http://www.flickr.com/photos/johsgrd/5964147932/

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Video of what is purported to be a second explosion.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

VG, one of the main tabloids, have had their building affected. Not sure how badly. They're not updating their website... Evacuated, prob.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

TV 2: shooting w/ automatic weapons at Utøya youth camp. Ambulances can't reach them due to ongoing shooting.

Early reports the shooter or shooters were using handguns.  Now reports of automatic weapons being used to shoot kids attempting to swim off the island.

What kind of diseased mind deliberately shoots kids to make a political statement???

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

@fmanjoo @techsoc @jeffjarvis Police says they do NOT believe it is international terrorism; but local aimed at political establ. Source NTB

Ida Aalen (idaaa) on Twitter

@techsoc police says they "know" the "grouping"/subculture/clique (=miljø) he belongs to.

CTV Calgary- Oslo police link camp shooting suspect to bombing - CTV News

Oslo police say they suspect the man arrested in a deadly shooting at a youth camp that killed at least nine people is also linked to the bombing that rocked the Norwegian capital earlier Friday, killing seven.

Acting Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim won't give any details about the man, who was dressed in a police uniform when he opened fire Friday on Utoya, an island just outside the capital, where the youth wing of the ruling Labor Party was holding an event for hundreds of youths.

Police say nine or 10 people were killed in the shooting and that the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there.

However:

An early, unconfirmed report put the death much higher. An eyewitness told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he saw 20 to 25 bodies on the shore and that there were more bodies in the water.

Too early too tell what is what exactly, but this is bad enough.

Far-right. Already talk about the Norwegian Timothy McVeigh...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

And perhaps for collecting fertilizer on the side.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

surrounded by water.  Once the bastard had made it on the island it was like shooting ducks in a barrel.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

In which fictional alternative universe is right-wing assassinations a new and surprising development? The only thing about this massacre that doesn't fit the bog-standard post-war right-wing assassination pattern is that he went after a large number of mid-value targets rather than a few high-value targets (Palme, Dutschke, Kennedy, MLK, etc.).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian prime minister and leading international politician, was at Utøya on the day of the shootings, but left the island an hour before the shooter appeared there.

She was addressing the young political activists. The sitting prime minister was scheduled to appear on the island on Saturday.

There is speculation that he had planned to attack the seat of government, and then attack the island while Mrs. Brundtland was there.

He was cold and methodical as he carried out his killing spree - the tales told by survivors are horrifying.

It is alleged that the shooter years ago lauded the two Columbine shooters in comments on the net forum of another leading Norwegian newspaper - it is not confirmed that the nick used there is his, but the comments by that writer match his many other comments on other forums.

nick peewee in the newspaper VG:
http://vgd.no/...

"If you don't use your majorities, you lose your majorities."

by SteinL on Fri Jul 22, 2011 at 11:51:49 PM PDT

With 80 dead, he may have actually succeeded in decimating the younger ranks of the Social Democratic Youth and this may have an impact in the leadership of the Social Democratic Youth in the next decade and the Labour party leadership further down the line.

You underestimate the depth and professionalism of the SocDem party organisation. The casualties so far reported are not in and of themselves crippling - the real effect will depend on which lesson the survivors learn: Whether it galvanises them into an uncompromising destroy-the-right-wing-and-take-no-prisoners stance or it makes them want to heal-the-national-wounds. The former would be useful, the latter would kill the party stone dead.

Too early to say which way they'll jump just yet.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

any crackdown is going to be criticised by business interests and their friendly press as illiberal and a danger to democracy

Given the shocking scale and horrifying circumstances, I think they'd have a hard time selling that line. Supposing "business interests" to be somehow favourable to leaving nutters of this kind free to commit mass murder.

Though there's some fancy footwork needed from those who at first lined up spontaneously with the stock analysis:

Why did the Norweigan attacks? - CBS News

(CBS News) 

The explosion in Norway's capital Oslo and a shooting on the island of Utoya that have left a total of at least 16 dead is puzzling because Norway is considered a peaceful country. It had prompted this question: "Why target Norway?" CBS News correspondent Bob Orr explains:

"Believe it or not, Norway has been on al Qaeda's hit list for agent about eight years now. Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri back in 2003 warned Norway would be targeting for supporting the U.S. War in Afghanistan. After a Norwegian newspaper reprinted cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2006, once again al Qaeda called for revenge.

