First, a link to Bruce Bawer’s site. He’s talking about Dagbladet’s report on the alarming number of tourist buses being set afire in Oslo (from July 18):Dagbladet reports that in the last two weeks, eighteen tourist buses in Oslo have been set upon by thieves and vandals.
[…]
Official reactions to this latest development only serve to underscore where the roots of the problem lie. You can almost see the spokesman for the Agency for Road and Transport shrugging and yawning as he tells Dagbladet that, well, this sort of this happens every summer, and hey, don’t worry, there’s more and more tourist buses coming to Norway. And the cops? They say that they “can’t see any connection among the events of recent weeks.” A police spokesman told Dagbladet that they hadn’t put the case materials together yet - they’ll get around to that on, oh, Monday.
No, Oslo isn’t Rome or Paris. But not long ago, it was at least a safe, clean city. It’s now rapidly declining into a maelstrom of chaos, crime, and filth under politicians who’ve essentially handed it over to armies of Nigerian prostitutes, gypsy beggars, and Muslim gangsters; who ordered street work that should have been wrapped up months ago but that continues to keep much of the downtown area looking like Berlin in 1946; and who blithely hike subsidies to groups like the Islamic Council while letting the police and military go chronically underfunded.
Well, of course. Who wants to pay a decent wage to those nasty men who protect others when the Islamic Council, peace be unto them, needs funding so desperately?
And the cops? They simply suffer from the same virulent indifference as their superiors. It’s a top-down disease.
Mr. Bawer suggests that tourists re-route to Copenhagen instead.
Aftenposten has more details (in English) on this pastime of tourist bus burning. Here’s one Spanish tour driver’s experience:
“My company sends buses all over Europe, but we’ve never experienced anything like this,” bus driver Jorge Muniz Paredes to newspaper Aften. “If I talked about this on Spanish television, people would think I was in Africa.”
Paredes recently found his bus burning near the new Opera House on Oslo’s waterfront. The bus, used to carry Spanish tourists on sightseeing trips in Oslo, was in top condition, he said.
He’s convinced vandals are behind the fire on his bus. Two days earlier, the bus’ windshield had been smashed.
[…]
Three Spanish tour bus companies have filed a complaint with Norwegian tourism promoters in Madrid, who in turn have contacted both the Norwegian embassy in Spain and the Spanish embassy in Norway.
Some tour operators are considering dropping Oslo from their tour itineraries. “Oslo’s not a particularly pretty city, like Rome or Paris,” said Paredes. “The only reason we come is because it’s the capital of Norway. The vandalism makes the destination insecure and if this continues, we’ll stop coming.”
Oh, well. Plenty more tourists to take their place, right?
But here is the most interesting story from Fjordman’s selection. It lays bare the core of the problem. Olso burns while government strangles its citizens on procedural policies. The pervasive cynicism is heart-breaking.
- - - - - - - - -
Read carefully with attention to what the authorities themselves consider important:
An awkward power struggle has broken out among foreign and local beggars in Oslo, ironically over their street sales of a magazine whose very title calls for more equality in the capital.
Norwegian beggars are getting competition from foreign beggars, and conflicts are breaking out.
The conflict is over who should be allowed to peddle the magazine, which sells for NOK 50. Its sellers can keep half of the proceeds.
The magazine, called “=Oslo” (equal Oslo), was started up to help provide an income source to those who otherwise would beg for spare change on the streets of the capital. Many of its original sellers were Norwegian drug addicts.
Now, however, new groups of foreign beggars want to sell the magazine as well, reported newspaper Dagsavisen earlier this week. The magazine won’t let them, saying the sellers should be Norwegian and must be able to speak Norwegian.
That’s led to protests, and state authorities are investigating whether “=Oslo” is violating anti-discrimination laws. “If we find that ‘=Oslo’ has broken the law, they’ll have to find a new solution for the foreigners,” said Ingeborg Grimsmo, Norway’s acting discrimination ombud.
Why would a magazine originate with the intention of having “beggars” sell their product? It’s insane. Remember when Rudy Giuliani began cleaning up New York City by removing the beggars who were washing car windshields in city traffic?
The problem with “beggars” is that keeping civic order is an on-going problem. Mayor Giuliani solved it in his time, but the squeegee men are making a comeback in The Big Apple and their appearance scares people because of what it represents - erosion of public space. These depredations don’t stay “cured”; they demand vigilance and creative thinking. Neither is in great supply in Norway.
Here’s another problem where the authorities cynically leave in a bind those who would help the hungry:
Thorny issues also have broken out within an Oslo organization that serves the poor and offers them free food (Fattighuset). It has refused to give food to the foreign beggars, claiming that the foreigners try to sell the food on the street.
