2011 Oslo/Utoeya Norway attacks

Just saw the latest news w.r.t. death toll and figured it's time for a separate thread.

So in total we're talking about at least 91 people killed, so far linked to only one perpetrator (Anders Behring Breivik (32)) who's posted as a nationalist and anti-multiculturalist online.

links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/23/norway-attack-utoya-shooting-oslo

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/07/2011722222451150369.html

In 2009 29 people were killed in Norway, in 2010 31 people, and now, in ONE day at least 87 are murdered. #Utøya #Osloexpl

BBC regularly updating here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14254705

so terrible. those figures re: total deaths in the country in an entire year vs total deaths caused yesterday really bring home how much of a blow it is.

i can't get over how terrifying it must have been for the kids on that tiny island...if people were trying to swim to safety rather than hiding, he must have been going on a deliberate rampage. i presume he was only overpowered once help managed to get to the island?

the sun covering itself with glory with its front page today, which ignores every fact that had emerged quite early on yesterday in favour of just blaming THOSE MUSLIMS http://twitpic.com/5u6n2l

Ugh. I know, I should know better, but getting revolted at CNN's "it's terrorism! Wikileaks said they were unprepared!"

Heard a survivor telling R4 this morning how a lot of the kids lay down and played dead but the gunman walked around methodically shooting anyone on the ground in the head to make sure. Other reports that help was delayed because he'd booby-trapped the island with bombs. Hideous.

Last night it was 20 deaths, waking up and it is 84 at least. This is sickening.

Saying it is "Norway's 9/11" is an insult to victims of 9/11 and this attack. Sick of the childishness here.

news coverage insensitivity number 8436269204738392742 from the sun with the camping offer on the front page ALONG with the fucking stupid 9/11 line

+ dudes web postings were full of anti-Muslim sentiment

Ugh. I know, I should know better, but getting revolted at CNN's "it's terrorism! Wikileaks said they were unprepared!"

Being that all political violence is terrorism, this is also terrorism.

It was natural to think in the direction of Al Qaida because the entire thing in Oslo seemed so big and so well-planned. Once he entered Utøya, I was in doubt though. It just didn't seem natural for Al Qaida or other Muslim terrorists to attack a political youth camp, particularly not for an organization which is against Norway's participation in Libya and Afghanistan, which has far from supported the Mohammaed caricatures and which is in favour of boycotting Israel.

Btw. ideologically, it seems this guy is more closely related to extreme American Christian fundamentalist right wingers than to nazis.

Video of the rescue operation

http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/07/23/nyheter/utoya/bombeangrep/innenriks/17424074/

be warned, it's pretty graphic and horrible.

that link was from the guardian page which is updating pretty regularly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jul/23/norway-attacks-live-coverage?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

You can read some of his thoughts here, should you wish to:

http://dougsaunders.net/2011/07/political-thinking-anders-behring-breivik/

Thanks for that link ShariVari. He seems well-spoken, friendly, conservative, Protestant, politically involved. Right wing but not in a nutcase sense in his writing. But his last comment there is from October 2010. A lot can change in a few months, I gather...

Right wing but not in a nutcase sense in his writing.

Really? You must have just skimmed.

For me it is very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists differ. They are all supporters of hate-ideologies.

What comes across is how similar his posts are to those of any old fuckwit posting in the Telegraph or Guardian comments; they make an effort to appear reasonable but a little prodding reveals the real sentiment driving the obsessive, repetitive posting.

I admit, I skimmed. I was more looking at his style of writing perhaps, which wasn't as ranting as I expected. But that is as You say the "to appear reasonable" schtick here.

rumours of at least another shooter surfacing again

the bbc interviewer just asked a survivor from utoya 'was there panic among the young people there?'

Foreign Minister cautioning against making assumptions based on attacks in other countries. Perhaps The Sun should take the hint - though did it actually go out to the newsstands with that cover? It was circulating yesterday evening, so surely there was time for them to change it?

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6028/5966417535_6a8a3814ee.jpg

Only slightly changed. Main headline the same.

so this guy is in custody? they took him alive?

Yes, police have been talking to him all night.

This has left me kind of numb, it's so horrific, when I went to bed last night they were saying 10 dead on the island, when I wake up it's 84, and supposedly it could rise a lot higher. I'm speechless...

The post from Geir is so right, and he would know better than any of us, that the political nature of the target should have alerted people to the possibility that this was not an Al-Qaeda/Jihadist operation, instead we had hours and hours of "terrorism experts" on rolling news telling us that's exactly what it was.

ya newsnight was still going on about libya etc at 11pm last night

i p much never watch tv news and whenever i make an exception for an event such as this, it only serves to remind me of its inadequacy - the time lag, the spacefilling banality, the forced emotions

Rolling news is at its worst here, it's just filling time to excuse the gawping. The bbc's 'end of innocence?' piece was up by the time I heard the news and is entirely irrelevant afaict; when I got up this morning they were questioning the emergency service response as if: (i) they knew what it was; (ii) a great big bomb hadn't gone off immediately beforehand; and (iii) that's what went wrong here.

the bbc is so embarrassing for this stuff, the hosts are so painfully awkward when talking to "real people" (a phrase used casually in bbc meetings, all the time) that they act like someone is daubing them with shit throughout.

that plus the anchor this morning describing the suspect as being "of a right wing orientation"

what like...militantly straight??

