Wednesday, July 11, 2007
1 in 86 Norwegians Is A Millionaire
How can that be? They are all stinky commies who provide social services and tax the wealthy at a substantial clip. Yet, there are still many wealthy Norwegians.
No other country has more dollar-millionaires per capita than Norway, Roger Gullqvist of Paris-based consulting firm CapGemini told newspaper Finansavisen.
A new study compiled by CapGemini and Merrill Lynch showed that one out of every 86 Norwegians has more than USD 1 million (about NOK 5.8 million at current exchange rates) in net worth even when the net value of their primary residences is excluded.
Without residences is quite a stunning figure. Much of American's wealth is tied into home equity. 1 in 86 is pretty decent odds for a child growing up in Norway. We desperately play the lottery here in the hopes that we will strike it rich at astronomical odds.
We give tax breaks to our rich who are becoming even more rich while the poor get poorer, and the middle class stagnates. We have nearly fifty million without health care, because we can't be like those socialists, who hate the rich, except that they don't.
If Americans ever grow up and start thinking for themselves instead of trying to impose an American theocracy, their standard of living might improve just a wee bit. Nah, let's go bash some gays, protect the flag, and defend the virtue of Janet Jackson's nipples instead.
Oooh look, a shark attack! What was that Brittney Spears did?
Monday, July 09, 2007
Mo I Rana
Mo i Rana is where my father grew up in Norway. If any Norwegian readers stumble across here, I want to know how you rate it. The last time I was there, I was two and my mind is foggy on the details.
Dad had moved from Norway to the states at age 12, and had this great idea that he was going to bring up the family back in the homeland. My parents sold all their furniture, most of their belongings, and towed me and my older brother to our new home country. After a few weeks, Dad said this sucks, and we went back to America and settled for a bit in Seattle. There apparently is a law in the US that Norwegians must live in Minnesota, North Dakota, or Seattle.
It may just be wanderlust, or the Bush Presidency, but I am thinking of at least visiting Norway in a few years when my boys are older. My father is still a citizen of Norway so the embassy said we could move there without a problem. Mrs. Trifecta isn't too keen on that. She has heard about lutefisk.
Any Norwegians feel free to tell me the real story about my father's birthplace. It would be alot easier there for me with my name. Very common there, not so much here.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
My Peeps Sure Dress Funny
A colorful photo essay on a traditional Sami wedding made me realize that my Norwegian ancestors wore some really unique clothing. I think the colors in the outfits are to stop one from going insane during the long winters seeing all that white snow for months on end. Check out the shoes. If I ever get the druthers to move to Norway (I can due to my father's Norwegian citizenship), Mrs. Trifecta is not getting me to wear one of these things.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Tough On Crime Norwegian Style
There was an infamous robbery in Norway that has finally made it's way through the court system with sentences being handed down. A depot holding Norwegian Krones, as well as other foreign currencies, was robbed of 60,000,00 Krones($10,000,000 U.S.) Twelve men were involved in the plot. Wearing paramilitary uniforms, acting as like a military commando squad, they broke in, the authorities were called, and they started firing at the police. A police officer was shot and killed. The men confessed to the robbery, but wouldn't reveal where more than 80% of the loot was hidden. Now read the following.
Norway's Supreme Court handed down generally tougher prison sentences on Friday to the 12 men convicted of planning and carrying out the most spectacular robbery in the country's history.
Prosecutors sought Norway's harshest sentence, 21 years in a special form of protective custody, for both mastermind Toska, and his main partner Kjell A Schumann. Both are career criminals, with Schumann having a long police record and involvement in some of Norway's other major armed robberies.
The top sentence handed down was 18 years. The shooter received 16 years with the potential of serving life because he was a career criminal, but that isn't guaranteed.
Picture how this would have been treated in most any other country in the world. The difference is that Norway considers prison to be rehab more than punishment. Police and prison guards are not armed. A person who received a short sentence of under 18 months or who has that amount of time left on his sentence is put in a facility with no bars because the Norwegians believe that to re-enter society properly, you must be acclimated to it.