“We can’t have that,” said Johanna Engen, a board member at Fattighuset, arguing that it defies the purpose of the aid and can threaten donations.
The anti-discrimination authority is investigating whether Fattighuset can legally only give food to poor Norwegians and not poor foreigners. “There are important principles at stake,” Grimsmo said, arguing that the foreigners are becoming “more and more” stigmatized in Norway.
People get “stigmatized” when they consistently operate outside the mores of local culture. Perhaps these “foreigners” of unnamed ethnicity come from a place where ripping off charitable organizations is all in a day’s work.
Fattighuset is absolutely right: letting this go on would threaten donations. But the “anti-discrimination authority” is not concerned with outcomes; it lives for procedures. And by its lights, procedures take precedence over virtue.
When a government - be it local, state, or federal - has that much power over charitable endeavors and it uses that dominance with Kafkaesque indifference, then the government is acting with evil. Indifferent evil, but evil nonetheless.
Fjordman called it a maelstrom of chaos. His powers of perception are acute.
37 comments:
In London (and maybe in other UK cities as well) there is a magazine for The Homeless to sell called The Big Issue. It was started IIRC by someone who had himself been homeless for a while. Said to help them not be beggars, but some of the sellers are just as aggressive as beggars.
The first time I encountered Oslo was through Knut Hamsun's novels and stories, especially "The Hunger" - the old Christiania. This summer I had the privilege to see the capital of Norway beyond fiction, in reality, in bones and flesh, so to speak. What a sad view! A wonderful city and wonderful people invaded by foreign thugs. I could recognize easily that the beggars from my country, Romania, have moved in crowds to Norway. Actually, these beggars are not poor starving outcasts, but people belonging to the gypsy mafia. Most of them are derided in my country, because many people know who is behind them, but they found an asylum and a shelter in Norway. It's like the Western European countries are supposed to shelter all the trash of the world. In the Oslo subway, I could see that about half of the people were of foreign origins: blacks, Arabs, Asians. I was almost frightened, it looked even worse than in Sweden and similar to the outskirts of Paris.
I actually think the story about the magazine “=Oslo” is funny: liberalism collapsing under its own weight.
Yes, the impression of Oslo is worse than any Swedish city (including Malmö), seen from spending time in the city core. And the downfall has happened in just the last few years. So shouldn't Norway be better off, they are not in the EU? Forget about it. San Francisco is not in the EU, go check it out!
Still I was surprised by what I saw. Last time I was in Oslo was four years ago, and it's gone much worse. So I was searching for an answer. And I think this is it: Norway is rich! The price level in Norway is at least 50% higher than in Sweden. This will surely be reflected in how much money a beggar will get. Same for the criminals: more loot in one go.
Oslo is the paradise for criminals, beggars and prostitutes. The richest city of Europe, and gullible and inhibited Scandinavians all over the place.
Why would a magazine originate with the intention of having “beggars” sell their product? It’s insane.
Not at all. There are numerous advantages to this business structure. Beggars often are viewed with sympathy. By providing some sort of material exchange instead of them demanding an outright donation, beggars are de-stigmatized as well.
Imagine the profitability of eliminating your entire street-level distribution network. No capital equipment in the form of newspaper racks. No collection routes or bothersome subscription lists. The advantages are numerous.
On a more serious and cynical note: Look how well this business model worked for the Krishnas. Consider the benefits:
A volunteer workforce with no wages
Crew support consisting of cheap vegetarian food
Crew quarters amounting to low grade dormitories
Tax-free operation as a putative religion (which it wasn't)
Free dissemination of organization propaganda
Massive profits from low quality merchandise sold at high prices
Ongoing recruitment of new operatives by these unpaid crews
The Krishna enterprise was a smashing commercial success. Factor in the gullible loons who would actually sign over their entire personal estates, houses and bank accounts included, to these spiritual vultures and untold millions of dollars flowed into the coffers of this sham "religion".
Be sure to note how the Krishna organization was only legitimized long after its original inception.
While the =Oslo group may not have such a sinister agenda, the commercial exploitation of indigent people isn't an altogether new concept.
As to the burning buses, this would seem, at first blush, to be counterproductive. Less tourists means less pockets to pick and yokels to gull. What we may be witnessing is a turf war by rival gangs. One may be attempting to extort the pickpockets and street walkers for a share of the take by choking off their revenue source. Another possibility is simply a "protection" style shake down of the tour operators themselves.
As any good detective would tell you, "follow the money". This entire bus scam is designed to make a profit for someone. If it was typical Parisian-style Mindless Muslim Madness™ you would be seeing Car-B-Ques and not Bus Bonfires.
@Zenster
Why would a magazine originate with the intention of having “beggars” sell their product? It’s insane.
