Booms and headshots in central Oslo

[Scribbly]

Anders Behring Breivik has been delcared insane by psychiatrists

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15936276

Psychiatrists assessing self-confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik have concluded that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

They believe he was in a psychotic state during the twin attacks on 22 July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151.

He was also insane during the 13 interviews the two psychiatrists held with them, a news conference heard.

Breivik admits carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to charges.

He has previously said the attacks were atrocious but "necessary".

The two psychiatrists, in their report, concluded that he lived in his "own delusional universe where all his thoughts and acts are guided by his delusions".

I find this assessment suspect as hell.

I have my suspicions that this conclusion was obtained because it was decided that sending Breivik to prison would be less than ideal, given the severity of his crimes, and that indefinite incarceration was the preferable option.

Paranoid schizophrenia only fits if you consider Breivik's beliefs about the world to be delusional - which they are, but no more so than most political ideologies and certainly not to the level that psychology normally recognizes as a delusion, and his cold, unemotional response to what he did.  He doesn't seem to have hallucinations, that we have been made aware of, show significant verbal or linguistic confusion, show grossly disorganized behaviour (just the opposite, in fact) or show significant interpersonal or occupation related dysfunction.

As such, the treatments wont work, Breivik wont recant, the Norwegian authorities will keep him locked up forever.

It also helps to turn his actions into a narrative people can understand. The idea that it was motivated because the closeness of the mainstream parties and their domination of the system meant his political ideology could not gain ground is a strike against democracy. That is a dangerous notion and implies that there's more people out there than we might be comfortable with who are willing to resort to the same tactics. Only smudgy people can be terrorists, and they have to be motivated by religion (fundamentalist religion, too, which is often characterized as a kind of insanity). Making him a psychopathic madman helps to de-legitimize his actions and tossing him in the crazy bin forever for the safety of himself and others is perfectly understandable.

It makes him a figure of pity, rather than a political figure. It also makes it far less likely that the threat of right wing extremism and organized racist groups are going to get seriously looked at, which I find pretty troubling.

[Cain]

Indeed.  It may prevent a martyr being made of him, but half the "counter-Jihadists" are convinced the entire political-legal system is in cahoots with Muslim extremists anyway, and so they will draw the same conclusion I have, just from a different (ie; incorrect) perspective.

[Lenin McCarthy]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/norway-forensic-board-approves-breivik-insanity-evaluation-1-.html
Norway's Board of Forensic Medicine approved a psychiatric evaluation that found mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik insane after killing 77 people in a July 22 bombing attack and a shooting spree.

"There are no significant comments on the evaluation," the board, led by psychiatrist Karl Heinrik Melle, said in a one-sentence opinion released today by Oslo District Court.

Yesterday, Norwegian media reported that at least three of the seven board members were critical of the report. Now, they're all in agreement that the report is completely fine. Wat.

[Cain]

From Breivik's manifesto:

I had the privilege of meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

And now this http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/norge/1.7928517

For those people who are not Iron Waffle or Lenin McCartney, I shall give you a summary of what it says: Breivik was in Liberia in 2002, and Serbian mercenaries were also present in the country at the time, and weapons were being smuggled by them from Serbia into Liberia to help in the conflict there.

This, of course, does not confirm that there was a network behind Breivik or that it supported the attack...but it makes the claim a hell of a lot more credible than it originally was.  That Breivik was messing around in a civil war at 23 years of age is also very interesting in its own right, and merits further investigation.

[EK WAFFLR]

Here's a short clip of ABB as he is led into the courtroom.

Seeing him like this for the first time makes me want to puke, cry and punch something.

http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/norge/1.7982759 (article can be translated if you want)

[Jasper]

He's not a psychopath.  Sociopath maybe, but my gut says there's more at work than simple bad wiring. 

[Jasper]

 I wasn't sure until I saw the video.  He's too composed for schizophrenia.  I've been an avid student of schizophrenia since I was a kid, and I've had a job where I worked closely with them daily for over a year.

I know Schizophrenia.  It is absent from his actions and his outward behavior.

[BadBeast]

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".

Just saw this post today, it's hard to know where to begin to respond to it, but after reading, it demands some kind of response. It speaks volumes about the Norwegian character that Breivik was taken alive, and details of his activity haven't been covered up or discounted. (I had no idea you were Norwegian, btw) Trying to understand Brievik's motivation is a brave step to take, when the common response is one of baying for his blood. This post is the most honest and objective piece I've seen re: Brievik, including everything I've read in the press, or on the net. I can't imagine how an otherwise intelligent man could ever believe what he did to be right. Maybe in a few years time, we will understand the psychopathy involved, but I'm not holding my breath. But props for this post (I only saw it when someone else brought it to my attention) I think People need to see what useful introspection looks like...and how to go about it, and this post is a shining example.

