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Keep your off topic discussions out of this thread and show some damn respect! |
It was, at least from what I understand, a politically driven summer camp.
Even with that aside, I don't think expecting a decent security force to protect an island of youths is unreasonable.
Thing is, this has never been a nessecety in this country. I hope it never will be, and I hope our belief in the good of humanity will not shatter due to this one man.
If we 'need' to protect our own citizens in a summer camp with armed guards, then we truly has lost something. Wether this is naive or not i do not know. I hope it isn't.
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On July 23 2011 20:25 Absentia wrote:
As should be obvious by the question, I don't know what the security situation was like on the Island and nor do I know the limits for Norweigian security. To be honest, I have no idea what security is like for any summer camp anywhere. However, the fact that one (or two?) men have been seemingly able to unproblematically slaughter so many innocent people over an extended period of time is extremely disturbing.
I used to go camping as a kid with Cub Scouts here in the states. There was no one with a gun anywhere on the camp, in fact firearms were prohibited. The best we had were "Scout masters" who were essentially just chaperones and the only "weapon" they had were Swiss Army knives. Had someone decided to bring guns and go on a rampage there it's very unlikely that anyone at the camp would have been able to do anything about it.
The fact of the matter is, no, there wasn't armed guards patrolling the island because why would there be? Hindsight is 20/20 and there are very few people who want to live in a society where men with guns are around every corner to "keep us safe."
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Just read about the summer camp thing, 84 dead at the hands of one man? Insane 
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I think his motives for doing this is as following:
The politicians are for multiculturalism, and never dares to say anything negative about the islam culture, out of fear of terror etc.
I think that he in some twisted way thought: "Ok, so then if the opposition threatens with terror they may have to chose who they are afraid of".
Ofcourse this is just speculation.
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On July 23 2011 20:31 Grettin wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 20:25 Absentia wrote:On July 23 2011 19:59 Grettin wrote:On July 23 2011 19:58 Absentia wrote:
Does anybody have any information on the security of the island?
Obviously there's been reports about the police taking a long time to get there but was there no security detail on the island itself? No there wasn't. It was a SUMMER CAMP. It was, at least from what I understand, a politically driven summer camp. Even with that aside, I don't think expecting a decent security force to protect an island of youths is unreasonable. It has been held there for 30 years, and nothing has been even close to happen. In Nordic it's pretty common that these kind of camps really doesn't need or have any guards because it's rare that something would happen unlike in countries like United States. After all it's a camp for KIDS for christ sake.
Nor does the UK have armed security in every summer camp, and I've been to summer camps in the UK. It's easy to say in hind sight that you should have security in X and Y but ultimately you can't protect everything. Unless you really want armed police around every corner and you want to adopt the mindset saying that every citizen is a threat.
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On July 23 2011 20:31 crappen wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 19:14 Tachion wrote:On July 23 2011 19:02 crappen wrote:
By destroying this man, executing your own vengeance and thirst for it, is a terrible solution. This man, Anders Behring, must be in extreme pain to do such things, he is already in hell.
Do not destroy yourself by having thoughts of vengeance. I hope we in Norway can find a good solution to this, and why not try to rehabilitate him if we think its a slight chance of posibility?
I hope we can find peace in all this, and not fall into the trap of fear. You...feel sorry for him? Hope he can be rehabilitated and re-enter society? I honestly don't even understand how someone could possibly want that for a guy who just mass murdered a bunch of children. If it was your daughter on her hands and knees begging him for her life before he killed her...he deserves better than what she got? I just keep deleting comments that make me rage at the naivety of this. I dunno what to say. sorry. Most of us think this guy wanted to spread fear in us, and to give some sort of message. Dont you see that what you are saying is full of fear? You are walking right into what he wanted. I want this man to re-enter society as a healthy male again. If we can achieve this, the world is a great place with so much hope. What I am hoping for, seems impossible, but its what we in Norway believe in. We want less fear, not more of it. Vengeance is a form of fear. Scenario if someone close to me got hurt + Show Spoiler +
If I had a daughter, and she got raped and killed, I would work so hard to find a way to forgive this man, to understand and hope that he too, would find peace and come back from the terrible things he had done.
I'll just agree to disagree and leave it at that, I don't want to get into it. We have very different beliefs and I shouldn't have even posted that, not the thread for it.
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On July 23 2011 20:33 Traeon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 20:04 MaGic~PhiL
Or how exactly does the USA handle a guy with a weapon and the will to kill people. He just goes somewhere where many people are and no one ever expects a shooting. What can you do? Its just not stoppable unless you want to live in world of total observation or worse.
Seriously. Kinda makes me angry to read your studd which just makes no sense. Sorry but what you're doing here is abusing this tragedy for your own agenda.
