Tuesday, July 26, 2011 5:17:09 AM
Norwegian terrorist stirs multiculturalism opponents
This is an undated image obtained from the Twitter page of Anders Behring Breivik, 32, who was arrested Friday in connection to the twin attacks on a youth camp and a government building in Oslo, Norway.
Anders Behring Breivik/Twitter/AP
Some commentary points to sympathy for the views of the Norwegian man alleged to have murdered 76 people last Friday in a terrorist attack that has stunned Norway.
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / July 25, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik's admission that he planted the car bomb at the Oslo prime minister's office and stalked a nearby island [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0724/Norway-mourns-ponders-impact-of-terror-attacks ], killing 76, had led to speculation about the potential for more mass violence from Europe's radical right.
But some commentators argue that despite his deplorable methods, Mr. Breivik has a point: "Multiculturalism" has failed and Europe should turn back toward the narrower, traditional national cultures of the region.
They argue, Breivik's attacks – among the largest mass murders carried out by a single person in history – should push Europe to redouble its opposition to both Muslim immigration and to Islam itself.
Exhibit A this morning is a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Bruce Bawer [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576465801154130960.html ], an Oslo-based American critic of the role of Islam in Europe, whose book "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within" was admiringly quoted by Breivik in the rambling 1,500 page manifesto he published online before his rampage.
Breivik – a self-described Christian nationalist opposed to the "Islamic colonization" of Europe abetted by mainstream European politicians ("a corrupt class of abject traitors") – argues that modern Europeans have been "indoctrinated" by a "multicultural orthodoxy." Both Bawer and Breivik appear to be of the belief that members of the European political elite are ignoring general public opposition to immigration and a growing threat to nations like Norway.
But while Bawer condemns Breivik's "unspeakably evil" approach to addressing such concerns, he appears far more concerned about the likelihood that Breivik's violent methods will detract from a cause they both care deeply about.
In a column at the Pajamas Media blog last Friday [ http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-double-tragedy-for-norway/ ], Bawer worried "that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has been profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic."
Bawer has not been alone in worrying about the need to criticize Islam. Yesterday, a Jerusalem Post editorial [ http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=230788 ] made much the same point. "Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism," goes the summary at the start of the editorial.
"As Israelis, a people that is sadly all too familiar with the horrors of indiscriminate, murderous terrorism, our hearts go out with empathy to the Norwegian people, who perhaps more than any other nation symbolize the unswerving – and sometimes naïve – pursuit of peace.
Oslo is the namesake of one of the most ambitious – and misguided – attempts by Israel, under the mediation of the Norwegians, to reach a peace accord with our Palestinian neighbors.
Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right."
Pamela Gellar, an influential right-wing blogger who runs an organization called "Stop Islamization of America," wrote [ http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/la-lies.html ], "The Islamic supremacists are having a field day with the Norway mass murderer. No mourning for the children, no; only accusations, obfuscations and cries of victimhood," she wrote, while launching an attack on a plan to build a mosque in Brooklyn.
There are of course strong points to be made about the large pockets of Muslim immigrants in Europe who have failed to integrate and who pose challenges for society – particularly when socially liberal values appear under threat by highly conservative newcomers. But it's an odd choice to focus on that question in light of the 76 bodies laid out by Breivik.
Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin took the opportunity to remind Americans that jihadis are still the main threat. "There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West," she wrote [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/evil-in-norway/2011/03/29/gIQAtsydVI_blog.html (at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65487026 )].
© The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0725/Norwegian-terrorist-stirs-multiculturalism-opponents [with comments]
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Norway attacks: Terror from the right
Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of a killing spree and bomb attack in Norway, sits in the rear of a vehicle as he is transported in a police convoy in Oslo.
(Reuters)
The Norway attacks provide a chance for introspection for those who bash Muslims.
Editorial
July 26, 2011
With news that the man accused of slaughtering 76 people Friday in Norway was a right-wing extremist whose manifesto was littered with quotes from American anti-Muslim bloggers, conservative pundits were put on the defensive again. We say "again" because it's a scenario that played out six months ago when "tea party" conservatives were blamed for [ http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/11/opinion/la-ed-giffords-20110111 ] allegedly inspiring the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson by popularizing anti-government views.
It was wrong then, and still is, to attack the purveyors of legitimate if extreme political views for the violent actions of deranged individuals. Yet while we'll strenuously defend the right even of bigots to express themselves, we do think the horrifying act of terrorism to which Norway's Anders Behring Breivik confessed Monday [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norway-suspect-20110726%2C0%2C62256.story ] provides a welcome opportunity for introspection among Muslim-bashers.
