Members of the union BJMF arrived before dawn after learning that Domus Ejendomsservice, black-listed by the labour movement for undercutting wages and refusing to sign a union contract, had been hired by project owner, the business lobby group Dansk Erhverv. The lobbyists, who own the landmark building, had previously denied BJMF access to make routine inspections of the construction site. The blockade lasted four hours and ended only when the lobby group conceded to every union demand: conflict-hit companies will be removed from the site, unions will be allowed to make routine site inspections and main contractors will accept financial responsibility if any subcontractor breaches Danish pay and safety standards.

Carsten Bansholm Hansen, who chairs the BJMF construction section, said the action was necessary to defend the “Danish model” of negotiated wages. “In Denmark, things are supposed to be in order, people must earn a living wage not be subjected to wage dumping. If that principle collapses on a large site like the Stock Exchange, how are we going to enforce it on the smaller ones?”

The 400-year-old Stock Exchange was heavily damaged by a fire in February 2024, in which its iconic dragon spire collapsed. It is now being reconstructed.

Source:

• removedligt aktive blokerer Børsen: “Et prestigebyggeri skal have ordentlige forhold”, Arbejderen, September 23rd 2025

The move threatens to further deteriorate the human rights situation for the nation's Muslim and non-white minorities. Stoklund is one of the Social Democratic party's most openly racist figures, infamous for comparing refugees to "weeds" that must be removed. He has also called for revoking the human rights of refugees to allow deportations to countries where they face torture and prosecution. Shortly after his appointment, he declared that Denmark has "significant integration problems with people who simply behave horribly," adding that "even though they have had all opportunities in Danish society there is trouble with too many of those who have come from The Greater Middle East."

The appointment is a transparent attempt to claw back voters defecting to the surging, fascist Danish People’s Party. Since gaining power in a flawed 2022 election, the regime has failed to address the escalating cost-of-living crisis and spiraling prices for food and energy. Instead, it has funneled astronomical sums into a military buildup, ignoring the plight of its civilian population. The deteriorating material conditions has made the regime and the Social Democratic party increasingly unpopular, leading voters to drift to the fascists.

For decades the Social Democrats have pursued a policy of close alignment with the Danish People's Party and going to great lengths not to be perceived as less racist than the fascists. Despite being thoroughly bureaucratised, the Social Democrats still perceive themselves as a workers' party but lacking any serious class analysis they bastardise the concept of the working class into an incoherent mess of job tiles, educational achievement and cultural preferences. Out of this hodgepodge comes an idea of the working class as overall-wearing racist simpletons. This results in policies that prioritise performative cruelty to minorites over winning material improvements for the people they claim to support — a convenient approach that also avoids challenging big capital or diverting funds from militarization.

The regime has agreed to hold elections within the next 13 months.

Source:

• Han bliver ny udlændingeminister – analytiker er ikke i tvivl om årsagen, TV2 (state media), September 23rd 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently walked a gauntlet of parked military gear while visiting Canadian and allied troops in Latvia. All of it was spit and polish, some draped in camouflage and looking showroom ready, if not somewhat menacing. It was an impressive, seemingly substantive, display of combat power. If only he'd known what it probably took to get those tanks, armoured vehicles, howitzers and other pieces of kit onto the concrete vehicle park.

The Canadian battlegroup, the nucleus of the NATO brigade in Latvia, has been suffering through a critical — and in some cases crippling — shortage of spare parts that has regularly sidelined vehicles, CBC News has learned. A recent internal briefing, a copy of which was obtained by CBC News, shows the vehicle off road (VOR) rate for the Canadian contingent in the Baltic country has been "high" and that it even affected a recent training exercise. The factors forcing the army to park vehicles include Canadian "supply chain issues, parts backlog" and the new "compressed" training regime, which has seen troops complete their combined arms training in Latvia, rather than in Canada, said the internal briefing.

