No news at all on the Chainsaw Murder, but I just discovered I can now access the "Got Slaves?" website I mentioned yesterday.

Here's the website, and the photo in the poster is apparently a still shot from a television ad, which you can download here (<2MB). Or maybe you want the wallpaper? Notice that the wallpaper doesn't even mention the campaign: it's just the image, so I'm sure it'll be popular with the white-hood crowd.

(The dialog in the video, in case you don't speak Danish, is exactly the same as the text on the postcard, so the translation in my previous post covers it.)

I may have seen a more tasteless campaign in my life, but I honestly can't think of it. This is without a doubt the crudest, cheapest, ugliest campaign I've ever seen. (And I'm saying that as someone who still remember's Burger King's "Where's Herb?" campaign.)

The website's "Contact" page is framed and I don't know how to link frames, so here it is without them, if you're interested.

There's a poster you come across here and there in Copenhagen these days of a smiling white man in a suit and tie, sitting on the edge of a desk in the sort of vast, airy, uncluttered space that Danes so admire. A black man wearing only shorts is squatting at the feet of the businessman. The businessman rests his free hand on the black man's head in a proprietary gesture. [Description corrected.]

"Get more profit out of the third world," says the poster's legend (in Danish). "Support Denmark's current trade policy."

The poster caught my eye two days ago, but I didn't have my camera with me. Today I did. Here's the poster:



Here's a bigger closeup of the image:



The poster is also available in postcard form. The flip-side of the postcard offers the following text (don't have time to transcribe the original Danish, sorry):

We believe in free competition, which serves you well. But as an employer one also has considerable influence on the culture's development. An influence that obliges. We do not therefore believe in competition at any price. Denmark is a little country in a big global market. And with added competition especially from low-salaried nations, employer subsidies are important to survive. We can't afford to do otherwise.

This message is brought to us by SAAV, which stands (in Danish) for the Association of Responsible Employers.

Are you surprised the responsible employers of Denmark would authorize such a campaign? Well, they didn't.

An article (in Danish) from yesterday's Jyllands-Posten may help: the whole campaign is the product of "Netværket for Retfærdig Verdenshandel" (NRV) or "The Network for Fair Global Trade."

The NRV is obviously opposed to government subsidies for business, which they believe (rightly or wrongly) to have a strong negative impact on the developing world. This faux-campaign is just their idea of public service satire.

Look, I'm not a big subsidy kind of guy, but I think a campaign equating corporate subsidies with the literal enslavement of human beings is overshooting the mark.

But maybe that's just me.

(The fictional NRV has its own website, but every time I try to access it I'm told I don't have permission. Maybe it's because I don't accept cookies. I don't know. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.)

As promised yesterday, here's the Berlingske Tidende article:

11 April 2005

Police Search for Jaguar in Copenhagen
by Kristoffer Meinert and Thomas Helsborg

The police believe that the Sudanese homicide suspect "Jaguar" is being hidden by friends in Copenhagen. Homicide boss Ove Dahl is optimistic.

It's been two weeks since the 41-year-old taxi-driver Torben Vagn Knudsen was found killed and dismembered, but one of the two lead suspects, the 27-year-old Jaguar is still at large. But the homicide boss for the Copenhagen Police, Ove Dahl, is optimistic.

"We hope and believe that he is still in Copenhagen or the surrounding area, and that he's staying with people who are keeping him hidden," says Ove Dahl to Berlingske.dk.

The police investigation now primarily consists of officers going around to all his friends and acquaintances. The problem is just that Jaguar has an incredibly large circle, because he met many people via his nightlife, where he went into the city, arranged parties, and played as a DJ.

"It certainly doesn't make things easier that he knows so many people. If he only knew three people whom he could stay with, it would be relatively easy. But there are so many, many places where he could be. He could be with people we don't even know about yet," says Ove Dahl.

All his friends and acquaintances that police have spoken with say that they'd speak up if they knew where he was. But Ove Dahl believes that some may be lying and protecting him. Anyway, he's skeptical.

"The pressure is going up on everyone he might be staying with, and they're getting tired of financing him. So I think it's a question of a relatively short time before he's arrested," says Ove Dahl, who still requests everyone with information about Jaguar to report it to the police.