Under particularly withering fire from critics is Robert Spencer, operator of the anti-Muslim website Jihad Watch [ http://www.jihadwatch.org/ ], who was quoted 64 times in Breivik's screed. After fielding calls from reporters, Spencer complained on his blog [ http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/07/anders-breivik-stole-the-counterjihad-movement-from-freedom-fighters----were-stealing-it-back.html ] that he felt the way the Beatles must have after Charles Manson said he was inspired by their song "Helter Skelter" to commit murder. Here's how Spencer distinguished between his writings and those of Muslims: "Islamic texts and teachings, and frequently imams, directly exhort their followers to commit acts of violence. I do not."
What Spencer failed to address is the fact that his site, and others cited by Breivik such as The Gates of Vienna [ http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/ ], make a habit of blaming all Muslims for the actions of a minority of violent jihadists. As an example of Spencer's thinking, he wrote in November [ http://www.humanevents.com/article.php%3Fid=40261 ] that the Transportation Security Administration should profile and give extra screening attention to Muslim males at airports, because this is the likeliest group to commit acts of terrorism. One could as easily argue that special attention should be paid to white males. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber's [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Kaczynski ] reign of terror, the Tucson shootings [ http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/09/nation/la-na-gabrielle-giffords-20110109 ] and, now, the mass murder in Norway [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norway-attacks-police%2C0%2C6277048.story ], this population also appears prone to terrorist violence.
Conservative pundits are getting back some of what they've been dishing out for years, finding themselves being unfairly blamed for the actions of those who share their ideology but take it to violent extremes. Will this inspire them to treat Muslims more fairly? A defensive post from Pamela Geller [ http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/media-assassins.html ], who writes the anti-Muslim Atlas Shrugs [ http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ ] blog (also cited by Breivik), points to the answer. While failing to acknowledge an iota of responsibility for spreading distrust of even moderate Muslims, she instead blames the "Sharia-compliant media" for attacks on her and her site. Opportunity lost.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-terror-20110726,0,7236702.story [with comments]
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Norway attacks focus attention on US right-wing extremists
Anti-Islamic rhetoric from American groups cited in gunman's 1,500-page manifesto
By Azriel Relph and Michael Isikoff
NBC News
updated 7/25/2011 8:02:43 PM ET 2011-07-26T00:02:43
The bomb attack and shooting spree that killed 76 people in Norway on Friday is refocusing attention on the threat from right-wing terrorist attacks in the U.S. inspired by anti-Islamic rhetoric.
In the aftermath of the mass murder, investigators are looking at a 1,500-page manifesto in which Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who admitted to carrying out the attacks, vowed “brutal and breathtaking operations” in order to stop “the ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe.” Analysts say the manifesto was inspired by heated rhetoric from groups in the United States – some of which are quoted directly.
Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, is cited more than 50 times by Breivik. He helped organize protests against the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York City and has written that “traditional Islam contains violent and supremacist elements.”
Breivik wrote that Spencer would be an “excellent choice” for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But Spencer told NBC News that he bears no responsibility for what happened in Norway.
“There’s nothing in any of my writings that is anything but a defense of human rights, a defense of the equality of rights of all people before the law,” he said. “So if somebody gets from that that they should kill, well then he’s nuts.”
But according to some analysts, words can be weapons themselves.
“When you push the demonization of populations, you often end up with violence,” said Heidi Beirich, research director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The center recently released a report, Jihad Against Islam [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/summer/jihad-against-islam ], concluding there has been an apparent spike in anti-Islamic attacks in the United States in the past few years, including the burning of a mosque in Tennessee arsons and bombings in Florida, Michigan and Oregon.
In this April 14, photo, Imam Abdul Latif Azom walks past damage from an April 1, fire at the Masjid Al-Falah Islamic Center of North Detroit. Federal authorities were investigating the incident.
Paul Sancya / AP
“This attack in Norway should be a wake up for our decision makers,” said Daryl Johnson, the founder of DT Analytics [ http://www.dtanalytics.org/about.php ], a consulting firm that tracks extremist activity in the United States.
As a former top domestic terrorist analyst for the Department of Homeland Security, Johnson produced a 2009 report [ http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf ] that warned of a growing threat from right-wing extremists and domestic hate groups. The report produced a storm of controversy amid charges that the department was monitoring protected political speech. The report was ultimately removed from the Homeland Security website and Johnson says his unit was eventually dismantled.
DHS officials told NBC News that the domestic intelligence division of DHS was merely reorganized. And they say they are tracking the problem as closely as ever, but see no signs it is getting worse.
Johnson, however, sees parallels between the rhetoric of some domestic extremists and Breivik’s writings.
“We could have a similar attack here, and that’s my greatest fear,” he said. “We could have a Timothy McVeigh-type carry out a mass shooting event or a vehicle bomb attack that resulted in mass casualties.”