During a recent brigade-level training, known as Exercise Strike, which took place alongside other NATO allies this summer, the Canadian mechanized infantry company, Leopard tank squadron, combat support units and headquarters were considered combat ineffective (CBT IE) because of the off-road rate, said the undated briefing. The slide deck said the affected equipment included LAV 6 light armoured vehicles, Leopard 2A4s (the roughly three-decade-old main battle tanks), command-and-control vehicles and utility vehicles including the trucks that tow howitzers. Due to the high rate of vehicles not being available, "more than 150 personnel" were left out of battle (LOB) or unable to participate in the training exercise. That represented more than 30 per cent of the Canadian personnel involved in the drill, said the briefing. The Canadian commander of the NATO brigade acknowledged there are issues with spare parts and used Leopard tanks as an example.

"Spare parts directly contribute to the serviceability of the tanks that are here. So, we have not completely squared that away," said Col. Kris Reeves. He said the Canadian contingent has the "priority of parts that are available in the Canadian system" and must be ready to fight at all times. Reeves said he hopes the issue will be sorted out within a year, and that Defence Minister David McGuinty told him that "he's actively working on it."

Supply system challenges

Part of the $9.3 billion in defence spending announced this summer by the Liberal government is earmarked for improving the stock of spares throughout the military. During last week's Latvia visit, McGuinty acknowledged they are trying to fix the problem as quickly as possible for the entire military. "We went looking for the money needed to continue the investments needed, and we are thinking about the whole question of how we buy the parts, how we purchase the necessary materials and how we continue it quickly and together," McGuinty said. But it is not just a question of filling up the stock bins. The system itself needs an overhaul. Parts for the German-manufactured Leopard 2A4s come from Europe. But because of the military supply chain, those parts have to first go to Canada before they are shipped back to Europe for use in the brigade.

The absence of spare parts for the Leopard 2A4s has been a long-established, well-documented issue for not only Canada but other allies who use the old fighting vehicle. It became a major, almost intractable, issue for Ukraine after tanks donated by allies broke down or were damaged in battle and parts were almost impossible to find. "This is not acceptable," said retired lieutenant-general and former Liberal MP Andrew Leslie. Canadian troops have been deployed in Latvia for several years and the crisis in Eastern Europe kicked into high gear with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. "By now, for heaven's sake, we should have figured out how to keep our troops in harm's way with the right levels of equipment, with the right levels of spare and ammunition, supplies," said Leslie, former commander of the Canadian Army.

Decades of underfunding is partly to blame. But more recently, Leslie said the Trudeau government's plan to give more money to the military for equipment, while forcing the Defence Department to cut elsewhere, has exacerbated the problem. "You've gotta get your act together because it's not happening right now," said Leslie. Alan Williams, who was in charge of the Defence Department's purchasing branch in the early 2000s, also condemned the shortages and said there's been plenty of time to sort out the issue. He said it has become custom at the department to cut what's known as national procurement funding, the pot of money that pays for — among other things — inventories and replacement stocks. During the former Conservative government's drive to cut the deficit in the 2012-14 timeframe, that line item took an enormous hit and wasn't fully restored by the Liberals. The policy of buying equipment but then not setting aside enough money for maintenance and repairs is a disservice to the public and the troops, Williams said. "It really pisses me off, you know, because our guys deserve the best equipment properly maintained," said Williams. "Don't play games. You don't say you're going to provide them with these things and then shortchange them on the money so that they can't deliver with it. It's insulting and our guys and gals deserve a lot better."

In a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Meink highlighted the service’s lackluster aircraft readiness as one of its major challenges. “We have some of the best aircraft,” Meink said, citing the F-22 and F-35 fighters and the B-2 bomber as examples. The scope of the readiness challenge “surprised me a bit,” Meink said. “I knew there was a readiness challenge,” Meink said. “I didn’t appreciate how significant that readiness challenge was.”