"Not at all. There are numerous advantages to this business structure. Beggars often are viewed with sympathy. By providing some sort of material exchange instead of them demanding an outright donation, beggars are de-stigmatized as well."
Nothing destigmatizes beggars. A hand held out with a magazine in it is just urban decay. It's no different than the squeegee men making their comeback.
I'd rather make a material donation to wherever the beggar is going to eat or sleep that night. Or buy him some food.
Begging, even with a crummy product as the payoff, is still extortion. Liberals just want the beggars to feel better about it, but that doesn't change what it is.
Actually the original idea of the Big Issue was to give homeless destitutes a means to work their way back into the general workforce by giving them a means to make money. Great idea in principle, free market and all that, but it fell down on the fact that the magazine is run by hard leftists who seem incapable of turning the majority of their "employees" into something other than aggressive beggars. There are success stories - I know a guy who used to sell the big issue in manchester who's getting back on his feet, now - but they happened because of outside help. The Big Issue just exploits them.
The interesting thing about Norway potentially falling off the edge of the Western cultural map [see the tour operator's remarks above] is that no matter how dirty or violent it becomes, it will still seem like paradise to Somalis, Kosovans and Sudanese. So they will keep coming.
And no matter how bad the economy gets, there will still be enough residual wealth and institutional stability to keep the place an attractive proposition for Jihad.
Remember that Norway is oil rich (or as Obama might say, filthy rich), anti-Christian, and full of self-loathing. The Saudis are licking their lips.
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/gospel-banned-in-norway/
Re: "Great idea in principle, free market and all that, but it fell down on the fact that the magazine is run by hard leftists"
That reminds me of a CBC news story about a Canadian who brought church-donated bikes to Cuba to recycle them, provide employment and make money to help "The Revolution".
Then he was shocked to find that the Cuban bureaucrats and police just want bribes and did everything to stop him from being successful, and the workers were all lazy.
Can't find the story, but here's the project's site:
http://www.bikestocuba.org/Text_Files/Project.html
I notice:
" We also welcome superstores like Canadian Tire, Zellers etc., to donate us the scratch and dent bicycles."
So Canadian business should support Communist Cuba?
I bet they go around these stores scratching up bikes and then try and get them for free.
@brianakira--
The interesting thing about Norway...is that no matter how dirty or violent it becomes, it will still seem like paradise to Somalis, Kosovans and Sudanese. So they will keep coming.
Precisely. And the Norwegians will keep letting them in.
But your comment really reminds me of a story I read a few months back. It seems that sometimes No. Koreans are punished by being sent to the gulags in Siberia. When their time is up, they don't want to go home.
The book The Tipping Point tells the story of the Guiliani sucess story with crime in New York. The policy was called "Broken Windows."
Turns out that if you remove graffiti and keep a more wholesome atmosphere on the street -- preventing minor crimes like turnstile-jumping at the subway entrance -- people think twice about doing significant criminal action, or perhaps simply feel better about the environment and don't want to ruin it.
Norway? Norway? The Scandanavians deserve better.
An "alarming number of tourist buses being set afire in Oslo"?
Get your facts straight instead of exaggerating - one bus was caught afire - there is no evidence as of yet that this was arson, although this may change, subject to forensic investigation. One may however say that an alarming number of buses have been vandalised. But there is a difference between that and buses (plural) being "set afire".
And with all due respect to Mr. Bawer, Denmark hardly rates as a safe country in Europe compared to Norway; check out the following:
www.amcham.dk/dl/com/osac/DenmarkCrimeReport_2008.pdf
In fact, tourists may well be better off in Oslo in general terms of personal safety than in Denmark, where the threshold for resorting to violence in disputes seems to be lower than in Norway. After all, according to a report published in 2007, European "crime hotspots are the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark". (see www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/statistics/statistics060.htm)
By way of wider comment, outsiders (this includes the editors of this blog) when remarking on Norway first have to understand that tribalism rules the ethnic Norwegian mentality. So much so that there are regular and sustained efforts to rehabilitate a Nazi boot-licker like Knut Hamsun - the poor old dodderer couldn't have been that bad, what? He was after all one of us, etc. etc, ad nauseam. The same goes for assorted murderers, art thieves, and layabouts.
Also bear in mind, no matter how bad the criminal, efforts will be made - based on lefty criminological theory supported by a galaxy of former (we hope!) Stalinists and Maoists now in professorial positions of authority - to sympathise with the criminal, who is putatively socially disadvantaged. The idea of personal moral responsibility is more or less officially nonexistent in political Norway. These two streams of thinking - the solidarity of tribalism and leftist criminology - have combined to ease the acceptance of ethnic Norwegian beggars on the streets of Oslo. And by extension, the same thinking informs attitudes of parts of the Norwegian public with regard to the recent East European beggar invaders.
