rigorousintuition.ca

ShinShinKid wrote:Has anyone else heard the story of the ten year old boy who spoke to the shooter? The boy ended up being spared, but his father was shot dead in front of him.

stickdog99 wrote: Sure, I do. But everyone here seems to be missing the point I am making. I'm not really considering what the greater ramifications of this attack are at the moment. I'm just pissed that the cops sat back and let a number of kids die, and then lied about it. And it bothers me a tad that I'm stranded on an island taking fire for this stance.

JackRiddler wrote:.

Okay, let's speculate: Gladio. Why is this new incarnation fingering Nazis?

.

barracuda wrote:
This seems closer to the truth of the matter. FEMA doesn't really exist to protect the citizens from disasters. Like the National Guard, the Navy SEALs or the Norweigean Beredskapstroppen with their expensive equipment and war toys, it exists to assist The State. Those troops and war toys were created and trained to deal with hostage situations, sniper attacks, and assorted other assymetrical acts of warfare in order to protect stuff like oil platforms and the kind of national infrastructure/services on which doing corporate business depends from guerilla sabotage. They don't really work for or belong to the people.

Plutonia wrote:Joe, the physical resemblance doesn't need to go much further than tall and very fair.

They can be matched up in their particulars and what is said about them:

1. Manifestos? check
2. Blood on hands? check
3. Links between Scandinavia and England? check
4. Belong to secretive organization/society? check
5. Associated with youth activists? check
6. On trial? check
7. Authorities slow to respond? check

Those are the key signifiers, I think though there's prolly more I haven't thought of yet.

Pierre d'Achoppement wrote:So anyway, speculating.. there's this focus on how this guy Anders Breivik is like a superintelligent intellectual evil villain, planning this on his own for 9 years and documenting every detail as proof. What to me seems more likely is we should see the guy as an actor. He probably has some major mental issues no doubt, and is an insecure individual looking for an identity. He grew up without a father, not a lot of real friends, no serious girlfriends. There are lots of young men like that and they can be nice or not, but they are all vulnerable to being used. In other words ideal as patsies and assets. His real father worked at an embassy and his stepdad in the army, so the spook connections are there. What happened maybe is some group noticed him, maybe invited him for some masonic rituals, isolated him further by giving him some money so he could buy a farm etc. Then said he was selected for a very special mission playing on his narcissistic side. Just take the blame for an event to be staged. 21 years in a norwegian prison maybe didnt sound so bad to him, in combination with the feeling of being able to do something perceived as useful, a goal in life and becoming famous. What I'm saying is, those sort of guys are usually easy to manipulate. I think it's more likely he is a bit dim than that hes superintelligent. All this on intuition and maybe projecting my own insecureties btw.

That's the other part: doesn't the whole package REEK of marketing exactly for the likes of us, eg internet"nerds" into computergames, conspiracies, the knight templars, freemasonry, etc? What with all the different posed photos, the facebook, the twitter, the hidden manifesto.. seems like any other viral marketing campaign for a new (internetmedia)product these days no? Lots of things to discover, lots of things to discuss for months to come. All the work of one supersmart guy? A marketing guru on top of a bombexpert and skillful shooter? Or did one team make the manifesto, and was it another team that did the shooting? And nobody can say that they could never find someone to do such a horrible thing, there;s lots of hardened military who are used to doing things exactly like that no? So with several european countries breaking down financially, generating real largescale protests, like in spain for example, bang suddenly there can appear one of these Knights Templar, nice spain marxist hunter badge and all. And noone can complain about policebrutality because its this mysterious group of internet neonazis. And everyone is now a suspect!

So that's what I think could have happened. The police wouldnt have to be in it, nor the judges, nor the prime minister etc, just one crackkiller, a patsy and a marketing team. So it's not even that big of a conspiracy! Also, Breivik was convinced hed be shot when they transported him to court and keeps babbling about multiple cells.

