Norway loses its innocence

[hdw]

Terrorist bombs come to Oslo. Nobody knows why yet, but I'll be surprised if it isn't linked to Norway's military involvement in Afghanistan.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/explosion-r...135137359.html

Harry

[Eric]

I suppose that everyone, including the secret police in Norway, were watching Murdoch and the threatened collapse of the euro, and took their eye off the ball. That is what the central shopping street in Stockholm could have looked like last December.

Obviously, we don't know right now whether it was Islamists or Norwegian Nazis. But even though the ultra-right in Norway might not like the Social-Democrats, I cannot quite imagine them spraying SocDem kids with bullets at a summer camp.

Maybe the West will have to show more muscle to preserve its culture. But how, without falling into the trap of tit-for-tat? Jesus tried to revise the Old Testament "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" culture. But when such atrocities happen, the gut reaction is revenge.

[hdw]

My only link to Norway at present is a very tenuous one. My wife has a nephew who graduated in international law from Durham University and his fiancée is a Korean girl who was adopted and brought up in Norway, and she has a very high-powered job with the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. We thought they were in Oslo just now but we checked with family tonight and they're in Geneva.

I'd like to have more links to Norway. I've done a tiny bit of Norwegian-English translation, and have polished the English of a Norwegian journalist's reports for Al-Jazeera.

Harry

[Eric]

The interesting item of information being toyed with in the press right now is that the gunman on the island of Utøya is tall and fair-haired. What the journalists are trying to prove I do not know. But it will take a while to find out who is behind these atrocities, whether Al Qaida or a fascist group who doesn't like the way the left is running Norway.

My links to Norway are wholly impersonal ones. As I know the language, at least to read, I can, like Harry, access the websites of Aftenposten, Dagbladet and VB at a moment's notice to read the updates. For me, this is yet more proof how vital language knowledge is, if you want to find out about something in Europe, where English is not the first or only language.

[hdw]

The interesting item of information being toyed with in the press right now is that the gunman on the island of Utøya is tall and fair-haired. What the journalists are trying to prove I do not know. But it will take a while to find out who is behind these atrocities.

Yes, I've just been reading Aftenposten online. A "grusom situasjon" indeed, with loads of kids jumping into the water and trying to swim ashore. My wife has just updated me from the TV, and they are talking about 19 dead in toto from the two incidents.

Harry

[Eric]

The number of dead is something the papers, especially the tabloids, obsess about. I've seen, in various online papers, a number of up to thirty for the island. Obviously, it was hard to get away from there. But when the reports settle down, we will get the true tally. One death is already one too many. Now that the police have opened up access to Utøya, principally to parents and relatives, but presumably to the press too, a clearer picture will emerge.

[Eric]

I'm afraid that the story about Wikileaks does not shed a very positive light on the PST. What's the PST? It's the organisation which tells people "pst, we're the Norwegian secret police". Every country in Europe, even Liechtenstein, should now surely get the message that terrorism can happen anywhere. This Oslo thing today was pretty big, coordinated and deadly, and must have required some organising. Someone in the PST will be carrying the can.

Swedish terror expert Magnus Ranstorp claims it's not Al Qaida-style terrorism. If he's right he'll be a Scandinavian hero, if wrong his credibility as a terrorism expert will fly out of the window. Either Aftenposten can't get it right, or Ranstorp's been flapping as to who did it. A couple of hour's ago he thought it was Al Qaida.

[Eric]

So, the Wikileaks dimension:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...or-attack.html

[Eric]

One aspect of all this that disturbs me is that there seems to be an eagerness to say:"It's not coming from Afghanistan or Pakistan. It's just a local nutter. So that's alright, then.". If one nutter or psychopath can wreak so much havoc, what is left of our carefully built up Western civilisation, with all its ways of expressing dissidence and disagreement in a peaceful manner (like parliamentary committees that hound crooks)? I don't fancy getting blown up on the street just because some lone psychopath, or strictly organised seriously cerebral group, plans to explode the bus I'm sitting in. The loss of an arm or eye is the same whoever is organising it.

[Eric]

As I keep mentioning, language is a key tool for accessing information. From Norwegian sources (the reliability of which is, of course, not guaranteed in the rush to be first) I have found out the full name of the purported lone terrorist, his exact date of birth, an indigenous Norwegian (and looks like one if the photo is genuine), his age, political views, and so on. Someone with a knowledge of Norwegian, no doubt, has already spread this information to the Wikipedia, beating the scoop press to it, as they have to follow legal procedures, while private citizens can risk leaking information.

But assuming this is the man, how can he receive a fair trial once all this information has been leaked, whether it's true or not? The WikiLeaks attitude to information could lead to a lynch mob way of dealing with suspects. Even the probably dishonest James Murdoch will go through endless bouts of questioning and trials, no doubt. But this man, whether a psychopath who is not responsible for his actions, or the hero of some neo-Nazi group, is already pronounced guilty.