From my vantage point, the fact that modern beggars are tolerated also has much to do with a continuation of older Norwegian attitudes towards public drunks and various eccentrics. Whereas - say thirty or forty years ago - such individuals would have been viewed with utter disdain in many western societies, these figures were remarkably enough easily tolerated in a then ethnically homogenous urban Norway as fellow tribal members, viewed in a jocular and bemused fashion as long as they stayed peaceful. Older books about Oslo when it was called Christiana are in fact filled with such deviant figures, often treated in a generous and sympathetic fashion.
These types have by and large disappeared from the public urban scene; in their place are heroin addicts in their current role of beggars. With the appearance of heroin big time on the Norwegian street in the 80s, a crime wave was generated that involved a great increase in theft and break-ins. This apparently has to some extent subsided, or has held level, due to lower prices for street drugs, the risks involved, generational shift, and the like. And with the economic growth following the expansion of the oil economy, begging has taken hold in Oslo's streets, perhaps most of all because it is so lucrative. Why risk prison, use energy, and or bother to plan a break-in, when a soft-touch public is willing to put up to two to three hundred dollars in your pocket each day?
Thus, many of the drug addicts went into begging, and many Norwegians transferred their old attitudes towards street "originals" onto these dopesters. This assuaged consciences, and at the same time, bought off the addicts (as in "protection racket"). In fact, one druggie beggar, interviewed by a major Oslo newspaper a few weeks ago, bluntly stated that giving money and buying the street magazine "=Oslo" is the price the citizenry has to pay, unless they want renewed unsolicited raids on their homes and chattel goods by such stalwarts as himself and his addicted cronies. (The interviewing of lawbreakers, children, the mentally unfit and others of such ilk, and treating their opinions in a serious fashion, is a standard - if odd - feature of Norwegian journalism.)
Oh, well!
And for the record, out in the city centre last night with a visitor from the southern hemisphere who had been away two years, I received the unsolicited, unprompted remark from her that the "population on the street was darker, noticably so, than two years previous." I assumed she was not talking about the summer tans that everybody in Oslo seems to have these days.
pleas said...
An "alarming number of tourist buses being set afire in Oslo"?
Get your facts straight instead of exaggerating...
If this is an exaggeration, why are Spanish tours considering dropping Oslo from their tours? Why have there been formal complaints filed in "both the Norwegian embassy in Spain and the Spanish embassy in Norway"?
As for one bus being set ablaze, and the rest merely "vandalized" --are you actually saying it's okay to vandalize buses and steal the belongings of passengers? That's not so bad, hmmm? After all, they weren't your belongings.
When a visitor says that people back home would think he was describing Africa, you have a problem. That you choose to deflect it only ensures the problem will increase.
Dymphna: Begging, even with a crummy product as the payoff, is still extortion.
Extortion? Low level coercion, at best, but not extortion. Nobody is forcing you to give the beggar anything. That said, blatant guilt trips such as the flaunting of sores or amputated limbs, in the timeless Hindu fashion, comes far closer to "extortion". The entire criminal addict subtext mentioned by pleas is a lot closer to extortion than some drunkard selling a newspaper.
Side Note: San Francisco—itself a confluence of "tribalism and leftist criminology"—used to have an "original" character of its own at one time. His name was Emperor Norton.
I'm not defending the =Oslo paper or any of the mechanisms behind it. My only intent was to provide an analysis of why the system functions as it does.
It's like watching the lights go out
one by one in Europe.
From the above description of a people who are smugly self-congratulatory about dooming themselves and others to a brutally primitive existence, one is forced to conclude that socialism in prolonged doses does lead to mental illness, similar to the extreme form that few have difficulty recognizing as pathological i.e. people who want to be cannibals find (through the Internet) people who want to be cannibalized.
Norwegians and the other Scands clearly want their culture and themselves to be devoured.
No doubt they are full of their own wonderfulness, thinking themselves the most generous, kind, tolerant people on earth. It would never dawn on them that enabling drug addicts and other self destructive people is the furthest from kind. Nor have they figured out that history will not think highly of a people who "evolved" to the point that their brains fell out and they embraced barbarians whose invited invasion and appeasement put an end to a civilization approaching Nirvana on Earth.
How stupid do you have to be not to notice that the majority of people suffer in every majority Muslim state, that there is no exception to this rule? So in what twisted mind is giving power to that darkness in what was an enlightened state either progressive or good? You coddle the barbarian and bring proven misery to millions? What does that make you?
Not what Norwegians think. It makes you criminally negligent at the very least.