Pierre d'Achoppement wrote:So anyway, speculating.. there's this focus on how this guy Anders Breivik is like a superintelligent intellectual evil villain, planning this on his own for 9 years and documenting every detail as proof. What to me seems more likely is we should see the guy as an actor. He probably has some major mental issues no doubt, and is an insecure individual looking for an identity. He grew up without a father, not a lot of real friends, no serious girlfriends. There are lots of young men like that and they can be nice or not, but they are all vulnerable to being used. In other words ideal as patsies and assets. His real father worked at an embassy and his stepdad in the army, so the spook connections are there. What happened maybe is some group noticed him, maybe invited him for some masonic rituals, isolated him further by giving him some money so he could buy a farm etc. Then said he was selected for a very special mission playing on his narcissistic side. Just take the blame for an event to be staged. 21 years in a norwegian prison maybe didnt sound so bad to him, in combination with the feeling of being able to do something perceived as useful, a goal in life and becoming famous. What I'm saying is, those sort of guys are usually easy to manipulate. I think it's more likely he is a bit dim than that hes superintelligent. All this on intuition and maybe projecting my own insecureties btw.

That's the other part: doesn't the whole package REEK of marketing exactly for the likes of us, eg internet"nerds" into computergames, conspiracies, the knight templars, freemasonry, etc? What with all the different posed photos, the facebook, the twitter, the hidden manifesto.. seems like any other viral marketing campaign for a new (internetmedia)product these days no? Lots of things to discover, lots of things to discuss for months to come. All the work of one supersmart guy? A marketing guru on top of a bombexpert and skillful shooter? Or did one team make the manifesto, and was it another team that did the shooting? And nobody can say that they could never find someone to do such a horrible thing, there;s lots of hardened military who are used to doing things exactly like that no? So with several european countries breaking down financially, generating real largescale protests, like in spain for example, bang suddenly there can appear one of these Knights Templar, nice spain marxist hunter badge and all. And noone can complain about policebrutality because its this mysterious group of internet neonazis. And everyone is now a suspect!

So that's what I think could have happened. The police wouldnt have to be in it, nor the judges, nor the prime minister etc, just one crackkiller, a patsy and a marketing team. So it's not even that big of a conspiracy! Also, Breivik was convinced hed be shot when they transported him to court and keeps babbling about multiple cells.

Anti-immigration politics: barbarism with a human face
Slavoj Zizek

Recent incidents - such as the expulsion of Roma, or Gypsies, from France, or the resurgence of nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment in Germany, or the massacre in Norway - have to be seen against the background of a long-term rearrangement of the political space in western and eastern Europe.

Until recently, most European countries were dominated by two main parties that addressed the majority of the electorate: a right-of-centre party (Christian Democrat, liberal-conservative, people's) and a left-of-centre party (socialist, social-democratic), with smaller parties (ecologists, communists) addressing a narrower electorate.

Recent electoral results in the West as well as in the east signal the gradual emergence of a different polarity. There is now one predominant centrist party that stands for global capitalism, usually with a liberal cultural agenda (for example, tolerance towards abortion, gay rights, religious and ethnic minorities).

Opposing this party is an increasingly strong anti-immigrant populist party which, on its fringes, is accompanied by overtly racist neo-fascist groups. The best example of this is Poland where, after the disappearance of the ex-communists, the main parties are the "anti-ideological" centrist liberal party of the Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the conservative Christian Law and Justice Party of the Kaczynski brothers.

Similar tendencies are discernible, as we have witnessed, in Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Hungary. But how did we get to this point?

After decades of hope held out by the welfare state, when financial cuts were sold as temporary, and sustained by a promise that things would soon return to normal, we are entering a new epoch in which crisis - or, rather, a kind of economic state of emergency, with its attendant need for all sorts of austerity measures (cutting benefits, diminishing health and education services, making jobs more temporary) is permanent. Crisis is becoming a way of life.

After the disintegration of the communist regimes in 1990, we entered a new era in which the predominant form of the exercise of state power became a depoliticised expert administration and the co-ordination of interests.

