A picture from the Norwegian political assembly, Stortinget ...

Carl Ivar Hagen, the leader of the Norwegian neoconservatives, just retired as party leader for the Progress Party.
He was promoted to vice-president of the Stortinget national assembly last year. Here he's leading a session, which is slightly photoshopped ...

The party has nazi ties, and several known Norwegian neonazis has held positions in the party structure.
They've held email-campaigns to thank Bush for his invasion of Irak, and Hagen is described as being Bush' political twin; during the last years the party has aligned itself with neochristian evangelical movements, and has a very high activity level on the internet.
And is a festering boil of racism in Norway.

He was the person that brought Norway - with it's reputation of peace and human rights - into the Bush coalition, and made it even more easy to sell in the US.

The followers of the party is dubbed Frp'ere ...

They currently jumped from 24% to over 30% in polls due to a party comrade, Vebjørn Selbekk, who published the Muhammed-cartoons in Norway and made a lot of people angry, so angry that they burned down our embassies and - naturally enough - made a lot of people afraid. Selbekk was prior to publishing the cartoons mostly known for his gay-bashing, and has publicly thanked the Swedish pastor Åke Green for having the guts to stand up and call gay people a 'cancer on society'. It's the Fred Phelps gang, people. Phelps travelled to Sweden to thank Green, and has also made a special site for him.
http://www.godhatessweden.com

How the hell did Norway get into this mess? :shrug:
The answer is the same as in the US: a takeover of the mass media - obstruction of the free flow of information combined with heavy bias.

immune systems. I.E. Ignorant morons; and sadly it seems every country has their fair share of them.

I often wonder what political radicalization through religion does to people.

Here's what's the Guardian wrote about Norway's dark secret:

"Calls are growing for the far right to be given real power for the first time since the second world war, writes Andrew Osborn

Friday November 1, 2002

It gives more money to the developing world than any other country and its standard of living is officially recognised as the best that money can buy but Norway has a dark secret: it has become home to Europe's most successful far-right movement.
The far-right Progress party is not in power yet (although the country's minority government relies on it to pass legislation) but that could change and pressure is growing for it to be given a seat at the top table.

It already has 26 seats in the country's 165-member parliament and captured almost 15% of the vote in elections last year.
However, recent opinion polls show that its strength has grown considerably and that 33.6% of Norway's population now support it. Almost half of the country's 4.5m inhabitants also believe that it is time for the party to take the reins of power and be brought in from the cold."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,824319,00.html

Earlier, in 2000 Hagen said this:

""We're a new political breed," says the silver-haired, rather portly, Mr Hagen, sitting in his smart office in the parliament building in Oslo.

"We combine the best from social democratic thinking and the best from conservative thinking.""
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,378160,00.html

He was highly controversial when he made this remark about the muslims:
"Hagen also talked about children being used as suicide bombers. "We Christians are very concerned about children, 'Let the children come to me,' said Jesus," Hagen declared. "I can't see Mohammed saying the same."

That remark spurred laughter and applause from his Christian audience, perhaps encouring Hagen to add: "If he (Mohammed) did say such a thing, it must have been: 'Let the small children come to me, so that I can exploit them in my effort to make the world Islamic.""
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article828110.ece

He has constantly attacked minorities, single moms and aboriginals up through the 70's - 90's, today the muslims are an easy target, you can imagine.
He and his party poses as 'Friends of Israel' which always strikes a chord among the Christians here.

Strange thing that the neonazi sites is celebrating him, then:

Here's a debate at the nazi site Stormfront, the Norwegian extremists has been pretty active in promoting him:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=234291
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=230445&highlight=fremskrittspartiet
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=95429&highlight=fremskrittspartiet
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=21562&highlight=fremskrittspartiet

He made it big international among rw'ers because of his speech about Muhammed, and is often quoted as a leading figure:
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/234

Here's an article called State of the European Right, with a summary on how the rightwing movement is doing in Europe:
http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no4/dt-euroright.html

any rational person.
They are all learning from the NeoCons/Rove; keep the sheeple terrified, and find a good scapegoat, and then just manipulate the public to do your bidding.

It has generated some debate here, but no media has been even remotely critical towards this man of dishonor.
Perle too has visited Norway, prior to the war in Iraq. I remember seeing him being given a traditional piece of clothing as a 'guest of Norway' by the neoconservative gossip-magazine Se&Hør.

They admire these guys, does the Norwegian media.

As it is, they've built Hagen up to what he is today by playing up to his lust for attention, using it to sell more papers.

The big topic the last weeks has been censorship by one of the main TV-channels of a TV-documentary; 'A little piece of Norway', by <:www.erlingborgen.com|Erling Borgen> in which it's disclosed that Norwegian corporations are involved in building projects at Gitmo. Among other things. Pictures in that doc had never been shown on Norwegian TV, from the participation at a weapons fair by Norw. weapons corps. like Kongsberg.

The man taking the decision, John Bernander, was a former politician for the Conservatives and is currently holding a very influential position in Norway as a head of the Norwegian Broadcasting company, NRK. Previously, they've always had reporting of mint quality, like the BBC. Now you can hear the rw bias in every word they say in the news. I'm just waiting for the 'some people say' to pop up.

It is strange to watch it happen.

How horrifyngly sad.

In the paper Dagbladet.

"What's your relationship to liberalism and Ayn Rand?

I've enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead several times, although I think John Galts speech is a bit too long.
I agree with her points of view, but they can't be fully realized because we don't start on scratch to create the ideology in a new society"

Dagbladet is a former liberal paper, now shilling shamelessly for Hagen and Frp.
There wasn't one negative question in this net meeting, they've filtered out all 'touchy topics', lol.

I guess you recognize that style ;-)

One always thinks of Norway as the country where the King wore a Yellow Star on his sleeve in defiance of the Nazis.

oops. In checking this out, it turns out that it was the king of Denmark who did that.