The Air Force’s aircraft readiness rates have steadily trended down for several years, and last year hit a recent low. The fiscal 2024 fleet-wide mission-capable rate — which measures how many aircraft are able to carry out their missions on an average day — hit 62%, meaning nearly four in every 10 aircraft were unable to perform their job at any given time. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin raised alarms about the decline at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in March. During that speech, Allvin displayed a chart showing another statistic, aircraft availability, which had declined from 73% in 1994 to 54% in 2024. One major factor driving declining readiness rates, experts agree, is that the Air Force’s planes are decades old — and getting older all the time. Allvin’s chart in March showed that over the past three decades, the average aircraft age in the fleet almost doubled from 17 to nearly 32 years old.

Meink said Monday that the Air Force has “some of the best aircraft” of any military, and praised the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the B-2 Spirit bomber. But he pointed to Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, where F-22s are stationed, as an example of the problems the Air Force is facing. The F-22 is “a phenomenal platform,” Meink said. “But when I go out to Langley and there’s a number of aircraft, nonoperational, sitting around the ramp that aren’t even being worked on because we simply don’t have the parts to do that — that’s a problem, right? We have to fix that.” In an afternoon roundtable with reporters, Meink said maintenance and sustainment have been a major cost driver for the Air Force over the last roughly 15 years. Lawmakers, the administration and top Pentagon leadership are working to help increase the Air Force’s maintenance budget, he said. But with the Air Force’s resources stretched thin, Meink said, it must be efficient and focus maintainers on its top priorities — systems that will be able to survive in a future war’s highly contested airspace.

“If a system is not capable of operating in a contested environment, then we need to be second-guessing and/or thinking about how much money we’re dumping into readiness on those platforms,” Meink said. And as the Air Force retires older, outdated aircraft, Meink said, it will be able to shift skilled maintainers and other resources to planes that will be needed in a future conflict. Meink pointed to Ukraine’s success in using modified quadcopters worth a few thousand dollars to destroy multimillion-dollar Russian drones as an example of the new air warfare environment the U.S. will have to operate in. Meink said the Air Force also must hold its contractors accountable for the reliability of their systems.

the US government holding contractors accountable? lol. lmao

“When we’re getting a part that’s supposed to last 400 hours, and it lasts 100 hours, that’s unacceptable,” Meink said. “We need to work with the government and contractors to make the right investments to improve the serviceability and reliability of our weapon systems and the parts we’re putting in those weapon systems.” William Bailey, who is performing the duties of the assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the increasing modularity of new aircraft and other in-the-works systems will allow them to be more easily maintained and replaced. Bailey also said the acquisition community plans to conduct a deep dive into the service’s supply chains to identify where “pinch points” are holding up the delivery of vital spare parts. The Air Force must use also advanced data analytic techniques to better understand the state of its weapon systems, Meink said.

If anybody is thinking of making an AI version of the Catholic pope, please don’t. That’s the message from the newly-minted Holy Father himself, Pope Leo XIV, who emphatically slapped down the idea of a digital simulacra masquerading as himself. “Someone recently asked authorization to create an artificial me so that anybody could sign on to this website and have a personal audience with ‘the pope,’ but this artificial intelligence pope would give them answers to their questions, and I said, ‘I’m not going to authorize that,'” he said. “If there’s anybody who should not be represented by an avatar, I would say the pope is high on the list,” he continued in an excerpt for a planned biography, according to Crux, a Catholic media outlet.

Let’s face it: the whole idea is perverse, especially since AI models tend to hallucinate. Imagine an AI pope suddenly going off the rails and recommending you steal your church’s collection plate. (That’s a sin, by the way.) Leo also slammed a deepfake of himself falling down some stairs as well as other fraudulent news ginned up by AI. The pope also called attention to how “extremely rich people” are putting loads of money into AI while “ignoring” humanity’s needs. “If the Church doesn’t speak up, or if someone doesn’t speak up about that, but the Church certainly needs to be one of the voices here, the danger is that the digital world will go on its own way and we will become pawns, or left by the wayside,” he said, hastening to add that he’s not entirely against AI technology.

