Norway’s Premier Vows to Keep an Open Society | Hacker News Reader

Norway’s Premier Vows to Keep an Open Society

nytimes.com

144 pointsrberger61 comments

Interesting bit that I worked out the other day that might be non-obvious for those not familiar with the demographics of Norway:

The 76 people that were killed in the attacks is a larger percentage of the country than the 4000 killed in the US on September 11th. So, despite the absolute numbers being far smaller, presumably the psychological impact is of a similar magnitude.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2876+%2F+%28population...

It's hard to compare the events and the psychological impact, but keep in mind that most of the victims are children, came from all over the country and knew the PM and rest of the parliament, especially the Labour party.

As far as I know, September 11 was an attack that killed people who worked in office and affected people who lived in or near New York the most, and did not hurt Bush administration like the Oslo-attack did.

I would suspect that may make it worse to bear for the Norwegian people, but as stated, it's hard to compare.

The September 11 attacks also struck the Pentagon in Washington, DC, which would have the same effect on members of the American administration.

Did anyone die in those attacks? Didn't the plane hit a segment of the Pentagon which was under construction and unoccupied?

Yes, 125 people died at the Pentagon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Casualties

Ah I see, that area of the Pentagon was under renovation but not entirely unoccupied at the time of the attacks. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon#September_11_attac...).

There is a memorial for those who died on the Pentagon's western boundary http://www.whs.mil/memorial/

Another fact to contrast the magnitude is the fact than in 2009 there was a total of 31 homicides in Norway. This attack produced more than two years of homicide victims.

http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/minifakta_en/en/main_0...

Wow. That's incredible. In Montana we have just shy of 1 million people. According to the stats there were 28 murders in 2009. Montana is a very safe state and that's still 5 times Norway's murder rate.

why try to quantify the unquantifiable?

Human nature.

Give the man a prize. I wish there were a Nobel Prize for Common Sense. Very glad to see that Norway is not following the general (and useless) trend of "more surveillance and fewer civil liberties" after things go boom.

It's actually not common sense, and that's what is special about it. The common-sense reaction to terrorism is to be terrorized by it, and to behave accordingly. It is human nature. We are emotional creatures, and we revert to "fight or flight" instincts when violated.

It takes serious resolve and uncommon grace to rise above the gut reaction, keep calm, and remain focused on what really matters.

No, that is common sense. The dictionary definition[1]:

    Good sense and sound judgment in practical matters

[1]http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=common+sense&tbs=dfn:...

> The common-sense reaction to terrorism is to be terrorized by it

I think it's a learned reaction. Car accidents pose a greater threat than any terrorists, we're not terrified of cars are we? The threat has been played up by our fear mongering media, an extension of our military.

Depends on your definition of terrorism. Here's mine: an act of terrorism is an attack designed to elicit a reaction massively disproportionate to the damage directly caused, typically perpetrated by a non-state actor. This is why terrorists target planes, because plane crashes generate tremendous news coverage.

By contrast, if a person found an unnoticeable way to sabotage all cars in a city, making them slightly more likely to crash, and didn't seek credit, this would not be terrorism even if the act killed very many people.

You might say that our tolerance for the danger of driving is logically inconsistent with our expectations of perfect air travel safety. Is that irrationality a learned or innate one? Probably a mix, but certainly at least partially innate, similar to the human tendencies to value immediate rewards much higher than future rewards, or the loss aversion bias.

> Here's mine: an act of terrorism is an attack designed to elicit a reaction massively disproportionate to the damage directly caused

I see where you're coming from, but I feel it's too subjective. The massively disproportionate action is not under the control of the terrorizer, but rather the publicist. The media really controls who we consider to be "terrorists", rather than any empirical metric.

If we have counter-terrorist groups who just go after terrorists, shouldn't we define who terrorists are? We start using words like "cyber-terrorists", and now we're all included. I just find no value in the semantic classification of boogie men except for expansion of our police state.

I think a better comparison is with airplanes. You don't have a any real chance of being killed in an airplane, but if you were to be in a plane crash it would be horrifying and violent and you would die.

A pretty common reason for buying SUVs is because they apparently feel safer, so I think it is possible to argue that some people are indeed terrified of cars.

Don't be ridiculous. The "common sense" response is always something along the lines of "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". It takes real sense to see how shortsighted "common sense" usually is.

I'm just wondering if someone can invite him to the US on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to reiterate that message in a public forum. Nobody here is going to do it.