There is clearly no recovery from the European sickness which has infected North America and Australia as well. For people who are made anxious by free will and individual responsibility, totalitarianism is preferable and Islam has rules and answers for everything. No need to think any longer. What bliss to clasp the viper to one's bosom and doom future generations to a new Dark Ages.
Hopefully there will be a Bede to record this great betrayal of future generations by the lotus eaters who welcomed their devourers.
Pray for Peak Oil: It will destroy the West in the short run, but save it in the long. The higher the price of oil, the harder it is to justify the mass importation of alien cultures, and the more unaffordable becomes global travel for those alien cultures.
queen--
good idea, except they come in innertubes and rowboats from the coast of Libya to Italy.
They swim to Spain.
They climb electrified fences.
Because anything is better than starving where you are. And when oil peaks which subset of people will suffer first and which of them will begin moving?
zenster, you're right. It's coercion rather than extortion.
The extortion begins when they threaten to beat you up, as the squeegee men did in NYC.
Since some of the "foreign" beggars are no doubt Romanian, it will devolve into extortion in the not-too-distant future.
BTW, the Baron said he saw Roma beggars, women with small children, in Vienna. I try to imagine San Francisco if (when) they hit there. What a quandry for our European city on US soil.
" the Baron said he saw Roma beggars, women with small children, in Vienna. I try to imagine San Francisco if (when) they hit there."
Don't fret about San Francisco Dymphana. The illegal Mexican gang members who occupy most of California will waste any Roma gypsies pronto. Remember, assault rifles and hand guns are as plentyful as oranges there.
See this site for a good example of their handywork:
http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?p=6998
Dear Mrs Dymphna,
You certainly do have a habit of taking a loose fact and running freely with it in a hyperbolic fashion. Furthermore, you try to deflect legitimate criticism by assigning rather outré interpretations to other content in my contribution in what I assume is an attempt to divert attention away from the validity of my original observation.
Let's get it straight: your exaggeration consisted of the claim that more than one tourist bus in Oslo burned. This was not the case. My stating so is in no way a condonation of the vandalism rife in Oslo against tourist buses. It is rather a case of "keeping the record straight". Your implication that I am saying "it's okay to vandalize buses and steal the belongings of passengers" (your words) is simply a red herring. My point? - you need not embroider the truth, which is bad enough.
And have "formal complaints"! really been filed with embassies in Norway and Spain, as you state? It seems to me that a joint complaint - pure and simple - from bus companies was filed with Innovation Norge, a state-owned organ that replaced (among other organisations) the former Norwegian Tourist Board. It was Innovation Norge that in its turn contacted the Oslo Spanish embassy and the Norwegian embassy in Spain regarding the matter, promising at the same time to work further with the case. Innovation did not lodge a "formal complaint" with these embassies, as far as I can see. "Formal complaints" in diplomatic terms are direct communciations between governments regarding affairs of serious consequence, which was not the case here, as reprehensible as the acts of vandalism in question have been.
Finally, my visitor of last evening (by the way, a "she", not a "he", which last interpretation derives solely from your misreading) did not say she was describing Africa - again, your words. That darker complexions were alluded to does not imply that our streets are absolutely filled with migrants from the Dark Continent, although there are enough of them here, god knows. What we do have are a general surfeit of Third World immigrants in Oslo; my closing comment was an underlining of the fact. I do not see how such a closing comment from my previous communication "deflects" the problem, although your remarks about it seem to point to your being unpossessed of a sense of irony.
dymphna,
Europe is overpopulated for a life without oil. Only oil makes it's present population sustainable. Without oil, the southern hempisphere actually offers a better opportunity for survival (easier to grow food, less need for heating resources). That's why the Southern Hemisphere has always been more populated than the northern. The Third Worlders will stop coming when the day arrives that Europe actually has to live on what it can grow and energize itself.
Hi Dymphna.
pleas comment made a lot of sense to me.
I agree with him concerning Dymphnas comment. Don´t jump on conclusions.
Today Americans conservatives keep on with that "Europe is doomed" meme.
Tomorrow it will be rants about how godawful those European Identitarians are.
It´s either dooming or hitling.
At last, ot, I will say that Dymphnas blogg-effort during the Barons absense has improved much from previous occasions.
I still read GoV every day.
When I read Pleas comment closely I have to say that I also disagree with some of her points.
Hamsun is a great writer and his name surely needs to be rehabilitated. WW2 is over.
Oslo´s infamous "Plata" should hold Knut Hamsun´s name.
Dymphna: zenster, you're right. It's coercion rather than extortion.
No harm, no foul. From what pleas has described it still seems to sucketh a mighty wind.
This will probably get me flamed but if the War on Drugs has proved one thing it's that some people will do anything, repeat anything, to get a buzz on. I've seem people huff spray paint, crush three vicoden into a shot of Jack Daniels and other such lunacy.