I have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone tasked with processing, live on air, the fact that a man had just murdered eighty children because he didn't like their political beliefs, to be honest. The rolling news was handled terribly but, as has been suggested, i think it's more a structural issue with the format than the fault of any particular reporters. Apart from Kay Burley.

i just find the way they speak to people v odd and detached

It's not reporting for facts in an odd sense, more ambient reporting, reporting the shock/grief and confusion. Was odded out by one of the first interviews I heard on Radio 5 last night, with....the ex-footballer Jan Åge Fjørtoft.

Foreign Minister cautioning against making assumptions based on attacks in other countries. Perhaps The Sun should take the hint - though did it actually go out to the newsstands with that cover? It was circulating yesterday evening, so surely there was time for them to change it?

It is still being described as our 911 here. Of course it is different in that this is not a Muslim extremist, but maybe it will also teach the world outside Norway (like it has taught some - slightly, but just slightly, more moderate - right wingers in this country) that Islamic extremists are not the only ones capable of doing such horrible acts?

You guys are funny. So worried about the reputations of terrorists.

right wing Christian fundie / Islamist fundie, what's the difference, ultimately?

If this had been an Islamist fundamentalist the backlash against the Muslim community would be outrageous. I doubt this will cause any movements to kick Christians out of Europe.

yeah kinda shows what fucking morons these guys are when their "statements" just involve mass murder, regardless of their views. xpost

Fuck 'em all. I'd shit on Allah, G-d, Yahweh, Jah, and zombie Jeebus if they existed.

*removes bookmark*

urgh i only just looked at the news. i only heard about the bomb yesterday :(

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/23/nyt/index.html

basically, Geir is right: this guy is a terrorist.

oh man that washington post thing that greenwald links to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/norway-bombing/2011/03/29/gIQAB4D3TI_blog.html

This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.

ugh

yeah there's a lot of outrage going on about that & about how she's merrily posting away again without in some way saying "ok, I had that one wrong." Michelle Malkin's doing the same thing she always does after attributing something to Muslims that turns out to be something else: "looks like this wasn't RADICAL ISLAMISTS, but I won't let that stop me from covering the real threat posed by RADICAL ISLAM"

Another brilliant post by Rich Perry's foreign policy adviser.

*gets sober, empties bank account, wages war against jihadists*

If it turns out that the suspect in custody is a non-Muslim with no connections to jihadist groups, it would be unreasonable to focus the investigation on Muslims and Islamic terror groups.

Thanks for clearing that up, Corner guy.

Re: Norwegians sing...

That the whole world is against him plays to his narcisism, better to not show him any attention.

think its more for the norwegian people than it is for him

But he's aware of it, surely.

who cares what he thinks

don't throw me in the padded briar patch

It's painted in a very utopian light but not everyone here are happy about all the various public responses towards Breivik. Some people like to pretend we're much different from others, but the overly nationalistic celebration of our nation and our flag is present here as it was in other countries after terrorist attacks: Otherwise sympathetic demonstrations like that sing-a-long moment or rose marches always include, to me, slightly tiresome "this kind of response shows off how great Norway is, responding to hatred with love" statements or variations on "this is the Norwegian spirit!". Just focus on the respect for each other, why do we need to wrap it up in a Norwegian cross? I think some people lap up praise from foreign media, and nationalism feels even less rational to flaunt in the aftermath of this particular terrorist attack than many others.

totally recognise that :(

not really directly analogous but cf a lot of the "clean-up" response post-riots in the UK, and the "keep calm and carry on!" rhetoric that accompanied it

that thing of nice middle-class (liberal) society wanting to put total distance between them and the nasty man, as though breivik/the rioters/[insert menace to quotidian society here] was a monstrous aberration rather than an extreme, macabre manifestation of sentiments that are more widespread than most care to admit

ehhhhhhhhhhhh

that thing of nice middle-class (liberal) society wanting to put total distance between them and the nasty man...is healthy & should be encouraged

it's like...yeah...I guess Norway could don sackcloth & ashes and say THE MONSTER IS US in a public square but collectively saying "no, this guy sucks" is I think a lot healthier. people play out their identifications; a collective response is "really, this guy is more an expression of who we are than we care to admit" might be intellectually satisfying but is not, I think, constructive. That view might be better suited to history. In the present moment, what you say you believe & how you act on that is more important than The Sum Total Of The Big Picture

imo

a collective response is of "really, this guy is more an expression of who we are than we care to admit"

It's painted in a very utopian light but not everyone here are happy about all the various public responses towards Breivik. Some people like to pretend we're much different from others, but the overly nationalistic celebration of our nation and our flag is present here as it was in other countries after terrorist attacks: Otherwise sympathetic demonstrations like that sing-a-long moment or rose marches always include, to me, slightly tiresome "this kind of response shows off how great Norway is, responding to hatred with love" statements or variations on "this is the Norwegian spirit!". Just focus on the respect for each other, why do we need to wrap it up in a Norwegian cross? I think some people lap up praise from foreign media, and nationalism feels even less rational to flaunt in the aftermath of this particular terrorist attack than many others.