The only way to introduce passion into this kind of politics, the only way to actively mobilise people, is through fear: the fear of immigrants, the fear of crime, the fear of godless sexual depravity, the fear of the excessive state (with its burden of high taxation and control), the fear of ecological catastrophe, as well as the fear of harassment (political correctness is the exemplary liberal form of the politics of fear).

Such a politics always relies on the manipulation of a paranoid multitude - the frightening rallying of frightened men and women. This is why the big event of the first decade of the new millennium was when anti-immigration politics went mainstream and finally cut the umbilical cord that had connected it to far-Right fringe parties.

From France to Germany, from Austria to Holland, in the new spirit of pride in one's cultural and historical identity, the main parties now find it acceptable to stress that immigrants are guests who have to accommodate themselves to the cultural values that define the host society - "it is our country, love it or leave it" is the message.

Progressive liberals are, of course, horrified by such populist racism. However, a closer look reveals how their multicultural tolerance and respect of differences share with those who oppose immigration the need to keep others at a proper distance. "The others are OK, I respect them," the liberals say, "but they must not intrude too much on my own space. The moment they do, they harass me - I fully support affirmative action, but I am in no way ready to listen to loud rap music."

What is increasingly emerging as the central human right in late-capitalist societies is the right not to be harassed, which is the right to be kept at a safe distance from others.

A terrorist whose deadly plans should be prevented belongs in Guantanamo, the empty zone exempted from the rule of law, and a fundamentalist ideologist should be silenced because he spreads hatred. Such people are toxic subjects who disturb my peace.

On today's market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol. And the list goes on: what about virtual sex as sex without sex? The Colin Powell doctrine of warfare with no casualties - on our side, of course - as warfare without warfare?

The contemporary redefinition of politics as the art of expert administration as politics without politics? This leads us to today's tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of the Other deprived of its Otherness - the decaffeinated Other.

The mechanism of such neutralisation was best formulated back in 1938 by Robert Brasillach, the French fascist intellectual, who saw himself as a "moderate" anti-semite and invented the formula of reasonable anti-semitism.

"We grant ourselves permission to applaud Charlie Chaplin, a half Jew, at the movies; to admire Proust, a half Jew; to applaud Yehudi Menuhin, a Jew; ... We don't want to kill anyone, we don't want to organise any pogrom. But we also think that the best way to hinder the always unpredictable actions of instinctual anti-semitism is to organise a reasonable anti-semitism."

Is this same attitude not at work in the way our governments are dealing with the "immigrant threat"? After righteously rejecting direct populist racism as "unreasonable" and unacceptable for our democratic standards, they endorse "reasonably" racist protective measures.

Or, as today's Brasillachs, some of them even Social Democrats, tell us: "We grant ourselves permission to applaud African and east European sportsmen, Asian doctors, Indian software programmers. We don't want to kill anyone, we don't want to organise any pogrom. But we also think that the best way to hinder the always unpredictable violent anti-immigrant defensive measures is to organise a reasonable anti-immigrant protection."

This vision of the detoxification of one's neighbour suggests a clear passage from direct barbarism to barbarism with a human face. It reveals the regression from the Christian love of one's neighbour back to the pagan privileging of our tribe versus the barbarian Other.

Even if it is cloaked as a defence of Christian values, it is itself the greatest threat to Christian legacy.

Slavoj Zizek is the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, and one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His most recent book is Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010).

barracuda wrote:How many local officers were there, anyway? Do we know? Because if it were only two or three it might make a difference as to the dynamics of their motivations. Where one man can be a hero, five can become a unit, doing what they were told. And as others here have mentioned, police aren't trained to act heroically, they're trained to use caution.

Stephen Morgan wrote: Except they knew that only one gunman had gone across to the island on the ferry, that they therefore heavily outnumbered him, and that a commando force was on the way just in case.

