Huge explosion in Oslo

[barracuda]

This guy claims that video of the second bomb going off is fake...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-QetRjaAM4&feature=player_embedded#at=137

There was no second bomb. That entire video is a fake by a YouTuber who has admitted it. It was never actually broadcast on Norwegian television.

[justdrew]

FOX needs to be taken off the air. this is the most outrageous outpouring of virulent psychopathic insanity I have ever seen, it's beyond belief. It's evil incarnate. The most vile shit I have ever seen on TV. Look at Daily Show opening story on 7/27.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

This guy claims that video of the second bomb going off is fake...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-QetRjaAM4&feature=player_embedded#at=137

I knew about the fake explosion vid (wonder what the motivation behind it was, though - it came out very quick, or seemed to) but I meant I've only seen two videos made by the public in the aftermath of the real bomb, showing the devastated streets and the injured. For a big incident in a city centre there is not a lot of film of it that we've seen, so I'm not surprised to see none at all from Utoya barring the news copter footage (which we haven't seen much of).

I might be projecting here but the answer in my experience is yes, this is something teenagers of a certain demographic (basically bright middle class kids with iphones and smart phones) would have to be admonished NOT to do, especially if there were really just one shooter, and it was Breivik, who looks rather stout and not particularly difficult to hide from in a garage, basement, attic, closet, locker, vehicle, etc and photograph.

It sounds like a huge risk to take, also risking the lives of those who might be hiding with you, for no reward. Teenagers take big risks for no reward, of course, but usually in less extreme circumstances, and without having (quite possibly) seen their friends murdered in front of them beforehand.

It's pretty clear though that there were multiple shooters, and I doubt if Breivik was one of them, so hiding may have been more difficult.

I understand that you want to see concrete evidence of Breivik alone being responsible for all those deaths - extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs and all that, and this is the probably the largest single-shooter death toll in history - but doesn't this apply to your own argument as well? So far there is no credible evidence of multiple shooters (though it wouldn't surprise me at all if it emerged) and to me the idea that kids under threat of death will stop to make an "abundance" of documentary evidence showing the identity of their attacker is quite an extraordinary claim.

I don't know, though. None of us are there. We watch and we wait, I suppose, for what comes next.

Going back to the short piece of video from the copter - does the very end show Breivik, or someone very much like him, running down to meet the cops at the dock, beside the van? It's odd. I'm not really sure what I'm seeing there, or what I'm supposed to be seeing.

[RobinDaHood]

This guy claims that video of the second bomb going off is fake...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-QetRjaAM4&feature=player_embedded#at=137

There was no second bomb. That entire video is a fake by a YouTuber who has admitted it. It was never actually broadcast on Norwegian television.

Well then the guy was right.
If you can remove it please do. I'd hate to clog up the thread with irrelevance. As penance, I offer this-

He signed a lease on the 85-acre farm in Rena, 90 miles from Oslo, in April, paying rent of £1,000 a month.

The property -which two years ago was used by a criminal gang as one of Norway’s biggest marijuana farms

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019138/Norway-shooting-Anders-Behring-Breiviks-farmhouse-lair-wrote-manifesto.html
I also saw mentioned (but not sourced) that the farm was "right next to a military base" and in an area used by special forces to train. Anybody see anything about that?

[vanlose kid]

...

I also saw mentioned (but not sourced) that the farm was "right next to a military base" and in an area used by special forces to train. Anybody see anything about that?

both are mentioned early on in the thread. Guardian i think.

*

[vanlose kid]

Norway's lost innocence

The attacks in Oslo and Utøya have changed Norway for ever and it will never again be the innocent, trusting place it once was, says novelist Jo Nesbø

Jo Nesbø
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 July 2011 20.00 BST


A few days ago, before Utøya and the government building, a friend and I were talking about how two things always go hand in hand: the joy of being alive and the sorrow that things change. That even the brightest future can never entirely make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what went before. To the innocence of childhood. To the first time you fell in love. To the scents of July, the blades of grass tickling your sweaty back as you leap from a boulder and in the next second are enveloped by the ice-cold meltwater of a Norwegian fjord, with your nose and throat filled with the taste of salt and glaciers.

No road back to when you were 17 and, with 10 francs in your pocket, stood by the harbour in Cannes and watched two grown men wearing idiotic white uniforms row a woman ashore from a yacht with her poodle and credit cards, and you realised that the egalitarian society you came from was the exception and not the rule. Or you stood, wide-eyed, in front of another country's national assembly, which was surrounded by guards carrying automatic weapons – a sight that made you shake your head with a mixture of resignation and self-satisfaction, thinking: "We don't need that sort of thing where I come from."

Because I came from a country where fear of others had not found a foothold. A country you could leave for three months, travelling through two coups d'état, a catastrophic famine, a school massacre, two assassinations, a tsunami, and come home to read the newspapers and discover that the only thing new was the crossword puzzle. A country where everyone's material needs were provided for when oil was discovered in the 70s, and where the political path was established right after the second world war.

