Norway

nation state

Norway  link Sourcewatch Wikiquote
Capital city	Oslo
Location	Europe,Nordics,Northern Europe
Leader	Prime Minister of Norway
Type	nation state
Strategically located nation with money to spend on supranational deep state policies.

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a contry in the north of Europe. Since 1945, the country has been firmly tied to NATO and the Anglo-American sphere of influence. By 2020, Norway was aggressively pushing supranational deep state policies.

Deep state

Full article: Norway/Deep state

File:Norway Deep state.png

The Norwegian Deep state had a reboot after World War 2.

International treaties

Norway is a founding member of the United Nations, NATO, the European Free Trade Association, the Council of Europe, the Antarctic Treaty, and the Nordic Council; a member of the European Economic Area, the WTO, and the OECD; and a part of the Schengen Area.

The mainland territory comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of Norway. With a population of 5,385,300 in November 2020, the country shares a long eastern border with Sweden and a highly strategic coastline. It borders the Russian Kola Peninsula to the east.

Economy

The country has the fourth-highest per-capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists.. Norway maintains the Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system, and its values are rooted in egalitarian ideals.

The Norwegian state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, having extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, and fresh water. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). On a per-capita basis, Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East.

COVID

In November 2020, Norway’s National Institute for Public Health estimated that "The lethality rate for COVID-19 in Norway is 0.12%”.

Prescient emergency law

The government established an Emergency Response Committee on 9 February 2018 to assess whether "a sector-wide authorization provision should be introduced outside the cases regulated by the Emergency Preparedness Act, which gives the Government authority to temporarily supplement, and if necessary make exceptions from, current legislation". The committee was also asked to consider whether, in addition to this, a legal basis should be formulated for temporarily suspending individuals' statutory rights, or possibly modifying how the rights must be fulfilled.

Since the law gave the government dictatorial powers, The Lawyer's Association and several senior law professors called it unconstitutional and a "threat to the rule of law"

The timing of the law is curious, as it was heavily pushed by the government and came in the run-up to the COVID-19 deep event, and there were no existing situations that called for it.

In March 2020, a new crisis law was introduced and express processed by Parliament to "keep the wheels of society running during the corona crisis". Again, the legal community opposed it. Morten Walløe Tvedt, associate professor of law at Molde University College and a senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, calling the proposal "democratic madness", an opionion also expressed by other legal experts, stated: "The law gives very broad powers to do anything - that is, if the government decides, for example, to detain all infected without medical help and lock the door, they have the authority to do so. I do not say that the government will do it, but in principle they can. "

Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund

During 2019, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund ('Oil Fund') purchased large amount of stock in pharmaceutical companies, an increase of 31.5% year on year.

COVID-19 Cover up

File:Kommisjon.png

the Corona Commission discussing its own mandate in May 2020 - all classified.

The Corona Commission, established to review the decision to lock down the country in March 2020 against Covid-19 originally sought a 100 year confidentially clause, but the government instead agreed to the standard 60 year clause "for personal matters, as well as operational and trade secrets."

In a legal "gymnastics exercise to avoid the intention of the Public Access to Information Act" all the documents defined as internal proceedings were withheld from the public. Not even the members of the government received a copy of what they stated, and had to read and approve their own minutes in person. As a result, the public was only scheduled to see the commission's conclusions, but not the basis for them.

This wish for secrecy have led journalists' union to point out that it fitted the pattern that the journalists "have struggled to gain access during the pandemic, and the duty of confidentiality has been used as a pretext to withhold important knowledge and block free public debate.

Destroying the COVID evidence trail

Ministry of Health Ministerial Councilor Bjørn-Inge Larsen was one of the key people when the major decision on lockdowns were made from March 2020 onwards. According to a previously secret letter the Corona Commission received from the department and leaked to the press, it was confirmed that all text messages to Bjørn-Inge Larsen had been deleted.

Minister of Health Bent Høie stated to media that all contact he had with Health Director Bjørn Guldvog until the decision to enforce a COVID lockdown was made on March 12, 2020, went via Larsen. Thus, an important part of the most dramatic days in Norwegian history is no longer possible to document. As much of the communication between the key people happened via text messages, and these have now been deleted permanetly, it will be almost impossible to reconstruct and verify what was communicated in this critical period.

