Booms and headshots in central Oslo

[Cain]

Most political parties have youth wings in Europe, Pickles.

I cannot say for sure what they do on these trips, as I'm not exactly a "party line" kinda person, but I would guess they spend a few weeks away from their parents and with friends, attending the occasional lecture and seminar on political issues and how it relates to them, ignore it totally and spend their time trying to catch the eye of members of the opposite sex, going swimming, playing silly games in the woods and all that kind of stuff.

Except the BNP Youth Wing, who engage in paramilitary combat training and have lectures on how the SS were totally awesome role models.  And Trotskyite Youth Wings, who presumably spend all their efforts in futile entryist tactics against more moderate left wing parties, and not getting laid.

[Disco Pickle]

Most political parties have youth wings in Europe, Pickles.

I cannot say for sure what they do on these trips, as I'm not exactly a "party line" kinda person, but I would guess they spend a few weeks away from their parents and with friends, attending the occasional lecture and seminar on political issues and how it relates to them, ignore it totally and spend their time trying to catch the eye of members of the opposite sex, going swimming, playing silly games in the woods and all that kind of stuff.

Except the BNP Youth Wing, who engage in paramilitary combat training and have lectures on how the SS were totally awesome role models.  And Trotskyite Youth Wings, who presumably spend all their efforts in futile entryist tactics against more moderate left wing parties, and not getting laid.

Ah, so it's sort of the equivalent of cooed 'Mericun boyscouts/girlscouts but with a bit of politic and social discussion?  I'm not sure there's anything else here that's along those lines but then I don't have a child living here and there wasn't anything like that when I was growing up that I'm aware of.  

The paramilitary camps happen but I think they try to stay way way under the radar.

This really is new to me and reminds me just how little I know of the planet outside of my current borders.

ETA: I figured shit like this would have died after the Hitler Youth camps.  

Shows what I know.

[Cain]

I would assume so, yes.  I was in the actual Scouts myself, so we didn't do political talk, we just skipped right ahead to the swimming, wide games in the woods and trying to catch the eye of members of the opposite sex (all five of them in our Scout group).  Although we had to turn up and do parades and things for the Queen, so I guess that is quasi-political.

I can see why the association would be with Communists and Nazis if you were unaware it still goes on, but quite a lot of very respectable parties have youth wings.  Like Lenin said upthread, the Labour Party have been in power for most of the past 60 years in Norway.  They are, essentially, the Establishment.  In the UK, a lot of talent-spotting goes on at University political clubs, especially at Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and Warwick.  And so on and so forth.  I personally have some problem with people associating with a political party at that age (having an interest in politics is one thing, forming a whole political identity is another.  This is related to my objection to kids having a religious affiliation before they can fully reason through the consequences of what they are doing) but it's not really doing any harm.

[Lenin McCarthy]

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.

Neither can I, so a personal crisis seems very likely.

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

The Labour Youth League is the youth organization of the Norwegian Labour Party. They held a summer camp this week where hundreds of young people aged between 13 to 25 were discussing politics, making friends, doing sports, listening to talks about various topics and watching their favorite bands play. Or brainwashed into accepting the social democratic paradigm, if that sounds better to you.

All the political parties here in Norway (except for the Pensioners' Party) have a youth wing. Not every of them has a summer camp; the Young Conservatives have an annual large conference at a finer hotel somewhere in the country. One of my former classmates bought champagne for about 10000 Norwegian Kroner (about 1000£) at one of those. When he was 16.  

[Disco Pickle]

I, fairly justifiably, associated "political camps" with bell curve blowing political views.  In my experience, parents do most of the work indoctrinating children into a political view.  Varying degrees of passion for that view and association with other views can either turn on or turn off their child to that view.  It's not like it's a SCIENCE.   

My parents were pretty much non-political so I formed my own over the years.  Camps that teach political views along with recreational activities are completely foreign to me and I'm beating myself up a bit for not paying more attention to what people do with their children in this regard.  It's just unheard of here to me.  Maybe another 'Mericun could chime in and point me toward something I've missed. 

The Labour Youth League is the youth organization of the Norwegian Labour Party. They held a summer camp this week where hundreds of young people aged between 13 to 25 were discussing politics, making friends, doing sports, listening to talks about various topics and watching their favorite bands play. Or brainwashed into accepting the social democratic paradigm, if that sounds better to you.

You don't have to be a dick about it. 

It's pretty clear that both sides have their zealots and are willing to indoctrinate children at a young age, as your SN pretty accurately (and ironically) paints.

I wrote it as a bit of a joke intending to call out both ends. 