Hope you're right.. but only time will tell

I'd also like to point out that on Monday, an estimated 200,000 people turned out in Oslo for what was originally planned to be a "rose parade". The parade portion was canceled at the request of the police due to the huge number of people who turned out. --200,000 is more than 1/3 of the population in Oslo. Other cities also saw huge turnouts.

I am very amazed, but in many ways not surprised, at just how different the reaction has been in Norway as compared to 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK.

You can read more about it here: http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/07/26/extraordinary-show-of...

I've been taking pictures over the last week, including at Monday's events: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tallanvor/sets/7215762713080899...

> I am very amazed, but in many ways not surprised, at just how different the reaction has been in Norway as compared to 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK.

I'm sorry, what? Given the context of your statement, this sounds awfully like a criticism. I remember quite a heart warming show of solidarity in the US after 9/11 and indeed an amazing show of solidarity with the US by the whole world after 9/11. I remember being immensely touched. It's irritating to have people using Norway's tragedy to take pot shots at the US. I don't want to get into a debate about whether there's good reason for the US and Norway to respond differently to their respective attacks--now is not the time--but it's hard to avoid when confronted with repeated digs.

Oh, I'll be quite clear: I'm criticizing the way the US reacted to 9/11. And although I don't think it should matter, I'm an American citizen, and didn't move overseas until 2006.

So yes, having been in both the US and Norway during their respective disasters, I have absolutely no problem in stating that, so far at least, Norway has handled this act of terrorism - on all levels - political and otherwise - much better, and with much more solidarity, than the US did after 9/11.

"Given the context of your statement, this sounds awfully like a criticism. I remember quite a heart warming show of solidarity in the US after 9/11 and indeed an amazing show of solidarity with the US by the whole world after 9/11."

Sidenote: I was annoyed by how Bush didn't include Canada in the list of countries he thanked after we had down medical supplies, medical practitioners, re-directed flights and helped stranded passengers... It took three years before he finally thanked the country.

Here's the original: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/world/europe/28norway.html... - Boing Boing requotes the third paragraph.

I was just about to post that myself. Good call.

A more apt comparison would be to the U.S. reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing.

I came to say exactly the same thing. The U.S. reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing was pretty muted, and I'm not surprised at the Norwegian reaction.

People are acting all impressed with the PM for saying this, but this was the work of one crazy man, not an organization dedicated to destroying you. No one would let one crazy person influence your county, so I'm not surprised at the PM's reaction.

When you face an enemy group dedicated to destroying you things are far different - it makes you worried there will be more.

No one thinks one crazy person who was caught will do anything else.

But Jens said the same thing before the attacker had been identified, and before it was clear that it was one person (and not an organization or an enemy group.)

The PM actually said on the first press conference, on the night of the attacks, that the response will be more openness and more democracy.

This was before the identity of the attacker was known and everyone was still suggesting muslim extremists.

This.

After 9/11 there were enormous structural issues with the world order that made it easier for terrorist groups to proliferate. That's why the Treasury Secretary was in all the initial planning meetings- there were two prongs to our response, one financial, one military.

The military one was an unmitigated clusterfuck.

The financial one was a rousing success. We forced the world to tighten financial controls, largely ended anonymous banking, seized huge quantities of terrorist funds, and made it really, really hard for the people trying to kill us to get money and to move money around.

There was a financial War on Terror, and we won it. Just because the military side went so badly doesn't meant there wasn't a real threat.

There was tons of collateral damage in that war. It's a huge pain to transfer funds overseas and is a major impediment to opening up offices in other countries. Many banks won't even deal with the hassle if you're an American with a small company or below a certain net worth.

I guess some of the people doing anonymous banking or with offshore funds were indeed terrorists. But most of the "financial war on terror" is about terrorizing payment processors and banks, not actual terrorists.

I'm very interested in more info on the financial War on Terror - is there are good articles or books you can recommend?

Bob Woodward's are actually very good- he wrote a whole set on the Bush Presidency, from 9/11 through the Surge.

That's true, but it should be added that Norway was already a much more open society than the US. There are obviously reasons for this that could be discussed ad nauseum.

Remember, the Norwegian police are not carrying weapons (unless they get permission), the Oslo police did not have a helicopter they could use, politicians were only recently somewhat given security considerations.

So all in all, given that this system will not change much in response to this is actually quite remarkable.

It should also be noted that this is not being treated as the work of a lone madman. The focus is now directed at right-wing extremist groups internationally.

