Eivind Berge, the Norwegian Men’s Rights blogger who was arrested after making repeated death threats against police on his blog, has been released from jail. The country’s Supreme Court has ruled that his comments – in which, among other things, he talked about how killing police was on his “bucket list” – are not illegal. His property will be returned to him and he is evidently entitled to compensation for his time in jail.
As far as I can figure it from the Google-translated articles I’ve read, the Supreme Court has ruled that statements on the internet are not “public” and therefore his threats don’t count as “incitement” under the law. Here’s what one article says:
Supreme Court’s Appeals Committee believes statements Berge has made on his blog are not covered by the Freedom of the definition in the Penal Code. incitement to violence and murder of police officers are therefore not presented publicly in the legal sense and therefore is not criminal, says the Supreme Court.
Apparently the issue was a fairly narrow legal one. According to the same article, the law under which he was prosecuted (written long before the birth of the Internet) “operates with a public safety and publishing concept that … do not take account of electronic publishing on the Internet.” The majority on the Supreme Court, the article goes on to say, felt that “the indictment includes actions that are clearly worthy of punishment,” but that existing law does not allow punishment for statements made on the Internet.
If anyone here knows Norwegian, let me know if this is correct. Here and here are several more articles in Norwegian, translated by Google. Here’s an article in English, written before the Supreme Court rendered its judgment, that spells out the issues a little more clearly.
On his blog, Berge celebrates his victory in the courts:
My blog is legal after all. The police had no lawful basis for pursuing criminal charges against me. This means the case has collapsed for the prosecution and I will be entitled to compensation for the three weeks I spent in prison. I was arrested and jailed for speech which the Supreme Court has ruled is legal, so obviously the entire prosecution was utterly baseless.
He considers his release a giant victory for Men’s Rights:
Being a political prisoner provided a welcome boost to my activism. … The entire process has been tremendously empowering for the Men’s Rights Movement. This spectacular prosecution of an MRA sparked debate and demonstrated to the horror of the feminist establishment that there are more antifeminists out there than they knew. I am not some kind of extremist easily dismissed, even though some of my writings may appear somewhat ungenteel. While my kind of violent rhetoric is legal, it is no longer needed. We are strong enough to fight feminism in more elegant and subtle ways now.
I will highlight some of Berge’s “ungenteel” opinions in future posts.
See here and here for previous posts of mine on Berge, which include many examples of his “violent rhetoric.”
Can’t decide which MRA fantasy is the most elegant or subtle, femicide or fuckbots.
Threatening to kill a cop is not a real threat guys!!
This shit just got real!!
Oy. Robert, he said all of these things on his blog (in English, to boot, so there’s no issue with translation):
His comment about “watching” the prosecutor ended with this not-very-subtle reference to someone who had just massacred 77 people:
See here for specific links to the quotes on his blog:
http://manboobz.com/2012/07/07/norwegian-mens-rights-activist-blogger-eivind-berge-arrested-for-death-threats-against-police/
Anybody who is okay with Anders Breivik is not ok to be in the general population.
Jesus, Robert, I know MRAs have trouble with the concept of words meaning things, but come the fuck on.
Oh, we got a badass over here!!
The way he carries on about psychiatry, I’d half expect him to be a Scientologist.
And I don’t know how he expects to try to plug a cop, fail, and then go “docilely.” I’ve got no experience with Norwegian cops, but here in the States the cops tend to react with overwhelming force, especially since that shooting spree in Pennsylvania in 2010. Take a shot at a cop, and you’re likely to end up dead yourself, even if you miss.
I’d say anyone who has read Berge and decided he didn’t call for killing cops, is either a troll, or an extremist; both if (of course) also possible.
Over here in the UK, I’d imagine that if you took a shot at a cop and ducked down into cover after the hail of return fire (we’re assuming here that you’ve been seen with a gun and therefore have firearms officers facing you), you could then stick your gun up in an obviously-not-ready-to-fire fashion, come out with your hands up, and not get shot unless you make a sudden move for another weapon (or something that looks like one). Not *certain* but plausible.
“If I ever find myself on the jury of a criminal trial involving, say, statutory or feminist-defined rape or nonviolent drug offenses, I would vote to acquit in any event as a matter of principle, regardless of the evidence, because I fundamentally disagree with the laws in question. Convicting anybody for such bogus, victimless crimes would be contrary to my core libertarian moral values.” – quote from the turd-Berge’s blog
By this logic, if the turd-Berge were ever to get himself drugged, raped and mugged, then he would have no cause for complaint for this victimless crime as it would be contrary to his liberatian moral values.
Then again, if he had a change of heart and thought that this victimless crime was only OK when HE wasn’t the victim and he decided to call the police to complain, they’d probably just laugh their heads off at his bleeding bum and empty wallet.
@MorkaisChosen: Yeah, probably over here you could avoid getting shot if you evaded the hail of return fire and then very definitely surrendered.
The cops might shoot you anyway and claim you had another gun.
Hell, sometimes they shoot you and then plant a gun on your body. That kind of cop we must identify and remove from the force.
The sovereign citizens who shot up Memphis a couple years ago were in their car, and the police fire kept up a while after they stopped shooting.
Bonnie & Clyde got ambushed, and this is what their car looks like. Of course, they were known to carry multiple Browning Automatic Rifles (500 .30-06 bullets a minute) and they had a (false?) reputation as cop-killers.