The consensus was overwhelming, the debates focused primarily on the best means for achieving the goals that had been agreed upon by everyone from the rightwing to the left. It was a country that thought it was best served by keeping to itself and chose to remain outside the EU, which most small countries would give their right arm to be admitted to. Ideological debates arose only when the reality of the rest of the world began to encroach, when a nation, which up until the 70s had consisted largely of people of the same ethnic and cultural background, had to decide whether their new citizens should be allowed to wear the hijab and build mosques, and when Norwegian soldiers were sent to Afghanistan and Libya. But the Norwegian self-image before 22 July 2011 was that of a virgin – nature untouched by human hands, a nation unsullied by the ills of society.

An exaggeration, of course. A glance at police records is all it takes. And yet. In June I was cycling with the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, and a mutual friend through the streets of Oslo, setting out for a hike on a forested mountain slope within the city limits of this big yet little city. Two bodyguards followed a few metres behind us, also on bicycles. As we stopped at an intersection for a red light, a car drove up beside the prime minister with the window rolled down. The driver called out his name. "Jens!" The fact that the Norwegian people usually speak of the nation's top leader and even address him directly by his first name is in the tradition of the egalitarian spirit, and it has long since ceased to surprise me.

"There's a little boy here who thinks it would be cool to say hello to you," said the man.

Stoltenberg smiled and shook hands with the little boy sitting in the passenger seat. "Hi, I'm Jens."

The prime minister wearing his bike helmet. The boy wearing his seatbelt. Both of them stopped for a red light. The bodyguards waited a discreet distance behind us. Smiling. It's an image of safety and mutual trust. Of the ordinary, idyllic Norwegian society that we all took for granted. Of what we considered normal. How could anything go wrong? We had bike helmets and seatbelts, and we were obeying the traffic rules.

Of course something could go wrong. Something can always go wrong.

In February the Nordic World Ski Championships were held in Oslo. The Norwegian participants performed well, and every evening more than 100,000 enthusiastic Norwegians gathered for the medal ceremonies in downtown Oslo, jubilantly celebrating. On 25 July, 150,000 of Oslo's 600,000 citizens gathered in grief.

The contrasts were striking. As were the similarities. Both events revealed the unexpected force of emotion in a nation where restraint is a national virtue and "keeping a cool head" is a standard expression, but "keeping a warm heart" is not. Even for those of us who have an automatic aversion to national self-glorification, flags, grandiose words, and expressions of joy or sorrow in large crowds of people, it makes an indelible impression when people demonstrate that they do in fact mean something – these ideas and values of the society we have inherited and more or less take for granted. It's true that they are symbolic actions, which don't cost the individual much, but the actions do say something. They say that we refuse to let anyone take away our sense of security and trust. That we refuse to lose this battle against fear.

We have the will.

And yet there is no road back to the way it was before.

Yesterday I heard a man shouting in fury on a train. Before 22 July, my natural response would have been to turn around, maybe even move a little closer. This could be an interesting disagreement that might entice me to take one side or the other, after an objective assessment of the arguments. But now my automatic reaction was to look at my daughter to see whether she was safe and to look for a possible escape route for her. I hope there is reason to believe that this new response will be tempered over time. But I already know that it will never – never – disappear entirely. That date will occur every year, 22 July, and for Norwegians who are alive today, it will be a reminder for the rest of our lives that nothing can be taken for granted, in spite of the bike helmets and seatbelts.

After the bomb went off – an explosion that was felt where I live in Oslo – and reports of the shootings on the island of Utøya began to come in, I asked my daughter whether she was scared. She replied by quoting something I had once said to her: "Yes, but if you're not scared, you can't be brave."

So if there is no road back to how things used to be, to the total, unconscious and naive fearlessness of what was untouched, there is a road forward. To be brave. To keep on as before. To turn the other cheek as we ask: "Was that all you've got?" To refuse to allow fear to set limits to the way we continue to build our society.

• Jo Nesbø is the author of the novel The Snowman. This article was translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally. © 2011 The New York Times

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... s-jo-nesbo

*

[lupercal]

I might be projecting here but the answer in my experience is yes, this is something teenagers of a certain demographic (basically bright middle class kids with iphones and smart phones) would have to be admonished NOT to do, especially if there were really just one shooter, and it was Breivik, who looks rather stout and not particularly difficult to hide from in a garage, basement, attic, closet, locker, vehicle, etc and photograph.

It sounds like a huge risk to take, also risking the lives of those who might be hiding with you, for no reward. Teenagers take big risks for no reward, of course, but usually in less extreme circumstances, and without having (quite possibly) seen their friends murdered in front of them beforehand.

It's pretty clear though that there were multiple shooters, and I doubt if Breivik was one of them, so hiding may have been more difficult.

I understand that you want to see concrete evidence of Breivik alone being responsible for all those deaths - extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs and all that, and this is the probably the largest single-shooter death toll in history - but doesn't this apply to your own argument as well? So far there is no credible evidence of multiple shooters (though it wouldn't surprise me at all if it emerged) and to me the idea that kids under threat of death will stop to make an "abundance" of documentary evidence showing the identity of their attacker is quite an extraordinary claim.