Norway attacks: police detonate explosives at killer's farm
Detectives investigating the terror attacks carried out controlled explosion at Anders Behring Breivik's rented property

Wednesday 27 July 2011 12.09 BST

Police investigating the Norwegian terror attacks that left 76 people dead have detonated a stash of explosives at a farm rented by Anders Behring Breivik. Detectives believe the 32-year-old made the bomb that killed eight people in Oslo on Friday using fertiliser he purchased under the guise of being a farmer.The controlled explosion on Tuesday night came after police named four of the victims, including three caught up in the city centre bombing and a 23-year-old shot dead in the Utøya Island gun rampage.

Police would not reveal the quantity of explosives found at the leased farmstead in Rena, about 100 miles north of the capital, but said the detonation was carried out safely.

As the investigation continues, security officials have cast doubt on claims made by the gunman that he had accomplices who were still at large.

At his first court appearance in Oslo on Monday, Breivik told a closed courtroom that he had links to "two other terror cells".

But Norway's domestic intelligence chief Janne Kristiansen said no proof has yet been found to link Breivik to right-wing extremists in the UK or elsewhere.

She told the BBC: "I can tell you, at this moment in time, we don't have evidence or we don't have indications that he has been part of a broader movement or that he has been in connection with other cells or that there are other cells."

(...)

Scotland Yard called in over Breivik's claims he met 'mentor' in UK

Europol ask for information because gunman wrote of visiting London for secret far-right gathering in 2002

Vikram Dodd and Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 July 2011 21.05 BST

www.guardian.co.uk

Police attempting to piece together Anders Behring Breivik's links to far-right groups in the UK and Europe have written to Scotland Yard asking for more officers to help with the investigation.

Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, told the Guardian he had written to the Metropolitan police's new head of counter-terrorism, Cressida Dick, asking for more officers from Scotland Yard after Breivik boasted of his links to far-right groups in the UK.

<snip>

Breivik's alleged links to the UK emerged in his manifesto, which details his years of meticulous planning prior to Friday's attacks. The document was signed "Andrew Berwick" (an anglicised version of his name), written entirely in English, and datelined "London, 2011" – although security services and police say there is no further evidence at this stage to suggest it was written in the UK.

In the manuscript Breivik describes his "mentor" as an Englishman he identifies as "Richard", and says his journey into violent extremism began at a small meeting in London in 2002 where a group of like-minded extremists met to "reform" the Knights Templar Europe, a military group whose purpose was "to seize political and military control of western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda".

The group's name is a reference to the medieval Christian military order involved in the Crusades. It has no connection to the Knights Templar International, a long-established organisation aiming to build "bridges throughout the world for peace and understanding", and which has issued a statement deploring Breivik's "senseless acts of terrorism".

In his manifesto Breivik said the gathering in London was "not a stereotypical 'rightwing' meeting full of underprivileged, racist skinheads with a short temper". Instead, he claimed those present were successful entrepreneurs, "business or political leaders, some with families, most Christian conservatives, but also some agnostics and even atheists".

Breivik said the handful of far-right activists had travelled to London from across Europe, and most had not met each other before. He did not name those present, but claims two of them, including the host, were English, as well as one French, one German, one Dutch, one Greek, one Russian and one Serbian. "They obviously wanted resourceful, pragmatical [sic] individuals who were able to keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by their governments."

At 23 years old, Breivik says he was the youngest person at the meeting, and had first been put in contact with others in the group by a "Serbian crusader commander".

At the end of the sessions, he says, he was "ordinated as the 8th justicar knight for the PCCTS, Knights Templar Europe" – the name he uses to sign off the last entry in his diary before carrying out Friday's attacks.

It was at this meeting that he also claims to have struck up his friendship with his mentor. Breivik says he and "Richard", who took the pseudonym in reference to Richard the Lionheart, had a "relatively close relationship".

According to the document, the meeting in London was followed by two larger events held in "Balticum", which attracted people from all over Europe. He says there was a high level of security at the gatherings, adding that those attending were told not to communicate to people outside.

"Some of us were unfamiliar with each other beforehand, so I guess we all took a high-risk meeting face to face … electronic or telephonic communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of contact with other cells was strictly prohibited."

Under a false identity for 18 months in the early 80s Andrew Drummond infiltrated the League of St. George, regarded as the ‘thinking man’s Nazi party’, and the umbrella for a wide range of different Nazi movements in Britain.