I’m no expert on cop culture over here, but there’s a definite and large strain of “this is a highly dangerous career,” to the extent that larger police forces are becoming indistinguishable from the military.
So should we all practice our surprised faces for when this guy goes on a spree of some sort?
Well, they did kill some cops, so that might be part of the reason they had that reputation. They even killed a constable and police detective here in Joplin in April of 1933, and their hideout is now designated as a preserved historical sight. Some of the most famous photos of the couple were taken in Joplin, and they left their camera behind in their rush to get away from more law enforcement. The local newspaper, the Joplin Globe, found the camera, developed the photos, and now they own the rights to them.
Bonnie and Clyde’s hideout
Back to OP, well I guess if there was a loophole, then there’s nothing Norway can do, but I do hope they at least keep an eye on him and his blog. I also hope they fix the law to include online threats.
“So should we all practice our surprised faces for when this guy goes on a spree of some sort?”
Let’s hope not. Last thing I need is to be paranoid about people’s safety 🙁
The BAR can’t fire at that rate Yes, the cyclic rate of fire is 550 rounds per minute, but it can’t really fire more than about
Background, the cyclic rate of fire is the fastest cycling rate of an automatic weapon. It takes between 6-10 rounds fired for the rate to get to that speed (the reason for the difference has to do with friction, spring tension, gas pressures, temperature of the parts).
But firing at that rate means a lot of recoil, and the BAR only weighs about 20 lbs, so it had a lot of climb.
The BAR had a 20 box magazine.
A practised shooter, in braced position can fire 3-5 rounds before he has to stop and reacquire the target. Call it five. That’s four bursts, an a bit of slack in the middle.
Call it 6 seconds.
Lets’ say the shooter is really good at changing magazines, it only take five seconds, plus time to regain the target, call that another three seconds, for an eight second delay between firing periods.
6 + 8 = 14 +6 =20 +8 =28 +6 =34 +8 =42 +6 =48 +8 =56 = 6 magazines in a minute = 120 rounds.
That’s still a lot, but a lot less than the cyclic rate implies. It’s also not accurate. The, “sustained rate of fire” is the one which matters, that being the rate at which rounds are put downrange, while being able to engage the target, without wearing out the barrel. For the BAR that’s about 60 rounds per minute.
To add to the problem (for someone like Clyde Barrow: who was the one with the BARs†) each of those mags is also non-trivial for weight. Each loaded magazine is 1.6-1.8 lbs. So 6 magazines is about 12 lbs. 500/20 = 25 x 1.75 = 43.75 lbs.
It wasn’t the rate of fire, per se, which made the cops ambush them, it was that it fires a 30-06 cartridge, which, when loaded in the mil-spec M1 Ball configuration has a muzzle velocity of about 2,700 feet per second, and an energy of about 2656 ft lbs. The penetration is about 24″ of white oak at 200 yards. At less than 100 yards, because of the time it takes the round to stabilise the penetration will be less, but still enough to go through any sort of obstacle between the shooter and the target.
†The BAR M1918A2 had no semi-automatic option, but rather a two rates of automatic fire, the 55o Cyclic, and a 350 Cyclic. The 350 meant that one could fire with less climb, the practical rate of fire wasn’t that much less; given that the rifle’s rate of fire on the way to the 550 cyclic was pretty much not getting past the 350, and the 350 was getting closer to cyclic.
It didn’t come out until 1937, by which time Bonnie and Clyde were already dead.
@misanthropic muse
eh, from a usian perspective, what he did is not criminal behavior, i dont think it should be criminal, and i have no problem with it not being called that, i just think it’s stupid that he thinks this is other than a technical victory under the law
@purvis
saying you’re going to stab someone is the textbook definition of a threat, dummy.
@ Robert Purvis: “He is an admirable activist.”
He is a wretched man who says “involuntary celibacy [i.e. not getting laid] has ruined my life”, who “wishes [he] was a pick-up artist”, and as a consequence, rather than ask himself why that is the case, has instead become a self-described rape advocate. He admires the Norwegian mass murderer in the same way that other pathetic people have drawn swastikas on walls or called themselves Communists, because it’s a scary theme they can attach themselves to. Then he complains when someone finally takes him seriously by arresting him!
I’m not surprised that someone finds him admirable, however – there are probably hundreds of people with the same lack of awareness, both of self and of others, as he.
Can I just point out this from Sandra is NOT OK? Rape = not funny. Rape of rapists = still not funny. Cops laughing at rape victims = way too goddamn common and acting like it’s fiiiine when they “deserve it” makes me want to vomit.
I especially like the gratuitous description of the violence of his imagined rape. Lovely.
whoa justin thats a bit out of left field we have people who admire a mass murder, people putting swastikas every where and communist a political belief. one of these things is not like the other.
We’re supposed to be scared of communists? Sorry to break it to you, buddy, but J Edgar Hoover is dead.
I’m a bit intrigued by the idea of someone calling themself a communist to come off as a badass outlaw. It seems a bit quaint. In school, everyone is taught to boo the anti-communists (they’ve at least heard of McCarthy) and cheer the anti-anti-communists. Anti-communism lost and now it’s beyond the pale.
The answer is the former, because fuckbots are now a reality.
Also, fuckbots aren’t just for men anymore!
Ditto to what Hrovitnir said.