The other lead suspect in the case, the 34-year-old American Jared Heller, was arrested on Thursday and is imprisoned for four weeks.

I obviously need a better title than Homicide boss for Ove Dahl. Previous articles seemed to call him "Crime Inspector" Ove Dahl, but more recently they seem to be calling him "Homicide Boss." That may merely be because I'd been relying mostly on Politiken before Berlingske Tidende started scooping everyone thanks to exclusive interviews from the aforementioned boss/inspector. Unless someone wants to set me straight on this, I think I'll use "Chief Inspector Ove Dahl" as his title from this point on, condensed to "Inspector Dahl" after the first instance in each story.

As for my response to the Friend of Jared that I posted last night, and his response to that response, I'm just going to let it stand. I've said all I have to say on the subject of sensitivity to the feelings of Jaguar's and Jared's friends and family. I see no point in pursuing a political debate that's entirely irrelevant to the investigation.

But in my own defense against the schoolmarm accusation, I'd like to gently remind my correspondent that I actually didn't lay a glove on the spelling, grammar, or syntax of the first missive, except to say up front that I was going to ignore the strange stylings therein. If that qualifies me as an English teacher, God save the American education system.

* * *

I have a lot of work ahead of me today, so there'll be no Tuesday Almanac.

In spite of all the qualifiers I keep putting out, I seem to have been targeted as some kind of villainous anti-Jared partisan. Here's something that came into my inbox within the last hour or so (I'm cutting and pasting, editing only for line-breaks, superfluous spaces, and the like, so the whole thing is sic):

First of all I am assuming that all the good folk's writing this shit assume Jared Heller's friends and family are too stupid or too poor to own a computer.

I can only imagine if one of your close friends or family was in the most violent and freaky case in DK history how you would all feel reading jokes about the matter.

Unless of course you have become desensitized just like the Americans you're poking fun at.

First of all Jared's record of violence in the US ???
"Bueller , Bueller ..... Anyone ? "None you idiots!
The man without a name ...aka "The Jaguar"?
Who the fuck knows ? But I bet you my ass he did the chopping.
Since Jarred hardly ate meat, if any, that I can recall.
Let me tell you how AMERICAN Jared was:
1.He moved away; He left ....
2.He was very anti- establishment and anti- corporate.
3.He never voted Republican. He cared about the masses.
4.He was an avid reader: not typically American!
5.He produced music instead of watching television.
6.He ate healthy (when affordable).
7.He supported and helped a shitload of poor friends ( many of whom were ethnic).
8.I hung out with him for over 16 years and never witnessed an angry minute.

He is an Artist you dolts. A pacifist. The other guy from what I understand from a friend recently in Copenhagen was a bully and an addict.

In America you don't say shit till your lawyer is present. Also you probably don't turn yourself in right away with a partner that might kill you to shut you up. Maybe you loose him or maybe he has friends inside jail to shut you up. Either way all the shit you guys are writing is absurd speculation and it insults my friends and family who all care about Jared.

This isn't some piece of shit kid here. He has talent and worked hard his whole life. His family loves and supports him anyway they can. He without a doubt fucked up and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He may have been on drugs or may have been scared to death that a "Jaguar" was going to eat him. I hope we find out from him and not the DK sewing circle of justice. This is "my boy" as we say it here in the States, my homie. We go way back and I'm heartbroken over all of this. I am walking around in a daze trying to not imagine how fucked up my friend is.

I'm sitting in my room in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA and have learned more about what's going on over there than all of your reporters combined.

How is this ?

I hope it's not the Hash.

Who Am I ?

I am an award winning independent Film and Video producer. I have several Documentaries on the market. Also I worked with Jared almost ten years helping him to produce several music videos for his label.

I'm going to overlook the superfluous profanity, the bizarre grammatical and syntactical stylings, the typos, and pretty much everything else that comes under the heading of "form" rather than "content." I'm going to address the arguments, as I understand them, on their merits.

First of all I am assuming that all the good folk's writing this shit assume Jared Heller's friends and family are too stupid or too poor to own a computer.

