How the Norwegians Reacted to Terrorism
schneier.com
schneier.com
I've had friends consider me crazy for complaining - way after the time, I hasten to add - that I'd had a small deodorant can taken off me in airport security, which I'd then had to purchase in the duty free shop.
My wife's now tired of me complaining - again, after suffering through it in silent, stony-faced contemplation - that in any other context, I've just suffered sexual assault. I won't apologise for it; I find it extremely distressing to have my dick groped by a stranger. All because a machine went "beep" and one two many green bars lit up.
And then you look at the London olympics; where the army will be frisking people who've dared to pay money to watch events. (NB: the army presence was guaranteed regardless of G4S's cockup). The army! And in this instance, it's not like the UK hasn't decades of experience of dealing with terrorism from the IRA.
How well does all this work? Who knows, nobody's telling. I'd argue if there was anyone caught or something prevented by one of these systems, the government concerned would be singing from the rooftops. But no - it's "a deterrent." Gah.
Let's not assume the people implementing these measures are complete morons. There's power to be gained and money to be made from a submissive, unquestioning people.
One wonders the level of suffering people actually endure by having to purchase new deodorant at the duty free.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/census-shows-1-2-people-103940...
My immediate thought is, how do i get myself on that gravy train :-)
[1] Journalism, wikipedia articles, books, adult education classes, when good and proper are all education.
No one believes your deodorant would take down a plane. It's just that no one wants to pay to back that belief up.
I do find terrifying what's happening in UK lately, seemingly all of the sudden from those of us not living there, like that new law proposal to monitor everyone's private communications. Not too long ago that kind of proposal would've been seen as insane. Now it seems a lot of politicians are taking it seriously, as if history before the past 20 years doesn't even exist, and we've all started from scratch 20 years ago. They now think monitoring everyone is a "necessary" thing to prevent the "evils" of the world.
Also, in US, isn't it strange how they don't talk about terrorists "hating us for our freedoms" anymore? Is it because they've realized what a stupid statement that was to begin with, or because they know they're taking them away one by now one, and it's best not to mention this dirty word "freedom" anymore?
I'm sure the Aurora guy had his "reasons", just like Breivik. It all just relates to how we rationalise a position we don't understand.
I'd call neither of them a madman or terrorist.
To Add: I seem to recall there were media sources calling Breivik a madman (I helped keep the Wikipedia article under control at the time it happened and saw a lot of material go past). But they were less widespread because we could hang him off a political boom; right wing extremism.
But at the end of the day that was just Breivik rationalising what he did, to himself.
Same thing about computer games that came up at the trial; he played FPS's for a year to make him insensitive to killing. And he made a big deal about hating what he did.
Which one part of the media turns into "COMPUTER GAMES INSPIRE KILLER".
The reality of course is that it was pure narcissism; he played the games to desensitise him because, in the movie plot where he is the star, the games desensitise him.
Breivik builds a persona where he is the centre figure. Everything relates to him in some way - and killing those people "hurts" because that is part of the story. He still did it.
Good reading for this is alone's "The Last Psychiatrist" blog. This one is about honor killings but it touches on a lot of the same points: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/nobody_will_understan...
Ultimately the Aurora killer will probably boil down to narcissism too. But the media needs a neat word to rationalise his actions; in this case madman. Because he is white and well educated - so they cannot comprehend any other explanation.
If he were exactly the same person, but of muslim descent he would have been a terrorist.
But, as you say, the term "madman" is an easy and emotive term used by the media, and also incorrect. They are irrational about one or more things, which led them to take irrational actions (however rational and clear their thinking seems to themselves).
> If he were exactly the same person, but of muslim descent he would have been a terrorist.
Yes, the media (and probably the authorities) would certainly have done that, but they would have been wrong (c.f. the Ft Hood massacre)
Just putting it out there. It could be better than the alternative.
Budget half as much to give the service personnel nice bonuses.
Sorted.
As far as I know they haven't used military personnel after that...
I just feel like my order of trust (for law enforcers) goes something like this:
1) Military personnel 2) Police 3) * 4) Private security
* In general I trust anything or anyone over private security.