This guy (forgot) his name partly blamed the scale of the massacre on norways police & defense system and said in USA this would not happen. All I did was say he wrote bull shit and that there is no place where something like this can be totally prevented. And if there was this place sure as hell would not be pleasent, cause it would be constant observation.
+ this was an island.. u get the point !?
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Sad day for the world. It only took a high powered weapon and a mad man to do this. My thoughts and prayers to the victims.
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My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 23 2011 19:54 MaGic~PhiL wrote:
Now I know this is a very bold statement and some might find it inappropriate. Never the less may I question you what the big difference is between hundreds and thousand people dying in africa right now and this massacre? I mean in terms of the 'result'?
I know this stuff is much 'nearer' to us and that gives it more new coverage and everything. Even though I agree this is a horrible, sad and absolutely frightening thing to happen I always even at 9/11 I just had no other choice than to think ''Stupid humankind, it's a total outrage and everyone is totally flustered when something like this happens while in other countries its a daily thing''
And I know(!) there are ''difference'' but one of them is the fact that the people who died in the shooting had a nice & good life before there dead while those little children or humanbeings in the poor countries suffered all the more or less long way to their dead.
I dont want to offend anyone by this. Let alone the people who have relatives involved in the shooting I just want to put things into perspective and just make people realize in what kind of a crazy world we live. Were people far away die due to the most simple things in a long, suffering fight and we barely even notice anymore. But when a handfull of people ''of our kind'' die all hell breaks lose.
Now I know this is not your usual ''oh my god this is all so sad and horrible'' posts but I always feel like at least one person has to put things into perspective and just show how fucked up this world we live in truly is.
Once again: This is not meant to insult anyone who lost somebody in those shootings or the bombing or to say this is a ordinary thing or something which is not horrible or bad but I never could stand it in 9/11 when 2000-3000 people died and everyone was like ''this is the worst thing ever happening to humankind'' while those or probably the numbers of people dying due to lack of water and food..
Crazy thing never the less. My thoughts are with the relatives who lost their loved ones. But please keep in mind this is something (in terms of ''dead toll'') many poor countries have to endure on a dail basis mulitplied by quite a figure.
I have some sympathy with your view and its important that someone brings it up to remind people that there are worse things going on the world which are being left unreported by world media.
Still, it is the attention of this thread to remain focused on the massacre at hand and its completely unorthodox and psychopathic nature.
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MaGic~PhiL
All I want to say is, please post elsewhere about africa, starvation, influence of the media and so on. These are all valid points but you just make a poor impression when you come into this thread and connect them somehow to this tragedy and are basically telling people they're wrong to feel bad about it when so much other bad stuff is happening. You should really try to be a bit more self conscious (in the philosophical sense of the term).
Trying to make people feel guilty is not the way to change anything. They'll only dislike you for trying.
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On July 23 2011 19:54 MaGic~PhiL wrote:Now I know this is a very bold statement and some might find it inappropriate. Never the less may I question you what the big difference is between hundreds and thousand people dying in africa right now and this massacre? I mean in terms of the 'result'? + Show Spoiler +I know this stuff is much 'nearer' to us and that gives it more new coverage and everything. Even though I agree this is a horrible, sad and absolutely frightening thing to happen I always even at 9/11 I just had no other choice than to think ''Stupid humankind, it's a total outrage and everyone is totally flustered when something like this happens while in other countries its a daily thing''
And I know(!) there are ''difference'' but one of them is the fact that the people who died in the shooting had a nice & good life before there dead while those little children or humanbeings in the poor countries suffered all the more or less long way to their dead.
I dont want to offend anyone by this. Let alone the people who have relatives involved in the shooting I just want to put things into perspective and just make people realize in what kind of a crazy world we live. Were people far away die due to the most simple things in a long, suffering fight and we barely even notice anymore. But when a handfull of people ''of our kind'' die all hell breaks lose.
Now I know this is not your usual ''oh my god this is all so sad and horrible'' posts but I always feel like at least one person has to put things into perspective and just show how fucked up this world we live in truly is.
Once again: This is not meant to insult anyone who lost somebody in those shootings or the bombing or to say this is a ordinary thing or something which is not horrible or bad but I never could stand it in 9/11 when 2000-3000 people died and everyone was like ''this is the worst thing ever happening to humankind'' while those or probably the numbers of people dying due to lack of water and food..
Crazy thing never the less. My thoughts are with the relatives who lost their loved ones. But please keep in mind this is something (in terms of ''dead toll'') many poor countries have to endure on a dail basis mulitplied by quite a figure.
