Norway is attacked by white supremacist fundamentalist Christian terrorist, commence Muslim-blaming.

[the_future_modernes]

And also of course, dude's mental capacity gets questioned. Because the only way one can be a mass murderer is if one is mentally ill.





Norway attacks: Saturday 23 July as it happened The Guardian

• At least 92 killed in Norway attacks
• Bomb blast in capital Oslo kills at least 7
• 85 killed at (leftwing Labor Party) youth camp on Utøya island
• Unexploded device found on Utøya
• Norwegian gunman 'held rightwing views'

9:10amThis is David Batty bringing you the latest on the twin attacks in Norway yesterday in which at least 91 people have been confirmed killed.

• At least 84 people were shot dead by gunman at a youth summer camp on the island of Utøya, after an explosion at government buildings in Oslo killed at least seven. Many others have been injured.

• Police have charged Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian man, over both attacks. Oslo police say Breivik's website indicates he is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist.

• Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose offices were among those badly hit by the Oslo bomb blast, said the attacks were "like a nightmare". He was due to have been on Utøya a few hours after the attacks began.

• Survivors of the Utøya shooting said the gunman shot his victims twice to make sure they were dead.

• Concerned relatives should call 004723132700.

The Guardian has a gallery of the attacks here.

You can follow me on Twitter at David_Batty.MORE

Norway Live Blog Al Jazeera

The following is a timeline of the attacks on a Norwegian government building and a political retreat for young people on Friday, July 22, according to police and eyewitnesses. All times are local and are reported by the AP news agency:

3:26pm: A car bomb explodes outside the prime minister's office in central Oslo.

4:50pm: Vacationers at a campground begin to hear shooting across the lake on Utoya, an island where the youth wing of the Labour Party is holding a retreat.

5:38pm: SWAT team is dispatched from Oslo. It drives, deciding that taking a police helicopter would take longer.

6:00pm: The team arrives at the lake but struggles to find a boat to cross over to the island.

6:20pm: The SWAT team arrives on the island.

6:35pm: The shooting suspect puts down his weapons and surrenders to police.
MORE

Youth camp targeted in Norway attack

Norway massacre suspect 'had links to right-wing groups'

Norway attacks: at least 92 killed in Oslo and Utøya island

Police name 'rightwinger' Anders Behring Breivik, 32, as suspect behind Oslo bombing and youth camp massacre

Norway was today coming to terms with one of the worst atrocities in recent European history as police revealed that 92 people died in the attacks in the centre of Oslo and on a nearby island summer camp, apparently the work of a lone gunman.

The killings, it now seems clear, were carried out by a 32-year old Norwegian, named by local media as Anders Behring Breivik, who had expressed far-right views, and had dressed as a policeman to carry out his bomb attack on government buildings in central Oslo before heading to the island of Utøya, where he shot at least 85 people.

Survivors of the island attack, which took place barely two hours after a huge bomb was detonated close to the offices of Norway's prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, described how the gunman moved across the small, wooded Utøya holiday island on Friday firing at random as young people scattered in fear.

Teenagers at the lakeside camp organised by Stoltenberg's ruling Labour party fled screaming in panic, many leaping into the water or climbing trees to save themselves, when the attacker began spraying them with gunfire.

"A paradise island has been transformed into a hell," Stoltenberg told a news conference on Saturday morning.

He said he did not want to speculate on the motives of the attacks, but added: "Compared to other countries I wouldn't say we have a big problem with rightwing extremists in Norway. But we have had some groups, we have followed them before, and our police is aware that there are some rightwing groups."

...


Witnesses and survivors of the island attack described scenes of horror and panic.

"I just saw people jumping into the water, about 50 people swimming towards the shore. People were crying, shaking, they were terrified," said Anita Lien, 42, who lives by Tyrifjord lake, a few hundred metres from Utøya. "They were so young, between 14 and 19 years old."

Survivor Jorgen Benone said: "It was total chaos … I think several lost their lives as they tried to get over to the mainland.

"I saw people being shot. I tried to sit as quietly as possible. I was hiding behind some stones. I saw him once, just 20, 30 metres away from me. I thought, 'I'm terrified for my life,' I thought of all the people I love.

"I saw some boats but I wasn't sure if I could trust them. I didn't know who I could trust any more."

Another survivor, a 16-year-old called Hana, told Norway's Aftenposten: "We had all gathered in the main house to talk about what had happened in Oslo. Suddenly we heard shots. First we thought it was nonsense. Then everyone started running.MORE

Norway Attacks in pictures There is fucking idiocy in the comments, so don't read if you value your sanity.


Right-wing politics on the rise in Scandinavia

Blaming Muslims, yet again

With at least 92 people dead and several injured, the brutality of Friday's attacks in Norway left the country reeling.
But who to blame for the bomb blast that tore through Oslo's government district and the shooting spree that left scores of teenagers dead at a youth summer camp in nearby Utoya?