Zee jokes they are not always funny, no?

[Cain]

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6560898/2083_A_European_Declaration_of_Independence

This was supposedly posted by the subject (where, I don't know) minutes before the Oslo attack by Anders Behring Breivik, though the book says the author is "Andrew Berwick" (anglicization of his name?) and that it was written in London.

Could be a moron piggybacking on the tragedy as well, I suppose.  Going to investigate further.

[Cain]

If this was him....is it too much to hope for a terrorist who is aware of brevity?

This thing is 1518 pages long.

[Telarus]

http://www.oysteinrunde.no/#post18

Comments from a Norwegian spag on the ground:

The tragedy on Utøya - an attempt to understand

Anders Behring Breivik is the man who personally, slowly, cold-bloodedly executed eighty teenagers at Utøya, Norway. I have spent the whole night thinking and reading his writings and trying to understand what drove him. I am in two minds about sharing his writings, because ideas are powerful, no matter where they come from and how tainted they - in the outset of things - seem. I think he was smart enough to know this.

I think he wanted to save the world from muslims.

I think his mind was set on saving the world. Saving the "pure", clean ... norwegianness. For some reason, he was thinking these thoughts first, and then he committed the most disgusting, tear-inducing, awful crime I am capable of imagining. Serial killers act out of a sexual-like sick drive. Dictators kill out of paranoia. Anyone can kill if group pressure becomes a factor, like Zimbardo proved. But this? What is this? What IS this?

He is born in 1979, like me, and he is tall and rather norwegian-looking, like me. His facebook page lists George Orwells "1984" and Kafkas "The Trial" as favorite books. Two of my favorite books. I have family members called Breivik.

Anders B has posted a great deal of texts on the internet, in particular on a norwegian right wing islam-critical christian blog. For me, christianity has a lot of humanistic, wonderful tones. "What would Jesus do" is a beautiful, simple credo that every christian in the world should have tattoed on their bodies. What is Anders Behring Breiviks christianity?

There they are, his words. His mind. He brags that he is rich, that he has had successful businesses that allowed him to live without working, to plan for his great book on how muslims will take over the western world. His values: Protestant christianity. Culture-conservativeness. He is a freemason, whatever one can make out of that. He was, some years ago, a member of the right-wing political party Frp - he claims they got a huge amount of success when he worked for them, because of his great understanding of how to market ideas.

Even more reason for me not to write in this blog. He is marketing. Right now. As I write this, with shaking fingers. Even more. And yet - everyone will write about it. Hopefully this can make him understandable. Do not hate him. Do not fear him. Know him, and think: Are these your thoughts? Do you understand? Would you applaud these thoughts before you knew they drove a man to kill children?

To me, these actions stand as the purest evil thinkable. Executing eighty youths, gathered like fish in a barrel, on an island. They were unarmed, they were young, they were an ocean of human potential. A political gathering. What could have been our future prime minister may have died today. She may be dying now.

I do not know what to think anymore. But: He wanted to save the world from the muslim threat. He was afraid. Fear, fear, sickening fear permeates his writing. It is clever. He is well-read. It has all the good, rational ways of explaining a point of view. He is afraid. Nothing in his writing says it clearly. His fellow right-winger bloggers are as shocked as I am. But I never shared any of his horrible fears. I never shared any of his views. I always felt an unexplainable disgust at the flawless reasoning of my Frp friends. And now, his line of thinking led him to this. He chose to sacrifice a few human lives in Norway to save the world from something he sees as a huge, religiously fanatic threat. And when he started doing it, he was so convinced that the screaming, the pain of human beings, could not make him budge in his decision.

Do you understand his thoughts? Would you feel comfortable inside this man's mindscape? Why? What is it that it gives you? I do not want to judge. I have always loved my Frp friends. I will not delete them from facebook, even when they used the first bomb to say "Get out of my fucking country, you fucking fucks" or "time to check out the "against islamization of Norway" website". I believe that we all need friends with different worldviews.

And I have always been a bit embarrassed by the fact that I am by nature ridiculously politically correct. I do believe in non-violence. I do believe that NOT sending the famous Mullah Krekar out of Norway, because he could be executed in his homeland, is a strong signal to send to the world. Both to the east and the west. "Okay, you guys may still want to execute prisoners, but then we'll let him walk freely around in Oslo, because WE happen to believe in something called the sanctity of ALL human life, even the life of this guy who is an obvious terrorist fundamentalist." I am endlessly proud of my tiny country, who has the guts to appear "soft" and "kind" even when the rest of the world pressures us to be "hard".