Through his investigations Drummond was able to show that the far-right was not just involved at street level in racist attacks but on a much higher level in which activists committing acts of terrorism abroad could seek refuge in Britain.

This was an era of right-wing bombings, the most notable of which was in Bologna, Italy. Andrew Drummond was able to identify safe houses in London used by the Italian right wing group M.S.I.

It came to a point that Andrew Drummond was even consulted about new recruits and asked to check their background. As a result he got to know not only the top fascists in the National Front, British Movement, National Socialist Party U.K, and Column 88, but also members of foreign fascist movements, including, F.N.E, the Turkish Grey Wolves; Spanish CEDADE, and the Belgian V.M.O.

www.andrew-drummond.com

Survivors from Utøya: First came confusion, then panic





Ali Esbati survived the attack on Utøya. But the experience left him deeply scarred.


Ali is speaking to the yound politicians about the (political) turn to the right in the neighboring country of Sweden when the troubling sms began to come in.

A bomb has hit Oslo and many are dead. The talk was quickly ended and the 34 year old Swedish debator and economist with an Iranian background, who in recent years had lived in the Norwegian capital, did not immediately return home because of the attack on the government complex.

Instead he stayed on Utøya to eat supper with members of the Norwegian Labour party youth organization AUF.

"I stood in the main building when there was suddenly unrest, people looked out of the windows. Then I heard a sound (smaeld) and I thought: people are excited and anxious because of the bombing, it is just a bad joke", he said.

Panik

Politiken met him in sunny Grønland, Oslo's answer to Norrebro (a section of Copenhagen), four days after the terror attack on Utøya, where in all 76 people were killed.

"But then came folk running from other sides, they shouted, 'get out of there', everybody out." There was panic, people jumped out the windows because they could not get through the door. I was most concerned that people not get stuck in the door"

When Ali Esbati, as one of the last out of the building, ran over the grass he looked back and saw two lifeless shapes in the grass. Three quarters of an hour later he was looking directly at the muderer, the terrifying Anders Behring Breivik, who had just begun an hour and a half massacre on the island of Utøya.

At that point no one knew what was happening or what the motives were. Ali Esbatis's theory was that someone will take revenge for what many at that point in time speculated was a possible islamic terrorist attack, to wit the bombing in Oslo.

"If it was revealed that there was an Islamic suspect behind the bombing in Oslo there would have been a lot of anger and physical reaction. Now, when it is clear that it was not Muslims, there is no physical attack against rightwing extremist groups."

Islamophobia as racism in Europe

Do you mean if there had been Muslims who were behind the bombing in Oslo, the Muslims in Norway would be in a worse situation than the rightwing is in now?

"Yes, absolutely. And i am not saying that I would wish that there is physical attack (against the rightwing extremists), that people are beaten up. But it is interesting to think about the difference.


He was unbelievably close. I noticed that he was very tall and stout. Then he yelled out.

Ali Esbati



Ali Esbati is a popular blogger on the leftwing in Sweden and moved some time ago to Oslo to work as an editorial editor for the left oriented paper Class War. Today he is an economist in a think tank. He has been strongly involved in the subject of the evolution of hatred for foreigners and the rightwing in Europe he explains.

"I myself am not a real Muslim. I am what I am. But I see Islamophobia as a concrete element in European racism here and now, and I am against it. It has an effect on my life and on the lives of many others.

He draws a line from Anders Breivik's ideology to what he callls the 'Islamophobic milieu'. It has moved from being marginalised conspiracy theories to be a very important part of the mainstream (politics). Denmark is an example of this, and Holland. And this development has also come to Norway in the years I have lived here."

Not surprised


It is still a long way from the rightwing political point of view to the grusome events here in Oslo and on Utøya.

"Yes, that is certain. The bloodbath is his responsibility, and only his. But if we have an evolution toward preventing this in the future, it is necessary for us to understand that he has been fired up by the political debate. I am not the least bit surprised that this happened."

