121–130 of 144 posts
Norway has not had any real "terrorist attacks" in the way the UK and Other european contries have - RAF/bader minhoff, ETA and the PIRA.
For exmple in the UK the Hungerford gun attacks and the IRA and laterly the PIRA campaigns are quite diferent.
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Its not clear to me how your last comment is related to the rest of your post.
I think it's an important point in discussions relating to these types of events. --Why are people in the US so hesitant to label this sort of event as being the act of a terrorist unless the perpetrator(s) are Muslim?
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London had to bring in the army largely because the private firm that had the contract to provide event security completely failed to hire enough security guards, and this became apparent far too late for London police to raise the necessary staff themselves. There were probably ways to avoid the army, but would have cost much more.
Would I be wrong in assuming that perhaps trained military personnel may be easier to deal with and more level headed than some plastic policeman with a weekend certificate in security and law enforcement? Just putting it out there. It could be better than the alternative.
Budget half as much to give the service personnel nice bonuses.
Sorted.
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It does seem to be the case in much of the media reporting, that with white supremacist terrorists, the loner aspect is generally played up, where as with those of a somewhat darker hue, grand conspiracy and existential threat is more on the agenda.
Which I acknowledged. There are no suburbs, in Scandinavia at least, filled with young rightwing extremists getting radicalized.
Also the political system is based on pluralism so there is a built in conservatism in the system that will cause changes to take time. However, changes will come and this is a big eye-opener for many people.
When the bomb exploded I was sitting on work around 30m away. I remember the day well, it was very quiet because it was in the middle of the summer vacation and we were only 3 people working in the "Web Department" of the central government, which usually have 26 people on work.
I was working on testing the software behind https://go.usa.gov/ which is based on Drupal and I was struggling with it, working late. Short story, I suddenly was on the floor 2m away from my desk and when I looked around I was shocked to see that all my colleagues offices was blown in with papers, desk and computers laying all around. Luckily my office was facing the backside and the blast threw me away from the blown in window and I was fine again after some weeks.
Anyway, one year has past and these are now only memories.
I have visited the State Departement in Washington and seen the security messures in place there. It's really not comperable to Norway in any way, but Norway is living in the same world and I hope we can keep things as open as possible. Maybe in the future I can someday be as trusting again as I were when I was hacking Drupal back on the 22. July 2011.
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equa...
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London had to bring in the army largely because the private firm that had the contract to provide event security completely failed to hire enough security guards, and this became apparent far too late for London police to raise the necessary staff themselves. There were probably ways to avoid the army, but would have cost much more.
Would I be wrong in assuming that perhaps trained military personnel may be easier to deal with and more level headed than some plastic policeman with a weekend certificate in security and law enforcement? Just putting it out there. It could be better than the alternative.
As far as I know they haven't used military personnel after that...
I don't think any state could sit by and do nothing institutionally after such a terrible event. The problem in Norway is that whilst there is a self-congratulatory air about their response to Brevik - "love and democracy", they do not seem to want to engage in substantive debate about the planned changes to their security apparatus. To be honest they trust their government to do the right thing, even if that means extremely illiberal changes to the legal right of the person and the criminal system. Whether that trust is misplaced or not, and remember this is a highly consensual society, the Janteloven that Brevik has revealed will be controlled now via new laws - including new laws on using the Internet and making comments (Brevik was a big user of the internet and left comments on Norwegian websites).
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Which I acknowledged. There are no suburbs, in Scandinavia at least, filled with young rightwing extremists getting radicalized.
Really? Cause there are such suburbs all over Europe and I'm pretty sure our local neo-nazi rally also draws buses from Scandinavia.
The Norwegians, for good reason, doesn't expect repeated attempts by right wing extremists every year in the future. In Scandinavia, lately we can look forward to such terrorism attempts every year from the islamists...
Edit: morsch, I was not talking about Germany! But ok, a simple point. East Germany was a dictatorship; intolerance and conspiracy theories grows in those. As I understand, it was much worse to e.g. have the wrong skin color there 20 years ago.
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Really? Cause there are such suburbs all over Europe and I'm pretty sure our local neo-nazi rally also draws buses from Scandinavia.
Sigh, you can find neonazis in Israel(!), that doesn't imply those idiots are numerous. (The left wing idiots (AFA et al) seems to be more numerous.) The Norwegians, for good reason, doesn't expect repeated attempts by right wing extremists every year in the future. In Scandinavia, lately we can look forward to such terrorism attempts every year from the islamists... Edit: morsch, I was not talking about Germany! But…
And this is in a country where right-wing extremist and populist parties rarely get more than a few percent in elections, unlike seemingly half of Europe. For instance, what's going on in Hungary is just disturbing, and things could go crazy all over Europe if/when the economic situation takes a sudden turn down.
(Edit: Added a few sentences regarding the current case of domestic right-wing terrorism in Germany.)
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground
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It does seem to be the case in much of the media reporting, that with white supremacist terrorists, the loner aspect is generally played up, where as with those of a somewhat darker hue, grand conspiracy and existential threat is more on the agenda.
Which I acknowledged. There are no suburbs, in Scandinavia at least, filled with young rightwing extremists getting radicalized.
[edit] Also, as a mate of mine pointed out, they can't be real vikings anyway, as then they would be from York or Iceland or somewhere, rather than being descended from the people who were left at home to look after the sheep.