True, but you have not posted anything nobody knows. First take the plank out of your own eye - how much did you pay to buy Starcraft II? Because 1.4 billion people around the world live on less than one dollar a day - so why didn't you sponsor a child for a couple of months instead? Secondly, if one of your family members died in a car accident, how would you feel if someone came up to you to say: "I feel for your loss but back in 1912 the Titanic sank with over 2,000 people." You wrote that you felt it was necessary for you to put things into perspective. I say STFU.
On topic: I have a couple of Norwegian friends here on an exchange programme but am not sure what to say to them, or whether I should say anything to them at all and just leave them in peace. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
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We can't protect every grouping of people with militarized personnel.
It would be impossible in terms of logistics, and it would probably not even deter crazy/right-wing extremists from trying.
Norway is a relatively open society, and politically wide unlike f.ex. USA. If we close everything down with regulations it will shut down open discussion and breed more pent-up violence as a result.
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my prayers are with all of Norway.
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If I may, I want to briefly give some opinions on how we as a nation have handled this thus far. Some of you may have read my post in the other thread (my reply here), and this is a bit of clarification and some more of the same.
It may surprise some of you - especially if you live in the United States, where sensationalism and fear drives the news - to know that the government, the police department, and the media have all been very honest and straightforward in covering this tragedy, and that the people of Norway remain calm and composed (if a lot more sombre than usual) despite the enormity of the tragedy.
For instance, after the explosion and the early reports of the shooting on Utøya, the news simply recycled what they had previously stated: That a bomb had exploded in or near a government office building, that there was a related shooting in a political youth camp on Utøya, and that people had been killed in both of these cases. The ticker line at the bottom of the screen wasn't some quote from a news anchor or the prime minister -- it was the phone number for a hotline offered to the families of the victims.
From the first, there was no public outcry of, how did this happen, how did you let this happen, who is responsible for this travesty. There was no speculation or debate, no expert-witness criticism of foreign or domestic policy, no guesswork. In fact, when an Islamic extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack, few newspapers even deigned it worthy of mention -- the claim was either ignored completely, or there was a small notice buried under other headlines dealing with the actual facts.
At the end of the day, it seems that this was the correct approach: The entire tragedy now appears to be the work of one individual, who in fact had anti-Islamic views. Planned, yes, and executed with chilling efficiency, but to muddy the waters with sensationalist guesswork like some news channels in the UK, the US, and elsewhere did before they even had any of the facts in hand is the kind of thing that can partially obfuscate the actual events in retrospect, especially for onlookers abroad that by nature get a more peripheral glance. In that regard, I am very impressed with how the aftermath has been handled locally.
Later yesterday evening, the prime minister and the minister of justice held a press conference. It was excellently handled. The prime minister, his expression stoic, opened by saying that this abhorrent event will not bring Norway down; that we will be able to remain proud of our strong democracy, and that the open discourse and debate on every topic - no matter how controversial that topic may be - which has been a staple of our freedom of speech, will remain intact -- that we will not be cowed into silence, and that our politics should become even more open in the aftermath, as that is the correct response when faced with this kind of terror.
He also stated that the first priority over the coming days is to save lives, and to provide medical aid to the victims. Later on, there will be further statements as regards to the perpetrator, but for the moment the focus is completely on providing immediate aid.
The media questions at the press conference were of a similar nature: Who is this man, has he given a motive for his actions, what will you do in the coming days, can you clarify this one small thing. Very to the point. And, again, worth of note and admiration: When asked his opinion on the alleged claim of responsibility by the Islamic extremist group, the prime minister said simply, "These groups often claim responsibility for actions they had nothing to do with in an attempt to seem more capable than they really are." It was a great response.
All in all, I admire how the aftermath of this terrible incident was dealt with, and how open and honest the police, the government, and (most of all) the media have been in reporting this obscenity to us and the rest of the world.
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To switch topics a bit, I've noticed that some people appear to be baffled at our justice system. I will address this briefly by taking on this composite quote:
"He deserves to fry. Norway's justice system is retarded for giving him decent living conditions for the rest of his life."
Really? Killing this human being would bring back the other human beings? Would it lessen the blow of our loss? Most Norwegians don't see it that way; we don't agree with this biblical desire for vengeance. Granted, in this particular case I'm sure some Norwegians will feel differently, but we aren't going to completely alter our justice system for just one man. Even this depraved individual will not get that dubious honour.
Our justice system is one of rehabilitation and reintroduction to society. Those individuals who are simply too damaged to ever be released (of which there are very few) are simply imprisoned for life. Bad people, yes, but still human beings. We won't publicly kill a fellow human being just because we feel like it, out of some desire for revenge. How is that any better than killing someone over an ideological viewpoint? Both are abhorrent. Both are murder.
