51–60 of 144 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot to add, "Wake up sheeple!"
We've been yelling at the sheeple long enough to know it's ineffective. What I want to know is what would it take to wake them?
My immediate thought is, how do i get myself on that gravy train :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot to add, "Wake up sheeple!"
We've been yelling at the sheeple long enough to know it's ineffective. What I want to know is what would it take to wake them?
[1] Journalism, wikipedia articles, books, adult education classes, when good and proper are all education.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've been yelling at the sheeple long enough to know it's ineffective. What I want to know is what would it take to wake them?
Suffering will eventually wake them up, but by then the opportunities to do something about it will be considerably less.
One wonders the level of suffering people actually endure by having to purchase new deodorant at the duty free.
Quite possibly the worst comparison I've ever seen. You're taking a country that not only has an incredibly low crime rate (they had 5 homicides in the entire country in 2009) and only has a population around 5 million. By comparison, Chicago has close to 3 million people just in the city. To try and compare our reaction to terrorism and how the Norwegians reacted to their recent mass killing is completely absurd.
Second, I'm sorry, but as an American who currently lives in Oslo (and was at work 2 blocks from where the bomb exploded last year), the comparison to how America has reacted to terrorism compared to how Norway reacted to this event is entirely fair.
Immediately after the bombing, nobody knew who was responsible, but many people immediately started theorizing that it must have been Muslim extremists (Norway is active in the international community, and not everyone is happy with them based on their attempts to help with negotiations between Israel/Palestine, opposing forces in Sri Lanka, and not to mention their ongoing attempts to figure out what to do with Mullah Krekar).
After the attacks, the government could very easily have made changes to the law and done so very quickly (look at how the U.S. was able to pass the horrible Patriot Act in less than a month after 9/11). Instead they had a very reasoned response. --The army was deployed to several locations around Oslo for two days (to help keep people out of areas with heavy damage after the bomb, around their parliament, palace, and a few other locations), and then they were gone. Very few new laws have been introduced - the only big one is the one to allow them to hold Breivik in prison even if he is declared insane, although they're now considering laws to allow more internet monitoring, which I hope will not pass.
In comparison, the U.S. reaction to 9/11 (which resulted in fewer deaths and injuries per capita than in Norway) include the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and military tribunals where defendants and their legal counsel aren't even allowed to see the evidence against them.
I had a lot of friends and relatives asking me if I wanted to move back to the States after the attack, and I've always been able to point to the reasonable response Norway had to a horrific attack vs how the U.S. responded and easily say no.
There have been no changes to the law to increase the powers of the police and security services, terrorism legislation remains the same and there have been no special provisions made for the trial of suspected terrorists. A white lie, I'm afraid. Lex Breivik [1] has changed the laws so that regional security departments have a lot more power, in fact more power than what prisons have as of today. [1]: http://www.goo…
The "regional security departments" the article refers to are high-security psychiatric wards. The problem was that if the court declares Breivik insane, Norway couldn't (legally) put him in a high-security criminal prison, and there was no equivalent for psychiatric cases. Now there is. It is a change, and clearly in response to this case, but the scope of the change is limited.
That's wrong - they can do that without Lex Breivik. The issue is when he's declared healthy, what would then happen? It's legal to detain him if it can be proved that he constitutes a danger to society. However, if he is not considered a danger to the society, he will be able to walk freely. With Lex Breivik, they will be allowed to detain him as long the society is a danger to the person.
Think about that for a moment. With Lex Breivik, you can be isolated even if you've not done anything illegal (or have finished serving your imprisonment) or is considered healthy, because some people in the society want to do you harm.
a. It was domestic terrorism. Compare it to American reaction to domestic terrorism before 9/11 and we may start to have some actual merit in the comparison. There was no "War on terror" on the same scale after the Oklahoma City bombing (1995). b. There's a very different social reaction to domestic terrorism ("there's something rotten in us, we can fix this from the inside") and terrorism from the outside ("we're be…
What about the London tube/bus suicide bombings: those were domestic terrorism and elicited a distinctly different response than we're seeing in Norway now. Or is it only domestic terrorism when the perpetrators are white one wonders!
Of course the race (and religion) plays a huge role in the emotional reaction to violence. Uncomparatively more so than the technical "domestic/external" categorization based on residence, citizenship and whatnot. Race and religion are the top factors in eliciting the "us vs them" reaction.
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And when the next crazy guy brings in gallons of gas and lights people on fire? Edit: I don't particularly like guns, but non-representative, singular incidents to change policy seems like a very poor way to start debates or come to proper conclusions.
And at what point do such things become a pattern? Unfortunately, mass shootings happen in the US at a rate of roughly one per year.
Remember that heat wave/power outage combination we had on the east cost (USA); at least 46 fatalities [1]
[1]http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/06/12597271-dozens...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And when the next crazy guy brings in gallons of gas and lights people on fire? Edit: I don't particularly like guns, but non-representative, singular incidents to change policy seems like a very poor way to start debates or come to proper conclusions.
And at what point do such things become a pattern? Unfortunately, mass shootings happen in the US at a rate of roughly one per year.
I personally believe that US citizens are unable to understand how dumb their attitude to weapons is, but
+ mass shootings wouldn't be much impacted by changes in the policy
+ mass shooting don't seem to have a strong correlation with firearm policy
Example of what's happening in San Francisco today: Obama is in town, they shut down four city blocks. Example of when I was last in Bulgaria: Bulgarian president was in town, he danced Horo (traditional Bulgarian dance) with the people and made toasts.
In fairness, by population Bulgaria is closest to Virginia and I'm sure you could find the Governor of Virginia dancing at some state fair at some point.
Quite possibly the worst comparison I've ever seen. You're taking a country that not only has an incredibly low crime rate (they had 5 homicides in the entire country in 2009) and only has a population around 5 million. By comparison, Chicago has close to 3 million people just in the city. To try and compare our reaction to terrorism and how the Norwegians reacted to their recent mass killing is completely absurd.
Agreed. (and of course you were downvoted here). People love to hold Scandanavia up as an example as how the rest of the world "could be." However, I think that is such a naive point of view, and one that needs changing. Their populations are too small and lack diversity to make a realistic comparison to the USA or even their larger European neighbors. I usually like Mr. Schriener's work, but this post is a little of…