Norway historically is a nation of rugged frontier individualists but with the long tradition of solidarity/ 'Dugnad' necessary for survival in a hostile environment.

This society has - in the last 30 years - become thoroughly corrupted by the influx of alien values of neo-liberal politics of greed. This process has been turbocharged by the Curse of Oil and has led to the hopefully not yet irreversible spread of selfishness and materialism.

A relatively small elite has been an almost permanent fixture at the pinnacle of Norwegian Labour politics - such as Brundtland; the Stoltenbergs; and behind the scenes there have been key figures and 'eminences grise'.

Post-war the Labour party exemplified the spirit of solidarity that rebuilt the nation after the war. But Power corrupts over time, and Norwegian Labour has paralleled New Labour in the UK, whose policies they have studied and follow slavishly.

When the Norwegians voted twice, narrowly, against joining the EU, the elite essentially ignored this inconvenience by simply adopting EU directives and enforcing them more rigorously, within a context of EEA membership, than any EU member.

Brevik clearly blamed Brundtland in particular for this internationalism, and I would imagine he was aiming to kill her on Utøya had she not been fortunate enough to leave an hour before he arrived.

The neo-liberal assaults which followed - many of which flowed from following EU directives - on traditional property rights; and on common ownership of productive assets, have deeply divided Norway.

Creeping marketisation and exploitation has taken place of institutions as diverse as the 'for profit' enforcement industry in respect of court judgements, and an entire industry built around removing children from 'unfit' parents and fostering them at huge expense to the state, and immense private profit.  

This process has been exacerbated by the opening up of the borders through Schengen, which is one of the main drivers of the membership of the anti-immigrant populist Fremskritt party, whose members perceive themselves as being excluded from work by immigrants. Brevik was apparently a prominent member of the Fremskritt party's youth movement.

This tragedy creates a watershed or cross-roads moment for Norwegian society.

Hopefully, they will draw the right lessons from this appalling crime and address the cause, rather than this gruesome symptom, of the Anglo Disease in Norway.


"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

The most certain outcome of this event for the left politics is fear. The left is already marginalized and betrayed by own elites in most countries. They can't buy a confidence boost in this century. Whatever revival scenarios were in cards, the area of passive fear - of loosing your job, house, friends, and now perhaps your own life - has just expanded. Whatever "global awakenings" you may hear about, you don't see any mass pressure on rather coherent crashing events (unlike the 1960s), just a passive observation. Did totalitarian manipulation experts dream of anything better?

Even if there will be an expectable crackdown, with these governments you will never know what they would be actually doing. Thanks for extra "emergency" powers, no watch this... A compartmentalized control of global politics, economics through shock events is not only feasible, it should be now a serious consideration.

Don't laugh, but I checked a few "truth" sites:

Oslo Police Conducted Bombing Exercise Days Before Terrorist Blast

Obama Reaction To Norway Massacre Betrays US "War on Terror" Fundamentalism

I don't believe that "the" global conspiracy is that awesome as, say, David Icke describes. That type of conspiracy actually needs to inflate its awesomeness with "leaking" stories to leave a few options to those "getting it". Let's see: the mass media is evidently consolidated and routinely manipulated; much of alternative information sources do not leave much potential for rational analysis; more and more commentary and decisions are based on fear, unknown factors. It goes only one way since some time, and no slowdown or turn around in sight.

Could one man plan and execute all of this alone?

Yes, if he had an IQ above room temperature. On the Celcius scale. I'll bet that I can come up with three ways to assassinate the Danish queen within ten minutes, if you don't care about getting caught. It's our good fortune that most assassins aren't very bright, but this one seems to have been the exception.

Is there any information on investigations among Norway's extreme right?

At this stage you don't get anything but blather. The real police hasn't gotten into gear yet, so all you'll get is political posturing and photo ops. That isn't a criticism of the real police, by the way - murders don't get any worse with time, so being thorough is better than being fast.

