Booms and headshots in central Oslo

[Cain]

I find a Facebook account that is set up only days before the event highly suspect to contain anything but specific information he (or his organisation) would want us to know in light of the event.
(same goes for the Twitter feed, though that's more obvious)

Interesting how that one-two step plan worked btw. So if he'd acted alone, he'd have to set off the bomb, then drive to Utoya to do the policeman spiel. What are the timings of the events again?

Agreed.

The bombing took place roughly 2 hours before the shootings.  The drive is 40 minutes or so.  The car bomb, if that is what it was, may have been on a timer, though we know he was seen in Oslo earlier that day (exact time unknown).  It is very possible he went from one to the other within the time frame.

[Cain]

They're your usual first world Labour Party - social democracy, turned a little to the right and against immigration.

Note that most political youth organizations here have at least some degree of independence from their mother organizations, and AUF are significantly to the left of the Labour Party.

At least 80 killed at the Utøya camp, apparently. Fuck.

Anders Behring Breivik used to be a member of the right-wing populist Progress Party and its youth organization (where he chaired a local branch for several months in 2002), but he left a couple of years ago, probably because he thought their policies on immigration were too naïve. He has been an active commenter on far right and anti-Islam blogs.

Yeah, that's pretty true over here as well, in both our major centrist party and Labour.  More the centrists than Labour, funnily enough.

Interesting.  They did say he was a Christian and right wing in his views, so that would fit.  I think I may even know a few of those blogs (I have a half Norwegian friend who wrote a very good book on contemporary far-right parties and he believes, rightly so IMO, that Muslims are nothing more than a stand-in for Jews in those discourses.  He also likes to argue with the writers for said blogs in his spare time). Has there been a big debate involving Muslim immigration or Muslims in general in Norway - something with a political dimension where blame could be laid on the Labour Party?  Mosques being built, a radical Muslim preacher winning the right to claim asylum, anything like that?

I mean, I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely with this analysis, I'm just thinking out loud.  This would probably have to have been a few months back, as well.  He clearly planned this quite well, he'd have to get the uniform, the weapons, make the bomb, do test runs for the attack and so on.

[Triple Zero]

Urgh, the Dutch TV news reports on the Facebook page and the Twitter feed as though they are his actual online identity, not something set up less than a week before the attack. Even though the screenshot of his Twitter feed clearly shows it only has one single tweet!

The part where he's been active online in the month before and what he's said then and there is much more interesting IMO. Fortunately they do at least also talk about that.



BTW, given that Norway is rather thinly populated, shooting 80 young people that are highly politically active--that's actually quite effectively killing off the future of that particular stream of political intelligentsia. There's a reasonable chance that one of those kids might have become a future labour party prime minister or something.

[Cain]

Not to mention who is going to want to go to future youth camps?

From the BBC

In a post in Norwegian in an online forum on December 2009, a user named Anders Behring Breivik claims there is not one country where Muslims have peacefully lived with non-Muslims, stating that instead it has had "catastrophic consequences" for non-Muslims.

Mr Breivik was a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi internet forum called Nordisk, according to Expo, a Swedish group monitoring far-right activity.

[...]

The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang quoted a friend as saying that the suspect turned to right-wing extremism in his late 20s.

He had no military background except for ordinary national service and no criminal record, it seems.

Police say he is co-operating with them, answering questions.

[...]

He later appears to have moved out of the city and established Breivik Geofarm, a company Norwegian media is describing as a farming sole proprietorship set up to cultivate vegetables, melons, roots and tubers.

A supply company has come forward to say that it delivered six tonnes of fertiliser to this company in May - an ingredient used in bomb-making.

[Telarus]

Wow, wish some-body would have shown this dude this monument:

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2011/07/mysterious-minaret-of-jam.html

Dan Cruickshank, who visited the place, writes about the carvings: "This chapter, called Maryam, tells of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, both venerated in Islam, and of prophets such as Abraham and Isaac. It's a text that emphasises what Judaism, Christianity and Islam have in common, rather than their differences. It seems the Ghorids placed the text here to appeal for harmony and tolerance in the land, a message that is more relevant now than ever."

The stupedous structure of the minaret of Jam is actually only a part of The City of the Turquoise Mountain, which is the lost Afghan capital of the Middle Ages - Firuzkuh (Firuz Koh). The city was once a prospering, multicultural center - before it was destroyed by a son of Genghis Khan in the early 1220s. The site even includes a Jewish cemetery, complete with carvings in Hebrew! This seems to prove a sizeable Judeo-Persian trading community, that was thriving there and had connections to other such Jewish centers in Medieval Afghanistan.