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 being attacked, we need to protect ourselves from those people"). Sure, even in domestic terrorism there's a social mindset of differentiation (i.e. "us v.s. them perpetrators") but not to the same extent.
c. One year strikes me as too soon to assess anything and to pat on anyone's back.
d. One could argue the US can't afford what Norway can afford, whether it's because of size, number of enemies, etc. Yes, one could counter-argue those same American policies perpetuate some of these reasons (i.e. number of enemies), but please keep it mind when doing such a comparison.
Any Brit here caring to comment on British public perception of the tubes bombing? Would you say it's considered domestic terrorism in Britain? Please chime in.
EDIT: in any case, while this IS an interesting discussion (about the tubes), British reaction to terrorism does not reflect on the original comparison and points, so far anyway. Just want to mark different discussions and tangents as different.
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.
If Breivik was a convert to Islam, then the reaction would have been different:
He would have been taken seriously, not seen as a crazy "one hit wonder". Because of, well, the few right wing crazies in Europe the last few decades.
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.
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
[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.
As I wrote in another comment, you find neonazis in Israel, that doesn't mean they are numerous. Today in Scandinavia, the left wing idiots in organized groups seems more violent than ND etc. I might be wrong, you got a reference?
Edit: Otoh, the word "Viking" has been used for so many things it has lost all specific meaning long ago. :-)
I wrote that Europe has few right wing crazies in the last few decades. I meant Scandinavia, I have no real interest/clue where different types of extremists are numerous.
Hrm, sorry about that.
The difference seems to be the same as with car v plane crashes. Kill lots of people over time v many at once and society reacts very differently, even though the first kills more.
One year after 9/11 (ok, 14 months but the work was being publicly done within a year) - we had Homeland security, PATRIOT Act, a war, and noise about another war. Sales of duct tape went through the roof (along with plastic tarps, some sort of voodoo chem weapon protection scheme), new warrantless wire taps everywhere, the NSA box to read all internet traffic, and so on.
So yes, a year is plenty of time to compare responses in the first year.
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.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=no&...
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.
From an article on the opposition to the law[1] (my translation):
The Department of Health hasn't tried to hide that the
goal is a stricter set of laws which can be
used if Breivik is sentenced to compulsory mental
health care.
The department has long wanted a change of laws to
improve the security in institutions that hold highly
dangerous patients. This work was sped up after July 22.
The criticisms I've seen seem to center on that the new law makes it too simple to declare someone "dangerously insane".
Do you have a link supporting your interpretation?
[1] http://nrk.no/227/dag-for-dag/lovforslag-moter-kraftig-motbo...
[2] http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Lex-Breivik-splitter...
Take a look at http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/hod/dok/regpubl/prop/2011-2... - esp. § 4A-8, which states the new changes in the law.
After the bombing of Khobar Towers, the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of the USS Cole, and finally the acts of 9/11, it would seem that US anti-terrorism policies in place at that time were not particularly effective.
On the other hand, if we're just speaking of mass-murderers rather than terrorists, I don't think anyone has expressed an interest in increased police powers or surveillance, but rather implementing some rational gun laws.
Instead they'll find some way to circumscribe the rights of non gun-owners, that will be ineffective, but will play well in Republican states.
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.
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...
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
However...
>firearms killings _are_ a pattern, if I recall correctly they are something between 5 and 10 times more frequent in US than other first wold countries. I personally believe that US citizens are unable to understand how dumb their attitude to weapons is,
You can't compare crime rates without controlling for other differences. Most other first world countries are much more ethnically homogenous than the U.S.
And they don't suffer from the cultural problems caused by the fairly recent institutional persecution of an entire class of people.
It's not very PC to talk about, and I think that the high incidence of crime amongst black Americans is directly caused by the decades of persecution they suffered which causes them to occupy a lower socio-economic position on average than whites, not any inherent racial differences.
But whatever the reason, whites and blacks both have similar access to guns and similar gun ownership rates, yet if you only count white americans, you'll find a fairly similar gun crime rate to the rest of the first World, so clearly, easy access to guns isn't the problem.