[Lenin McCarthy]

So now he's 'sane' again.

Norway massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik is 'not insane'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/10/norway-massacre-suspect-not-insane

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who has confessed to killing 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage, is not criminally insane, according to a psychiatric assessment issued on Tuesday which contradicts an earlier assessment.

The conclusion comes six days before Breivik is scheduled to go on trial on terror charges for the massacre on 22 July 2011. Though not definitive, it suggests he could serve the maximum penalty of 21 years in prison rather than being detained indefinitely in a secure psychiatric institution.

[Cain]

Watching Breivik's trial thus far, he's definitely not a schizoprenic.

If anything, he comes across as a psychopath.

It's also interesting to note how the media are treating his trial differently to how they would treat, say, an Islamic terrorist.  The constant poring over his every statement stands in stark contrast to the lack of coverage (apart from denunciations by vapid media airheads wanting to look "tough on terrorism") those sort of trials get.

[Cain]

Also been following the UK blogger "Lionheart", who some thought was Breivik's UK mentor, before he and the Norwegian police (and common sense) ruled it out.

He seems convinced he is the victim of some kind of international conspiracy, that his anti-Islamic sentiments and movement he was building (he was a founder of the EDL, until an internal coup removed him from the organisation) were so threatening to the Powers That Be, that he was stitched up as part of the bombing due to a sinister plot to take him down, and that his former comrades in the EDL, and possibly government officials, are involved.

So far so tinfoil-y.  Nevertheless, in his quest to prove this, he has been reproducing reams of material on Alan Lake, the leaders of the EDL and their financial backers.  Very interesting stuff.

I'm still on the fence about the network supposedly backing Breivik.  There are a lot of Knights Templar revivalists.  There are lots of people who dislike Muslims.  Sometimes there is crossover between the two, and if it would be anywhere in the world, it would probably be in London.  Some of Breivik's more outlandish claims have since been verified, but some have not.

Although if it doesn't exist, Breivik has now planted the idea in the heads of the more violent fringes of the Counter-Jihadist movement.  Just like the Rosicrucians didn't originally exist, until the books spurred on the creation of secret societies based on them.

I wouldn't be surprised to see in 10 years time a worrying proliferation in Templar-themed groups with a violent bent, selling copies of Europe: 2089.

[Lenin McCarthy]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/02/13/world/europe/ap-eu-norway-parliament-threat.html?smid=tw-share

A member of the Norwegian Defence League has been arrested for threatening to bomb the Norwegian parliament.

[Cain]

The X Defence Leagues are becoming increasingly violent, all over the place.  Doesn't bode well...

[Lenin McCarthy]

Despite the Norwegian police intelligence services' (PST) claim that not even the DDR could have stopped the July 22nd attacks, I'm starting to think we could have, if only PST weren't completely useless.

For the last ten years, they've been using young James Bond-obsessed narcissists as informers. Example: Christian Høibø (also child porn convict and at one point reality TV star). In 2002 he gave the police a lead about a supposed secret radical leftist arms cache. It turned out to be false, but they enlisted him as a source anyway. First, he infiltrated the quite harmless Trotskyist group International Socialists, and then the anarchist/communist/miscellaneous lefty Blitz squat/autonomous community, where he actively encouraged violent behaviour and at at least one point got arrested by police for stone-throwing and violence against cops. And then, he joined Norway's resident Maoist sect (and the anti-racist organization they've taken control over) in infiltrating the islamophobofascist Norwegian Defence League. Allegedly he almost single-handedly turned it from a Facebook group to an actual, somewhat well-functioning organization. He also recruited young football hooligans into NDL. All this around the time when Breivik was involved in the organization. So this guy has been building up, recruiting to and inciting to violence in extremist organizations on both the left and the right, while reporting (often falsely, or exaggeratedly) to the Police Security Service. All to live out his inner secret agent fantasies.

Next to all terrorist attacks in Norway since WWII have been committed by right-wing extremists. Still, the police intelligence services have this weird fixation with left-wingers. Their official threat assessment report for 2013 even suggests that left-wingers may turn to violence to protest Norway's immigration policies (the government is trying to deport a bunch of well-integrated second-generation immigrant kids along with their parents because they lied or did the paperwork wrong, and that's enraging some) and dedicates more space in the report to discussing that than the possibility of another attack similar to Utøya. And it still considers Islamic fundamentalism the biggest security threat to Norwegian society today.

[Cain]

Of course, there is an alternate explanation....that he was doing exactly what the PST wanted or expected him to do.

Unstable personalities like this turn up far too frequently in the history of undercover agents and police informants.  It also gives the security forces, with their generally conservative bias, an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway...keep the leftists down (but potentially threatening enough to keep an eye on) and the fascists on a short leash.