It would almost be more humane to set up electro-cerebral stimulation centers where these heroin junkies can go and get "stim wires" implanted. Then they can sit back, press the "green button" for however long it takes them to starve to death. Wired up in a similar fashion, rats will continue pressing the "green button" until they expire from lack of food and water.
Heroin junkies just do this over a much more extended period of time and usually inflict massive amounts of harm upon everyone around them in the process.
Barring the "stim parlours", the British model of providing the drug for free to certified junkies (along with periodic counseling), almost makes more sense. I DO NOT advocate the "needle parks" like they have in other European countries. Those are HIV and HEP incubation farms and little else.
As I mentioned before, follow the money. Why hasn't the War on Drugs worked? What is it really designed to do? What has it actually achieved? Here are some clues:
A huge number of people can no longer own guns due to conviction for low-level possession. The sort of politicians I'll be describing definitely DO NOT want people owning guns.
A huge number of lawyers are filthy rich from defending clients in cases involving criminal violations of laws that these same lawyers' politician friends (who are also lawyers), have passed.
A major chunk of taxpayer money goes to support state and federal prison programs with some guards making in excess of $100,000 per year. Some estimates place California's prison budget at 25% of the state's economy. Remember, California routinely places as the WORLD'S TENTH LARGEST ECONOMY. Imagine what a drain that represents upon the state's coffers.
So, follow the money. Look who's getting rich from the War on Drugs. Legalization with regulation would make a lot more sense. Treat the stuff like alcohol except make the penalties for providing it to minors hard felonies with HEFTY mandatory prison terms WITHOUT parole or time off for good behavior.
Clearly, there are a lot of politicians who are making money from the War on Drugs. The Mexican model can only apply to America too, in at least some respects. Far too much money washes around when so many BILLIONS of dollars are at stake. Politicians and Law Enforcement would rather have their jobs in this pointless legal hamster wheel than see them eliminated in favor of a more sane system.
A point in case is the Afghanistan opium poppy crop. Why not just go in and BUY THE ENTIRE HARVEST? Outbid the Taliban or mafia by 50% and then burn the entire stinking mess. Do this for three years running and the spine of a huge organized crime network will have been broken almost overnight in comparison to the long drawn out agony of the current War on Drugs. Three years of crop monopolization would cost a tiny fraction of what is currently being spent to interdict heroin trafficking.
Why isn't this being done? Again, follow the money.
I have noticed recently that there has been a large influx of black immigrants in the city where I live. These blacks are straight out of Africa and with many of them, their Muslim women. We are a terrorist target hot-spot, and I can't help thinking, like many others living here, that these black Muslims are not here for the work but for some other sinister plot. I went shopping the other day, and there were so many black immigrants working and shopping in that supermarket that I couldn't help but stand up and take notice. It felt surreal.
I am sure the people of Norway must feel like strangers in their own country and must be perplexed as what to do about it.
Joanne, Your comment shows something interesting. Americans are often rightly criticised for not paying enough attention to Europe. But it seems Europe has paid no attention to the USA, or that perhaps the leftist ideology so prevelent has blinded you to our reality.
Our reality includes a 70 year black crime wave that has devistated the largest cities in America, some more, some less. The poster child is Detroit, which went from majority white to majority black in the late 1960s after a series of horrific black riots that included massive arson and looting, along with 50 dead.
Today it is "missing" 1 million people! That is it has 1 million fewer people living there than in my childhood. Imagine a city of 2 million becoming a city of 900,000. Every other house is empty. Stores close, then streets close.
There is also the epidemic of rape, robbery, car jacking, gangs and street drugs that is the every day reality in places like LA.
It's laughable that Norway somehow thinks the can do better with the same people. As if we, in the USA, are inferior or not able to solve simple problems.
The African underclass is not a simple problem, and it is not easily solved. We have had trillions of dollars in wealth transfer to this group and it has only made things worth. We have third and forth generation welfare moms in every ghetto in the USA. We have a "ghetto culture" that celebrates its disfunction in rude and obscene unintilegible language ('ebonics') - and this from a group that has been here for 400 years.
Ha, ha, ha. Sorry to say this, but you are idiots. You are voluntarily importing the biggest social disfunction known in the world. For no good reason what so ever.
You will become strangers in your own land, your boys will be mugged and your girls raped by the children of the people you think you are helping. In return for this you will be shouted down, told you are racist and accused of hating.
We do have some advice for you, though. While you still have the upper hand you need to introduce a 2nd Ammendment. It takes millions of armed civilians in America to keep the pleasant areas pleasant. Eventually you will get used to the idea that carrying a cocked adn locked .45 is as normal as having a cell phone, and a lot more necessary if you are going to 'those' parts of town.