If the suspect was indeed as Chris Cook says, "a prominent member of the Fremskritt party's youth movement", doesn't this create a PR problem for the party - to say the least?

No. They have plausible deniability.

What are they saying for themselves?

I haven't checked, but if they play by the usual right-wing assassination playbook, they'll invoke plausible deniability, claim that he was an isolated individual who acted without their knowledge or consent, and that a party can't be held responsible for the actions of individuals who happen to be members - they can't run a thorough background check on every new applicant, after all.

Were there no police officers in the island? I mean, shouldn't there be?

Why should there be? It was a political party holding a summer camp, and there had been no threats made that we know of.

Is there some really dark side of Norwegian society that is surfacing here?

Yes. Scandinavia has a long-standing problem with violent right-wing direct action.

Recently, I always connect Norway with its uniquely violent, and sometimes murderous (not to mention racist/fascist on occasion), Black Metal scene, especially of 10-20 years ago...

I don't see any credible connection between the '90s black metal and right-wing direct action groups. Right-wing direct action groups tend to be associated with hooligans - at least that's the British and Spanish experience.

Yet this is still one of the more equal societies in Europe, no?

Yes.

The left of SD in Norway is in decline, and it is a part of the ruling coalition. Are there two facts correlated?

Yes, but whether the causality goes from being in government to reduced militancy or from reduced militancy making it more acceptable as a party of government is not completely clear to me.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

As a 32 year old he would have been in the Fremskritt party youth movement a few years ago: I think that this outrage may well see existing schisms in that party destroy it in months to come. We should get an indication of that in forthcoming local elections in the autumn.

Yes, indeed there are some extremely dark and sometimes dangerous currents in Norwegian society.

The myths surrounding what went on in the war and in the aftermath are now being dispelled as a generation dies and the truth is revealed after generations of suppression.

Note here that there is more than one source of poison: there is the Nazi collaboration aspect, which is mirrored by similar revelations in France and elsewhere which dispelled prevalent myths.

Secondly, and more dangerous still, there is the relationship between elements of the Norwegian Left, and the Soviet Union.

Don't forget here that the Russians did not pull out of Northern Norway until over 6 months after the War ended, and some say that was not until they were comfortable with the regime which followed. Some believe that the US was for many years uncomfortable in their dealings with Norway whom they suspected of being infiltrated. This is a very dark and dangerous area, and there have been many unexplained deaths and much ruthless suppression of inconvenient facts.

But I digress.

The real point is that lurking within the civilised and egalitarian Norwegian society may be monsters which have grown in the last 30 years, nourished by the black tide of oil and gas 'wealth'.

I think - maybe 'hope' is better - that this massacre may prove to be a cathartic event, and that Norway will emerge the stronger as the 'Old Norway' of sturdy self reliance and solidarity re-asserts itself against alien values.

It all hinges on how the Labour party heals itself in the aftermath.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

With few friends in the real world, he appears to have immersed himself in political chat rooms. Hans Rustad, editor of one forum, Document.no, does not remember Breivik being "particularly hateful" in his online postings. "There was nothing that would suggest that he was an extremist, as in the meaning of an actionist." Breivik showed up a public meeting hosted by the website in December 2009. "There wasn't anything that could back up what he said. He pretended to be someone he wasn't."

My heart goes out to all whose lives this tragedy has touched. I grieve with you over this senseless loss of life. How unfair, how arbitrary. Why can't we just get along? Will we ever learn?

Christian values of the West versus (cultural Marxism + Islam).

the facts that violent crime is disproportionately committed by Muslims

Then you commit something to disprove it? I can't get the motive. In the Dokument.no rantings linked to in this thread, in the very first one quoted from last October, the madman warns the site from hiring a "potentially 'potentially correct' person with a background in a Marxist boot camp", which suggests that he saw the summer camp as incubator of evil ideas – still, could even such a madman expect to avoid a comparison in evil-ness with Islamist terrorists?

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

I think I wrote about this before: YouTube (and other international video/image hosting sites) are full of far-right propaganda in languages other than the site owner's, and they are little bothered to do anything about it. They would need to hire lots of 'moderators' who understand what's spoken and written and know the symbols shown, after all.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Ladies should be wives and homemakers, not cops or soldiers, and men should still hold doors open for ladies.