Moments after the explosion that, as of Saturday night, left seven dead, pundits and analysts alike had assigned blame to al-Qaeda or an al-Qaeda-like group (a close approximation will do, one can suppose).

There were also reports of a group calling the Helpers of the Global Jihad either claiming responsibility for the attack or lending it support to whoever carried it out. The group retracted its rather vague statement on Saturday.
Norwegian police, meanwhile, concluded fairly early on that the attacks weren't the work of a foreign terrorist group. They have 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik in custody - he is believed to be the gunman who opened fire on the teenagers attending a youth camp organised by the Labour Party.

It's also been reported that Breivik bought six tonnes of fertiliser in May from a farm supply firm, which seems to take a page right out of another non-Muslim terrorist's handbook: Timothy McVeigh, who along with Terry Nichols, blew up the Alfred P Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 with a truckload of fertiliser, killing 168 and injuring 450.
Still, despite the initial lack of evidence shortly after the attack - and a growing stack of evidence pointing to the contrary later - some continued to look for a "jihadist" connection in the Norway attacks. Some looked for a link between the attacks and the anger that erupted after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

Local Muslims: 'Deep sorrow'

This hits the Muslim community in Norway in two different ways - first, their sense of security is threatened as much as any other Norwegian. On top of that, they are automatically blamed for arguably the darkest days in Norway's recent history.
The local Muslim community was quick to respond.

The Islamic Council of Norway immediately issued a statement of condemnation, saying that any attack on Norway was an attack on the homeland of its members, while imams and other Muslim community members visited with various Christian groups and church leaders in an effort to not only offer condolences, but to improve lines of communication.
"We are in deep sorrow with the Norwegian community," Muhammed Tayyib, the coordinator of The Islamic Cultural Centre Norway, told Al Jazeera.

MORE

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism"

For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front pagestrongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits. The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates. The morning statement issued by President Obama -- "It's a reminder that the entire international community holds a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring" and "we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks" -- appeared to assume, though (to its credit) did not overtly state, that the perpetrator was an international terrorist group.

But now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn't from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller's Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch. Despite that, The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals (h/t sysprog):

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda's brutality and multiple attacks.

"If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al Qaeda," said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Al Qaeda is always to blame, even when it isn't, even when it's allegedly the work of a Nordic, Muslim-hating, right-wing European nationalist. Of course, before Al Qaeda, nobody ever thought to detonate bombs in government buildings or go on indiscriminate, politically motivated shooting rampages. The NYT speculates that amonium nitrate fertilizer may have been used to make the bomb because the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, owned a farming-related business and thus could have access to that material; of course nobody would have ever thought of using that substance to make a massive bomb had it not been for Al Qaeda. So all this proves once again what a menacing threat radical Islam is.

Then there's this extraordinarily revealing passage from the NYT -- first noticed by Richard Silverstein -- explaining why the paper originally reported what it did:

Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist.

There was ample reason for concern that terrorists might be responsible.

In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know -- by definition -- that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant -- also by definition -- that it was an act of Terrorism. As Silverstein put it:

How's that again? Are the only terrorists in the world Muslim? If so, what do we call a right-wing nationalist capable of planting major bombs and mowing down scores of people for the sake of the greater glory of his cause? If even a liberal newspaper like the Times can't call this guy a terrorist, what does that say about the mindset of the western world?

MORE

Norway attacks suspect admits responsibility

The man suspected of a gun and bomb attack in Norway has called his deeds atrocious yet necessary, his defence lawyer said.

"He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary," defence lawyer Geir Lippestad told TV2 news on Saturday.

Lippestad said his client had said he was willing to explain himself in a court hearing on Monday. The court will decide at the hearing whether to keep the suspect in detention pending trial.

Earlier on Saturday, officials in Norway had charged a 32-year-old Norwegian man with killing at least 92 people in agun and bomb attack described as the worst act of violence in the country since World War II.

Police confirmed to Al Jazeera on Saturday that the suspect had been named as Anders Behring Breivik.
Breivik, who confessed to firing weapons during questioning on Saturday, belonged to right-wing political groups. But officials said they are not jumping to conclusions about his motives.

Reports suggest he belonged to an anti-immigration party, wrote blogs attacking multi-culturalism and was a member of a neo-Nazi online forum.

But Norwegian authorities said Breivik, detained by police after 85 people were gunned down at a youth camp and another 7 killed in an Oslo bomb attack on Friday, was previously unknown to them and his internet activity traced so far included no calls to violence.

Breivik bought six tonnes of fertiliser before the massacre, a supplier said on Saturday, as police investigated witness accounts of a second shooter in the attack on Utoya.
If convicted on terrorism charges, he would face a maximum of 21 years in jail, police have said.


MORE

Our thoughts are with Norway at this dark time.