Anybody got a TL;DW (didn't watch)?
Fjords run deep into the country. Maritime society.
Major lumber exporter.
The UK agreed to a median line split for divvying up oil fields.
A tiny island 17km off shore gave Norway 85% of the most productive oil field in the North Sea.
Oil and gas companies operating in Norway come under the control of the government after 100 years.
A low corruption society was in place prior to the appearance of oil wealth.
The sovereign wealth fund has a strictly capped draw down to prevent politicians from looting it.
In short, an Iraqi man married a Norwegian women. Their kid had cerebral palsy. They decided their son could get the best care in Norway, so moved to that country.
The man has both academic training and industrial experience with the oil industry, at a time when the Norway’s oil administration had only three officials. When al-Kasim went to the Ministry of Industry looking for a job in the oil industry, they jumped at the opportunity to tap his expertise.
He helped write the plan which puts the socialist state in control of managing the oil wealth, balanced between reply on private foreign companies and a "bloated, politicised oil sector" of only government control, quoting an excerpt from https://www.isegoria.net/2009/09/the-iraqi-who-saved-norway-... . Statoil is a Norwegian state-owned private Norwegian oil company, giving the Norwegian government deep access to the costs and profits in oil extraction.
I remember an account from the original FT story. The Norwegians told the oil companies the country would charge a super-profit tax of 40% on top of the 50% corporate rate. The companies said something like "what? That's too high!". The Norwegians replied "Since none of you walked out, I think it was too low."
He also did this in the most "by the way" way, he landed in Oslo had a few hours to kill waiting for his train connection, so he went to their office...
There are some rumors that the lumber comes from tropical forests.
I am native, and we do have oil, fjords blonde and .. misc. people that number a fraction of saudia arabia. All is not idyllic, most people like me die many years before reaching my age. My story is one that should have long since died and thus not been told. Tragic, cruel & ironic in the worst ways from start. TL;DR and a bit of a downer, so short short sunny version:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOKAS_robbery
^
One of those guys is the closest I have toa father figure, the police forced me to live in his town under his roof Norway: Where junkies keep you drug-fre, the criminals get you your first degree, bribe you with ADSL, weed and a higher education and the government agencies break the law & fuck you legally up for life.
- the 65M NOK still missing. We had paper money then, polymer now. They still ask them where the money is after having served 1.5 decades of time and changing the form of fucking currency we use.
Like I said sunny, if somewhat omitting most shitty events leading up to that, and more recent ones. It gets really bad, most people I know of facing those teens and early adulthood died .. 20 years ago. That age. Then again most people I know stuck with MS and windows despite living through the 90s aka the bsod inferno. I took up linux, bsds, programming assemblers, c, perl + misc scripting, binary exploitation and other very normal things for people that age from that background surrounded by violence and junkies.
It is very dark for those who are vulnerable, especially the under age and do not have my ability to make rocks envious pure stubborn refusal to take up heroin or participating in the national pass-time of death by self-inflicted liver damage and or cancer from its metabolites.
However, I am an optimistic fellow: I was hoping the Norwegian Political & LEgal Establishment died proving me & my assertion wrong. Drinking organic fat solvents produces industrial carcinogens as metabolites - both of which pass the blood-brain barrier - and not only a dumb idea, but infact is making them dumber..by drinking more and duying painful deaths.
- A Hacker w/ News on HN .. A Bizarro World indeed.
#PicnicElectronique #Nintendo