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Video [embedded, with transcript]:
US anti-Islamic rhetoric quoted in alleged killer’s manifesto
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© 2011 msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43887924/ns/us_news-security/t/norway-attacks-focus-attention-us-right-wing-extremists/ [with comments]
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Breivik's ideas 'shared by many'
BBC Radio 4
Page last updated at 07:48 GMT, Monday, 25 July 2011 08:48 UK
Embedded Audio (10min5sec)
Mass killers often turn the gun on themselves, but Anders Behring Breivik, the gunman in Norway who killed 93 people on Friday, has said he wants to explain his motives in the courtroom.
But should his motives be classified as the symptom of a deranged mind, or do they indicate something more widespread in the European psyche?
Norwegian philosopher Lars Gule believes he argued with Anders Breivik on an online forum, and he "did not stand out with a particularly aggressive or violent rhetoric... he was quite mainstream."
"When it comes to opinions and statements, he was not alone... it shows some of the warped sense of reality that is operating," in certain Norwegian communities, he said.
Matthew Goodwin, author of New British Fascism, said that he was "struck by the similarities" between Breivik's manifesto and some far right parties in Britain.
"There are also large sections of the public... who are very concerned over some of the same issues - the role of Islam in European society, immigration, multiculturalism."
"They might not endorse violence, but I think there is a pool of wider potential there."
BBC © 2011
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9547000/9547585.stm
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Norway attacks put spotlight on Europe's right-wing parties. Who are they?
Last week's attacks in Norway have put Western Europe's far right in the spotlight, despite their rapid condemnation of Anders Behring Breivik's actions. These parties share some of the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam opinions that spurred Mr. Breivik.
Who are some of these rising parties on the right?
Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer
July 25, 2011
Sweden Democrats (Sweden)
The leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, Jimmie Akesson (front l.), and his girlfriend Louise Erixson, wear traditional costumes on October 5, 2010 on their way to a church service at the Stockholm Cathedral in Stockholm ahead of the official opening ceremony of the parliament.
(Fredrik Persson/AFP/Newscom)
The Sweden Democrats won 20 seats (5.7 percent of the Swedish parliament) in the most recent parliamentary elections in 2010 on a campaign of cutting immigration rates by 90 percent. Its critics call it “racist” and “Islamaphobic,” but it clearly resonated with a section of the Swedish population, the Monitor reported in October 2010 [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1007/Why-Sweden-s-far-right-anti-immigrant-party-made-powerful-gains/(page)/2 ].
According to SD's website, the party rejects "multiculturalism," attributes increased crime to immigration, calls for an end to "public support for immigrant organizations," adding that "all other activities aimed at promoting foreign cultures and identities in Sweden should be canceled."
It also wants to outlaw “religious buildings, with a non-Swedish building style, strange architecture” and forbid public workers from wearing “conspicuous religious or political symbols, such as a head scarf or turban." What’s more, it calls for the government to support immigrants who want to return to their homelands.
The Sweden Democrats party was founded in 1988. In its early years, some members could still be spotted in Nazi uniforms at its meetings, although the practice was stopped as the party tried to move into the mainstream.
True Finns (Finland)
The True Finns took the third-largest bloc of seats in Finland’s April 2011 parliamentary elections with 19 percent of the vote. The party espouses nationalism and social conservatism. In its charter it “identifies Christianity as a hallmark of Finnishness and rails against free immigration ... and the ‘Islamization’ of Europe,” the Monitor reported in May [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0517/Gains-of-True-Finn-party-point-to-Euroskeptic-surge-in-Finland/(page)/2 ].
The victory was mostly a reaction to the bailout of struggling European economies, but some Finns are also angry about the influx of immigrants and what some call an “erosion of ‘Finnish values.’ ”
Freedom Party (The Netherlands)
Much of the Freedom Party’s publicity is generated by its controversial leader Geert Wilders, who brought the party to an unexpected electoral victory last summer, snagging 23 seats in the Dutch Parliament [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0610/Dutch-voters-boost-far-right-party-of-Geert-Wilders ] and becoming the country’s third largest party.
The party’s winning platform included planks such as banning the Quran and mosque-building and implementing a “head-rag tax.” After the election, Mr. Wilders said on national television, "The Netherlands chose more security, less crime, less immigration, and less Islam.’
Wilders was acquitted earlier this summer [ http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2080256,00.html ] of charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. The acquittal is “a sign that his once radical views have become mainstream in a country that for decades was viewed as one of the most liberal and tolerant in the world. ‘The judgment doesn't turn the tide,’ says [Egbert] Dommering, [a lawyer and professor at the University of Amsterdam], ‘but it's symbolic of what's going on in the Netherlands’,” Time reports.