You are not surprised? Had you imagined that an Islamic attack could look like this?

"No, not in this way, that I would never have imagined. I would have imagined less violence. And it would be targeted towards Muslims, or perhaps against some persons one sees as representing the culture-marxist elite. But that it would be like this, so calculated, there was no one who could have imagined this."

He looks like a giant

Shortly after Ali Esbati ran out of the main building on Utøya, he rang the alarm center. He is not the first who rings, they tell him. He sends an sms to his girlfriend, who is seven months pregnant, who has not even heard about the shooting. Then he waits.

After about three quarters of an hour a flock of people come running toward him. In panic. He runs with them. Many of them end in the water, at the foot of a slope.

Here they wait hidden for what seems like hours.

Suddenly he is there.

A heavily armed Anders Behring Breivik stands at the top of the slope and looks down on him. He looks like a giant.

"He was unbelievably close. I noticed he was very tall, and stout. Then he shouted.

The cry should have the effect of pacifying the group, assuring them they were safe, but no one believed him. Ali Esbati and four or five others threw themselves down in the edge of the water, behind a (pynt), to the left. Another group went to the right. Anders Breivik went that way as well.


I'm alive

Later I saw something over to the right, like a little bay. I thought it was a life vest.

It was not a life vest.

Shortly thereafter the suspect was arrested.

Two hours after the nightmare began, Ali Esbati sailed from Utøya. My girlfriend and my mother. That is what I thought about, he says.

His telephone was lost in the water, he cannot remember the numbers, so he cannot notify anyone. Only when he arrives at the hotel in Sundvollen, which is used as a gathering place, can he come on the internet and write "I'm alive" on his pregnant girlfriend's facebook wall.
And ask Facebook friends to call his mother.


From silence to ultrasound

Ali Esbati escaped the attack with two minor wounds one on the palm of each hand. But the experience has scarred deeply.

"It is so hard to concentrate on other things. Just the thought of working..."

For the moment Ali Esbati seems concntrated. Focussed. And often touched. Most when he speaks of the service for the victims in Oslo.

"When we observed a minute of silence, I stood with a large group of good people from AUF and we cried a lot. When it was over i went straight to the State hospital and saw a little heart with ultrasound. It was strange, such a great contrast"

In three months a person will enter this world who knows nothing about this.

A police guard had been due to be on the Norwegian island where a gunman massacred at least 86 people but detectives do not know where he was, they have revealed.
"There was supposed to be a police officer there," acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim told a news conference, adding that it is unclear where he was.

Peachtree Pam wrote:I have translated an interview with an Iranian who was on the island. It is from the Danish newspaper Politiken.

http://politiken.dk/udland/ECE1346462/o ... -panikken/

Survivors from Utøya: First came confusion, then panic



...

Ali Esbati survived the attack on Utøya. But the experience left him deeply scarred.


Ali is speaking to the yound politicians about the (political) turn to the right in the neighboring country of Sweden when the troubling sms began to come in.

A bomb has hit Oslo and many are dead. The talk was quickly ended and the 34 year old Swedish debator and economist with an Iranian background, who in recent years had lived in the Norwegian capital, did not immediately return home because of the attack on the government complex.

Instead he stayed on Utøya to eat supper with members of the Norwegian Labour party youth organization AUF.

"I stood in the main building when there was suddenly unrest, people looked out of the windows. Then I heard a sound (smaeld) and I thought: people are excited and anxious because of the bombing, it is just a bad joke", he said.

...

stickdog99 wrote:

vanlose kid wrote:
survivor at 0010: ... like many other people i thought it might be some kind of joke...

two survivors at 0300: ... we all thought it was a joke...

*

Yes. all that screaming and dying and bloody gore stuff must have been very easy to mistake for a joke. And these are the sound bites we get from what must be much longer interviews. We are supposed to believe that it took 20 minutes and how many people shot to death before somebody decided to dial 911 even though the PM confirmed there was a "critical situation" going on but that he was fine within 11 minutes of when the shooting began? Does anyone here actually believe that?