Here is prison life at a glimpse at one work farm.
Bastoey is based on the idea that traditional, repressive prisons do not work. "The biggest mistake that our societies have made is to believe that you must punish hard to change criminals," explains Bastoey's governor, Oeyvind Alnæs. "This is wrong. The big closed prisons are criminal schools. If you treat people badly, they will behave badly. Anyone can be a citizen if we treat them well, respect them, and give them challenges and demands."
Bastoey's philosophy is that individuals will stop their criminal behaviour if they develop a sense of responsibility, as well as empathy. And the way to achieve that is to take care of the nature around them. In the stables, for instance, each person is responsible for a horse or a cow.
"I've seen people refuse to take leave because their favourite cow is giving birth," says Haavald, 58, who is serving a five-and-a-half year sentence for fraud and who shows the new arrivals how to work with horses. "One guy - who all his adult life had beaten up people to collect debts owed to criminals - one day, a calf was born and it did not breathe. This guy gave it mouth-to-mouth. You could see he was shaken."
The system isn't perfect. I would think that criminals who commit a robbery such as this one should forfeit their freedom because they came in expecting to and did commit deadly violence against a police officer.
But, it does lead one to question the philosophy we have in place in the USA. Our prisons are trade school where prisoners learn to hone their skills. They are surrounded by brutal sadistic corrupted guards in some cases, and they leave prison less adapted to function in society than when they came in.
As offensive as these prison sentences may be to some in this case, Norway with a population of 5,000,000 people, has 3,100 people in prison.The crime rate is incredibly low, recidivism also is much reduced.
In the United States, our criminal justice system might think about being "soft" on prisoners. That doesn't mean letting them lie around all day, it means actively engaging them with trained professionals, giving them job skills, social skills, and a smoother transition period back into civilian life.
If that means our sense of vengeance is lost, what a pity. Warehousing somebody for thirty years to come out useless to fend for themselves and be productive might make us feel better, but ends up not doing much more than that. Criminality doesn't extinguish itself because we lock more people up and treat them harshly. Our crime and prison stats confirm that.
Treating dogs with brutality, harsh punishment produces worse anti-social behavior than what they were "guilty" of to start. We really expect differently from people?
Saturday, May 05, 2007
An article today in the NY Times highlights a dilemna that the Norwegian government faces. They have more money than they know what to do with due to their huge oil related profits, and they want to be socially conscious.
So, they have divested from companies like Wal-Mart due to their crappy labor practices. Our U.S. Amabassador to Norway is furious that they would do such a thing and is speaking out publically. Norway had $400,000,000 worth of Wal-Mart stock that they sold off. Our government believes they are just being big meanies by picking on such fine corporate citizens.
It's estimated that the Norwegian fund will be worth more than $180,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country within a decade. As a child of a Norwegian citizen, may I say that I am very intrigued about moving there some day. I like leffsa, will eat lutefisk if I am really drunk, and welcome my future socialist overlords.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
OSLO, Norway -- Representatives from 48 nations on Thursday launched a global effort to ban the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs by the end of next year, despite the opposition of several of the world's major military powers.
A draft declaration, obtained by The Associated Press, said these weapons - which can linger on former battlefields for years - cause "unacceptable harm." It calls for a treaty banning them by 2008, despite concerns that some countries would not agree to act that quickly.
Cluster bombs are small devices packed with high explosives and loaded into artillery shells, bombs or missiles. When the larger munition explodes, it scatters hundreds of the mini-explosives - called bomblets - over large areas.
The U.S., China and Russia oppose the ban and did not send representatives to the meeting.
Yes, we are the beacons of light. We have so many other ways of killing people, why do we need a method that leaves unexploded ordinance around for years to come? Because we say so. The next time George Bush bitches about Iran, or Venezuela, or any other "rogue" nation, let's please keep in mind that we want any weapon we can get our hands on, no matter how dangerous it is to civilian populations.
I am going to eat some lutefiske to celebrate the Norwegian effort.