The closest country I can think of to our situation is South Africa (Rights recently restored to an historical lower class. Though it's still not a great comparison because of their relatively lower GDP per capital, and different demographics). Their gun violence rate is about 5 times that of the US.
I was interested in the topic after I saw a DOJ chart that listed crime by race. I had to research myself to find anything really useful, and by research I just mean taking data from DOJ statistics.
The thing is, it's like we live in 2 separate countries, if you're white or asian, America is almost as safe as other first world countries. If you're Black or Hispanic it's much, much more dangerous.
But black Americans are about 8 times more likely to commit a violent crime, and about 6 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime.
I've seen some statistics that show at least a portion could be accounted for by controlling for the increased percentage of black single mothers.
Consider this data[0], in the context of Europe: UK[1] has likely more racial diversity than Denmark and Latvia, but firearm homicides/100k people is lower (0.1 vs 0.3 and 0.2, US has 3.0 ).
I imagine that "black poor/uneducated/mistreated people are responsible for most killings", is actually the same as saying "poor/uneducated/mistreated people are responsible for most killing", it just so happens that (at this point in time) in the US this poor are black, while in other countries the social segregation goes around different lines (e.g. gipsies in eastern europe).
Decades of persecution may or may not matter, but those also seem a minor issue, as most countries have had high criminality among poor/uneducated/mistreated people before (e.g. italian immigrants in US beginning of 1900, "wops") even without a history of repression.
[0] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.htm... I'm reading the 2010 or most recent column [1] data for england+wales, not northern ireland, not sure why not scotland
I'm not ascribing it to racial diversity. I'll elaborate a bit on exactly what I mean--I'm ascribing it to a particular cultural mix that is in part uniquely derived from the New World's history with slavery.
>n the US this poor are black, while in other countries the social segregation goes around different lines (e.g. gipsies in eastern europe).
That's not comparable, Gypsies do not make up anywhere near the percent of the population in Europe that black americans do in the US (also according to wikipedia we have have more Gypsies in the US than the vast majority of European countries).
>is actually the same as saying "poor/uneducated/mistreated people are responsible for most killing"
That's not correct. If it were that simple, once you adjusted for education and income, you would expect to find similar crime rates between blacks and whites, and nearly identical crime rates between blacks and other minorities. But that isn't the case, a poor uneducated black person is still many times more likely to commit a crime than any other poor uneducated race/ethnicity in the US.
Yes there have been plenty of cases of discrimination against minorities and increased criminality amongst minorities, but there are two factors here which seem to be fairly unique.
1. Descended from slaves. There is no other first world country where 13% of it's population is recently descended from slaves, forcibly moved there. In fact if you'll look at every other country in world that does have a large percentage of slave descendants, you'll find an incredibly high crime rate.
If you look at the top 20 countries by intentional homicide rate[0], you'll note that all but South Africa are in the New World, and have some recent(last 200 years) history of slavery.
2. No other first world country has had such a large single monolithic underclass for nearly its entire history. Underclasses come and go as immigrants assimilate. That hasn't been the case in the us with this one particular group.
In the end what I'm arguing is that you can't compare the U.S. to Europe, there are just too many differences to take into account. Take 2 separate groups in the US--blacks and whites--adjust for income--and you'll find that whites, even poor uneducated ones, have a similar homicide rate to other first world countries. Therefore gun ownership/access is not what causes our high homicide rate.
I would argue that if you banned guns tomorrow, and every law abiding citizen in the US decided to march down to the police station and turn in his gun, we would still have a murder rate much higher than nearly every country in Europe.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona... Note that the top 20 countries have far higher murder rates than the next 20
It is interesting to think about how much 2011 attacks affected us Norwegians. Living in Oslo, I know people who work in the government buildings that were hit, people who earlier years have been to the AUF camp at Utøya, and I've also personally been to Utøya at a Maths camp. My girlfriend were a only few blocks from the bomb when it went off.