Ever since someone tossed off a thoughtless insult about me, my wife, and my daughter in a blog last fall, I've tried to be as cautious as possible when writing about people I've never met—even murder suspects. Because I know from personal experience that one can't write anything on the internet without assuming sooner or later everyone will have the opportunity to read it.

I can only imagine if one of your close friends or family was in the most violent and freaky case in DK history how you would all feel reading jokes about the matter.

That's a good point, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to me. I don't see myself as "writing jokes about the matter." I'll confess to writing with what may be considered an inappropriately light-hearted manner about something that has life-or-death implications for a fellow American who still carries the presumption of innocence, and I can see how that may be painful to the men and women who love and support him.

But if this were America, you'd be hearing about Jared's misadventures on late night television and cable news, and the entire blogosphere would already be engaged in a feeding frenzy. Instead we've got one expat moron dashing off his own stupid opinions on a little seldom-visited blog from Denmark. Be grateful, my friend, that the American media have not yet got their teeth into this one.

I emphasize yet. This might be a good time for a trip to the liquor store.

Unless of course you have become desensitized just like the Americans you're poking fun at.

This is a little awkwardly written, so I'm not entirely sure I get the point. Am I being accused of making fun of Americans for being desensitized? That hardly makes sense, since I think I'm on the record for believing that the entire human race is too short on sense to be desensitized anyway. I've never claimed myself as an exception. "We are all of us cracked dreadfully about the head," Melville wrote, "and sadly need mending."

All of us. Me. You. Americans. Danes. Sudanese. Eskimoes.

But since I'm still not sure what the point of that sentence was, never mind.

First of all Jared's record of violence in the US ???
"Bueller , Bueller ..... Anyone ? "None you idiots!
The man without a name ...aka "The Jaguar"?
Who the fuck knows ? But I bet you my ass he did the chopping.
Since Jarred hardly ate meat, if any, that I can recall.

First off, if every crime required a precedent then no crime would ever be committed. It's therefore tautological that someone who's never committed a crime is capable of committing a crime. Inarguable.

Second of all, the author of this email has shamefully scrambled two of Ben Stein's Ferris Bueller bits. "Bueller, Bueller" occurs during roll-call. "Someone? Anyone?" occurs during the class itself, when he's asking his students questions related to their coursework.

Thirdly, and most significantly, how do you think Jaguar's friends and family feel about this characterization of their loved one? What do you know about Jaguar? Who are you to judge?

Fourthly, I completely miss the relevance of Jared's vegetarianism. Was there cannibalism involved in this crime? I ask honestly: there may have been. I don't know.

Let me tell you how AMERICAN Jared was:
1.He moved away; He left ....
2.He was very anti- establishment and anti- corporate.
3.He never voted Republican. He cared about the masses.
4.He was an avid reader: not typically American!
5.He produced music instead of watching television.
6.He ate healthy (when affordable).
7.He supported and helped a shitload of poor friends ( many of whom were ethnic).
8.I hung out with him for over 16 years and never witnessed an angry minute.

I certainly never questioned Jared's citizenship, so I'm not sure what point is being made here. I get the feeling the point is that he's not a typical American, but I don't see what this has to do with anything other than the Danish media's insistence on referring to Jared as "The American."

All the same, since I'm trying to be thorough, let me address these points:

"1.He moved away; He left ...." So did I. So do tens of thousands of Americans every year. We remain Americans. (Unless we emigrate, which most of us do not.)

"2.He was very anti- establishment and anti- corporate." So is the base of the Democratic party. Are you questioning their patriotism?

"3.He never voted Republican. He cared about the masses." Now we're into weird partisan pseudo-syllogisms. I've never voted Democratic (which does not mean I've always voted Republican, by the way), and I do care about people. Personally I tend to mistrust people who say they "care about the masses." I've never met a mass. Or is this a church reference? In any case, what's the implication here—that Jared's not a typical American because he's never voted Republican? That's weird stuff.

"4.He was an avid reader: not typically American!" Actually, it's human beings who tend not to be avid readers. But as a writer, count me as grateful that Jared reads!

"5.He produced music instead of watching television." I've never produced music instead of watching television, but I did once produce theatre instead of square-dancing. (Oh, hell, listen to me: I've been reduced to snarky one-liners. I'm sorry. I promised to respond seriously, and I intend to. But only when the author is being serious him- or herself, which I have to assume they're not being here.)