People's Party (Denmark)
Denmark’s People’s Party made headlines earlier this summer for its successful demand that the country implement some border controls [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0705/Denmark-imposes-new-border-checks-to-keep-out-immigrants-criminals ], which were banned under the Schengen Agreement of the 1990s.
The People’s Party makes up 13.9 percent of the Danish parliament. Founded in 1998, it has steadily gained followers and has shifted many mainstream parties to the right [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/europe/25denmark.html ] as they attempt to win back voters who turned to the right-wing party, according to The New York Times.
The party’s platform [ http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk/The_Party_Program_of_the_Danish_Peoples_Party.asp ] calls Christianity an “integral part” of Danish life and says that “Denmark is not an immigrant-country and never has been. Thus we will not accept transformation to a multiethnic society.”
National Front (France)
Under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, France’s National Front is moderating, but it can still be described as France’s right-wing party, the Monitor reported in January [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0117/France-s-Marine-Le-Pen-aims-to-shape-a-21st-century-far-right ].
Indeed, Ms. Le Pen, in her first speech as party leader, immediately made overtures to both right and left. She called for economic and social “patriotism,” saying that France is not “a caliphate,” or Islamic state, and describing the trends of globalization that particularly concern the French left as “a cultural tsunami and a moral Chernobyl.”
She also spoke to core National Front views that France’s destiny as a great nation is being diluted and damaged by foreigners and by the European project of integration: "Our country is at risk of dismemberment. ... The values of our civilization, our traditions, our way of life, and our customs are being contested in many quarters – in schools, in the public sphere, and in entire neighborhoods.”
The National Front has failed to gain much ground in elections, but its presence in the political arena has likely been a factor in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s shift to the right. In recent local elections, the party claimed about 15 percent of the vote [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/20/us-france-sarkozy-idUSTRE72J41F20110320 ].
© The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0725/Norway-attacks-put-spotlight-on-Europe-s-right-wing-parties.-Who-are-they/Sweden-Democrats-Sweden [with comments]
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Norway massacre: Breivik manifesto attempts to woo India's Hindu nationalists
This image shows Anders Behring Breivik from a manifesto attributed to him that was discovered Saturday, July 23. Breivik is a suspect in a bombing in Oslo and a shooting on a nearby island which occurred on Friday, July 22.
Scanpix/AP
Norway massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto invites Jewish groups in Israel, Buddhists in China, and Hindu nationalist groups in India to contain the spread of Islam.
By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer / July 25, 2011
New Delhi
The Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik writes in a manifesto that he acquired some 8,000 e-mail addresses of “cultural conservatives” not just across Europe but North America, Australia, South Africa, Armenia, Israel, and India – ensuring scrutiny of anti-Muslim groups far beyond Europe.
Mr. Breivik’s primary goal is to remove Muslims from Europe. But his manifesto invites the possibility for cooperation with Jewish groups in Israel, Buddhists in China, and Hindu nationalist groups in India to contain Islam.
"It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical," he wrote.
In the case of India, there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims. Human rights monitors have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue.
“Like Europe’s mainstream right-wing parties, [India’s] BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right – but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful,” writes senior journalist Praveen Swami in today’s edition of The Hindu.
“Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism,” he adds.
Last week, Breivik detonated a bomb in downtown Oslo and opened fire at a youth camp of the ruling political party, killing at least 76 people. He reportedly said in court today that the rampage was “marketing” for his manifesto, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.”
The manifesto
Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto calls preserving traditional European culture by cutting it off from immigration from the Muslim world. While he is against setting up a Christian theocracy, he envisions a revival of Christendom, where the church helps unify Europeans around a shared cultural identity.
In the manifesto, Breivik references India dozens of times. He included a five-page paper written by a man named Shrinandan Vyas that argues the Muslim invaders committed a “genocide” of Hindus in the Hindu Kush region of present-day Afghanistan. Efforts to track down Mr. Vyas have failed.
Invasions by Muslims into South Asia did include bloodshed, but use of the term “genocide” is highly controversial.
He goes on to cite dramatic drops in the Hindu populations in Pakistan and Bangladesh since Partition of British India – figures that Breivik also gives in his manifesto. Mr. Singhal and Breivik share a critical belief: Muslim majorities always subjugate religious minorities.
“I was with the shooter in his objective, but not in his method,” says Singhal of Breivik. “If you want to attract the nation’s attention, surely you need to do something drastic and dramatic, but not killing people.”
But Singhal goes on to say that sometimes violence must be fought with violence. He says people upset by violent responses to Islam must "go one step more to find why [Breivik’s] violence came in. Why was that western Christian talking in bad terms about Islam?” He says it’s because of violent verses in the Koran that continue to be preached in an intolerant way.
Singhal said India and Norway should deny voting rights to foreigners or "foreign religionists," meaning Muslims. That would solve the “bane of democracy,” says Singhal, where politicians who are strict with groups like Muslims are voted out.
