[turbutbamethyg]

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a man they identified as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian in connection with the bombing of a government building in central Oslo and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together killed at least 92 people.

As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II and a shocking case of homegrown terrorism, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, 32. He was described as a religious, gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country.

“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.”

...

“This is the Norwegian equivalent to Timothy McVeigh,” the right-wing American who blew up a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, said Marcus Buck, a political scientist at the University of Tromso in northern Norway. “This is right-wing domestic terrorism, and the big question is to what extent Norwegian agencies have diverted their attention from what they knew decades ago was the biggest threat” and instead focused on threats from militant Islamist groups.

The authorities recognized in terrorism reports as recently as March that threats could come from tiny right-wing groups that numbered no more than 50 people, Mr. Buck said. But the unclassified versions of the last three reports assessing the threats to the country by the Norwegian Police Security Service, the national security and counter terrorism organization under the Ministry of Justice, all played down the threat posed by right-wing and nationalist extremists.

[vypusknye]

Let's not start this rhetoric yet... I was more expecting Brad to say something about gun rights and how this could have been prevented. I don't thnk it's time to politicize this, kind of like with Giffords.

[longrema]

Lest you think I was editorializing, this was the NY Times' actual headline at the time I posted. He wrote a manifesto calling for a Christian holy war. There's not any conjecture in determining that his religious views were hardline fundamentalist and that his political worldview was on the extreme side of the right wing.

[Rategbee]

Can we call this guy what he is...a terrorist??

Is that allowed??

[indianstory]

It's what he is. He's even now admitted to forming a terror network with other cells to accomplish their goals.

As I've said often, fundamentalism of any flavor is a threat to our society. As activists on the fringes of society retrench into severe and violent belief systems to attack people of other faiths, races and political beliefs, this sort of thing becomes a warped and twisted goal in their minds.

[FreeDownloadOEMsoftware]

Meanwhile, Beck cites Hitler Youth, talking about the victims!

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/...html?hpt=hp_c1

(CNN) -- In the wake of last week's massacre in Norway, U.S. conservative commentator Glenn Beck on Monday compared the summer camp where most of the 76 victims died to the Hitler Youth organization of Nazi Germany.

Beck, on his radio show, declared the killings "the work of a madman" and called the suspect "as bad as Osama bin Laden." But before launching into that condemnation, he questioned what the victims were doing at a summer camp run by Norway's ruling Labour Party.

Beck said the camp "sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. Who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."

However, politically-oriented camps are being organized in several U.S. states by chapters of the "9/12 Project" -- an organization founded by Beck himself in 2009.

The Colorado 9/12 Project hosted a "Patriot Camp" for kids in grades 1-5 earlier this month, featuring programs on "our Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the values and principles that are the cornerstones of our nation."

And in August, the Danville, Kentucky, chapter is holding a "Vacation Liberty School" that organizers pledge "will help your children understand where we came from. Understand where we went wrong. Understand where the fork in the road was, and which path we should have taken."

The suspect in Friday's Norwegian massacre is a right-wing Norwegian who police say wanted to halt what he believed as the Islamic "colonization" of the country. But while condemning the attacks, Beck said he predicted last fall that Europe "is going to go into problems with radical Islam" and cited Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders as saying "Political correctness and multiculturalism is killing Europe, and he's right."

[Lenny Hensley]

I do love the duplicity of it all, as pointed out by Jon Stewart:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/#tool_tip_0

[plaiskegizils]

Looking at the news at Dagbladet one can see that all of Norway is hurting as we were hurting after 9-11 almost a decade ago, but what I'm not seeing so much of elsewhere around the planet is an outpouring of deep sympathy for the Norwegian people much outside the nearby Scandinavian countries but rather just the 'cold' news. Am I the only one on this side of the Atlantic to lay down a rose for Norway? I hope not. I suspect there were others but it sure hasn't made it into the news that I know of... but then again where I'm at in the south there are so few people of Scandinavian descent and we get either just the (very) local news or the major medias that all seem to copy from the same sources...

[VodsNittats]

^ That is a very interesting point you make Java, and I agree with you--I really haven't seen the outpouring of global sympathy that there was with 9/11, but I think there are a couple of reasons for that...one being that this was one isolated crazy Norwegian, killing other Norwegians. He didn't have a network of people backing him (as far as we know right now) and there's not the east v. west aspect that there was with 9/11. Like the OP quoted, this is probably more similar to the Timothy McVeigh bombing than to 9/11.

But another reason, I think, seems to be the vastly different media coverage. What's really struck me about the media so far (at least in the US) is the effort to distance this man and his actions from "Christianity," and the refusal to accept that there even are extremist Christians. Whatever expressed sympathy for Norway is tempered by the defensiveness of the American right, which closely links itself with extremist Christians, even though they don't identify them as such. So the reaction isn't so much "wow, what a terrible event" but "wait a minute, this conflicts with my worldview." And that's almost more tragic...

[embefuri]

Meanwhile, Beck cites Hitler Youth, talking about the victims!

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/07/...html?hpt=hp_c1

Sorry to double post--I wasn't going to comment on this, but. I feel like Glenn Beck should have his own special version of Godwin's Law. Seriously, when you're debating is one thing, but Godwining a monologue takes it to a whole 'nother level of bs...