And I am proud of the fact that we arrested this murderer alive. How would that have played out in USA? Even in this situation, norwegian police was able to catch him alive. It is horrible to have to talk about this. If a sniper bullet could have saved a single life more, of course that would have been immensely much better. But somehow, he was stopped without being killed, and if that happened without risking any more childen's lives, yes, that is a good thing.

My bodily reaction was a sudden wish to have him torn apart by horses. But that is my feelings. Fear. Rage. Disgust. This rage for vengeance is not what makes us human. It is the victory of abstract thought, of faith, that makes us human. The faith that any human can be something different tomorrow than they are today. To him, maybe killing children gave him a physical reaction. For his own sake, I hope he is a complete psychopath, if such a thing exists. If he really did this just to bring attention to his thoughts, and he will now have to face it like a human being ...

If he really cannot feel this, he is colder than anything I have ever known in any work of fiction. Our imaginations have been outreached. But if he WAS able to feel this, and yet persisted, systematicaly killing eighty young people for the sake of drawing attention to his cause, feeling their pain in his mirror neurons, but persisting to tell the world that muslims, muslims are scary ... if this is possible. If faith in one's own justification and perfection can be so over-riding, so much stronger than the sight of another human in pain, even "cold" cannot describe what he is.

This man will be locked up. After 21 years, he will be examined by psychiatrists. They will decide wether he is well enough to get out. But: I can assure all you justice-hungry people out there, it will be decided that Anders Behring is highly intelligent, calculating, and at best, a psychopath. And that he cannot be let out. This is how our "gentleness" works. We give our prisoners hope forever, while locking them away forever. Because we say that maybe ... maybe. If you become a better person. If you don't fight the guards. If you behave nicely. And we mean it.

And it saves us money and makes us look good, and the prisoners are locked away forever, but without going mad and becoming a liability.

In Frank Millers "The Dark Knight", the Joker gets out by pretending he is all fine, and starts a killing spree. So is this "norwegian" way wrong? No. It is this naive trust in people, this faith, that makes Norway a country that even islamic fundamentalists have kept their hands away from so far. I believe that it is impossible to say that a country is "the great satan" if it executes no-one, if it tortures no-one, if its politicians silently, and secularly, say "what would Jesus do?" before they make their decisions. We are all a bunch of atheists up here. But we have faith in democracy. And in humanity. On a day like this, nothing is more impressive, more steadfast, more Jesus-like, than maintaining one's faith in Humanity. And yes, this is what a huge amount of my 913 facebookfriends did. Okay, they're mostly cultural elite people, they direct theater and make movies and write books, and maybe not so many from the right wing, but it really, really felt good to see their maturity. I like my friends. I even like myself today, as my politcal views were clearer to me than in a long time, and as every absurd prejudice I had about freemason-conservative-right-wing-monsters from the rich, blonde upper class became grotesquely true, as if life had turned into a Stieg Larsson novel.

Basically: Coupled with healthy realism and a solid police force the faith in humanity is a valuable thing in itself. It says: Our justice system believes blindly in justice. We will not kill, because killing is wrong.

I know I sound awfully politically correct, as i am relentlessly soft, multi-cultural and left-wing.

But after today, as the worst human being in Europe is hard, mono-cultural and right-wing, it will be very, very, very hard to tease anyone for being too "politically correct".

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Pickle ive never heard of political youth camps here either. Ok off to rock just thought i would chime in as an american.

[Doktor Howl]

Pickle ive never heard of political youth camps here either. Ok off to rock just thought i would chime in as an american.

Compare to AWANA clubs.

[Cain]

http://publicintelligence.net/utoya-gunman-anders-behring-breivik-video-manifesto/

My flash plugin crashed, but this seems to suggest the 2083 Manifesto is indeed Anders Breivik's work.

If he did write it while in London, it may suggest why David Cameron thought UK intelligence may be of assistance in this case.  Surprisingly, the far-right are quite an international lot, and links do exist between networks in the UK, America, Belgium, Italy, Scandanavia and Russia.

I've only skimmed the manifesto so far, but it is much of what you would expect - boilerplate rhetoric about cultural Marxism and Islam destroying Europe.

[Cain]

Reading the file, a lot of it seems to be cut and paste jobs from blogs written by lunatics (lunatics I have trolled, and so recognize only too well.  Fjordman, Sarah Maid of Albion, Bruce Bawer, Isupporttheresistance, Gates of Vienna etc).