Breivik also proposed curbing voting rights within democracy, and both men view their ideological opponents in the media and universities as communists.
Singhal has not corresponded with Breivik, nor does he see much need for alliances to counter Islam’s spread: “Every country will have to find its own solutions,” he says.
Knights Templar
It’s unclear as of yet who Breivik reached out to in India and what the depth of the interactions was. His manifesto says he is among 12 “knights” fighting within a dozen regions in Europe and the US, but not India. It’s not known yet whether this group, which he calls the Knights Templar Europe, actually exists.
Breivik describes months of tedious work farming “high quality” e-mail addresses off the Internet by friending networks “representing all spheres of cultural conservative thought” on Facebook, then acquiring members’ e-mail addresses. The goal appeared to be to generate a list to send his manifesto to just prior to his rampage.
Officials in India’s Home Ministry would not comment on whether they are tracking down Breivik’s e-mails to India. Mr. Swami, who has sources inside India’s intelligence community, told the Monitor that India does not have the capacity to do those traces easily until Norway provides information from Breivik’s computers.
“I’ve been trying to ask around if anyone knows about a substantial correspondence of any kind and haven’t come up with anything,” says Swami.
The Internet has made it easier for extremists to follow one another internationally, he points out. But, historically, European and Indian far right groups have not worked with each other – nor do they have much practical reason to cooperate now.
“I think irrespective of the Norwegian [attacks], the government needs to keep a much closer eye on the activities of the Hindu fundamentalist groups … and crack down on hate speech whether it’s Hindu, Muslim, or otherwise,” says Swami.
© The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0725/Norway-massacre-Breivik-manifesto-attempts-to-woo-India-s-Hindu-nationalists [with comments]
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Norway gunman claims he had nine-year plan to finance attacks
Anders Behring Breivik says in manifesto he started a business, played the markets and used nine credit cards to fund massacre
25 July 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/25/norway-gunman-attack-funding-claim
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‘He Walked Around the Island as if He Had Absolute Power’
July 25, 2011
It has been a rite of passage for Norway’s liberal elite for decades: a summer camp set on a verdant Nordic isle called Utoya, where this week hundreds of young people gathered to meet government ministers, dive into election strategy sessions and maybe find a little summer romance.
But for Helen Andreassen, a 21-year-old aspiring politician, a celebration of bright futures became something horrifyingly different when she and her friends jumped from a second-story window to escape the bullets of a man who was hunting them specifically because of their politics.
They ran for their lives, she said, tumbling down the rocky heights to the sea shore, hoping the man in the police officer’s uniform would not pursue them into the water. But he kept shooting. “He was standing just by the water, using his rifle, just taking his time, aiming and shooting,” Andreassen said. “It was a slaughter of young children.”
For more than an hour, the gunman stalked the forests and steep, rocky shores of the island. There were no bridges to provide escape. Time was on his side.
The young people desperately silenced their cellphones and stripped off colorful clothing. But the shooter was methodical. After killing several people on one part of the island, he went to the other, and, dressed in his police uniform, calmly convinced the children huddled there that he meant to save them. When they emerged into the open, he fired again and again. Witnesses told Norwegian news agencies that the shooter sprayed bullets into piles of dead bodies, apparently seeking those that were hiding among them.
“He seemed he was enjoying it,” Magnus Stenseth, a youth leader, told the Norwegian newspaper VG. “He walked around the island as if he had absolute power.”
As witnesses began to recount Friday’s events, 90 minutes of terror came into focus.
3:30 p.m.:
Three days into the annual summer camp, some 600 Labor Party youth activists from all over Norway hear the first, vague news of a bombing in the capital, Oslo, some 30 kilometers away.
5 p.m.:
Amid the coming and going of several small boats, a lone policeman arrives. The officer — armed, unusually, with two firearms visible on his hip and shoulder — says he’s there to boost security. Then, witnesses say, he raises his assault rifle and opens fire with bursts of automatic fire. His hunt of defenseless left-wing political activists has begun.
5:10 p.m.:
At the camp’s food hall, Jorgen Benone is still talking with friends about the Oslo attack as they “hear panic down by the water.”
“Then we started to understand that people actually had been shot. Chaos broke out everywhere, and everyone started to run.” People at the camp report trying to call Norway’s emergency services but are told to keep off the line unless they’re calling about the Oslo bomb.
5:15 p.m.:
Witnesses say the gunman enters a village of tents, the residential heart of the weeklong retreat, and spots desperate individuals hoping he’ll spare them if they run back inside their homes. But the killer is seen working his way tent by tent, shooting many point-blank, one by one.
5:30 p.m.:
As the gunman picks off lone campers who run from their hiding spots as he draws near, many find themselves at the shoreline with only one apparent escape route — the water.