I don't know, though. None of us are there. We watch and we wait, I suppose, for what comes next.

Going back to the short piece of video from the copter - does the very end show Breivik, or someone very much like him, running down to meet the cops at the dock, beside the van? It's odd. I'm not really sure what I'm seeing there, or what I'm supposed to be seeing.

Claims of multiple shooters come from survivors' accounts, like this blog by Emma Martinovic, an 18 year old activist in Norway's youth labour movement, translated in yesterday's UK Guardian:

Then came the text from my friend Pernille: "He's by the school building, he's shooting through the door. We are a group of 30 who are trying to hide. Are you safe?" I replied as concisely as I could: "What does he look like? Is there more than one? Has he got into the building? We are hidden, but not safe."

Finally came her description. He was in a police uniform and had a weapon. There were some reports of there being two gunmen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... a-massacre

As far as a huge risk for no reward, most teenagers routinely take risks, and the rewards would also be huge, i.e. capturing an image of worldwide criminal and political importance with the media adulation that would likely follow, a possibility that would be immediately grasped by most teens I know. But as I say I might be projecting my own experience and Norway might be less media-obsessed than southern Cal.

[stickdog99]

The first phone-related reports I heard were that kids had wisely switched their phones off while hiding so that incoming calls from concerned parents or friends wouldn't give their positions away to Breivik. Makes sense to me.

Ever heard of vibrate mode?

So I wouldn't expect an abundance of video from Utoya. I wouldn't expect any at all, really, other than from the news copter, unless the cops had chest or helmet cams - or unless Breivik was wearing a cam himself, as he planned to do in the manifesto. BTW, there are always quote-marks around the word manifesto in this thread, even though we can't see them.

IMHO, the current lack of video evidence of the shootings is not anything that proves anything or even makes me more likely to believe in any sort of malfeasance. If I were the cops, I wouldn't have dicked around while the kids were dying. But if I were the kids, I certainly wouldn't have dicked around with my cell phone camera, either. And even if someone had taken some video, why would that person have had to have already made this video footage available to the public?

[Stephen Morgan]

Anne Sofie Rønnfeldt (Age 13), Nesodden

Not for 15-25 year olds, after all.

[Pierre d'Achoppement]

Apparently where Breivik had his badges (the skull with the red cross) designed & made: http://mahjabeen.en.ec21.com/Hand_Embro ... 20800.html

[Dradin Kastell]

The figure in the video seems to be wearing the standard Scandinavian workman's deep blue overalls with reflective bands at the knees and elbows.

Scandinavian police service outfits often have a coverall feeling about them. The figure in the picture has the reflective bands in the places one would expect for a Norwegian police uniform, like these cops without the leather jacket:



It seems that Breivik's outfit was convincing enough to fool the ferry driver and the camp organizers at least long enough to get him to the island. There was one guy on the island that would notice a fake uniform quite easily, the off-duty cop/security guard. We are told he was also one of the first people killed - was it because Breivik deemed him a threat or maybe because he called Breivik's bluff?

The Norwegian cops use white vans with blue-red police markings, and might use similar vehicles also as unmarked. I think this is why Breivik used a white van, it is the most plausible "cop car" he could get his hands on without faking the markings.

I also saw mentioned (but not sourced) that the farm was "right next to a military base" and in an area used by special forces to train. Anybody see anything about that?

This is what Wikipedia says about Rena, the administrative centre of Hedmark:

"The valley of Østerdalen, where it lies, is a mountainous and forested area used by the military for special forces training; the Norwegian army's Rena military camp is located nearby. The surrounding area is abundant in lakes, forests and rivers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rena,_Norway

[kenoma]

Port Arthur massacre video posted online

A Tasmanian police training video, featuring footage of the bodies of the Port Arthur massacre victims, has been posted online.
The crime-scene footage, which showed close-up images of the victims, was overlayed with text questioning the guilt of Martin Bryant, who was convicted of murdering 35 people during his killing spree in 1996.
The footage was removed from YouTube but a copy uploaded by a different user remains on the video-sharing website. It is not clear when the footage was uploaded or taken down.
...

[semper occultus]

looks sort of familiar.....oh yeah..

[Searcher08]

If I was a cop I wouldnt have gone NEAR that island until the army were there - if that meant he shot every child on the island FINE.

Why?

Because in the scenario of someone doing that, they would be a prime candidate for
releasing a

Bio-weapon
Dirty bomb
Suitcase nuke

Are you two such great Risk Analysts that you would go in there, guns blazing like John Wayne, in THOSE scenarios? When you dont even know WHO is doing it?

So if you knew government agents were the ones doing it, you would just sit there letting them kill kids by the score.

Christ, you know it ain't easy.

Sorry, I appear to have over-estimated your intelligence and under-estimated your attachment to John Wayne movies.

[crikkett]

He writes under the penname “Lionheart,” named after King Richard I, who earned the name Lionheart for commanding armies as a teenager during the Third Crusade.

Stopping for a moment to grok 'commanding armies as a teenager'.