Build more prisons! You are going to need them. We have the highest rate of imprisonment in the Western world. It is silly liberal nonsense to think this has something to do with bad Conservative laws in the USA. It has everything to do with the racial makeup of our society. Blacks and now the Mexican invaders are hugely over-represented in our prisons.
Finally, you might consider forming a true Conservative or even anti-immigrant party now, and slowing, ending or even reversing the import of future criminals.
Of course - that's not very tolerant, is it.
Anyway, don't say that you didn't know. All you have to do is visit America: say Detroit, or Gary, or LA, or Camden, NJ, or Newark, or Compton, or Oakland, or Philly, or Brooklyn.
I suggest touring these places in the daylight in large groups with as many of those large Viking types as you have.
Good luck on all counts!
Amen, Zeke. Unfortunately, we all know that in their hearts the Europeans do not want further immigration and social decomposition, but the elites are imposing it upon them from above, intimidating and even legally persecuting anyone with the temerity to dissent.
Western elites are destroying the West. They know what they are doing; they aren't stupid. (At the top levels at least, although they have plenty of gullible lemmings drawing salaries from the persecution of their own people through Marxist NGO's and other organizations.
The question is: Why do the American and European elites want to destroy Europe, and what do they get in return?
Cui Bono?
I've noticed more foreigners selling Big Issue on British streets...
zeke - no worries, the Americans will be up to set things straight right away; we have something they need.
You've also pretty much explained how America has gone wrong with immigrants who have no intention of integrating into mainstream society and pulling their own weight. Unfortunately, America is half-idiot/half sane and so is pretty much everywhere else. North America is just a few years behind Europe. Just don't ever let your government try and take your guns away. It all starts by disarming the populace. If Obama was to become President, my guess is he would try to put the wheels in motion to disarm America. If Americans are stupid enough to vote Obama into the Whitehouse, they are stupid enough to fall for anything.....well, about half of you all anyways.
Dear Birkebeinr,
With regard to your comments, I tend to agree that Hamsun was a great writer - after all, everybody says so, n'est-ce pas? I myself cannot judge, since there are certain things - like rotting corpses - from which I hold my distance, regardless of whatever positive qualities such bodies may once have held.
On the other hand , there is no question that he was a nazi sycophant. A boot-licker, in other words.
Thus we have a problem - the Nobel Prize winner who was in his own small but nasty way a quisling. What to do with such a problematic figure?
Interestingly, one can turn to America for a solution: there was once upon a time a general officer in that country who turned the tide for the fate of his land in a famous battle, during which he lost a limb, only afterwards to turn traitor.
Somewhat analogous to Hamsum, you might say, although Hamsun never saved his country - quite the opposite, in fact.
The American solution? A monument at Saratoga that shows only a boot , with no inscription whatsoever - implying that the only honourable part of the man's body was lost on that battlefield.
I suggest that a similar monument be placed at Oslo drug hangout central "Plata" - perhaps a carved marble book with the title "Sult" on its spine, and nothing more. Certainly the association of druggies and Hamsun would be fitting - human trash.
That's as much "rehabilitation" as Hamsun needs. Otherwise, following your logic, we'll need a "Hitlerplatz" in central Berlin, and the like. No thanks!
Hi again Pleas.
I agree with you, one have a lot to learn from the US. There is such an abundance of great american writers such as Charlie Bukowski, one of my favorites. I understand you do not have the same admiration for one of my nations great writers.
If you read Hamsun with only his misdeeds in mind you can never appriciate his exploration of the human mind.
So if I understand your resonement right, NASA for example should righfully be called NAZI. Since exploration of the solarsystem was made doable by, a nazi, the enslaver and rocketscientist Werner von Braun. And astronauts should therefore be called nazinauts. According to your logos, wich reminds me lot of the kind of thinking applied by one Charles Johnson.
To bad so many discusions in the blogosphere ends with someone dragging Hitler out from the closet.
What´s wrong with Djengis Khan or Stalin? We need more diversity here.
Birkebeinr: To bad so many discusions in the blogosphere ends with someone dragging Hitler out from the closet.
Godwin's Law
Dear Mr Birkebeinr,
Come on, you can't be serious? Do you really want to give recognition to a nazi collaborator, charged with treason to his country after the war?
I'd feel so much better if you told me you have a graduate degree in literature (not that would justify your point of view), but I somehow feel this is not the case.
What really motivates you? Are there not enough patriotic, loyal Norwegian figures, decent people who deserve a monument? Or is Norway so bereft of notables that you feel it necessary to "rehabilitate" a figure who sent his Nobel Prize medal to Goebbels as a lickspittle gift? Someone who wrote an obituary for Hitler, lauding that evil person as a "warrior for mankind"?