"6.He ate healthy (when affordable)." I realize obesity is a problem in America, but if our eating habits are so awful that "healthy eating" is considered atypical American behavior, why on earth do we live so much goddam longer than the hundreds of generations that had to get by without Doritoes and Funyuns?

"7.He supported and helped a shitload of poor friends ( many of whom were ethnic)." I wish that slightly condescending parenthetical afterthought hadn't been included, because frankly this is important, and does mean a lot to me. This helps me move into the "Jared was a mensch" camp. People who help and support other people are the indispensible foundation of civil society.

But we're all ethnic! The appendage of that dangly little phrase just smacks of the notion that it's better to help people whose ethnicity is different than one's own. It's not. I hate that notion. Helping people is helping people, and as long as you're not doing it at anyone else's expense, then it's all good.

"8.I hung out with him for over 16 years and never witnessed an angry minute." This is troublesome. Either you're not being honest, Jared isn't human, or the guy really was just a ticking bomb. Even Jesus got angry. (See the fig tree episode, for example, which has never been properly explained to me by any religious authority—and yes, I've even asked Jesuits.)

He is an Artist you dolts.

So was Hitler. (Ignoring the ad-hominem stuff.)

A pacifist.

Okay, you got me on the Hitler thing.

The other guy from what I understand from a friend recently in Copenhagen was a bully and an addict.

Hearsay, your honor. Move to strike from the record.

In America you don't say shit till your lawyer is present. Also you probably don't turn yourself in right away with a partner that might kill you to shut you up. Maybe you loose him or maybe he has friends inside jail to shut you up. Either way all the shit you guys are writing is absurd speculation and it insults my friends and family who all care about Jared.

Actually, this is exactly what I've been speculating about as recently as this morning: that maybe Jared is clamming up awaiting counsel. And I speculated that Jared might be as frightened of Jaguar as he is of the police days ago. And all speculation about everything is absurd when you get right down to it—but I realize it's painful when the subject of that speculation is someone near and dear to you. For that I apologize, but Jared has, by his association with this crime, entered the public sphere. I'll be happy to chronicle his innocence when it's established. I hope to god he is innocent.

But I absolutely reserve the right to speculate about anything, anywhere, at any time. You wouldn't want to chill the first amendment, would you?

This isn't some piece of shit kid here. He has talent and worked hard his whole life. His family loves and supports him anyway they can. He without a doubt fucked up and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He may have been on drugs or may have been scared to death that a "Jaguar" was going to eat him. I hope we find out from him and not the DK sewing circle of justice. This is "my boy" as we say it here in the States, my homie. We go way back and I'm heartbroken over all of this. I am walking around in a daze trying to not imagine how fucked up my friend is.

I don't understand the attack on the Danish judicial system, but I do sympathize with your pain. I truly do hope his innocence is vindicated. But I think you damage some of your own "presumption of innocence" arguments by repeatedly stressing your assumption that Jaguar is some kind of maniacal killing machine. Do you think his family and friends are too stupid to use the internet?

I'm sitting in my room in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA and have learned more about what's going on over there than all of your reporters combined.

If you want to help get more information about Jared out there, rest assured I'll be happy to post anything relevant you want to forward to me. But I think your assumption that you have more knowledge about this case than Danish reporters who are on the scene strikes me as the kind of arrogant Americocentrism that you seem to despise. I could probably find a way to put you in touch with a Danish journalist if you'd like me to try. Would you?

How is this ? I hope it's not the Hash.

Me too.

I am an award winning independent Film and Video producer. I have several Documentaries on the market. Also I worked with Jared almost ten years helping him to produce several music videos for his label.

I'm an award-winning independent theatre producer and have a book on the market. That's irrelevant. Your relationship with Jared is relevant.

* * *

Look, from the point of view of someone who cares about Jared, I'm never going to be pro-Jared enough. From the point of view of the taxi-driver's family, I'm never going to be anti-Jared enough. My goal isn't to be pro- or anti-Jared anyway. My goal is to... wait, never mind, there's the problem: I don't have a goal.