The next six months, I'll be working in R6, one of the buildings in the executive government quarter where the bomb went off, but only suffered minor damages. I'll be walking past the bomb site. In fact, I was there earlier in the summer. Here's a photo I took: http://instagram.com/p/MK9aWrtM3z/
Norwegians are generally peaceful. We have a low crime rate and high employment rate. We do rank 11th on number of guns per capita by country[1], though, but the few people I know who have guns are active hunters. Norway usually tops the UNs list of best places to live. Norway has its share of problems, of course, but it usually pales in comparison to problems other places.
The 2011 attacks were just unbelievable, and I try not to think about them in detail because it's too emotional. Before the attacks, Norway was so very, very innocent and unspoiled. We've managed to retain some of our innocence, perhaps, and even one year after the attack, I feel that we're still trying to find out how to handle it.
I'm not entirely sure what my intention was with this post, but now that I've written it, I might as well post it. If you've read this far, I hope you got something out of it - perhaps new insight into the Norwegian psyche, if anything.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...
Changing laws that could negatively impact millions of people because of the statistically extremely small amount of people killed in mass shootings is just the kind of overreaction the article is talking about.
If you want to debate gun laws you have to weigh the rights of gun owners with the rights of people killed every year. Our policies shouldn't be based on statistically insignificant, but emotional charged tragedies.
Even the Obama administration has said it is against calling for more gun regulation because of this.
This man was apparently very smart and motivated, there was nothing we could have realistically done to prevent this. Look at Norway, they have stricter gun regulation than we do, yet they still had a mass shooting with a death toll that dwarfs anything we've seen.
Just saying: Despite the attack ad fueled mass hysteria about this, Obama hasn't done anything regarding US gun policy, in any direction.
He's already lost the 2nd amendment voters, from perception alone. He really needs to motivate his base and I think calling for tougher gun laws might help him there.
I disagree with him on most issues, but the fact that he seems not to be interested in using this for political gain deserves recognition.
I don't think it is wise to come to that conclusion so quickly. If his AR-15 hadn't jammed, this probably would have been the most deadly single-man massacre in history (he hit 70 people with a shotgun and pistols, and his AR-15 had a 100-round magazine), and I think that point merits some consideration. From what I understand of AR-15s, gun jams are somewhat common, but that isn't really a problem for adept users. It is too early to say exactly what was going on with this guy, but I get the impression that a growing insanity drove his actions more than rational planning; he probably would have been practiced if he had more of a plan as Brevick seemed to have.
It should be obvious that guns aren't going anywhere, but there is a clear distinction in policy between methods violence that affect a few people and those that affect a large number. It seems like Holmes' goal was closer to killing 100 people, and he came very close to doing so. And he obtained the means to do so without what you could even describe as a speed bump. If he had used a bomb instead, would there be an uproar over attempts to curb bomb making? I don't see why the use of a gun should make the case so easy to dismiss.
That doesn't really say much, at the range he was firing and for his skill level, a shotgun may have been the optimal weapon for "number of people hit."
>his AR-15 had a 100-round magazine
With training you can switch magazines fast enough that there isn't enough of a difference between a 100 round magazine and 3 standard 30 round magazines to matter. There is a reason you don't see the military using drum magazines. They have an inherently more complicated feed mechanism and are therefore more likely to fail. They are pretty much novelty only (range use).
>It should be obvious that guns aren't going anywhere, but there is a clear distinction in policy between methods violence that affect a few people and those that affect a large number.
But my argument is just that, it wasn't a large number. Even 100 people killed is barely a blip compared to the total number of gun deaths per year.
You need to look at the whole picture, not just a single emotional event. If 10 gangbangers each killed 3 extra people last night you wouldn't bat an eye. This is a completely emotional reaction.
>If he had used a bomb instead, would there be an uproar over attempts to curb bomb making?
Yes, if bombs were useful tools used by millions of Americans.
I'll ask you this, if a madman drives a hummer into a big crowd of people and manages to kill 13 of them would you be calling for more regulation on SUVs?
And he hit a lot of people, but the AR-15 would have led to a lot more people dead.
