Prime Minister Erna Solberg (Høyre) says she is very worried about riots raging across the United States following the George Floyd police killing.
“I’m very worried about what’s happening in the US. Not least because society looks so divided,” says Solberg to NTB.
“We needed a US that was in the international arena after Covid-19 to foster international cooperation. What we see is a US that is going to be much more concerned with their internal situation,” she says.
In the United States, the demonstrations and riots have now been going on for seven days after the death of African-American George Floyd, 46, following a brutal arrest by police last Monday. The unrest has spread to a large number of cities in the United States, and in several places a curfew has been introduced.
President Donald Trump’s threat to deploy the army against the violent anti-racist demonstrations in the United States has not helped calm tempers. On Tuesday, it was reported that five police officers had been shot in the last few hours – four of them in St. Louis, Missouri and one in Las Vegas.
“The fundamental challenge of making minorities feel part of a society is vitally important. We must all work with that,” says Solberg, who believes that Norway is doing well in this context.
At the same time, the explosive situation that the United States has experienced over the past week has long historical roots, the Prime Minister points out.
“But you have to try to build bridges. It is not good for any society to be as deeply divided as the United States is now,” she says.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
As an American, I appreciate Erna’s concern. Something must be done about police brutality in America – seemingly encouraged by Trump in 2017 – which whites have certainly suffered from too. However, this looting and rioting may set back those reforms, and there seem to be organized elements helping foment them, although blacks have always had a tendency to loot and burn when they get riots going.
My own experience growing up with blacks in the North was good and bad. I played American high school football with black kids who became friends as well as teammates.
On the other hand, a girl I was close to had been sexually molested by a black kid in our public swimming pool when she was 10, and there was nothing I could say or do to help her get over that.
On the other hand, black fathers in the predominantly black section of our town made sure my kid brother (was safe and) got to play basketball in the neighborhood courts, and trained by experts he became one himself.
In the U.S. Army, I was unexpectedly attacked by 3 black GIs walking past me in West Germany in 1968, who then ran off when a lone white kid came down the stairs out of the Enlisted Men’s Club. Hit in all the way to the one kid’s wrist in my solar plexus, I had some doubt I would breathe again but finally did so after a couple minutes. This seemed like bitter payback for having supported the campaign for integration and blacks’ civil rights when I was younger.
In 1976, a black university janitor helped my older son prepare for the Illinois statewide high school age individual player chess tournament, wherein Robert tied for 2nd, not realizing until after the game he could have beaten the top-seeded player and later tournament winner twice. Chet and I have always had good games and are friends.
This looting and burning is like what helped much-maligned President Nixon – a far better president than Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, or Trump – get elected in 1968 stressing law-and-order. However, if Trump is seen as one cause of the violence, the reverse may be true in this November. It has been recently said that the Democrats could win running a glass of water as a candidate, but if they do run a hideous apparatchik like Creepy Joe, they’ll still manage to lose again anyway.
When the National Guard is called out, deadly force is understood, and anyone with any sense stays indoors, so I am confident the Guard – and Army, if necessary – will sort this out as they have in the past.
Erna might also be concerned about the Sweden-like grenade reportedly found 100 meters away from justice minister Mæland’s residence. If this isn’t another (car-burning) false-flag, this appears to be a terrorist counter-threat against the deportation crackdown on those criminal elements responsible for the Oslo street crime attacks and “flash” gang fights in public places, which the gangs use to establish their territories and control, like in Sweden.
Again, the gangs – and mafiyas – are indeed terror groups, and to be effective against *them*, extra-ordinary anti-terror laws should be utilized for investigations and prosecutions.
We live in interesting times indeed.