As for us having a "retarded" justice system? While you were reading about the appallingly decent living conditions provided to our prison population and the leniency granted to our criminals, you should have also looked up some numbers, namely the per capita crime rate and the number of repeat offenders. In both cases, that number is extremely low. The justice system is working a hell of a lot better than that of most countries.
Lastly, the comment that the political youth camp equals indoctrination and likening it to Hitler-Jugend is so ignorant and insulting that I don't even want to tarnish the English language by crafting a response to it, but I'll call it out anyway in order to prevent its propagation as anything but drivel: The young men and women who suffered this living nightmare yesterday were nothing more than enthusiastic youths who were personally and voluntarily interested and engaged in politics, young men and women who take an interest in and care about how the government runs their home.
So, with all that said, how is our country failing again? Please, let us know -- we desperately need to improve our standing in the Human Development Index. Seriously, can we at least agree that this misguided socialist country of ours appears to be doing something right?
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I'll end on a much more optimistic note. I mentioned this in my previous post as well, but it's worth repeating: Shortly after the call went out for blood donors, hospitals had to start publicly declining offers from further donors because they had already acquired more than enough of even the rarer blood types. That's how quickly Oslo responded. I think I'm more happy about that than anything else.
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On July 23 2011 20:38 larrysbird wrote:
Sad day for the world. It only took a high powered weapon and a mad man to do this. My thoughts and prayers to the victims.
One of the reasons I inherently hate firearms&weapons. I know its not the weapon which kills the person. The humanbeing kills the humanbeing. But imagine this guy running on the island with just a knife or something. I doubt he would have been able to kill even 10 persons. I hate weapons and I find no private person should ever have a weapon..
Bah the pictures make me so sad. Especially the one with a person standing (probably him) surrounded by dead bodies (probably his victims). It looks so surreal..
shit
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King, Queen and Crown Prince just arrived at the hotel where the survivors are. PM has been there for quite some time.
Nothing new regarding the man who was arrested. He was in possession of a knife, but it is unknown if he is related to the incident.
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I can't belive this, i was really sad and disturbed when i heard news yesterday what happened in Norway, and that beside bombing casaulties there were 10 people killed by gunman, and i was thinking, how could he manage to kill them before someone got him down.
Now i wake up, and i see this..i'm completely stunned, i read all facts now, it looks like some bad horror movie, i can't belive that this is real.
It's just, you dont see this comming in modern world anymore, and look at his facebook profile, classic normal profile, we never think there are people like that around us, and what dangers lies ahead..
I can't belive how everything matched for him, no security on island, really small island with not so much place to hide, as i said, as in some horror movie, he was just going around, shooting and shooting and shooting, but even in movies, killer usualy get killed after 5-10 kills, i can't belive he managed to take down so many people..
And the picture that someone reposted from first page...what can a person say about it, just, no comments, its hard to say anything in times like this.
Be strong Norway, i just hope this is not begging, and some other crazy people will try to abuse facts that some countries are not prepared for this kind of evil deeds.
RIP all victims
Sad sad moment for humanity.
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This is a very dark day for Norway as a whole, and those affected specifically. Flags are flying at half mast across the country, and there is a general mood of sadness, hopelessness, and some thoughts of anger and revenge. All of this is to be expected, I just hope we do not turn on each other and blame one specific religion/ideology/political view for any of this, as it seems that this was the act of one very deranged man.
My thouhgts go out to everyone affected. This is sickening.
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On July 23 2011 15:43 Krikan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 15:37 ViperaViRuS wrote:On July 23 2011 15:28 Smapz wrote:
He'll live on in a max security prison, probably with better standards then most people in the world, probably for the rest of his life. This may be a biased view being an American, but I fail to see how people from Norway are okay with something like this? He takes away the lives of so many individuals yet he gets to live in better accommodations than a fair amount of people in the world? Simply for the hopes of rehabilitating him in order to one day be released back into society and contribute to society once again? My heart goes out to those directly affected by this. I feel that the stance the government etc is trying to take, and display to the public is summarized very well by this post on page 2: I am of those that believe we should never make exceptions... If we truly believe in the ideals of our society, one madman, no matter his crimes, should not move us away from our own ideals. If we do, then the killer not only destroyed lives, he also destroyed our way of life. If we are willing to change our laws to punish this man differently than we have since ww2, that gives him yet another victory doesn't it? Personally, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, I think he deserves way way worse. Hopefully he'll get put into solitary til it drives him fucking nuts. Seems like the best thing we can manage here in Norway. I also highly doubt he'll have a very good time with the other inmates, to put it mildly.
Very well written post, I fully support your views here, as do most of us who have grown up in Norway and are familiar with our general culture/way of life/political ideals.
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EPT