> With training you can switch magazines fast enough that there isn't enough of a difference between a 100 round magazine and 3 standard 30 round magazines to matter.
But he wasn't trained. He tried to get a gun range membership, but he couldn't hold himself together enough to actually get said membership. Is it not reasonable to ask if a feel hurdles wouldn't have stopped him from buying the guns in the first place?
> But my argument is just that, it wasn't a large number. Even 100 people killed is barely a blip compared to the total number of gun deaths per year. You need to look at the whole picture, not just a single emotional event. If 10 gangbangers each killed 3 extra people last night you wouldn't bat an eye. This is a completely emotional reaction.
First of all, I live in Chicago, and I see such reports about gangbangers and the random people who get caught up in their wars all the time, and it always bugs me. I went to see the movie last weekend too, and even if I knew I was at greater risk travelling to the theater at all, a tinge of fear still entered in. Why does it matter if the reaction is emotional? I consider my abhorrence of early death part of my humanity, and I'm hardly alone in that. I would rather see 100 fewer deaths a year from guns than 100 more.
> I'll ask you this, if a madman drives a hummer into a big crowd of people and manages to kill 13 of them would you be calling for more regulation on SUVs?
You need a revocable license that requires a few basic competency tests to acquire in the first place. On top of that, you are required to have insurance to drive as well. It doesn't stop everyone from driving who shouldn't, but it certainly helps. I would be thrilled if the same sort of requirements existed on guns across the country. It is also worth noting that cars are much, much more useful than guns, even in places like Alaska.
You are correct in saying that McVeigh's actions may not fit that definition, as he claimed that his motive was revenge for the government's actions on Waco and Ruby Ridge, rather than trying to force political change, but terrorism also refers to the state of fear that an act can cause, so you can still call him a terrorist.
The problem in the United States is that people are always willing to call Muslim extremists terrorists, but for some reason other individuals or groups that commit terrorist acts are simply labeled nuts, extremists, or the fringe element.
To try and compare our reaction to terrorism and how the Norwegians reacted to their recent mass killing is completely absurd.
Probably apocryphal, but it does draw attention to the role that cultural differences play in what sort of rules you can implement in organizing a society.
I usually like Mr. Schriener's work, but this post is a little off.
There is a lot to be learnt from other countries, and I am sure it's not always easy to say that there are countries that do things better than the United States, but people tend to make it sound as if it's all rainbows and ponies, as soon as you get off the plane in Northern Europe.
It's not like they don't have their own problems to wrestle with in areas where the United States does better.
Sure, we Norwegians like to blow our own horn and preach peace and tolerance, and can sometimes be shocked when we travel the world and discover how other people think. It won't stop us from preaching socialism and believing that the world can be a better place, though.
Interesting that you make a point about diversity - that was one of the things Breivik was fighting (or multiculturalism, specifically).
There are many things that are done differently in other parts of the world, to great success, that we could adapt and learn from.
In 2010, there were 1.33 million foreign-born residents in Sweden, corresponding
to 14.3% of the total population. Of these, 859 000 (9.2%) were born outside
the EU and 477 000 (5.1%) were born in another EU Member State.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
The number of immigrants in Norway is approximately 550,000.
The total "immigrant population", which includes Norwegian-born children
to immigrant parents, is 655,170, corresponding to 13.1 percent of the
total population (2011).
Wikipedia points immigration to Norway has risen very recently because of it's membership in the European Economic Area. It is entirely possible that united states has issues caused by continued high levels of immigration that Scandinavia has not had time to experience.
Since our foreign born populations are similar, adjusting for that shows that when native born Scandinavians and Americans are considered, Scandinavia is much more ethnically/racially homogenous than the United States.
Furthermore Scandinavia doesn't have a recent history of institutionalized oppression of a very sizable racial minority. There is still a generation of people alive here who actually lived under forced segregation, and more generations who were raised by them.
I'm sure if America was composed only of people who's ancestors came here voluntarily, and who weren't kept as second class citizens for decades, we wouldn't have many of the problems we do.
Source: https://www.politi.no/vedlegg/lokale_vedlegg/kripos/Vedlegg_...