After Dunblane, Timothy McVeigh, and the atrocities in East Germany, Finland, etc., has no one got a grip on the linkeage between gun licences, gun clubs, and lunatics? Was this man manouevred by Al Qaida, or was he "only" a disgruntled rightie with a grudge? And how did he organise and coordinate all of this on his own? What is our open society doing to prevent this kind of thing happening in the future?

There are many questions.

[waalkwriter]

Anders Behring Breivik (born 13 February 1979) is suspected of being the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks.[1][2][3] On 22 July 2011, he allegedly approached a Labour Party youth camp, posing as a police officer. He then proceeded to open fire on the 13 to 25 year old youth present, reportedly killing at least 10. He has also been linked with the bomb blast that took place approximately two hours earlier, and is now in police custody.

Behring studied at the Oslo Commerce School, and is described by newspaper Verdens Gang as Conservative and nationalist.[3] He is also described as a one-time freemason.[4] He expresses his sympathies for Winston Churchill and Norwegian anti-nazi World War II hero Max Manus on his Facebook profile,[5] He owns the company Breivik Geofarm.[6]

What was it you said about not being able to fathom someone from the ultra-right wanting to mow down youth activists for the labor party? This isn't some unemployed, unstable college student like McVeigh or Jared Loughner, this is a grown man, with a moderately successful business.

His last tweet was a quote from John Stuart Mills:

"One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."

And your last comments would never do in America Eric, where the solution to gun violence is always to give more people guns and make the process easier than it already is. Republicans pander to the NRA (National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobbies in American politics), and Democrats are afraid of it, and this an organization that opposes making background checks at gun shows mandatory and requiring gun manufacturers to include child safety locks on handguns.

I don't know why you're still going on about a possible Al Qaeda connection when it seems clear that this deranged asshole was working with some group of neo-nazi extremist.

[Eric]

I've noticed, Waalkwriter, that Americans cite some amendment in the constitution, and the right to bear arms, but if indeed 80 (!) have been killed on the island of Utøya, even the gun lobby may think again. That could have happened in the States. That figure seems big but it was the main headline of the respectable paper Aftenposten just now, and is echoed in the respectable broadsheet newspapers in neighbouring Sweden.

It does now have the hallmarks of the actions of a lunatic from the ultra-right, not an Islamist terrorist organisation. The young people must have been sitting ducks, as the island is tiny. But I'm still amazed that one man could wreak such havoc, both in the capital and on the island.

But don't get too "assholey" about the ultra-right. The Islamist organisations can do the same. In fact, one Islamist organisation immediately claimed the act themselves, then backed down. So it's no wonder that people have thought this could be the work of Al Qaida, given 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Mumbai, and so on. The main thing is that gun clubs are too easy to join, and access to explosives is clearly too easy in our easygoing West.

You're right about McVeigh, etc., so I think that gun clubs must have much stricter rules, so that members can't just walk off with weapons.

[Eric]

If you look at the island, it's just a tiny area with no escape:



You can see the scale from the size of the trees and jetty.

[Eric]

Just for the record, it does say the following in one Norwegian newspaper:

Behring Breivik har ingen kjent tilknytning til nåværende eller tidligere grupper på ytre høyre fløy, men var frimurer og medlem av Johannes-losjen St. Olaus T.D. Tre Søiler.

Which means:

Behring Breivik has no known connections with present-day or earlier groups on the far right, but was a Freemason, and a member of the Johannes lodge of the St. Olaus T.D. Tre Søiler. (I do not know what kind of organisation this latter one is.)

Source: http://www.dagsavisen.no/innenriks/article518499.ece

Nor do I know the credentials of this newspaper, but the information seems plausible. But I'm getting the information directly from Norwegian sources.

[waalkwriter]

I've noticed, Waalkwriter, that Americans cite some amendment in the constitution, and the right to bear arms, but if indeed 80 (!) have been killed on the island of Utøya, even the gun lobby may think again. That could have happened in the States. That figure seems big but it was the main headline of the respectable paper Aftenposten just now, and is echoed in the respectable broadsheet newspapers in neighbouring Sweden.

It does now have the hallmarks of the actions of a lunatic from the ultra-right, not an Islamist terrorist organisation. The young people must have been sitting ducks, as the island is tiny. But I'm still amazed that one man could wreak such havoc, both in the capital and on the island.

But don't get too "assholey" about the ultra-right. The Islamist organisations can do the same. In fact, one Islamist organisation immediately claimed the act themselves, then backed down. So it's no wonder that people have thought this could be the work of Al Qaida, given 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Mumbai, and so on. The main thing is that gun clubs are too easy to join, and access to explosives is clearly too easy in our easygoing West.

You're right about McVeigh, etc., so I think that gun clubs must have much stricter rules, so that members can't just walk off with weapons.