When another excerpt of the biography was released, Pope Leo made news when he criticized the countless piles of money mercurial bad boy billionaire Elon Musk has accumulated for himself. Musk responded on the social media platform X with a Bible verse that poked at the pope. “‘Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?’ (Matthew 7:3-5),” he posted. Something tells us this won’t be their last skirmish, especially since the stakes are so high. “It’s going to be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI,” Leo said in the biography excerpt, which is a direct criticism of people like Musk who are developing AGI.

In April, the Estonian government informed the allies that we would be ready to put our skin on the line.

This would mean combat companies of the Scout Battalion on Ukrainian soil.

“In addition to this, there are also training opportunities, staff officers and perhaps, if the Ukrainians need it, a ship,” Tsahkna adds. “Estonia is the most straightforward here.”

How did this decision come about?

Of course, it all started with Donald Trump, the US president’s message that the war must end immediately and Europe must guarantee Ukraine’s security.

The British and French were the first to adapt to this.

“The UK is ready to put its boots on the ground, planes in the air,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February. French President Emmanuel Macron promised to stand by its allies.

And then came the great Oval Office disaster.

The same one where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to talk about security guarantees and the Americans beat him with verbal sticks.

The message had to be sent by Western European leaders. The Americans had to be shown that Europe was taking the matter seriously. And the Ukrainians had to be shown that no matter what happens, Europe has their backs.

That day, March 2, the Coalition of the Willing was announced. Coalition des volontaires.

It’s not a random name. The same name was used for the alliance that went to Iraq at the request of former US President George W. Bush.

But a murmur of suspicion went through Tallinn that evening. Why didn’t Starmer invite any Estonians to the important meeting?

“We realized pretty quickly that if we want to be taken seriously in these discussions at all, we have to have a message,” says Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur.

And what better message than having our skin in the game?

Besides, a coalition of the willing is of little use if no one shows a clear will. Even the British didn’t go much more specific than their “boots on the ground” formulation. Other countries were even more cautious.

“In order for the formation of a coalition to be taken seriously, it was clear that we had to raise the flag,” says Pevkur.

Discussions between the State Chancellery, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Defense went on for several weeks. And in April, the government, gathered in the basement of Toompea, made a decision: if the guns fall silent and Estonia’s major allies are on board, we are ready to send our company to Ukraine.

At the same time as us, the Lithuanians made a similar promise.

Generals at the map

During the spring, a dozen countries gathered that said they were ready to send their troops to Ukraine. But there were far fewer who talked about specific units.

You can't really blame this. Because there was no agreement yet on what, how, and why to do in Ukraine. Many questions remain unanswered to this day. Yet, the map of Ukraine was rolled out in March and military planning began.

The coalition of the willing has two lines of action. Thus, the staff involved in planning was also split into two.

Some had to figure out how to build up Ukraine's defense forces after the weapons fell silent. That would involve training and a lot of weapons.

Other staff officers had to figure out what a Western military contingent operating on Ukrainian soil could look like. What would be needed to take control of the Black Sea? How and with what forces to control Ukrainian airspace?

What capabilities should the ground forces have? And should they be located in specific sectors of the front where the Russian threat is greater? Or should they be kept somewhere in western Ukraine to respond from there if necessary?

The military personnel of nearly thirty countries met in several countries. The headquarters is led from France.

On the one hand, this is normal military planning. The enemy is known. One can calculate one's own forces. The route of movement and suitable areas are shown in advance on a map.

At the same time, there are a huge number of open questions.

First, no one can say when and under what conditions the guns will fall silent. Will there be a shaky ceasefire between the countries or a more solid peace treaty? Where will the front line be and what will be the situation of the Ukrainian forces by then?

Second, it is not known how many countries are actually willing to contribute and with what kind of forces.

And third, and this is the most important: what is the goal of the operation?

What are we really promising?