5:38 p.m.:
Police say an armed SWAT team is deployed from Oslo. They drive rather than take a helicopter, police say — because the chopper would take too long to prepare for flight.
5:45 p.m.:
At another camp site on the mainland shore near Utoya Island, camp owner Brede Johbraaten has been listening to the sound of gunfire — sometimes lone pops, other times staccato bursts —waft across the humid evening air for more than half an hour.
But it’s only now that he discovers the horror unfolding some 800 meters of frigid water away. The first survivors, among the strongest and luckiest, have swum the full distance. They aren’t wounded but say many of their campmates are dying in the water behind, some bleeding to death from bullet wounds, others cramping up and drowning.
Johbraaten and other campers ready several small craft to join a local flotilla converging on the island from several points, including another island to the north. They pluck both flailing swimmers and lifeless bodies from the surface. Amid the chaos, the arriving police SWAT team complains that no boats have remained on shore as they’d expected, compounding the delay. 6 p.m.:
Witnesses lying low behind rocks, aware that the “policeman” is really the threat, watch helplessly as four campers run to the officer for help — and are each killed with shots to the head.
6:20 p.m.:
Police say the SWAT team finally reaches the island and fans out, still unaware of how many gunmen they’re trying to find.
6:35 p.m.:
Police say they find the gunman and order him to lay down his weapons. He complies and is arrested.
AP, NY Times
Copyright ©2011 Jakarta Globe
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/he-walked-around-the-island-as-if-he-had-absolute-power/455010 [with comments]
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Unsettling Wariness in Norway, Where Police Are Rarely Armed
Norwegian police officers guard the courthouse in downtown Oslo where Anders Behring Breivik was arraigned on Monday.
Johan Spanner for The New York Times
More Photos »
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/07/26/world/europe/20110726_OSLO.html
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Published: July 25, 2011
OSLO — When a man dressed in a police uniform began slaughtering young people at a Norwegian summer camp last week, one of the first to be killed was a real police officer named Trond Berntsen, who for years had worked in security at the camp.
Whether Officer Berntsen tried to stop the gunman is still being debated. But facing a man carrying multiple guns and ample ammunition, there was little he could do. Like most other police officers here, he had no weapon.
By law, Norwegian police officers must have authorization from their chief to gain access to a firearm, but they have rarely needed to ask, until recently. Violent crime has been steadily increasing, jolting a society used to leaving doors unlocked and children to play without fear. Coupled with growing criticism over the police’s slow response time to the attacks and confusion about the death toll, which was lowered Monday to 76 from 93, there are growing questions about whether the police are equipped to deal with the challenges.
“Criminals are now carrying weapons, so some people now think that police officers should have weapons as well,” said Gry Jorunn Holmen, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian police union. Though she said it was too early to make any assessments, Ms. Holmen said the union had formed a commission to explore the issue. For the police, she said, “it’s getting tougher.”
It took police SWAT units more than an hour to reach the camp, on Utoya Island, after reports of the shooting came in. Officers had to drive to the shore across from the site of the shooting attack, and use boats to get to the island. A police helicopter was unable to get off the ground; news crews that reached the island by air could only watch as the gunman continued the massacre.
Anne Holt, Norway’s former justice minister, told the BBC: “That makes him a person that killed one person every minute. If the police had actually been there just a half an hour earlier, then 30 young lives would have been saved.”
Officer Berntsen, 51, who was the stepbrother of Norway’s crown princess, was remembered in a service on Monday. It was among the first of dozens of memorial services and funerals expected in the coming days after the rampage. The man identified by the police as the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, most likely shot more rounds in the hourlong rampage than most Norwegian officers typically fire in a career.
Norway is internationally renowned for its low rates of violent crime, a fact that is a point of pride for many Norwegians. Murders, when they do occur, are front-page news here. In 2009, the last date for which official statistics were available, there were 29 murders in this country of 4.6 million. In Oslo, the capital, high-ranking officials rarely even bother with a security detail.
“You can walk around this city and bump into a leading government minister out promenading on the street and strike up a little conversation before you move on,” said Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo [ http://www.prio.no/ ].
So it has been jarring for many in the wake of the attacks to see heavily armed commandos stationed outside the gingerbread facades of government buildings. The nation is now plainly on edge, and it is clear, experts say, that some things might have to change.
Norway is one of only three Western European countries lacking a fully armed police force. Most police officers in Britain and Iceland do not carry firearms, either. Norway’s neighbor, Sweden, began requiring its officers to carry guns in 1965.
Over the last decade, the frequency of rape and other assault has inched ever higher, statistics show. Murder rates, however, have remained stable.
