Friday, January 22, 2021
Brexit POLL: Do you think the UK will Rejoin the EU? VOTE HERE
REMAINERS are turning their attention to rejoining the European Union after the UK finally cut ties with Brussels on December 31 - but do you think Britain will end up returning to the bloc?
Religions for Peace Norway urges gvt to sign Treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons
Religions for Peace Norway has urged the Norwegian Government to join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which seeks for the first time to establish a comprehensive ban on the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as obligations for victim assistance and environmental remediation.
Norway Panel to Review Attack Response
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg says an independent commission will be created to investigate last week's twin terrorist attacks in Oslo, which left 76 people dead.
Stoltenberg made the announcement Wednesday in the face of questions regarding how the Norwegian police responded to the deadly rampage.
It took officers more than 90 minutes to reach Utoya Island on Friday, as Anders Breivik, a conservative anti-immigration extremist, carried out a shooting spree at a youth camp organized by the country's left-leaning Labor Party.
Breivik has confessed to carrying out the shootings, as well as a deadly bombing in Oslo's government district earlier the same day.
During a news conference Wednesday, Stoltenberg also issued a public appeal that his countrymen work to ensure Norway remains an open and accepting place.
"The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation," he told a news conference.
"I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22," when an anti-immigration radical set off a bomb in Oslo's government quarter and proceeded to shoot dead dozens at a youth camp organized by the left-leaning Labor Party, Stoltenberg said.
"But I hope and also believe that the Norway we will see after will be more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before."
The prime minister also defended extreme views held by the likes of by Breivik, a Norwegian citizen who published a 1,500-page anti-immigration manifesto online in which he sought to justify the attacks.
"We have to be very clear to distinguish between extreme views, opinions -- that's completely legal, legitimate to have. What is not legitimate is to try to implement those extreme views by using violence," Stoltenberg said.
Meanwhile authorities continue to slowly release the names of those killed in Friday's attacks. The identities of 17 of the 68 people who died at the youth camp have been confirmed by officials.
The youngest victim identified so far is Sharidyn Svebakk-Boehn, who had turned 14 just days before his death.
Other victims include 51-year-old Anne Lise Holter, an employee in Stotenberg's office who was killed in the bombing, and a police officer killed on the island named Trond Berntsen, a stepbrother of Crown Princess Mette-Matrit.
Police released new details Wednesday regarding Breivik's arrest, describing it as "perfectly normal.
Amid the high alert following the attacks, police evacuated Oslo Central Station Wednesday after receiving a report that a man had stepped on a bus, left luggage and stepped off. Officials reopened the station after nothing suspicious was found.
Separately, Norwegian police defended their response on Wednesday, saying they had done their best to overcome obstacles in trying to quickly reach Utoya. Police said they were unable to send a helicopter because the aircraft's crew was on vacation. Television news helicopters arrived at the scene ahead of the police, who said they struggled to find boats to take them from the mainland.
Magne Rustad, a local police head of staff, said the response team may have saved 10 minutes by switching to two leisure boats that picked up the 10-man crew after the men had mechanical problems. One of the leisure boats had more horsepower and sped faster to the site, he said.
As the first boat docked, campers running toward the boat pointed north, screaming that the gunman was there, Mr. Rustad said. Part of the crew headed that way in search of the suspect.
As the second boat arrived, however, bursts of fire were heard from the island's south. "Gunshots rang out over and over," said Commander Jacob Bjertnaes.
Mr. Bjertnaes said the rest of the crew ran 350 meters (almost 1,200 feet) through the dense woods toward the gunshots, shouting: "Police!" Eventually, they came upon gunman Anders Behring Breivik, standing with his hands over his head and his two weapons 15 meters behind him.
Mr. Breivik was arrested and the search for a second suspect began along with efforts to rescue the victims. Mr. Bjertnaes said he was proud of the efforts of police and the numerous volunteers who transported victims and survivors to the mainland.
Chief of police Sissel Hammer said the police would launch their own review. "We want to take the initiative to evaluate all steps taken," she said.
'Christian terrorist' Coming to term?
As Norwegians prepare over the coming days to bury scores of the dead from terror attacks on a youth camp and the government's headquarters, an aggrieved nation vowed it wouldn't let its proudly open society also fall victim to the massacre.
The first funerals of the 77 killed in the attacks 10 days ago took place Friday—those of two Muslim teenagers from immigrant families who, in many ways, embodied the evolving face of Norway that an anti-immigrant extremist said he sought to assault with the attacks.
As a Muslim imam and a Lutheran minister led the casket of one of them, Bano Rashid, an 18-year-old Iraqi Kurd who had come to Norway with her family in 1996, mourners spoke of a passionate young woman who aspired to become a Norwegian parliamentarian one day. Earlier on the rainy day of the attacks, friends said, Ms. Rashid had lent her rubber boots to former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who had spoken just hours before at the Labor Party youth camp she and others were attending.
In his eulogy for Ms. Rashid, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere also lamented an irony that many in Norway have struggled to come to terms with since the tragedy:
"As refugees...you arrived in Norway, looking for protection and safety. And yet you have been hit by what is most absurd and most brutal right here in our home, in safe Norway," he said. "It is not understandable."
In the days since Norway's worst peacetime atrocity, political leaders, police and ordinary Norwegians have been re-examining the openness that for so long has marked this nation's society and its security policies.
During the first reports that someone had detonated a car bomb and then opened fire at a youth camp in Norway, many assumptions clicked into place.
"In all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra," Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote within hours on the Weekly Standard website.
The massacre was actually committed, police say, by a blond Norwegian. As Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto emerged, calling for violence to rid Europe of non-Christians and those he deemed traitors to Christian Europe, some seized on the religious aspect of his delusions.
Mark Juergensmeyer, editor of the book "Global Religions: An Introduction" and a sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara, wrote an essay likening Breivik to Timothy McVeigh, the American who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil until 9/11.
McVeigh and Breivik were both "good-looking young Caucasians, self-enlisted soldiers in an imagined cosmic war to save Christendom, and both were Christian terrorists," Juergensmeyer wrote.
In a column for Salon.com, Alex Pareene said Breivik is not an American-style evangelical, but he listed other connections to Christianity. "All of this says 'Christian terrorist,' " Pareene wrote.
Such claims drew strong resistance. "Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder," Bill O'Reilly said on his Fox News show.
That makes sense to Joyce Dubensky, CEO of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She said it also makes sense that "millions of Muslims say Osama bin Laden is not a Muslim, that no one who believes in the prophet Muhammad commits mass murder."
"We need to hear Bill O'Reilly, but we also need to hear and understand the voices of the overwhelming Muslim majority around the world who condemn those who are terrorists in the name of their faith," she said.
Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer and author of the upcoming book "Islamic Pacifism: Global Muslims in the Post-Osama Era," said the Norway attacks "proved that terrorism can be committed by a person of any race, nationality or religion.
Fact check: Discussion of deaths in elderly vaccine recipients in Norway lacks context
A social media post has been shared thousands of times claiming the ‘mainstream media’ were ‘silent’ after 23 elderly people died in Norway after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
The Facebook post was uploaded on Jan. 16, 2021
The deaths of 30 Pfizer vaccine recipients in Norway show it is stimulating an immune response
Reports of about 30 deaths among elderly nursing home residents who received the Pfizer vaccine have made international headlines.
With Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration expected to approve the vaccine imminently and the rollout set to begin next month, this development might seem like cause for concern around the safety of the vaccine.
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