Correspondents Look Ahead program.
My first blog dedication. Thanks BiB.
P.S. The armored car was actually built by a Danish resistance group during the Second World War. According to the plaque bolted to its door, the car was built at a railway factory in North Zealand and used in action on may 5th 1945 again Nazi groups, including a Danish Nazi group that was entrenched in the Asserbo plantation in North Zealand. It’s pictured here outside the Museum of Resistance in Copenhagen.
Denmark
Big Apple Blog Festival - January 9, 2006
Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week’s posts by NYC bloggers. We didn’t break it up this week … just presenting it in all its Big Apple bloggy goodness … The Big…
AND! You forgot to mention that the ‘army’ pictures were in fact from the parental sight-seeing trip over the holidays. Tusk - and to think you are married to a half-dane.
Now far be it from me to belittle Denmark’s contribution to the war on terrrr, but didn’t the Danes famously donate a snow-plough to the war effort in Iraq, or is this an urban myth?
And is Rasmussen still Prime Minister? Wasn’t the last one called Rasmussen too?
Seeing Sjaelland referred to as Zealand made me have a historic double-take and moment of doubt. Is NZ actually named after Denmark, and not something Dutch, as I had always thought? Step in Wikipedia, which soon had me sorted. Alas, NZ isn’t really New Denmark but is named after the Dutch province of Zeeland. Nice coincidence, though. (Gorgeous beaches in north Sjaelland, by the way.)
Mind you, have you been regaled with stories of Denmark’s colonial past on trips there, or by your good lady wife? India, the West Indies, Greenland… They got around, them Danes. And I read a nice story somewehere or other - probably the Independent - ages ago about an old Danish fortress that’s being/been restored somewhere in India. Somewhere for you and Mrs. B. to jet to one day, perhaps? It needs to be written about the Berger way.
Dezik
A quick trip to Wikipedia tells me that yes, it is 2 Rasmussens in a row, the previous Rasmussen being Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in 2001!
And as for the snow plough–that must be a myth. As far as I can tell from a quick web search, Denmark has 540 troops in Iraq.