The increasing presence of foreign criminal networks active in Norway is part of the reason for higher crime rates, Ms. Holmen and others said, though domestic criminal groups have also become more brazen. Just two days after the attacks, men in military fatigues shot a 27-year-old man to death in his home in southern Norway, Norwegian news outlets reported.
While Norwegian crime rates still look insignificant compared with a country like the United States, the uptick in violence, however small, has unsettled many here.
Currently, only beat police officers in patrol cars have immediate access to weapons. By law, however, they have to remain unloaded and locked in a box in the car unless authorization is given.
Some experts worry that arming police officers all the time will only lead to an escalation of violence as criminals arm themselves in response. For many, though, resistance to the idea has more to do with national pride.
“I would prefer to live in a society where police normally work unarmed,” said Johannes Knutsson, a professor of police research at the Norwegian Police University College. “It is a very forceful and symbolic sign to the citizens that this is a peaceful society.”
Elisa Mala contributed reporting.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/world/europe/26police.html
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Norway Attacks: Police Lower Youth Camp Death Toll To 68
7/25/11
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Police have lowered the death toll in the youth camp massacre outside the Norwegian capital to 68, down from 86.
Police spokesman Oystein Maeland said that higher, erroneous figure emerged as police and rescuers were focusing on helping survivors and securing the area.
Maeland also said the death toll in the bomb blast in Oslo before the shootings had gone up to eight, from seven. That puts the total number of people confirmed killed in the twin attacks at 76, down from 93.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/norway-attacks-police_n_908647.html [with comments]
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This is an undated image obtained from the Twitter page of Anders Behring Breivik, 32, who was arrested Friday in connection to the twin attacks on a youth camp and a government building in Oslo, Norway.
Anders Behring Breivik/Twitter/AP
Some commentary points to sympathy for the views of the Norwegian man alleged to have murdered 76 people last Friday in a terrorist attack that has stunned Norway.
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / July 25, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik's admission that he planted the car bomb at the Oslo prime minister's office and stalked a nearby island [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0724/Norway-mourns-ponders-impact-of-terror-attacks ], killing 76, had led to speculation about the potential for more mass violence from Europe's radical right.
But some commentators argue that despite his deplorable methods, Mr. Breivik has a point: "Multiculturalism" has failed and Europe should turn back toward the narrower, traditional national cultures of the region.
They argue, Breivik's attacks – among the largest mass murders carried out by a single person in history – should push Europe to redouble its opposition to both Muslim immigration and to Islam itself.
Exhibit A this morning is a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Bruce Bawer [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576465801154130960.html ], an Oslo-based American critic of the role of Islam in Europe, whose book "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within" was admiringly quoted by Breivik in the rambling 1,500 page manifesto he published online before his rampage.
Breivik – a self-described Christian nationalist opposed to the "Islamic colonization" of Europe abetted by mainstream European politicians ("a corrupt class of abject traitors") – argues that modern Europeans have been "indoctrinated" by a "multicultural orthodoxy." Both Bawer and Breivik appear to be of the belief that members of the European political elite are ignoring general public opposition to immigration and a growing threat to nations like Norway.
But while Bawer condemns Breivik's "unspeakably evil" approach to addressing such concerns, he appears far more concerned about the likelihood that Breivik's violent methods will detract from a cause they both care deeply about.
In a column at the Pajamas Media blog last Friday [ http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-double-tragedy-for-norway/ ], Bawer worried "that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has been profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic."
Bawer has not been alone in worrying about the need to criticize Islam. Yesterday, a Jerusalem Post editorial [ http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=230788 ] made much the same point. "Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism," goes the summary at the start of the editorial.
"As Israelis, a people that is sadly all too familiar with the horrors of indiscriminate, murderous terrorism, our hearts go out with empathy to the Norwegian people, who perhaps more than any other nation symbolize the unswerving – and sometimes naïve – pursuit of peace.
Oslo is the namesake of one of the most ambitious – and misguided – attempts by Israel, under the mediation of the Norwegians, to reach a peace accord with our Palestinian neighbors.
Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right."
Pamela Gellar, an influential right-wing blogger who runs an organization called "Stop Islamization of America," wrote [ http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/la-lies.html ], "The Islamic supremacists are having a field day with the Norway mass murderer. No mourning for the children, no; only accusations, obfuscations and cries of victimhood," she wrote, while launching an attack on a plan to build a mosque in Brooklyn.
There are of course strong points to be made about the large pockets of Muslim immigrants in Europe who have failed to integrate and who pose challenges for society – particularly when socially liberal values appear under threat by highly conservative newcomers. But it's an odd choice to focus on that question in light of the 76 bodies laid out by Breivik.
Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin took the opportunity to remind Americans that jihadis are still the main threat. "There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West," she wrote [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/evil-in-norway/2011/03/29/gIQAtsydVI_blog.html (at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=65487026 )].