I do hope that justice is done. But I have no dog in this fight, and there's nothing I can say or do to make that sound less callous than it is. What more can you ask of me, though, then that I hope the truth comes out? You certainly can't blame me for the things that are being reported in the Danish press. (Actually you can, if it makes you feel better, but it won't accomplish anything.)

* * *

The translation of the article in the previous post now has to be put off because I had to write all this crap. And I really did have to write it, because I'm tired of getting beat up on by Jared's friends and family for offenses I don't believe I've committed.

Your irony antenna quivering, or what?

Ove Dahl is closing in on his prey, according to Berlingske Tidende. He believes Jaguar is still in Copenhagen and that he'll be driven or taken into police custody soon:

DK: Så jeg tror, at det kun er et spørgsmål om forholdsvis kort tid, inden han bliver anholdt...

EN: So I think that it's only a question of a relatively short time before he's arrested...

Full translation of the article (which I've only scanned for the moment) to follow...

Here's the full, translated text of the article discussed in the preceding post.

The Hunt for the Jaguar

by Elisabeth Arnsdorg Haslund

Some will doubtless call the scene absurd:

While the 27-year-old Sudanese national Ahmed Numan Isaac Rahma, known as "Jaguar," is sitting at the trendy cafe "The Coffee Salon" by the lakes in Copenhagen, a massive criminal investigation is underway just a couple of kilometers away in the apartment on Adelgade where he [had] lived for several months.

The police had first realized that "Jaguar" was precisely the man they sought in relation to the murder and dismemberment of taxi-driver Torben Vagn Knudsen five days earlier.

But when the police arrived at the coffe-bar, Jaguar had disappeared completely. And no one has seen him since.

According to homicide boss Ove Dahl from the Copenhagen Police, the police arrived just ten minutes too late. But how could that happen?

The answer is, according to the homicide boss, that one of Jaguar's acquaintances had enough time to warn the Sudaner that the police had discovered his apartment.

"He realizes we're finding the scene of the crime, and I couldn't have done it any differently. When we find a crime scene, we have to close it off. I couldn't keep it a secret. But it's damned unfortunate, because we were so close, and now we're using tons of energy and resources to search for him," says Ove Dahl.

Head Start for the Killers

It's now been two weeks since the dismembered body of the 41-year-old taxi-driver was found in inner Copenhagen. Two weeks since Denmark woke up to one of the most macabre murders in recent times.

But many claim today that the police have been a little behind the killers from the start. Just as the police according to the homicide boss came ten minutes too late for the arrest of the suspect Jaguar, it was a random dog-walker who found the rest of the dismembered body, despite the fact that they lay just a few hundred meters from Klerkegade in Copenhagen, where the legs and arm had been found 24-hours earlier.

"In hindsight it's certainly damned unfortunate, but it couldn't have been done any differently. We couldn't very well search all of Copenagen. We framed off a likely area - it was appropriately large, and we had four dogs to a massive search all Saturday. But it was in the wrong direction. That's a shame, and I can just as well say that we thought the body lay in a back-yard in the neighboring blocks. As soon as it was a weekday, even more would be set on the job, and so the area would be uncovered," explains homicide boss Ove Dahl.

When the police succeeded in identifying the deceased, the killers had had a head start of several days. "Jaguar" had slipped away under their noses, and after a few days of searching for the two lead suspects the pulice had to go to the public for help. One suspect has now turned himself in. But the police still have no leads on Jaguar.

Behind on Points

The question is: did the Easter holiday prevent a sufficient number of officers being assigned to the case?

"Of course I've got the opportunity to call in the strength I need. But we're talking about resource management and job priority, and at that time we simply didn't know enough about what we had to do. The body parts could in principle just have been thrown out from a car that had driven in from Roskilde," says Ove Dahl.

After the macabre discovery of the head and body, the police took the unusual step of publicizing the picture of the deceased instead of sketches. The day after - and on the basis of hundreds of tips - he was identified.

"Since we didn't have his fingerprints in our system, there was no other way. The case had to be cleared up, and I couldn't proceed without knowing who the deceased was."

It was already three days since the killing had taken place. Didn't the suspects have a head start?

