Tag: Norwegian

Norwegian politician, Tove Lill Lyote

Tove Lill was one of the finalists in Miss Norway (Not to be confused with the Frøken Norge pageant, sometimes translated to Miss Norway in English) 2007 and won the finale. After that she has travelled around the world as Miss Norway in international beauty competitions such as Miss Tourism Queen International, Miss Peace International, International Union of Beauty pageants, Miss Globe International and Miss Pearl. She had her first modeling job at age 19 for a friend just for fun, doing a music video with a Norwegian rapper band. She realized modeling was what she wanted to do, and she sent the photos to a photographer, and a few weeks later she was on the cover of one of Norway’s biggest magazines.

A famous model scouter saw Tove Lill’s photos, and wanted to bring her to Los Angeles for work. They started a reality show called Glamour of Sweden with 5 other models, where they were competing with Playboy’s Girls Next Door.

In The United States, Hugh Hefner noticed the Norwegian beauty, and after Tove Lill moved back to Norway, he called her and invited her to the Playboy Mansion to do a Playmate shoot. Tove Lill stayed for a while, and Hefner wanted Tove Lill to be his girlfriend.

In addition to be a model, Tove Lill is also a politician. She is the leader of the Norwegian political party Progress Party’s Youth Organization the Youth of the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiets Ungdom in Norwegian) in the county of Vest-Agder.

The Progress party:

The Progress Party’s Youth (Norwegian: Fremskrittspartiets Ungdom, FpU), is the youth wing of the Norwegian political party the Progress Party. It is generally more libertarian than the Progress Party itself, both with regards to economics and politics in general. The current leader of the organization is Ove Vanebo.

In the organization’s manifesto, it states that; “The government should not use economic politics to influence economic development”, in stark contrast to the Progress Party’s economic politics. It also wishes to replace the public safety net with private insurance arrangements and privatize some schools and hospitals, making the public hospitals “compete” with the privately owned hospitals. On social politics, the youth party also has a much more liberal approach. The youth party does not support gay marriage in a common church, thus they do support them in getting married in a humanitarian church, due to religiously-influenced views that state that it is against the bible and what the church is built on.

The overarching political principle of FpU is that of individual freedom, and the right to do as you want, as long as it don’t bother anyone else or break any religious principles. A much used slogan, “my freedom ends where yours starts”, illustrates that in a clear way.

The hellholes that are Norwegian prisons

The dude in Norway who murdered 70+ people for no reason will be spending 21 years in jail instead of life and instead of getting executed. Naturally this has sparked debate over capital punishment, and even though I’m not thrilled with the death penalty as a policy, I absolutely have no problem with it on a basis of morality. I genuinely don’t understand the people who do, actually. I always ask them, but never get much insight into what moral basis exactly there is for keeping all murderers alive – which is what being anti-death penalty means despite the reverse not being true. Same as being anti-war vs the “pro” position which is favoring it in some cases: the “anti” side is against it in all cases and the pro side is only in favor of it on a case by case. same with abortion – the pro side is case by case and the anti side says its immoral no matter what.

In response to my search for insight on the matter, I usually just get stupid bumper sticker phrases like a sarcastic “lets kill killers to show that killing is wrong!”. When I correct them however that no one smart thinks “killing” is wrong – it’s “murder” that is wrong and they don’t really believe themselves the philosophy behind the argument of capital punishment being hypocritical because they don’t apply the same standard to other crimes. People who say that are not against kidnapping kidnappers or confiscating property from a thief, yet their logic dictates that if killing murderers is hypocrisy then jailing kidnappers is hypocrisy. And that’s where they stop responding… every time.

But another often used argument is that life in prison is a fate worse than death. Which is really odd since they’re going from “capital punishment is too cruel” to “I want them to have an even MORE cruel punishment”, but rendered complete nonsense considering no killer ever chooses death. They all want to live. Desperately. They make plea bargains and cooperate with the prosecution so they can avoid the death penalty. Killing these people doesn’t make them martyrs, it makes them go away. They get forgotten. They get prevented from killing again either within prison or getting released from it.

As for those hellish prison cells that capital punishment abolitionists claim is a worse punishment than being put to death (even though no one convicted of murder ever thinks so), here are some torture chamber one-person-per-cell examples in Norway (Bastoey Prison, courtesy of this Daily Mail article from 2010):

Each inmate gets a private cell with mini-fridge, flat-screen TV and even a private en-suite bathroom and barless windows – because they let in more sunlight.

Then for every 12 to 15 rooms there is a top-notch kitchen with stainless steel work tops and lounge areas complete with IKEA-style sofas and coffee tables.

To cap-off their stay at Halden, the pampered prisoners can even enjoy a gym – complete with rock-climbing wall – a music studio and luxury library.

Allegedly an even nicer prison exists there where hardcore felons “have an island where the they work on a farm and live in cottages., In summer, they can improve their backhand on the tennis court, ride a horse in the forest and hit the beach for a swim. In winter, they can go cross-country skiing or participate in the prison’s ski-jumping competition.”

Sounds like a fate worse than death to ME, right?

UPDATE: While looking for a picture of a cell in the prison the shooter is going to (cuz who knows, maybe they’re not ALL like this, right?) I finally found one and as you can see, it is a significant downgrade: the television is not a flat screen! *GASP*


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