Western politicians from Paris to Vilnius repeat the slogan of lasting peace. But there is no consensus among the capitals on what they are prepared to do for it.

What powers, intervention thresholds or rules of use of force will be given to the units framed by the expression “reassurance force”.

It is precisely in this phrase “reassurance force” that Macron and Starmer repeatedly use that there is an important mental trap. It should give Ukrainians courage. The certainty that they are not alone.

And yet it differs from the expression used by Prime Minister Kristen Michal in a press release at the end of April when she promised Ukraine a company. She said “deterrence force”. Deterrence force.

That would be a degree stronger. And it clearly states what message the units stationed in Ukraine should give to Russia. If you attack again, we will kill you.

"Deterrence doesn't cost a penny if Russia thinks that deterrence will not oppose Russia," says Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Riigikogu's Foreign Affairs Committee.

The promise to resist is a difficult political decision. It means being prepared to shed blood for the freedom of Ukraine. And to lose lives. “I am more than certain that there is no such consensus among the countries of the coalition of the willing at the moment,” says Mihkelson.

Until this certainty is there, it is impossible to answer the questions of how much force will actually secure Ukraine. Is it only those who are currently on the territory of the country? Or are the Western countries prepared for a battalion to be sent to help a company on the ground and a brigade to a battalion in the event of a violation of the peace agreement?

This has not even been seriously discussed yet.

But the planners of the defense forces are not bothered by such ignorance, and the plans have gradually begun to be filled with real forces. Whether it is good or bad, no one is saying. But the countries that are putting specific military units on the table have increased in the past six months.

The Turks have been signaling for some time that they may take control of the Black Sea. The Belgians could help by controlling Ukrainian airspace.

Czech President Petr Pavel has spoken of a willingness in principle. Canada also does not rule out sending troops. “And my feeling is that more countries will come,” says Pevkur.

It all comes down to the US

There was a fair amount of deadlock over the summer. For a long time, there were about a dozen countries that were talking about sending any troops at all.

Behind the hesitation is one of the biggest question marks in the whole undertaking – that same Donald Trump.

“We have always told the Americans that one way or another, the US must be there,” says Pevkur.

And the Americans have always said that their military boots would not set foot on Ukrainian soil.

The operation would be unthinkable without US intelligence and transport aircraft. Their air defense systems and long-range strike force are desperately needed.

A solid rear is just as important.

Even if the US does not send troops to Ukraine, they are expected to promise that if Russia does violate the peace treaty, they will come to the aid of the Europeans. This promise in itself would be more of a deterrent than anything else.

In August, after Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin met in Alaska, things seemed to be moving.

“We managed to get the following concession: the United States can offer Ukraine protection similar to Article 5,” US special envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters.

In some ways, the message was disgusting. The principle of the Coalition of the Willing is that Russia should have no say in whose forces move in Ukraine. Moreover, Russia soon announced that it still did not want Western countries in Ukraine.

On the other hand, it gave Europe hope that the Americans were ready to make concrete promises. “The United States is involved,” Trump said a few days later.

The procurement deal was signed in 2023 and became known after leaked correspondence obtained by the hacker group Black Moon; the analysis of roughly 800 pages of material was carried out by the British Royal United Services Institute(RUSI). According to that information, China purchased:

• 37 BMD-4M infantry fighting vehicles (airborne);
• 11 Sprut-SDM1 light amphibious tanks;
• 11 BTR-MDM Rakushka armored personnel carriers;
• several command-and-staff vehicles produced by NPP Rubin;
• several mobile artillery command posts Reostat;
• a number of Orlan-10 UAVs;
• parachute systems Dalnolyot.

All the equipment is to be fitted with Chinese communications gear. Technical documentation for independent maintenance and modernization of the weapons and equipment is being transferred as well. In other words, China will have more than enough information to reverse-engineer and copy the hardware if it chooses. That raises the obvious question: why would China need to buy equipment from Russia? As Defense Express noted RUSI's material notes the structure of the People's Liberation Army Airborne Corps: five airborne brigades, one air-assault brigade, one special-forces brigade, plus a transport (helicopter) brigade, an attack-helicopter regiment and a support brigade.