Part of that reaction: Congress limited habeus corpus petitions, extended the time a suspect could be detained without charge, and expanded what electronic communications or data could be retrieved without a wiretap order with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

Only if it had happened after 2001. Hard to imagine any American politician having the balls to say that today.

Or, indeed, to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

Now if only that freedom was as important online as offline. http://theforeigner.no/pages/news/updated-parliament-passes-...

That's how it's done, US.

I disagree with the foreign policy and ridiculous TSA procedures post 9/11.

That said, the more appropriate comparison is OKC bombing, since both incidents involved domestic terrorism.

>That said, the more appropriate comparison is OKC bombing, since both incidents involved domestic terrorism.

I'm not sure it is the most appropriate comparison.

As pointed out in comments above:

* The percentage of people killed in the Norway attacks was larger than the percentage killed in 9/11 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2816569)

* The homicide rate in Norway is astronomically low; these attacks accounted for two years worth of homicides (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2816911)

Arguably, our post-9/11 actions occurred as a response to 9/11. Thus, if we are discussing Norway's response, we should compare to a terrorist attack on the same relative scale; and, as above, it looks like 9/11 may be a good benchmark after all.

For me, it's less about the numbers and more about who did it and the complexity.

The coordination involved in hijacking multiple planes.

The symbolic effect of destroying and damaging icons.

The foreign organization and leader who has a history against the U.S due to the country's involvement in the Middle East.

The reason why OKC makes more sense is because the damage was caused from within by their own citizens, which potentially has a different scope as to what should be done next.

Ouch.

But yes.

They (Norway) probably learned from their (the U.S.) mistakes.

Your implication that Norway learnt how to treat its civilians decently only when the United States did the opposite is offensive and conceitful.

I don't think that's what he's implying.

I think he's saying that any Norwegian politician who would want to burden their population with laws styled after the TSA and US Patriot Act would have a hard time because the US is a stunning example of how these laws do not work.

So absent strong emotional argument, logically Norway should try to find different solutions.

Yes. This is what I meant. Thanks. Sorry if it sounded offensive.

Would be even more interesting to know when the US will be learning from their own mistakes

It's a nice sentiment, but it's the same sentiment expressed any number of times after terrorist attacks in the US, UK, and Spain over the last decade. The point isn't to just say "we aren't going to let you take away our tolerant way of life," the point is to actually not let enhanced security measures do that.

I hope Norway can live up the that promise. We sure didn't back home.

I bet that this is just lip service, and that the on-the-ground reality will be that, paradoxically, Muslims in Norway will be under more pressure to prove that they are not terrorists. This is how psychological sublimation works : as long as the Norwegians stick to Christianity (and blue eye + blonde hair) as part of their identity, they will be unable to accept that an avowed Christian did what the "other religion" was supposed to be hated for, and the psychological dissonance has to be released elsewhere. This is what religion does to you.

Norway is a very secular society. While majority of people do belong to the state church, they do not practice religion regurlarly. In 2005 poll only 32% said that they believe in existence of God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Norway

Most norwegians are not religious. The stats are skewed in direction of Christianity because everyone is a member of the government church per default. That doesnt mean they go to church, nor does it mean they are religious at all. Christianity has had a great cultural impact, true, but I woudn't say that it is part of a "norwegian identity" today, at least not a very prominent one.

How moslems, which several of the victims were, could be stigmatized much by this is beyond me. I would rather say that FrP and the extreme right will take a blow...

yes, if he decided to increase measures, the life of blonde blue eyes majority would be harder

Go ahead and upvote this mindless propaganda. But I really expected more from you.

http://www.infowars.com/oslo-police-conducted-bombing-exerci...

Why is it mindless propaganda? And is that article's point (and I assume your point) that 9/11, the london bombings and the Oslo bombings were conducted by government agencies?

In the wake of the bombing and shooting spree in Norway last week, some nations in Europe are now calling for increased Internet surveillance as a possible preventive measure.

Its mindless propaganda because they've already declared they are going to increase surveillance, both Internet monitoring and physical cameras.

Some parts of what you are saying is partially true, but first of all, it's yet to be implemented, and like in other European countries, it has been blocked by high court, or similar.

But - linking to absolute bullshit sources that feed upon this idea that everything bad that happens in this world is a covert government operation will get you down voted, you clearly have a delusional viewpoint on the world.

I had a similar argument with some other. And I ended up concluding that they didn't agree with the official statement because it was too boring. They think they are not heard because they are being silenced, but it's actually just because everyone thing they are lunatics.

focuses his white gamma rays on everyone, so they agree with him

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