[The Johnny]

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/781153.html

91

[Jenne]

ugh.  So sad.  And just a lovely little lesson on how extremism breeds this kind of thing--anywhere and everywhere.

But of course the extremists themselves only see their actions as holy, just and righteous. 

[Lenin McCarthy]

Has there been a big debate involving Muslim immigration or Muslims in general in Norway - something with a political dimension where blame could be laid on the Labour Party?  Mosques being built, a radical Muslim preacher winning the right to claim asylum, anything like that?

I mean, I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely with this analysis, I'm just thinking out loud.  This would probably have to have been a few months back, as well.  He clearly planned this quite well, he'd have to get the uniform, the weapons, make the bomb, do test runs for the attack and so on.

I think your analysis is quite right.

The first things that come to my mind are Mullah Krekar (lots of right-wingers are angry because the Norwegian government refuses to extradite him to Kurdistan, where he risks capital punishment), and a huge (Ahmadiyya and relatively moderate) mosque being built in the outskirts of Oslo.

There have been big national debates on Muslims and Muslim immigration in Norway over the last few years, and most of the parties in Parliament have moved in a less immigrant-friendly direction (including the Labour Party). The right has been obsessively pushing statistics showing that non-western immigrants were behind every assault rape in Oslo in 2009 (ignoring that Oslo has a Conservative/Progress Party council). Also, three Muslims were arrested last year over an alleged bomb plot. Prejudice against Muslims has most definitely "passed the dinner table test", like Baroness Warsi claimed in the UK a while ago.

The Labour Party is the largest party in a majority government and has been the largest party for most of the time since 1945, so you could blame practically anything you don't like about Norwegian society on them.

[Cain]

Interesting, thanks.  I see someone tried to knock Krekar off a year and a half ago...probably Kurds, but still interesting.  Especially as it followed the facebook assassination thing.

I couldn't see any obvious trigger events myself, but then, I'm not in full possession of the facts.  It could be a personal crisis compounded his political frustrations or something more local happened, which he then tied into a larger political-social narrative.  Or something else entirely.

[Disco Pickle]

Ugh.  I keep seeing idiots posting the "He was a zionist" shit on..  well..  a stupid image board sites with no credibility that I refuse to admit that I sometimes go for amusement.

Incidentally, what the hell is a Labor Youth League?  Is that like bible camp for communists?

As much as I do read on current events and continue to devour books on American, European and world history I have to say I really did not know things like this camp still existed.  Would one of you be kind enough to explain them to me?  Google isn't proving very specific but I'm still looking.  

    --Pickle: Needs to read moar, apparently.

[Doktor Howl]

Incidentally, what the hell is a Labor Youth League?  Is that like bible camp for communists?

ITT, DP attempts to justify the deaths of 80 children, because the killer was a libertarian.

[Disco Pickle]

Incidentally, what the hell is a Labor Youth League?  Is that like bible camp for communists?

ITT, DP attempts to justify the deaths of 80 children, because the killer was a libertarian.

wat? 

OK Dok.  Make this question about how much you despise libertarians.  You're good at that.

Feel free to ignore the fact that I asked an honest question about a subject I'm unfamiliar with and try and paint me as some sort of child murdering sympathizer because I don't share your political views.

Fuck you Howl.  Fuck you for even implying that. 

Fuck You, sir.

[Doktor Howl]

Incidentally, what the hell is a Labor Youth League?  Is that like bible camp for communists?

ITT, DP attempts to justify the deaths of 80 children, because the killer was a libertarian.

wat? 

OK Dok.  Make this question about how much you despise libertarians.  You're good at that.

Feel free to ignore the fact that I asked an honest question about a subject I'm unfamiliar with and try and paint me as some sort of child murdering sympathizer because I don't share your political views.

Fuck you Howl.  Fuck you for even implying that. 

Fuck You, sir.

[Disco Pickle]

Incidentally, what the hell is a Labor Youth League?  Is that like bible camp for communists?

ITT, DP attempts to justify the deaths of 80 children, because the killer was a libertarian.

wat? 

OK Dok.  Make this question about how much you despise libertarians.  You're good at that.

Feel free to ignore the fact that I asked an honest question about a subject I'm unfamiliar with and try and paint me as some sort of child murdering sympathizer because I don't share your political views.

Fuck you Howl.  Fuck you for even implying that. 

Fuck You, sir.

maybe.

I have to say I just can't ever tell with you.

You and your fucking baiting. 



you're still a fucker.

[Doktor Howl]

you're still a fucker.

I can't remember ever stating otherwise.  Please to see my custom title.