The reason for the deletion is to be "technical problems with receiving text messages from the mobile phones of Ministerial Councilor Bjørn-Inge Larsen", as well as limited storage of mobile data.

It turns out that the notes of health director Bjørn Guldvog are also gone, according to a meeting minute that Aftenposten has had access to. Guldvog regrets this, and explains it by that many loose notes were not systematized under strong time pressure. "In hindsight, he realizes that this was unwise".

The deletion of documentary evidence is similar to what happened in Denmark.

The right to detain all infected without medical help and lock the door

All restrictions is stated to be lifted from September 2021. However, just three days before the September national elections Prime Minister Erna Solberg introduced new changes to the Infection Control Act with the intent to make permanent the 'temporary' measures that were adopted by the Storting with express speed in 2020. The government also set a short timeline for this suggested change - the consultation deadline was set at 14 days. In the proposal, the government itself writes that it does not believe that the legal instruments will be needed in the next few months -a tacit admission that the hurry has other purposes, and that more lockdowns are coming.

The 'temporary' law that now will be made permanent was described by legal expert Morten Walløe Tvedt as:

The law gives very broad powers to do anything - that is, if the government decides, for example, to detain all infected without medical help and lock the door, they have the authority to do so. I do not say that the government will do it, but in principle they can.

Law professor Terje Einarsen , an expert on human rights and head of the International Division of the International Law Commission, ICJ-Norway warned strongly against the government's bill, stating:

It has not been public anywhere that they have worked with such a law. I find it very strange that such a far-reaching law is being rushed without public debate. It seems very undemocratic

Mass surveillance

During the decades after WW2, the intelligence services conducted large-scale phone surveillance. The program did not only include "reds", but politicians from all parties. The 1994 Lund Commission did a limited hangout of some of the surveillance done by the Norwegian Police Security Service, but their report noticeably avoided even looking the most powerful intelligence agency, the military Norwegian Intelligence Service.

2020

From June 2020, the Norwegian secret services are legally allowed to perform mass collection of metadata that crosses the borders to Norway. The information will be stored for 18 months, to "identify foreign threats"and "find digital clues to the co-conspirators" in Norway, said parliamentary committee leader Michael Tetzschner. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority criticized the law heavily, and stated "This will generate huge amounts of data about almost all Norwegian citizens, about our everyday, legal and ordinary communication, for the use of the intelligence service".

2023

• From 2023, the military intelligence service will be able to install technical equipment at providers of electronic communications such as Telenor, Telia, and others. In practice, this means that virtually all emails, text messages, chat messages and other communications can be monitored. The overall surveillance will ensure that most of the digital life of Norwegian citizens is captured, collected and recorded. "The possibility of maintaining a private life towards the authorities, becomes completely illusory", said Line Coll, Director of the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.

• The military intelligence service can monitor, store and analyze all data traffic going in and out to Norway. It covers most of all electronic communication, including between Norwegian residents.

• The Norwegian Police Security Service will be able to monitor and store everything that is done on the open internet in Norway. This will include article comment fields, open discussions on social media, public registers, blogs and leaked data sets.

• The police] were given permission to collect 18 different types of information about anyone who gets on a plane to or from Norway. The data may formally be stored for five years. This include name, contact information, itinerary, who you are traveling or sitting with, luggage details, payment information and passport number. The information may be exchanged with other countries.

• All providers of electronic communication services must store IP addresses and subscriber information for 12 months and make these available to the police.

Other

"Hate Speech"

Full article: Hate speech

In November 2020, the Norwegian legislature adopted (without a vote) a criminal law to punishes people for "hate speech" toward transgender people, including in their own home or private conversations.

Child sex abuse

After "one of the largest child sex abuse cases in history", Norwegian police announced in November 2016 that a year-long special investigation entitled “Operation Darkroom” had resulted in the seizure of 150 terabytes of photos, movies and chat logs containing atrocities against young children. The Washington Post briefly reported on the story, but later withdrew the page. Over 50 people are accused, including “highly educated” individuals, including two former or current elected politicians, one teacher, a lawyer and a police officer.