The Second Amendment. Goddamn our forefathers for literally, in our founding legal text, including an amendment with this vague statement:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I fear you are too optimistic. When some nutcase went and killed 22+ people on the Virginia Tech campus several years ago, the response of Republicans and the NRA was to immediately push back on suggestions that this was a case for stricter gun control laws. The problem is the nutjobs that run these gun shops have no respect for the law; the Virginia Tech guy bought guns from a dealer that wasn't following the law. These are the strangest group of backwater individuals you'll ever meet. And conservatives here view any widespread movement to tighten gun controls and ban handguns as well as automatic rifles as tantamount to the beginnings of a dictatorship. (They have this little armed insurrectionist vein among them, wherein the tea party types completely misunderstand 4th Grade history).

[Flower]

The whole of Scandinavia is in mouring cause of this, so please respect this!

[waalkwriter]

I wasn't trying imply any disrespect. I'm still shocked at trying to comprehend the type of mind that manages to justify this kind of action over political differences. It's an act that's both saddening and infuriating.

[Eric]

One thing is very dangerous in such circumstances as these, and that is a knee-jerk reaction.

People jump to conclusions about right-wing people and Christians, when you read in the papers that Breivik is a member of the ultra-right and a fundamental Christian. Given what Christ actually said, according to the Bible, no sane Christian would do something like this. Nor should people equate conservatism and liberalism (in the European sense) with the ultra-right and Nazism. Nor should people get too carried away with the fact that this is a fair-haired, blue-eyed "Aryan", to use Nazi terminology. Not all Whites are psychopaths. Such convenient blurrings of the truth only exacerbate the problem and encourage irrational ranting.

I try to shut out the emotional thoughts, such as parents coming to the island, because I cannot be of any help, and don't want to brood. But if one (or maybe two) people can destroy so much and so many, we must in the long term look into the way our society is run. Gun clubs must have much more strict controls. The sale of substances such as fertiliser must be more closely monitored.

There is always a pendulum between total freedom to do what you like in society, and total restrictions. We in the West have got it pretty spot on with the balance, except that now terrorists and lunatics tend to exploit our very easygoing society, where morality is not cultivated within the person or individual. Since the Islamist threats have come along, and what with the several school massacres in Finland, East Germany, the USA, Britain and elsewhere, we cannot simply "carry on as normal". Safety and security will perhaps erode some freedoms, but we already accept safety checks at airports. All these checks slow society down, so in the long run, if we discount the acts of lunatics, we will have to both sacrifice some freedom of movement, and will have to get people to understand what responsibility is.

Obviously, this man is a psychopath, and nothing would change his mind. But access to automatic weapons is a big danger in our society. There is a big difference between, on the one hand, the "rifle under the bed" scenario in Switzerland and the ownership of a weapon if you live on an isolated farm in the USA, but on the other, the ease with which people in certain countries can walk into gun shops and buy automatic weapons with no checks and the minimum of fuss. A lunatic with a knife is much less dangerous at a distance than a lunatic with a machine-gun.

[Flower]

It is a National day of mourning in Denmark now; All public buldings and ships have their flags half casted. I think you call it. I shall leave soon for a ceremony held infront of the Norwegian Embassy in Copenhagen by the Danish youth socialist party, connected and friends with the one having the summer camp for the young people in Norway.

http://www.bt.dk/danmark/danmark-fla...norsk-tragedie

[hdw]

It is a National day of mourning in Denmark now; All public buldings and ships have their flags half casted. I think you call it.

http://www.bt.dk/danmark/danmark-fla...norsk-tragedie

[flags] at half mast.

I'm afraid we have all been conditioned to the knee-jerk reaction that an atrocity of this kind must be the work of Muslim fundamentalists, and indeed people on the streets in Oslo thought so and the secretary general of the Islamic Council of Norway, Mehtab Afsar, was quick to announce "This is our homeland, this is my homeland, I condemn these attacks ..."

I knew there was a far-right element in Norwegian society as there is in all European countries, but a couple of years ago when I read Norwegian author Jo Nesbø's thriller which had Norwegian neo-Nazis as its theme, I innocently thought it was over-the-top and exaggerated. The question also arises, does treating such themes in a novel, even if you treat them negatively, give these people the oxygen of publicity and encourage them?

Hardline fundamentalism is always potentially dangerous, whether Christian or Muslim, Fascist or Marxist. If this guy was of the extreme right, then presumably the fact that those kids belonged to a Socialist organisation was enough to doom them in his eyes. The media and politicians are already using words like "madman", but he's more frightening than a madman whose behaviour is unpredictable and irrational and who just lashes out. This is somebody who has coolly and methodically planned his actions, even down to getting hold of a policeman's uniform.

We have bitter experience in Britain of the murder of innocent children. In England, Michael Ryan's gunning down of children in Hungerford, Berkshire. In Scotland, the similar atrocity carried out by Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane, Perthshire. Incidentally, one of the small children who escaped the gunfire that day by hiding under a table was tennis ace Andy Murray. Murray's public persona can be a bit churlish and "dour", as the Scots say, but who knows what psychological damage he suffered that day?

Harry