Sunday, April 15, 2012

Cowardice on Utøya

Utøya memorial


Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer sends his translation of an article that was published in today’s Dagbladet. It discusses the case of Eskild Pedersen, the leader of the AUF (Youth division of the Labour Party), who escaped from Utøya on July 22 during the massacre.

The translator includes this note:

I’m not going to criticize Pedersen for the choices he made that day, but it certainly does not put him in a very flattering light. People who were in the area at the time put their own lives at risk and saved numerous young people who had got into the lake and fled the island.

Pedersen heard the gunshots and listened to the desperate pleas from those still on the island, but decided not to return and help. He was only thinking of himself.

That is the classical definition of a coward.

A member of a local chapter of the FrP (Progress Party) was sacked for calling Pedersen a coward at the time this incident was first made public, and I haven’t heard of anyone else questioning Pedersen’s choice up until now.

The translated article:

Criticized for fleeing Utøya

AUF leader Eskil Pedersen is criticized for fleeing Utøya on board the passenger ferry MS Thorbjørn.

In an interview with the BBC Pedersen gives his perspective on the flight and the criticism that followed afterwards. Nine people escaped the island onboard the ferry when the massacre occurred.

“I think I acted the way people would normally act in such circumstances, on instinct. I did as I was told and boarded the vessel, based on the information I had at the time,” Pedersen says in the interview, excerpts from which NRK showed last Sunday.

Now he is criticized from within the ranks of the AUF about the choices he made on July 22, 2011. AUF member Bjørn Ihler survived the massacre by hiding on the southern tip of the island.

“It’s easy to say that this is how people would react, that most would have fled the island. But this was the leader of the people on the island. It is akin to a captain abandoning ship,” Ihler says.

“Our only hope”

Adrian Pracon, County Secretary of Telemark AUF, describes the ordeal in his book, Heart to the stone, about how he was lying on a rock and simply couldn’t believe that the ferry had left the island.

MS Thorbjørn was our only hope, and now it had left without us,” Pracon writes in the book. Pracon was shot in the shoulder, but survived the massacre by playing dead. He later stressed that this passage is not in any way meant as a criticism of Pedersen or the crew onboard MS Thorbjørn.

Pedersen said he acted on instinct and that he was told by others to get on the ferry.

“The offender has stated in interviews that I was his main target on Utøya. He had studied pictures of me and wanted to kill me. It is important to remember this,” says Pedersen.

“Does not recollect details”

The ferry departed Utøya around 17.30, fifteen minutes after Anders Breivik Behring made landfall. While the ferry was heading away from the island on the Tyri lake, several of the people on Utøya contacted the ferry with their cell phones and pleaded with the crew to return.

Pedersen says he does not remember who made the decision not to return.

“It is very difficult to analyze the choices that people made that day and what could have been done differently. It’s a hypothetical question that only produces hypothetical answers,” he says.

11 comments:

Nemesis said...

The fallout has started. A leader leads. He or she does not run off and leave those who look to their leader for direction. A leader ensures that everyone under his/her direction is properly looked after, especially in time of crisis. This person Pedersen, this so called leader, is a disgrace and a craven coward. He deserves all the vilification that will come his way.

Sol Ta Triane said...

“The offender has stated in interviews that I was his main target on Utøya. He had studied pictures of me and wanted to kill me. It is important to remember this,” says Pedersen.

Running in self preservation is one thing, but isn't he saying that he had to run because he somehow knew that the murderer was looking specifically for him?

This is that new, now common form of leftist lying that is hard to counter, a lie so obvious that it seems no one would have the audacity to say it.

Anonymous said...

We are talking about offspring of pampered Lefties here. They have no survival instinct to speak of. Furthermore they've been inculcated into believing they are part of new ruling class that will take the reigns of power soon. I doubt they could even conceive of the notion that someone would dare try to kill them.

So it does not surprise me in the least that some would engage in abject cowardice.

Par for the course.

Anonymous said...

Note also that according to the programme shown on BBC2 last night, the ferry was a converted military vessel, which was able to withstand gunfire. So sailing round the island and picking up people trying to swim to safety, the danger would have been minimal. But this fellow apparently did not choose that course of action, instead preferring to save his own skin, and to hell with everyone else.

Betty Burqa said...

The 'leader' who high-tailed it outa' there says that Breivik had studied pics of him and wanted to kill him, well, um, I am not a Detective but, How the hell would he know that before the fact!?
he is lying, pull your tail from between your knees, if you cannot be staunch at least be honest!.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Pedersen has a bright political future ahead of him given the way he weaseled out of helping his fellow human and not making himself look like a total heel in the process.

Anonymous said...

This will be Pedersen's problem for the rest of his days.

laine said...

"talking about offspring of pampered Lefties here. They have no survival instinct to speak of."

It seems Pedersen had plenty of survival instinct saving his own skin with no heed for anyone else AND justifying his shabby behavior afterwards. What Lefties don't have when push comes to shove is a sense of duty to others, any nobility or heroism, though they speak of themselves in those terms all the time when there's no danger.

Anonymous said...

This is true. Eskil Pedersen is a true anti-White weasel.

But it was not only him.
By "coincidense" 5 out of 8 on the boat were from the leadership of the youth-party, so they took care for each other, the others were a girl that was there already when the shooting started, the kaptain, and I belive, a guy assisting on the boat. So they only took care for themselves.

When the boat was far enough from the island, to be safe, the captain wanted to turn. (So he was thinking like any normal person would have though, he had a child there), but the others(read: the leaders of AUF) refused, and convinced(pressured) him to go far away, the captain also had a friend living near by that was an armed policeman, he wanted to go there for help , again the AUF-leaders refused him this, "because he(the policeman could be part of the attac), their "paranoia" soon ended as soon as they reached shore far away, and the first thing they did was to go to the nearest policestation.
Tourists, with plastic-boats were doing the rescue-work instead, hundreds more could have died because of these AUF-leaders if not the tourists with their small plastic-boats had gone out with danger for their lives picking up hundreds from the sea(they had no big steel-ferry for protection)
The PC-media has for almost 3/4 year now been referring to Eskil Pedersen as "the HERO from Utøya"

Anonymous said...

How can anyone be a real leader if they're not actually prepared to step up and help other people?

Anonymous said...

a leader does not "do as he is told" a leader makes difficult decisions and leads. he should accept that he made an exceptionally bad decision, he is not a leader, and do the right thing.