Still very low, but 580% more than five. That said, I agree that the idea of comparing a country with 5 million inhabitants to the US is not entirely right, given to
(a) The heterogeneity of the US population and, (b) The US being two orders of magnitude more populated. It really is more of a continent than a country.
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.
Of course Norway's response is different. Norway isn't the target of a terrorist organization. It had a terrorist incident that's now over. We had something similar in the US with Timothy McVeigh, and our response wasn't any more radical than Norway's.
Some of the focus in the debate has been more about how to avoid people ending up with value systems (or mental disease) that permit and promote such horrible violence.
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.
It's not like they evacuate DC every time the Presidential motorcade drives across town. I know because I've seen Obama wave from the back seat!
Can we please stop the USA hating around here?
Where did you get $265.911B?
Okay maybe just pick and choose bits to emulate. But comparisons for the purpose of constructive criticism is not equivalent to hate.
Back in 2000, Israel had a series of suicide bombing attacks, which resulted (among other things) in a law requiring every mall, restaurant, cafe, theatre, office buildings and many other businesses to have a full time security guard who will check every person coming in with a metal detector.
There were a lot of cries about how useless and what a waste of money that was (as, of course, the cost was shifted to the customers). However, it turned out to be a deterrent in a strange way:
There were several cases of suicide bombing later that year, in which the bomber saw the guard, and decided to go to an unguarded place (most establishments observed this law, but not all). In one case, there was no visible unguarded place, so the bomber blew themselves up in the middle of a busy crosswalk.
I think the bottom line is that these measures did not change the overall outcome, which was just as tragic, but they did manage to shift the locations of the events.
But once everyone is doing it, everyone is no better off (earningwise) than where they were before.
You have to keep running to stay in the same place.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/aurora-shooting-highlight...
Hopefully people will think ahead far enough to downplay the effectiveness of such security measures.
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...
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).
<deadpan> This is not about Republicans. </sarcasm>
If the killer was not white and "Norwegian" (as we think a true norwegian should be), but rather a muslim extremist from Saudi Arabia, would they react the same way?
Here in Scandinavia (and maybe everywhere) racism may seem alien but is never far away. I am sure, and saddened by the fact, that we would have reacted with hate and fear if the killer was not white, Norwegian and christian.
Is this not a little dangerous surely if we take this over to USA where gun ownership is part of their core values?
"[]...What we Norwegians are afraid of is actually the situation you have in the US and UK either with Police or prosecutors with way too much power or CCTV cameras everywhere etc. We have been a peaceful society based on trust to each other for a long time, and intend to let that continue. I can only quote FDR: "The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself". Stoltenberg actually had to come with that statement. As doing the "US style fixit" would have backfired on him politically. Popular demand is different here, and that is the true power of Norway."
http://zalmi.blogspot.com/2011/07/utoya-not-so-innocent-yout... http://www.debbieschlussel.com/40472/karma-2-norway-utoya-ca...
This is a factor that seems to go unmentioned in all discussions of the Utoya massacre, but is necessary knowledge to understand the event in its entirety. It adds detail to Breivik's motive, and it raises the question of why there has been no condemnation of the Labour Party's support for similar massacres elsewhere being conducted on racial and religious lines so long as they happen far away and are done by a faction that the Party approves of.
This is beside the point that Schneier makes, so I apologise for going off topic. To that point, the US overreacted (an understatement) and Norway faced little threat of further attacks. Norway did consider fudging its laws to give Breivik a life term as a mental inmate rather than the statutory limit of years as a prisoner, and that can be questioned as an expansion of security. More generally, no one in Norway could argue a need for greatly expanded security since the threat ended with Breivik's capture.
The links you provide equates this to antisemitism, which is very strange to me. Who was it, you mean, who were being "enthusiastically for" terrorism?
We are comparing an apple to a boiled egg : putting them in a microwave & trying to commend apple for not exploding !
Forget legislative or leadership moronism at times, but blasting US for reacting in a way for something no other country has ever faced seems too harsh.
The death toll from the 9/11 attacks far exceeded any other single terrorist attack.