"Yeah. In every homicide with unknown suspects, the first few days are damned important. So already by Monday we were behind on points, you could say. The suspects would have been able to cover a lot of their tracks," concedes the homicide boss.

Throught the entire case, the police have at no time been ahead of the suspects. According to Ove Dahl, the police knew the identities of the two main suspects Wednesday the 30th - almost a week afer the crime - but it was meanwhile two more days before they got the court's approval to arrest the two men, who were then automatically sought within and without the country. But while Jaguar's name had been thrown out to the media that same day, it was still two more days before the public heard the name of the suspecte American [Jared Heller].

"In all sincerity we then of course believed that we were in position to find them and take them to prison, so it hadn't been necessary to go public with their names. But we'd used so many hours and resources Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning, and again there's the pressure of time," says the homicide boss.

The publicization of the names, and the many tips that [were fulgt i kølvandet?], had not yet led them to Jaguar. On Thursday the 34-year-old American turned himself in - he called the police and asked to be picked up on Amagerbrogade in Copenhagen.

Why didn't you catch him, when he was in Copenhagen? Was it just unlucky?

"It really was, but there are also half a million people living in Copenhagen county. We still have no idea where he was. He could have been hidden away at the home of some people whose relationship we didn't know anything about. The same applies to Jaguar."

You've been looking for him for a week and a half. Is it now to a higher degree about pressuring his acquaintances to go to the police, because you've pursued all the other connections you're aware of?

"The principle is that we annoy as many people as possible. The people we've visited two or three times, we come to them another six or seven times. Then maybe at last some get irritated enough at having the police come by that they do something and draw Jaguar out."

But do you believe that you'll catch him by applying public pressure, or is it still possible you'll find him yourself?

"Both. I've got no doubt that the pressure we put on the American got him to accept the consequences, or got other people to ask him to. People get tired of having a man stay with them, and that'll also be the case wit Jaguar. It's only a question of time. It could well be that we'll be having this discussion again in two months, if we still haven't found him, but even then it'll still be a question of time," predicts the homicide boss.

The police are in possession of Jaguar's passport, but won't rule out the possibility that the 27-year-old Sudaner has left the country.

I apologize for any typos or clunkiness... I had time to translate the piece while Molli mucked around on the floor this morning, but now I need to get down to work and don't have time to edit for errors.

What's interesting to me is what this article actually means in the context of the ongoing investigation itself. Whenever cops come out and talk about a case while a suspect is still a large, you've got to assume that most or all of what's being said is being crafted for the suspect's consumption. Ove Dahl could be talking out his ass, throwing out a bunch of misinformation to catch Jaguar off guard. Maybe Jared really has been talking, but they want Jaguar to think he's been silent. (Or maybe Jared just didn't want to say anything until he got to meet with American lawyers.)

And why don't the Danish media know that Jared used to be known as Kenny? And why did he change his name—was that a hip-hop thing? Or what?

Interesting article in today's Berlingske Tidende: "Jagten på Jaguaren" (The Hunt for the Jaguar). Here are the opening paragraphs:

DK: Sceneriet vil nogle uden tvivl kalde absurd:

Mens den 27-årige sudaneser Ahmed Numan Isaac Rahma, kaldet »Jaguar«, sidder på den trendy café »Kaffesalonen« ved søerne i København, er en storstilet kriminalundersøgelse i gang kun et par kilometer derfra i den lejlighed i Adelgade, hvor han boet [sic*] i flere måneder.

EN: Some will doubtless call the scene absurd:

While the 27-year-old Sudanese national Ahmed Numan Isaac Rahma, known as "Jaguar," is sitting at the trendy cafe "The Coffee Salon" by the lakes in Copenhagen, a massive criminal investigation is underway just a couple of kilometers away in the apartment on Adelgade where he [had] lived for several months.

By the time police identified Jaguar as a suspect and got to the cafe, Jaguar was gone.

Ove Dahl explains a lot of his investigation's tactics in the article. It's long, and the hour is late (for our infant-inhabited household), but it includes a solid timeline of the whole case and a lot of nice quotes from Inspector Dahl. I may come back to it tomorrow and translate some excerpts, if I have time.

(I'm not anticipating a lot of free time.)

* Any Danes want to explain why that's neither har (el. havde) boet or just plain boede?