Consider me a fan of Norway. I traveled there extensively in my youth, and still have friends there. It is a beautiful country, with a traditionally pro-American foreign policy. It saddens me to see Norway have its version of the London bus bombings.Former congressional candidate and nanoscientist Mike Stopa notes that the warning signs were present in Norway, as noted by a Norwegian blogger earlier this year:
No one expected the barbarians to hit Norway. No one, that is, expect the people of Norway. And among those there is one woman named Hege Storhaug who anticipated it most clearly and cruelly. Her thoughts on the subject are frighteningly prescient. Storhaug begins this piece with a bit of optimism, crediting Germany’s Merkel and France’s Sarkozy with standing up to the catastrophe of multiculturalism.
Europe is finally waking up to the threat posed by decades of policies which preached tolerance, yet bred the exact opposite: an intolerance by many immigrants, particularly Islamists, for the values of their new homelands.
She notes however that in Norway last summer, 3000 men “many of them in long coats, ankle-high baggy pants and full beards” gathered in the same place that “Nazi thug” Vidkun Quisling gathered in the 1930′s to denounce the Jews. The Islamists last summer explicitly denounced Western Civilization and threatened a new 9/11 on Norwegian soil.
Much as in Sweden, the rise of radical Islam in Norway also led to a rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment, particularly among leftists who found a common cause.
I suspect that nothing will be the same in Norway.
Update: The NY Times reports:
A threat assessment released in March by the Norwegian police said that though support for extremist Islamic terrorism was not widespread, “activity in certain communities” meant that the threat level would be heightened in 2011. “Some extreme Islamists currently appear to be more globally oriented,” the report said, “and it is primarily this group who could present a direct threat to Norway in the year ahead.”The report also added that Norwegian businesses and high-profile figures were likely to be targets. Three Norwegian men were arrested in July 2010 on suspicion of terrorism and were said to be a terrorist “node” in a larger global network, American counterterrorism officials said at the time.
Further, initial claims of responsibility by an al-Qaeda group are being discounted. An initial arrest of a Norwegian has been made in connection with the island camp shooting. Speculation includes a lone wolf style attack and right-wing group targeting the labour party.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY