Friday, July 22, 2011

No Jihad Angle — Or Is There?

Oslo aftermath

Almost as soon as the first glass fragments hit the pavement in Oslo this afternoon, the blogosphere was abuzz with the news of the deadly event. The bombing was immediately identified it as a jihad attack by many commentators. This conclusion seemed to be confirmed shortly afterwards when a Islamic terrorist group claimed responsibility for the carnage.

As later reports came in, however, the picture began to change. The shooter at Utøya was repeatedly described as “Nordic” in appearance. Initial reports that he may have been a convert to Islam were never subsequently confirmed. Then the terrorist outfit withdrew its claim of responsibility, and the case for jihad became thin indeed.

No one of “Middle Eastern appearance” was listed as being sought. No witnesses reported hearing cries of “Allahu akhbar!” in Oslo or Utøya.

Now that the suspect is in custody and has been identified as an indigenous Norwegian, the latest reports refer to him as a “right-wing extremist”, presumably linked to some ultra-nationalist group.

Yet his attacks targeted the Socialists, the most anti-Israel of the major parties in Norway. Based on the affiliation of the people he killed, some websites go so far as to describe him as a “Zionist”.

To make matters even stranger, his Facebook page is quite innocuous — unless you consider The Prince subversive. And it was only set up a few days ago.

So I have no idea what the real story is. When the Scandinavian Gang of Five wake up in the morning, they will no doubt sift the latest Norwegian-language accounts, and possibly find something worth reporting.

However — assuming that the young man is not really a “Zionist” — his being a “right-wing extremist” does not rule out a jihad connection. Not at all.

There is ample precedent for speculation in this regard. For a possible parallel, we may turn to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

I’ve read several accounts that describe the Oslo murderer as “a Norwegian Timothy McVeigh”. The crime in downtown Oslo does resemble the Oklahoma City atrocity — a powerful vehicle bomb, possibly a fertilizer bomb, detonated near a government building for the purpose of causing mass casualties. Then, after initial alarm about Islam, we hear that the alleged perpetrator is a crazed right-wing zealot bent on killing as many of his fellow citizens as possible.

Yes, Oslo and Oklahoma City definitely have a lot in common in this regard.

But one thing many people seem to forget — and which they may never have known, thanks to the American government’s actions and the media spin that followed — is that there almost certainly was an Islamic terror connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

I refer, of course, to the book The Third Terrorist by Jayna Davis. Ms. Davis did exhaustive research, examined all the evidence, interviewed the witnesses who had seen the third conspirator, tracked down the connections, and identified the Iraqi who helped Timothy McVeigh build the bomb. Her work provided more than enough evidence to satisfy Occam’s Razor: there was a third terrorist.

McVeigh’s bomb was thought to have an “Islamic signature” — that is, a bomb of that strength and type was considered almost certain to have been constructed or designed by Muslim terrorists who had the experience and know-how to do the job. It was believed that no domestic terrorist group had the ability to construct such a powerful fertilizer bomb.

That’s why government officials made their early announcement of Islamic terrorism — which, for reasons of their own, they backed away from a few days later. “White supremacists” and “militias” were the preferred culprits, and not Muslims, so the third terrorist had to disappear down the memory hole.

And so he did, as I discovered this afternoon when discussing the horrific events with several Europeans. They had never heard of The Third Terrorist.

So don’t rule Islam out of the Oslo picture, not just yet. Think of the level of destruction the killer managed to accomplish — how unreasonable would it be to assume the backing and assistance of people who have proved themselves proficient at making very, very powerful bombs and detonating them in major cities?

No matter what conclusions the Norwegian government comes to, look for a “second terrorist”. Or a third, or a fourth…

Anybody who is interested in the idea and can read Norwegian should start investigating this right now. If any evidence of such complicity exists, it’s a good bet that it has already begun to disappear.

52 comments:

1389 said...

Considering what just happened, THIS should make your hair stand on end...

Jewel said...

It has all the hallmarks of a Reichstag.

Nick said...

One thing I have noticed happening recently is the way news reports are altered. If you bookmark a page of an online paper, then go back later, you can find it's been changed. Sometimes quite dramatically. And not necessarily to bring it into line with the facts. I've seen this happen a few times now.

Call Me Mom said...

Pamela Geller has noted that another blogger has been saying that Fjordman is the perpetrator of this outrage. She has defended him well, but I thought you would like a "head's up".
See here

1389 said...

@Jewel,
That's a likely possibility.
Or at least people will use it that way.

@Nick,
That happened some years back to stories of suspicious incidents in the Chicago area. Never did find out what actually happened.

1389 said...

@CallMeMom,

We got that on Blogmocracy. I'm not an admin there, only a contributor, but I responded and linked back to GoV for further clarification.

If you run any kind of a hard-news blog or forum - ESPECIALLY a counterjihad blog - and you allow open comments, somebody has to be watching that thing all the time.

:(

Nick said...

It's worth trying to find comparison points between today's events and previous events, the better to understand what actually happened today. Well, yesterday, technically, since it's now past midnight.

Was this guy a 'lone wolf'? As in, not part of any organisation?

Where did he get the materials to make a car bomb if it was him who did that? Some reports today have said that there were two car bombs. The footage being shown certainly looks pretty devastating, & seems to cover a wide area. All from one IED? If there was a second car bomb, then that makes it more unlikely that this guy acted alone. If he didn't act alone, then who helped him?

More questions than answers at this stage, but hopefully there will be some light shed on this wingnut's motivations in the coming days. More light than, say, was shone upon the motives of the perpetrator of the 'horrific outbreak of violence' at Ford Hood in 2009.

Call Me Mom said...

@ Nick,
That's why I will often save the web-page to my computer. IT keeps things from disappearing quite so effectively.
@ 1389,
That's why I posted the head's up.
:)

As for the unfolding events, When I checked, earlier in the day, there were three or four facebook pages that gradually disappeared, with only one of them having been created on July 17th, 2011. None of them had any friends. I am highly suspicious of any information that would have come from those pages, and that includes religion and affiliations.

Call Me Mom said...

What I meant was that the others had been created today, only one was older than today's date for the facebook profiles.

Franklin said...

The guy who did this was pissed at the Demosocialists for embracing "multikulti" and letting in muslims who won't assimilate. As a Republican farmer, he had access to ammonitrate and blew up the Fed Bldg is Oslo where the Demos worked...their kids where at Demosocialist summer camp, so he went there dressed as a cop and machine gunned 89 of their kids!

Nick said...

@Franklin,
There was a Norwegian journalist on TV earlier on (British TV) and the poor man was just devastated. The only thing I can compare it to from up round here is the Piper Alpha disaster. A lot of guys in the oil industry work in Norway nowadays, as it happens.

Sol Ta Triane said...

Baron, yes, Breivik's website is oddly innocuous for someone who would do this.

The only thing that caught my eye was that a couple of his favorite blogs he links are called iMuslim and Organic Muslim.

Franklin said...

I find it phenominal that one man could cause such havoc based upon political belief! Wait! Maybe his middle name was Muhammad!

Sol Ta Triane said...

Scratch what I just said. I thought that Falling on a Bruise was Breivik's blog but it's not.

dizzy said...

A site on which both Behring & Fjordman have posted has this notice -- [link is to google translation]
Anders Behring Breivik's comments with Document.no
23.07.2011 at. 04.50
This is a complete list of comments Anders Behring Breivik has left at Document.no.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3tu6j3v

One of the posts is short & sweet --
http://www.document.no/2009/10/dumhetens_pris/
Anders Behring
Good post by the way, Fjordman.

Anonymous said...

If there isn't a jihadi element behind this, then it would have to fall into the pattern of Western mass-murder and terror acts--which, in my untutored brain seem always to be committed by sociopaths--if not psychopaths. These people tend to act alone, probably because, being sociopaths, they are rather short on friends. It wouldn't surprise me that the jihadis choose to exploit them, but even if they don't, it remains that on the jihadi side you have whole organisations underpinned by an ideology, whereas on the Western mass-murderer side you have, generally, lone nutcases. Happy for someone a little less tutored in these matters to put me straight.

Call Me Mom said...

I'm suddenly having a lot of trouble getting to GOV. I got here now by using the link in my hotmail update. But when I try the link on my blog or even typing in the address, I get my server page offering suggestions. The suggestions that would lead here, just go right back to the same server page. What's the deal?

Call Me Mom said...

Hmm, must've just been a glitch. Seems to be working fine now. Phew!

Paul Weston said...

The Moral Depravity of Charles Johnson

If Charles Johnson could stoop any lower into the sewer he would have to be double-jointed. Although he considers himself a holder of the moral high ground and an ardent opponent of “haters” everywhere, he has contrived to take a global atrocity and turn it to his own personal advantage in manufacturing hate against a man of the highest moral character. I speak of course, of Fjordman.

Johnson’s site has picked up on an obscure and rather unsavourary blog which insinuates that Fjordman and Anders Behring Breivik are one and the same. LGF actually carries the following quote:

“Anders Behring Breivik has previously driven the blog Fjordman and later for many years been a writer for the anti-Muslim and Zionist bloggers Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch, under the pseudonym Fjordman.”

You will notice there is no reference to the fact that Fjordman was once a mainstay at LGF itself. When one sets out to smear an opponent, then economy with the truth is clearly no moral impediment to the obscene Charles Johnson.

The malicious libel against Fjordman was carried out with no desire to establish the veracity of the claim. Indeed Johnson knows it simply could not be the case, not least because Fjordman was posting at Gates of Vienna even as Anders Behring Breivik was locked up in a Norwegian cell.

What Johnson has done is truly immoral, indeed disgustingly immoral. His ego, vanity and hate filled soul have deranged him to such an extent that he has taken a tragedy of world shaking proportion and utilised in a game of hatred driven one upmanship.

Whilst the world mourns this unspeakable act of savagery, Charles Johnson views it merely as a vehicle to smear and libel a man whose integrity and decency are in a different constellation to those Johnson possesses. One of his acolytes even suggested that the smear provided a “silver lining” to the cold blooded murders.

Dear God, what sort of people are these? I have never viewed anything so irredeemably evil and sinister in my entire life. Charles Johnson has descended into the bowels of hell with what he has done. Such hatred, such deliberate libel and such deliberate economy of the truth is of truly surreal levels.

Let us pray for the souls of those murdered on that awful day, even if it is too late to pray that Johnson’s troubled soul may be forgiven, because it cannot. There are simply no words possible to describe the sheer barbarous, vicious and malignant evil of the man.

Eighty dead young people, thousands of traumatised mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Yes Mr Johnson, what a fantastic opportunity to settle personal scores of relatively trivial consequence. You disgust and appal all civilised members of the human race.

Félicie said...

What if this whole thing is a conspiracy to discredit the anti-jihad movement? I find it hard to believe that a Norwegian would do this to fellow Norwegians. Perhaps, an angry political opponent may assassinate the leader of the party he hates. But he would not go on a mass killing spree. On the other hand, we have very sophisticated psychotropic drugs today, hypnosis, and other methods of influence. A person who is slightly unstable could be turned into a zombie and made to follow orders. This conspiracy may go very high.

Anonymous said...

It is clear that he was a Counterjihadist and that his opinions were much like any of ours. He references the same websites most of us visit, including Gates of Vienna.
"Watch the pages gatesofvienna, brussels journal, Jihad Watch, religionofpeace etc.

Read Fjord Man's work "Defeating Eurabia". This is f as the perfect Christmas gift for family and friends."

I've posted most of his comments from document.no, google-translated, here:

http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.com/2011/07/anders-behring-breiviks-comments-about.html

He also wanted to establish a Norwegian EDL and claims to have given advice to the real EDL.

Anonymous said...

Again as a link

Anonymous said...

@dizzy

Thanks a lot for that link! Very enlightening.

Avery said...

Anders Behring Breivik had no heart.

I’m betting he had no friends either.

We know for a fact that he had books, and the Internet, and he was thinking seriously about the meaning of civilization. But I’m guessing–I may be wrong–that he had no deep connections that could bring him to understand the value of every human being and the deep connections of love that form between people. I believe his life up before the killing must have been an empty facade.

We know for a fact that he was a right-winger and racialist targeting leftists; that he cared about the survival of the Nordic race more than he cared about the life and liberty of the individuals who constitute that race. How can someone be so depraved as to reach that conclusion? You would have to believe that every rule of civilization–down to our respect for each other’s right to live, and the dignity of innocent children–can be suspended to achieve a political goal. That is not a conclusion that can be reached by someone who understands what society is for and trusts and loves their friends. That is a balance I think he lacked.

Let Norway show him mercy, not because he deserves it, but because their vision of civilization is more complete than his.

jeppo said...

@Cheradenine,
Thanks for the link. Anders Breivik writes about demographic changes in various cities and countries, in one case using Little Green Footballs as his source:

Bethlehem

Source 1

1948 85% Christians[1]
2006 12% Christians[1]

Source 2

1948 - 60% Christians[2]
1983 - 20% Christians[2]

Source:

1. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23696_Christmas_Disappears_from_Bethlehem&only
2. http://www.danielpipes.org/1050/disappearing-christians-in-the-middle-east

jeppo said...

Avery: "We know for a fact that he was a right-winger and racialist targeting leftists; that he cared about the survival of the Nordic race more than he cared about the life and liberty of the individuals who constitute that race."

You are wrong. Read Breivik's comments from Cheradenine's link, where he repeatedly stresses his opposition to racism.

Anonymous said...

On the claims that Fjordman was the perpetrator: surely he should be able to sue?

MRiggs said...

To my fellow counterjihadists:

"We have entered the time when all will turn against us and seek our lives."

During these difficult times, we must offer condolences to the victims of the recent atrocity in Oslo - equally sincerely and prominently as if this had been an Al Qaeda attack. We must desist from making far-fetched speculations, denials, withdrawals or dilutions of what actually happened and who perpetrated it - because doing so is the way to make the perpetrator appear one of us.

That is to say, until evidence actually surfaces, that does indicate that what happened is something other than it appears today.

We must also produce Fjordman, in a prominent way. Make no mistake, that s*** is going to stick, unless it is washed off right away.

This is my advice to you all.

Best wishes.

Anonymous said...

The NY Times quotes the police: << “We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference. “What we know is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist.” So far Mr. Breivik has not been linked to any anti-jihadist groups, he said.>>

By any definition of the word, this man was not a Christian. There are many varieties of Christianity out there, but none of them condone this sort of violence. Even in the heyday of the Crusades, no sane person would have supported this.

It may be that Breivik considered himself a Christian, it may also be that he considered himself a kind of Norwegian hero. It is certainly the case that he was deeply insane. Thus, it's unfortunate that the police take such an extremely unhinged man at his word. Clearly, he was fundamentally delusional on many levels.

I suspect that if he were from the far-left, the media would not simply accept the self-definition of a deeply insane man at face-value.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but it's clear he is one of us. If you read his comments, they're of a kind that could have come from almost any regular visitor to this site or any of the other major Counterjihad sites for that matter.

Let's not play the Muslims' "not a true Muslim" game.

nuum said...

>>If any evidence of such complicity exists,
>>it’s a good bet that it has already begun to disappear.

Baron,
With a little help from norwegian Press it will be an easy task.

Anonymous said...

Cheradenine,

What's most clear about Breivik is that he is insane. He might have considered himself a Christian, but his actions suggest otherwise. His actions were completely antithetical to Christianity.

Whereas for Muslims terrorists, the Koran has definite support for war against the infidels. Terrorism is tacitly supported or enabled by Muslims who don't do enough to distance themselves from violence.

Let's not make the same mistake and be quite clear that Breivik does not represent any form of Christianity whatsoever. He is simply a madman.

n/a said...

"We know for a fact that he was a right-winger and racialist targeting leftists; that he cared about the survival of the Nordic race more than he cared about the life and liberty of the individuals who constitute that race."

You're a liar or you completely lack comprehension. Read the link posted by Cheradenine Zakalwe.

He was not a racialist. He was a self-avowed "anti-racist" and Zionist, a "culturalist" who explicitly distanced himself from "ethnocentric" American and British anti-multiculturalists:

"The so-called anti-multiculti in the U.S. based their rhetoric on ethnocentrism alone which thus differs greatly from Europeans. This is the main reason that we must separate the American and European cultural struggle. I usually stay away from American issues as a result."

"Ethnocentric movements that BNP, National Front is not successful and will never be able to get over 10% support (GDP 5%, the UN has 7%). One can not fight racism (multikulti) with racism. Ethnocentrism is therefore the complete opposite of what we want to achieve."

Anonymous said...

I doubt he was a believing Christian at all. He did talk about the importance of preserving the "cultural" aspects of Christianity, however.

By "one of us" I mean part of the Counterjihad movement.

Dymphna said...

@MRiggs & Cheradenine Zakalwe --

Timohty McVeigh was an American sociopath. So do we claim him as one of us because he was an American or that some of the things he said in his rantings were, in fact, true?

The mentally-ill shooter in Arizona was a leftist, but the press just automatically assumed he MUST be a far-right wing loon. And when that turned out to be untrue, they just dropped it.

This smells like a set-up, just like the McVeigh job did. Not that he wasnt' a willing collaborator, just that TM couldn't have done that alone.

The trauma in Okalhoma City still reverberates...all those little children killed, all the families that still mourn them. And the trauma for Norway will also be irervocable, as it still is ten years later for the families of the three thousand victims who never came home on September 11th.

This foul deed puts the man outside the pale of ANY human community. I categorically reject the claim that he is "one of us". Indeed, he is NOT, and I don't care what his words were. By his acts he is judged, and those killings, ipso facto, make him a City of One, alone in whatever hatred or insanity he dwells.

Do not lump this man with us. By so doing, you are simply performing tricks for bureaucracies like DHS, whose main targets are right wing Christian groups -- which they ignore whole compounds of angry, resentful American felons who converted to Islam in prison...

...join that insanity if you want, but don't do it on this blog.

frankenstyrene said...

If he is an anti-jihadist, why did he target the building and children? I'm in the U.S. and am not familiar with the possible reasons for doing so. (I offer NO DEFENSE WHATSOEVER for what the man did, by the way)

Anonymous said...

It's sad that when it comes to the crunch we are not able to achieve any greater levels of intellectual honesty than the Muslims.

But I'll follow your suggestion.

Poosh said...

If he was an anti-jihadist, why did he target children? That is intuitive. But why would he target muslims or anyone, for that matter? Anti-jihadism who is concerned with liberty and freedom, a true one is not someone who would kill anyone innocent, including random Muslims. A true conservative holds individuality and freedom as prime laws. Why would he take a child's away?

Assuming this guy was a real anti-jihadist, assuming he was an actual right-winger, etc. And that's a big assumption in these early days where journalists are looking at his WORLD OF WARCRAFT account for info - it just goes to show how dangerous the discourse can get. Sites like this attract racists and bigots, madmen, who are just after a justification for their own bigotry or racism, and will absorb whatever suits their purposes, to hide the truth: they're not interested in anti-jihadism, they're just bigots who would hate Muslims even if the Koran was a carbon copy of the Bible.

Reasoned discourse becomes insanity when people start saying that "all" leftists are out to get us, or "all" Muslims are evil and determined to cover the globe with Sharia. This sort of idiocy, in unstable, or immoral, hands leads to dangerous consequences.

Homophobic Horse said...

Cheradenine, we have no Sura 9 verse 5 applicable to our intellectual movement, so no, this man is not one of us.

Nor do we have our people standing in court defending their "right" to abuse children because it is religiously acceptable.

alex THEIA said...

Cheraredine

"Let's not play the muslim's 'not a true muslim game' "....

Allright and let's not be shied and blinded by the medias game and unconsistancy...
They completly changed the story in a few hours !

We will not play the muslims' game you told since muslims don't play that game. To be more specific muslims are playing different games according to circonstances and we(i mean conservatives,grassroot europeans and christians...)are not playing "games"...

1389 said...

Let me point out that we don’t have all of the facts yet (or perhaps any of them).

Just for starters, there hasn’t been a trial yet. We don’t even know if the person arrested was the actual shooter (assuming that there was only one shooter, which we still don’t know).

We also don’t know who actually left the comments that are purportedly from the shooter.

Nor do we know the extent to which the police and the judicial system in Norway are honest. These cases become political footballs. There have certainly been enough problems with that in the US, especially with regard to high-profile crimes and assassinations.

Anybody can leave comments on just about any website, forum, or blog that allows comments. They can leave comments under somebody else’s name if they feel like it, and the website owner generally won’t know.

Let me point out something else: A blog, forum, or website is not responsible for the mental health (or lack of it) of its commenters. We don’t know who those people really are. Some commenters are undoubtedly imposters.

We’ve had some looney tunes commenting on 1389 Blog, which is, of course, another counterjihadist site. Even though a few such commenters seem to have agreed with our viewpoint (at least to the extent that we can figure out what they are talking about), we don’t like getting comments from people who seem to be incoherent or mentally unbalanced. That is partly why we moderate the comments. If we were to accept no comments from anybody at all, that would cut us off from any dialog with our audience, and that would cut down on readership.

I will make two further comments:

Whoever left the comments was not connected with the counterjihad movement to any real extent, simply because he (or they) would know by now never to use Little Green Footballs for a source of information.

Whoever shot up the youth camp wasn’t a Christian, despite what he (or others) might claim. That isn’t something that a Christian would do.

Franklin said...

Let's see, the man is a Mason (wears an apron), they teach Christ was not crucified, but an imposter. So, was he Christian? Six tons of ammoniumnitrate on his farm. Two cars exploded in Oslo. He hated the political party that allowed muslims to poliferate, more than he hated the muslims themselves. So his aim was to punish the political apparatus. Could this be a Masonic conspiracy in Sweeden?

frankenstyrene said...

Yes info is still limited and probably tainted. But it does not make sense that a man who hates what the government is allowing would target children. A government building? Conceivably. Children? Does. Not. Make. Sense. What kind of statement would even a violent, bomb-setting protester think he's making with that?

So either he was truly a lone nut psycho or there's already far more went on that we'll ever know.

Nick said...

To state the the obvious, this guy should be dealt with in the harshest way poss. under the law, and as I believe I already said, the trauma will reverberate through the country, and through the generations, much as the Piper Alpha disaster did over on the other side of the North Sea, when that tragedy occurred.

@MRiggs,

I have said many times on this blog that when trouble arrives the politicians and their flunkies will turn against anyone who dares to speak out against their fabulous worldview. So I do share your concern about how the authorities will react to this event, obviously. But this guy was a lone crackpot who went over the edge. He should be judged by his own actions.

S said...

Is it possible his attack was in retaliation for the "Rape on the Steps of Parliment" the other day? It was commited by a 15 year old which could explain his attack on the youth group, especially if it was mostly immigrants and not ethnic Norweigans.

After all McVeigh didn't come out of nowhere but had a major grievance as a reason for what he did.

Zenster said...

But one thing many people seem to forget — and which they may never have known, thanks to the American government’s actions and the media spin that followed — is that there almost certainly was an Islamic terror connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. [emphasis added]

Baron, thank you for your refusal to let this niggling little fact slip down the memory hole. Regardless of the outcome in this case, it is vital to remember that Islam manages to get its tentacles into an amazingly wide variety of pies.

Zenster said...

1389: Considering what just happened, THIS should make your hair stand on end...

No real surprise. Especially considering that Aussie Diggers are among some of the most ferocious fighters who have consistently stood shoulder-to-shoulder with America all through this war upon Islam.

What's more, knowing that the Sydney opera house was designed by a Dane just makes such Islamic terrorism plans a two-fer.

Rex Dyer said...

So this terrorist is a "blond Nordic man", who is "right wing", may have connections to "neo-nazis", his FaceBook page says he's a "Christian fundamentalist" and he's believed to be "angry about Muslims" and "immigrants".

He sounds like a stock villian from 24 or MI5. And what does he do? First he sets off a bomb near government buildings, on a bank holiday, to insure a minimum of casualties. Then he makes sure to do the most vile, reprehensible thing imaginable .... machine guns children.

What a new, powerful image the Establishment has now to associate any critics of Islam, PCMC, etc with. Just in time for that rise in "nationlist" parties popping up all over Europe.

Sol Ta Triane said...

Rex Dyer,

Very astute. Hollywood has been showing us versions of this white insane fundamentalist for a couple decades now.

ZZMike said...

"there almost certainly was an Islamic terror connection to the Oklahoma City bombing."

I have to disagree. As far as I can tell, the weight of evidence suggests that McVeigh was retaliating for the massacre at Waco, where Federal storm troopers (no other description seems appropriate) murdered about 70 people (the toll was about 80, counting both sides).

I wold welcome evidence from a reputable source to support the Islam connection.

The big question is, what do Norwegians do now? Bury their dead and move on? I don't think that's adequate.

Dymphna: "This foul deed puts the man outside the pale of ANY human community."

Plato (or Socrates) said that there are men who are human in form only. This monster is certainly one of those, as are many others we could name.

As to his insanity, I doubt an insane man could plan this operation. Now that depends on how you define "insanity. (It's a great defense, by the way: "Your honor, my client is clearly insane - you'd have to be insane to do [whatever].")

Can you be brilliant and insane? If this guy gets off on an insanity plea, the word has no meaning. I believe that "insanity" and "intelligence" are measures of two completely different things.

I appreciate GoV's reporting - it has to be more level-headed than ours (such as the NYT).

The Caped Crusader said...

It seems that in the aftermath of the tragedy, a steady and deliberate campaign to malign conservatives has gone full steam ahead.

Is there anyone this murderer didn't like? I heard an accusation that he talked with the EDL and liked Geert Wilders. Perhaps the GOP Presidential candidates are among his favourites too?

The attempted accusations of Fjordman as being the terrorist all seems too good (for the lefties) to be true.

Well, as you wrote in your 'Oklahoma' post GOV, I'm reserving my judgement.

Pam Gellar also has some interesting screen grabs of his facebook page, allegedly changed to emphasize his 'Christian conservative' outlook DURING the shooting.

Disturbing.

Call Me Mom said...

"By their fruits shall ye know them"

Beyond that, I must express an opinion contrary to many of those posted here. I have had an interesting life. One of the things I have learned is that every human being is capable, under the wrong conditions, of committing such evil. It is a difficult concept to grasp, and one I paid a rather high price to learn. (Not as high a price as some though, for which I am and shall be eternally grateful.)

That said, I do not discount the influence of evil beyond our human nature. Nor do I discount the possibility of madness.

I think of the accounts from Rwanda and other places and know that such evils do not occur without inspiration.