However, the inventory of dedicated tracked airborne vehicles is relatively small only about 180 ZBD-03 airborne IFVs and some quantity of CS/VN3 wheeled vehicles. China's airborne troops are even lighter than Russia's VDV, with an emphasis on helicopter insertion. By contrast, the BMD-4M is armed with a 100 mm gun paired with a 30 mm cannon, and the Sprut is effectively a light tank with a 125 mm gun. That represents a significant increase in firepower. The mention of the Dalnolyot parachute is also notable this is a winged parachute designed for special-operations units that, in favorable conditions, can glide up to some 60 km. All the purchased Russian equipment is intended to be air-dropped from Il-76 transport aircraft. China has roughly 75 strategic transport aircraft in this class (about 20 Il-76 plus 55 Y-20s). RUSI estimates that deploying this package by air would require some 35 Il-76-class sorties about half of China's available fleet.

Taken together, this can reasonably be viewed as a noteworthy enhancement of China's airborne assault capabilities a capability that is integral to vertical maneuver operations, where seaborne forces conduct a landing while airborne troops seize key rear objectives and fix or disrupt the enemy. By training Chinese troops in Russia, Beijing also obtained operational know-how for using airborne formations and the tools needed to employ them. In effect, Russia sold China a ready-made turnkey airborne capability.

some further details from the RUSI report directly:

The agreements also require Russia to train a battalion of Chinese paratroopers in employing the equipment. Armoured vehicle drivers will be trained at the Kurganmashzavod base, and the crews of KMN command and observation vehicles and Sprut anti-tank guns will be trained in Penza at JSC NPP Rubin. After completing courses on training equipment and simulators, the collective training of the Chinese airborne battalion will be carried out at training grounds in China. Here, Russian instructors are to prepare the battalion for landing, fire control and manoeuvring as part of an airborne unit. The Russians are also transferring Rheostat airborne artillery command and observation vehicle and Orlan-10 multi-purpose unmanned aerial vehicles. A Centre for Technical Maintenance and Repair of Russian Equipment will be established in China, to which all necessary technical documentation will be transferred. This will allow China to undertake the production and modernisation of these capabilities in the future.

Implications

... If the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, supported in a Joint Firepower Campaign, can successfully suppress Taiwanese air defences, then air manoeuvre offers the fastest means of transferring combat power onto Taiwan, and spreading operations across an expanded area. Helicopters offer the most flexible means of deploying troops, but light infantry, unsupported by armour and fires, will necessarily struggle to hold their objectives against a mechanised adversary, as Russian airborne troops found to their detriment at Hostomel. The capacity to airdrop armour vehicles, therefore, on golf courses, or other areas of open and firm ground near Taiwan’s ports and airfields, would allow air assault troops to significantly increase their combat power and threaten seizure of these facilities to clear a path for the landing of follow-on forces. It should also be noted that an attempt to seize Taiwan would likely see fighting erupt throughout the South China Sea, creating a requirement for the PLA to project combat power further afield. In the initial phases of war air manoeuvre could allow the PLA to move airborne forces with organic firepower and mobility to critical terrain beyond Taiwan, securing airfields or other infrastructure that could otherwise support US operations to counter the PLA amphibious landings on Taiwan. In short, an expanded air manoeuvre capability gives the PLA a diversity of options for rapid power projection.

...

The greatest value of the deal to the PLA, however, is most likely in the training and the procedures for command and control of airborne forces, as Russia’s airborne forces have combat experience, while the PLA does not. The requirement for a battalion’s worth of equipment – with an expanded number of C2 platforms – likely speaks to the desire to conduct battalion scale collective training, and since the Russians are to deliver it, this must be conducted on Russian vehicles. The deal also reflects the growing military-industrial co-operation between Russia and the PRC over the course of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.