Oslo and Utøya Attacks: Some of What's out There is Just Plain Wrong, Part 2
Continuing where I left off earlier today...
Breivik will be out in 15 years!: ABB will almost certainly get the maximum sentence possible under Norwegian law, which is 21 years. (There is a longer sentence for "crimes against humanity", but the law is relatively new and has never been used.) There is no possibility to give him the maximum penalty for each of the 77 murders he committed. However, there is also no mandatory "time off for good behavior". He will almost certainly serve the full 21 years. At this time, his case will be reviewed. Though it rarely happens, the court will at that time have the possibility to declare that he is still a danger to society and must be kept in custody for another five years. At the end of those five years, his case can be reviewed again, and the court may again decide to keep him in custody for another five years. This can continue until he is dead.
I'm not aware of any case where a person has been held in prison for life in this way during the post-war period, but if anybody's going to be the first, he's it.
The kids at the camp were anti-Israel/were being taught to be anti-Israel, or alternately, Norway recently declared a boycott of Israel: The case for this has been built on a single photograph, showing Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg walking by a group of teenagers holding a banner that says BOYCOTT ISRAEL.
But wait a minute. Stoltenberg was due to speak at the camp on Saturday. Since the shooting took place on Friday, he didn't speak there this year. Where did the photo come from?
The photo is from last year. And it isn't from the AUF camp at all! It's from SU's (Socialist Youth) camp, which rents the island of Utøya from AUF. SU's mother party, SV (the Socialist Left), is in a governing coalition with Labor, which is probably why Stoltenberg visited their camp. SV, as the name implies, are further to the left than Labor. AUF, like Labor, is divided on the question of the best solution for the Israel/Palestinian issue. Some of the kids at camp, I'm sure, would have argued for a boycott of Israel, but others would have argued for other approaches. And as I've already mentioned, arguing politics, not being taught what to think, is part of the fun at these youth party camps.
Norway does not boycott Israel, so such a boycott could not have been "recently declared". Some organizations in Norway boycott Israel - I remember, when I was studying in Trondheim, the fun of watching the arguments between those who wanted the university's stores and cantines to boycott Jaffa oranges and those who wanted to boycott Maroc oranges; the university mostly bought them from Spain in any case. (Everyone likes Spain, at least since Franco died, right?)
I'm not sure why this is supposed to be connected to the terror attacks in any case. Breivik clearly wrote that he supports Israel, officially because they should in his mind be Europe's ally in the battle against Islam. (I suspect he's also one of those folks who supports Israel because he'd rather have the Jews living there than in his own neighborhood.) But Israel has hardly chosen to return the favor. Still, this has been brought up often enough that I wanted to say something.
Norway is such a peaceful place, the police are unarmed and no one locks their doors: I heard this one while we were still in the States, and nearly choked on my cheerios. No, folks, sorry. Norway is a fairly quiet, peaceful place, but people lock their dang doors. Okay, maybe people out in some little village somewhere don't - but then, if you live in a ranch in the middle of Wyoming, you might not lock up when you leave either. City people are likely to have alarms on their houses and/or cars, as well. And there are crime problems - I mentioned a series of rapes in Oslo in my last post, for instance.
Most Norwegian police aren't armed, and shooting by or at the police is uncommon. But some squads, such as the one sent to Utøya, are indeed armed, and trained and authorized to use firearms. The only reason they didn't shoot was because Breivik surrendered without a fight.
Breivik called the police to surrender, and they hung up on him!: Exactly what happened when people called the police that awful day is one of the things under investigation. It does appear, from what we know now, that the people answering the phones were so preoccupied with the bomb in Oslo that they didn't take the calls from Utøya seriously. However, by the time Breivik called, things had changed. The police have released transcripts of the two conversations they had with Breivik (he apparently called more often than that, but only got through twice), and both times he hung up. Here's an English translation of the transcripts. They're pretty.... weird.
Breivik will be out in 15 years!: ABB will almost certainly get the maximum sentence possible under Norwegian law, which is 21 years. (There is a longer sentence for "crimes against humanity", but the law is relatively new and has never been used.) There is no possibility to give him the maximum penalty for each of the 77 murders he committed. However, there is also no mandatory "time off for good behavior". He will almost certainly serve the full 21 years. At this time, his case will be reviewed. Though it rarely happens, the court will at that time have the possibility to declare that he is still a danger to society and must be kept in custody for another five years. At the end of those five years, his case can be reviewed again, and the court may again decide to keep him in custody for another five years. This can continue until he is dead.
I'm not aware of any case where a person has been held in prison for life in this way during the post-war period, but if anybody's going to be the first, he's it.
The kids at the camp were anti-Israel/were being taught to be anti-Israel, or alternately, Norway recently declared a boycott of Israel: The case for this has been built on a single photograph, showing Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg walking by a group of teenagers holding a banner that says BOYCOTT ISRAEL.
But wait a minute. Stoltenberg was due to speak at the camp on Saturday. Since the shooting took place on Friday, he didn't speak there this year. Where did the photo come from?
The photo is from last year. And it isn't from the AUF camp at all! It's from SU's (Socialist Youth) camp, which rents the island of Utøya from AUF. SU's mother party, SV (the Socialist Left), is in a governing coalition with Labor, which is probably why Stoltenberg visited their camp. SV, as the name implies, are further to the left than Labor. AUF, like Labor, is divided on the question of the best solution for the Israel/Palestinian issue. Some of the kids at camp, I'm sure, would have argued for a boycott of Israel, but others would have argued for other approaches. And as I've already mentioned, arguing politics, not being taught what to think, is part of the fun at these youth party camps.
Norway does not boycott Israel, so such a boycott could not have been "recently declared". Some organizations in Norway boycott Israel - I remember, when I was studying in Trondheim, the fun of watching the arguments between those who wanted the university's stores and cantines to boycott Jaffa oranges and those who wanted to boycott Maroc oranges; the university mostly bought them from Spain in any case. (Everyone likes Spain, at least since Franco died, right?)
I'm not sure why this is supposed to be connected to the terror attacks in any case. Breivik clearly wrote that he supports Israel, officially because they should in his mind be Europe's ally in the battle against Islam. (I suspect he's also one of those folks who supports Israel because he'd rather have the Jews living there than in his own neighborhood.) But Israel has hardly chosen to return the favor. Still, this has been brought up often enough that I wanted to say something.
Norway is such a peaceful place, the police are unarmed and no one locks their doors: I heard this one while we were still in the States, and nearly choked on my cheerios. No, folks, sorry. Norway is a fairly quiet, peaceful place, but people lock their dang doors. Okay, maybe people out in some little village somewhere don't - but then, if you live in a ranch in the middle of Wyoming, you might not lock up when you leave either. City people are likely to have alarms on their houses and/or cars, as well. And there are crime problems - I mentioned a series of rapes in Oslo in my last post, for instance.
Most Norwegian police aren't armed, and shooting by or at the police is uncommon. But some squads, such as the one sent to Utøya, are indeed armed, and trained and authorized to use firearms. The only reason they didn't shoot was because Breivik surrendered without a fight.
Breivik called the police to surrender, and they hung up on him!: Exactly what happened when people called the police that awful day is one of the things under investigation. It does appear, from what we know now, that the people answering the phones were so preoccupied with the bomb in Oslo that they didn't take the calls from Utøya seriously. However, by the time Breivik called, things had changed. The police have released transcripts of the two conversations they had with Breivik (he apparently called more often than that, but only got through twice), and both times he hung up. Here's an English translation of the transcripts. They're pretty.... weird.