Let's let loosers who supported enemies of civilisation stay dead and buried. Hamsun had his Nobel Prize - before he gave it to the Nazis. That is more than enough. As far as monuments and commemorative street names go - forget about it.
Pleas,
Several streets in Norway bear Knut Hamsun´s name today. In Trondheim, Raufoss and other towns across the nation.
This to celebrate and remember his brilliant writing. In many people´s opinion our greatest novelist. I´m inclined to agree with those who say so.
In the aftermath of the war many books have been written about the enigma Hamsun, trying to explain his treason.
Remember that he loathed the british, who´s intellectual elite was negative to his work. But he had sucsess in Germany before the war, under, and is still widely read today. "Growth of the soil" was printed in fronteditions and distributed in large numbers to soldiers fighting on the eastern front.
I have come to the understanding that for Norway ww2 was more of a civil war.
the story about the Halle brothers can underline this thesis.
Sturmbannführer Frode Halle served in the SS-Schijägerbataillon on the Narva front while his brother Gunnar flew combat missions over France for the RAF. Many such stories have come to light in the recent years.
In the US veterans may be very open and proud about their sacrifice during the war. That is good and right. However, over here, my grandparents and elderly neighbours told me next to nothing about what really happend. For a good reason maybe. A great many families became divided over wich side to choose. Thousands of waffen volunteers was treated as second class citizens even after their sentence was served. Lebensborn where treated inhumane by the victorius. War sailors got their rights taken away.
The international kind of socialism prevailed, more subtle but as we now know today, it is just as evil.
I guess my point is that for an American the ww2 is either black or white, evil vs good. For us who come from the nations directly affected by this war, there are different shades.
Read up on the highly antisemitic and racist group called Ragnarok who´s members regarded germans as untermensch, halfgermaner and volunteered to allied forces.
A few of them had already warred for Franco. Why did´nt the allies shun them?
There was no surprise for Hamsun´s contemporarys that he choose the side he did. And that a man like Fridtjof Nansen died before the war undoubtedly saved the bold explorers renomé.
Reading your first post on this thread, I got the impression that you had some insight of the northern man´s nature. You got a much better view than the "doomers and hitlers" but you still have things to learn ;) Why don´t you try to read Hamsun unbiased?
And Pleas, I challenge you to answer this; You obviously know who Vidkun Quisling was and what he did. And what his name means today. Can his betrayal be excused by the historical circumstances? What do you know about Halfdan Koht and Johan Nygaardsvoll? Who made Quisling Quisling?
Dear Mr Birkebeinr,
Reading your last comments, I begin to detect an agenda underlying your concern with Hamsun's post-bellum reputation.
My impression is that Hamsun's literary merit has less to do with your desire for his "rehabilitation", than it does with a regret on your part that Germany lost the war. For all I know, this may not be apparent to you, but is readily clear to most readers of your comments, I should think.
Essentially, I feel a rehabilitation of Hamsun would represent the opening wedge in a struggle led by Norwegian neo-Nazis and Norway's extreme right to further water down any criticism of those blinded Norwegian souls, who - for whatever reason - took the side of one of the most vicious and murderous regimes known to history. For that reason alone, Hamsun's readmission to polite company deserves no serious consideration.
Because of that, your apologetics on behalf of Hamsun, and now Quisling - of all people! - cuts no ice with me, I am afraid. And I think you would do well to leave your "what-if" speculations about Nansen out of the equation.
Granted, many people people made mistakes taking sides before and during the war. The fact that time has since elapsed does not, however, exonerate them from their errors. Oh, I know that Norwegian tribal thinking encourages the idea that "there is no such thing as a really bad Norwegian" - a mental set that does much to explain the pitiably low sentences currently dished out to murderers and thieves in the land of the midnight sun. The Disney/Kardemomme By view of Norway, in other words.
Nonetheless, in spite of wide-spread local belief in that myth, it must be accepted by feel-good Norwegians that certain suspect members of their own tribe must remain beyond the pale for all time, unless common concepts of good and evil are somehow demolished in some brave new world. The past is irrevocable, and no amount of wishful thinking can change that.
And I am afraid that your revisionist view of WW II being in the main a civil war for Norway is misguided. It was an invasion and rape of the Norwegian nation, pure and simple, nothing less. That some traitors took the side of the Germans does not change the essential character of the conflict.
Hello,
I've just run across this story and started digging. When the bus story broke, the police weren't discounting the possibility that the bus engine caught fire/ exploded on its own. Did anybody hear anything about that since?
As for the beggars - the foreigners of unnamed ethnicity were named in the original Norwegian article as Roma.
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