― abcfsk, Friday, April 27, 2012 10:14 AM (4 hours ago)

this is right

surely hes going to be in his cell, between refreshing the wikipedia table of most prolific spree-killers, caclking at all the l4m0rz who are unwittingly chanting crypto-marxist hippy drivel as an ineffectual riposte to his murders

have we ever done a serious conversation on patriotism/nationalism/jingoism?

one would imagine so?

ya it's the rolling us elections thread i thought?

no it's the one that starts oi mates and ends with ilxor chums

tend to agree with aero (i think) about the media/cultural studies exam answer steez of 'this guy is us'. I think that focusing on the fact that this guy held certain views shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by others in society as a whole is missing the point- he's the one that felt that his views justified an irl fantasia shootfest, and as such he's in a very exclusive member's club that sure, emerged from the same society as the rest of us but can't seriously be held up as a mirror for it.

media/cultural studies exam answer steez

was going to use almost the exact same diss

The fact that everyone has terrible thoughts does not automatically mean everyone does terrible things, nor that everyone's terrible thoughts are equivalent to everyone's terrible actions.

ah, people take solace in shared culture, signs and symbols, "we is us" identifications of collective solidarity. there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this kid of thing, and sneering at it seems tiresome and juvenile.

http://i.imgur.com/w7qu2.jpg

is that person about to catch on fire?

yeah

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-sets-himself-on-fire-outside-833899

cant find any more info

the fuck

People are weird.

what a shitshow

that monk is frowning down from nirvana like, uh no dude sorry

i think you mean from rage against the machine

the video is just so strange

Police say the man is a Norwegian citizen in his forties with no link to the trial. They believe he acted alone. His injuries are serious, but not life threatening.

A local solicitor said she was contacted by the man just before he set fire to himself.

He smelt of paraffin and wanted to hand in some of his papers relating to the social services and unemployment.

oh, max

sick burn, max

nakhchivan on fire

ah sorry that was no match for your joke

He smelt of paraffin and wanted to hand in some of his papers relating to the social services and unemployment.

"How can I get down to Sidcup in these shoes?"

However, in 1999 at the age of 20, Breivik, suddenly underwent an operation to make his nose look "more Aryan".

But this detail did not surprise his group of friends, who merely teased their friend, who was also known for using powdered make-up, for his vanity.

Breivik, who has claimed to be on a "crusade" against multiculturalism and a pending "Muslim invasion" of Norway and Europe, has meanwhile insisted that his nose was broken when he was attacked by a Pakistani, but none of the friends he claims were there at the time say they recall the event.

According to the witness who is a fireman, Breivik was "a bit special" at this time, with very personal clothing choices, including wearing sunglasses when he went out to bars at night.

So he could, so he could, keep track of visions in his mind.

Sane. Obviously... not that I'm an expert, but come on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23327165

So Breivik secures a place at university. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/12/anders-breivik-university-oslo

He did so on merit? I can't imagine his ramblings of racist lunacy were up to much.

it's a symbolic gesture. the poli sci department will be in contact with the prison staff, and he'll be given access to study materials and tests, after which he earns 30 credits and no degree. the key point here is that norwegian prisons are only allowed to limit the right of free movement, and other than that life in the prison complexes has to be as similar to the outside world as possible.

i thought the bump was going to be the "breivik's party part of new government" story they've been trotting out recently in foreign papers, which is ridiculous.

If there's anything this guy needs education on, it's politics

i don't really see any purpose of this guy continuing to exist, but, you know, democracy and civilization etc.

Well, if he killed himself, noone would be sad. But I don't think he is worth turning norwegian society into killers as well.

i know that--my gut reaction is different than my considered reaction.

http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/swedish_artist_jonas_dahlberg_to_design_july_22_memorial_sites_in_norway/

This is great!

So Breivik secures a place at university. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/12/anders-breivik-university-oslo

He did so on merit? I can't imagine his ramblings of racist lunacy were up to much.

― mmmm, Thursday, September 12, 2013

just noticed this. the university's entitled to do what it likes, and honoring its rules has some (nominal, in this case) value, but its justification is nonsense.

Nasty feeling this dude is going to be out of jail and leading Norway's biggest opposition party in about a decade and a half.

The headland memorial concept is beautiful and very fitting, I think.

very moving even in the design mockups. i'm curious about the engineering of it.

PFO, that is never going to happen. His role in the Progress Party (which is in the current coalition government now, btw) is severely exaggerated in non-Norwegian media. So is the extent to which that party's positions on immigration (which are nevertheless quite unattractive) overlaps with his.