Of interest is how the compiler, "Andrew Berwick" signs off:

Sincere and patriotic regards,

Andrew Berwick, London, England - 2011

Justiciar Knight Commander for Knights Templar Europe and one of several leaders of the National and pan-European Patriotic Resistance Movement

Obviously he didn't get the memo that the Templars protected Muslim citizens in Jerusalem, had quite a cozy relationship with Muslim rulers (including the Assassins, who paid tribute to them) and that, if you believe the speculative history, that the Templars inspired the Peasant's Revolt in England and inspired Freemasonry and so liberalism and socialism. 

IOW, a Knight Templar would be more liable to beat him into the ground than not, as some Templars did to foreign knights harassing a Muslim merchant once.


Anyway, less history and more current news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14265094

The man accused of a massacre at a youth camp in Norway and a bombing in the capital, Oslo, has admitted responsibility, his lawyer says.

Anders Behring Breivik, 32, described his actions as "gruesome but necessary", and said he would explain himself at a court hearing on Monday.

At least 85 people died when a gunman ran amok on Utoeya island on Friday, hours after an Oslo bomb killed seven.

As Norway mourned the victims, police continued to search for the missing.

Four people from the island camp shooting are yet to be found; it is thought some may have drowned after swimming out into the lake to escape the hail of bullets.

In Oslo police said the death toll could rise further as bodies or body parts were in buildings damaged by the bomb but still too unstable to search.

Police have also said another person may have been involved in Friday's attacks, which happened within hours of each other.

'Demanding suspect'

"He thought it was gruesome having to commit these acts, but in his head they were necessary," Mr Breivik's lawyer Geir Lippestad told Norwegian media.

He added that the actions had been planned for some time.

Mr Breivik has been charged with committing acts of terrorism, and is due to appear in court on Monday when judges will decide whether he should be detained as the investigation continues.

The suspect is reported to have had links with right-wing extremists.

Still pictures of him, wearing a wetsuit and carrying an automatic weapon, appeared in a 12-minute anti-Muslim video called Knights Templar 2083, which appeared briefly on YouTube.

A 1,500-page document written in English and said to be by Mr Breivik - posted under the pseudonym of Andrew Berwick -was also put online hours before the attacks, suggesting they had been years in the planning.

The document and the video repeatedly refer to the Knights Templar and to multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

Police have not speculated on motives for the attack but the bomb in Oslo targeted buildings connected to Norway's governing Labour Party, and the youth camp on Utoeya island was also run by the party.

"He has had a dialogue with the police the whole time, but he is a very demanding suspect," police chief Sveinung Sponheim told the Associated Press news agency.

Norway has had problems with neo-Nazi groups in the past but the assumption was that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat, says the BBC's Richard Galpin, near the island which remains cordoned off by police.

[BabylonHoruv]

Most political parties have youth wings in Europe, Pickles.

I cannot say for sure what they do on these trips, as I'm not exactly a "party line" kinda person, but I would guess they spend a few weeks away from their parents and with friends, attending the occasional lecture and seminar on political issues and how it relates to them, ignore it totally and spend their time trying to catch the eye of members of the opposite sex, going swimming, playing silly games in the woods and all that kind of stuff.

Except the BNP Youth Wing, who engage in paramilitary combat training and have lectures on how the SS were totally awesome role models.  And Trotskyite Youth Wings, who presumably spend all their efforts in futile entryist tactics against more moderate left wing parties, and not getting laid.

Ah, so it's sort of the equivalent of cooed 'Mericun boyscouts/girlscouts but with a bit of politic and social discussion?  I'm not sure there's anything else here that's along those lines but then I don't have a child living here and there wasn't anything like that when I was growing up that I'm aware of.  

The paramilitary camps happen but I think they try to stay way way under the radar.

This really is new to me and reminds me just how little I know of the planet outside of my current borders.

ETA: I figured shit like this would have died after the Hitler Youth camps.  

Shows what I know.

More like the young Republicans than the Hitler youth.

[Cain]

This is actually starting to creep me out slightly.  I mean, myself and Anders Breivik were reading the same websites, at around pretty much the same time - for almost totally the opposite reasons.  I was worried about Islamic terrorism causing a fascist backlash, while he was preparing for it.

Damn it all to hell.  I tried to tell people I was worried about this kind of thing.  If Breivik was in London...damnit.  I said looking exclusively at Islamists would take attention off Republican dissidents and fascists - and here we are, three years later, with Republican dissidents shooting police and planting bombs in Belfast, and a fascist terrorist apparently wandering the streets of London, meeting with God only knows who. 

We could've caught him.

[The Johnny]

Your doppleganger with more fertile ground, too bad.