Combined with this:

He targeted pretty girls first.

...the possibility of a real a motive wholly different from Islamophobia emerges...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Personally, I think this is a clear-cut case for the death penalty.  The guy committed mass murder.  He is almost certainly somewhere in the sociopathic-psychopathic spectrum, for which there is no known cure.  He cannot be released from incarceration for the term of his life as he is a clear and present danger to society and individuals.  He is going to have to be guarded and supported by society ... at colossal expense for the next 50 years, or so.  Kill the bugger off and be done with it.

But I've never claimed to be all that Civilized.

 

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

A nation's enemy within: The far-right loner who wiped out nearly 100 souls - Europe, World - The Independent

When news of Breivik's arrest emerged, an agricultural supplier phoned the police to inform them that six tons of fertiliser had been delivered to the farm just two weeks before the twin attacks. Mixed with the right chemicals and with a detonator, fertiliser is highly explosive and has been frequently used in terrorist car bombs. But a farmer ordering six tons would not have been enough to ring any alarm bells.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

El Pais: The far right threatens Europe

A Siv Jensen, la incendiaria líder del Partido del Progreso noruego, se le mojó la pólvora al saber que Anders Behring Breivik, el asesino de Oslo, había militado durante años en sus filas. "Duele saberlo", comentó cuando le dieron la noticia. "Lo que ha ocurrido es una terrible tragedia y lo importante es que los noruegos estemos juntos". Jensen se encuentra ahora en el centro del escenario, bajo unos focos que la muestran en nutrida compañía de líderes y partidos extremistas europeos, que cazan a placer votos de un electorado a la defensiva por la crisis económica y defraudado por una Unión Europea que no solo no resuelve sus problemas sino que sacrifica en el altar de la globalización puestos de trabajo cada vez más escasos. El extremismo político, tintado de nacionalismo y xenofobia, ha dejado de ser tabú cuando políticos tan respetables como Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel o David Cameron juegan con la idea de que "el multiculturalismo ha fracasado completamente", como mantiene la canciller alemana. Políticos clásicos y radicales pugnan por ese electorado como en una subasta, lo que permite a los analistas aventurar que las ideas extremas modelarán el debate político en Europa.

Learnng that Anders Behring Breivik, the Oslo murderer, had for years been an activist among her ranks, wetted the gunpowder of Siv Jensen, the incendiary leade or the Norwegian Progress Party. "What happened is a terrible tragedy and what's important is that we Norwegians remain together". Jensen is now in centre-stage, in a limelight showing her in the company of a large number of extremist parties and leaders, catching votes from an electorate at the defensive due to the economic crisis and disappointed by a European Union which not only does not solve their problems but sacrifices ever scarcer jobs on the altar of globalization. Political extremism, coloured by nationalism and xenophobia, is no longer taboo when politicians as respectable [sic] as Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel or David Cameron toy with the idea that "multiculturalism has completely failed", as the German Chancellor maintains. Classical and radical politicians fight for that electorate as in an auction, which allows analysts to guess that extreme ideas will shape Europe's political debate.

As well as frequenting neo-Nazi forums, he spoke admirably of British far-right groups, eulogising both the English Defence League (EDL) and Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). "I have on some occasions discussed with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use conscious strategies," he wrote.

Lippestad also represented Ole Nicolai Kvisler, who was convicted of the racially motivated murder of Benjamin Hermansen in 2002.

Murder of Benjamin Hermansen - Wikipedia

Benjamin Hermansen (May 29, 1985 - January 26, 2001) was a Norwegian-African boy whose father was born in Ghana, his mother was Norwegian. He was stabbed to death at Holmlia in Oslo, Norway, just before midnight on January 26, 2001 by people from the Neo-Nazi group BootBoys. Joe Erling Jahr and Ole Nicolai Kvisler were convicted of the murder and sentenced to 18 and 17 years in prison respectively. A third defendant, Veronica Andreassen, was convicted on a lesser charge of abetting bodily harm causing death and sentenced to three years in prison.

Which is also the line coming out of Breivik's favourite American blogs (h/t Making Light).

Lone nut theory? Check!

Who Could Have Predicted?

Economics is politics by other means