© The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0725/Norwegian-terrorist-stirs-multiculturalism-opponents [with comments]
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Norway attacks: Terror from the right
Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of a killing spree and bomb attack in Norway, sits in the rear of a vehicle as he is transported in a police convoy in Oslo.
(Reuters)
The Norway attacks provide a chance for introspection for those who bash Muslims.
Editorial
July 26, 2011
With news that the man accused of slaughtering 76 people Friday in Norway was a right-wing extremist whose manifesto was littered with quotes from American anti-Muslim bloggers, conservative pundits were put on the defensive again. We say "again" because it's a scenario that played out six months ago when "tea party" conservatives were blamed for [ http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/11/opinion/la-ed-giffords-20110111 ] allegedly inspiring the shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson by popularizing anti-government views.
It was wrong then, and still is, to attack the purveyors of legitimate if extreme political views for the violent actions of deranged individuals. Yet while we'll strenuously defend the right even of bigots to express themselves, we do think the horrifying act of terrorism to which Norway's Anders Behring Breivik confessed Monday [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norway-suspect-20110726%2C0%2C62256.story ] provides a welcome opportunity for introspection among Muslim-bashers.
Under particularly withering fire from critics is Robert Spencer, operator of the anti-Muslim website Jihad Watch [ http://www.jihadwatch.org/ ], who was quoted 64 times in Breivik's screed. After fielding calls from reporters, Spencer complained on his blog [ http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/07/anders-breivik-stole-the-counterjihad-movement-from-freedom-fighters----were-stealing-it-back.html ] that he felt the way the Beatles must have after Charles Manson said he was inspired by their song "Helter Skelter" to commit murder. Here's how Spencer distinguished between his writings and those of Muslims: "Islamic texts and teachings, and frequently imams, directly exhort their followers to commit acts of violence. I do not."
What Spencer failed to address is the fact that his site, and others cited by Breivik such as The Gates of Vienna [ http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/ ], make a habit of blaming all Muslims for the actions of a minority of violent jihadists. As an example of Spencer's thinking, he wrote in November [ http://www.humanevents.com/article.php%3Fid=40261 ] that the Transportation Security Administration should profile and give extra screening attention to Muslim males at airports, because this is the likeliest group to commit acts of terrorism. One could as easily argue that special attention should be paid to white males. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber's [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Kaczynski ] reign of terror, the Tucson shootings [ http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/09/nation/la-na-gabrielle-giffords-20110109 ] and, now, the mass murder in Norway [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norway-attacks-police%2C0%2C6277048.story ], this population also appears prone to terrorist violence.
Conservative pundits are getting back some of what they've been dishing out for years, finding themselves being unfairly blamed for the actions of those who share their ideology but take it to violent extremes. Will this inspire them to treat Muslims more fairly? A defensive post from Pamela Geller [ http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/07/media-assassins.html ], who writes the anti-Muslim Atlas Shrugs [ http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ ] blog (also cited by Breivik), points to the answer. While failing to acknowledge an iota of responsibility for spreading distrust of even moderate Muslims, she instead blames the "Sharia-compliant media" for attacks on her and her site. Opportunity lost.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-terror-20110726,0,7236702.story [with comments]
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Norway attacks focus attention on US right-wing extremists
Anti-Islamic rhetoric from American groups cited in gunman's 1,500-page manifesto
By Azriel Relph and Michael Isikoff
NBC News
updated 7/25/2011 8:02:43 PM ET 2011-07-26T00:02:43
The bomb attack and shooting spree that killed 76 people in Norway on Friday is refocusing attention on the threat from right-wing terrorist attacks in the U.S. inspired by anti-Islamic rhetoric.
In the aftermath of the mass murder, investigators are looking at a 1,500-page manifesto in which Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who admitted to carrying out the attacks, vowed “brutal and breathtaking operations” in order to stop “the ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe.” Analysts say the manifesto was inspired by heated rhetoric from groups in the United States – some of which are quoted directly.
Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, is cited more than 50 times by Breivik. He helped organize protests against the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York City and has written that “traditional Islam contains violent and supremacist elements.”
Breivik wrote that Spencer would be an “excellent choice” for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But Spencer told NBC News that he bears no responsibility for what happened in Norway.
“There’s nothing in any of my writings that is anything but a defense of human rights, a defense of the equality of rights of all people before the law,” he said. “So if somebody gets from that that they should kill, well then he’s nuts.”
But according to some analysts, words can be weapons themselves.
“When you push the demonization of populations, you often end up with violence,” said Heidi Beirich, research director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The center recently released a report, Jihad Against Islam [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/summer/jihad-against-islam ], concluding there has been an apparent spike in anti-Islamic attacks in the United States in the past few years, including the burning of a mosque in Tennessee arsons and bombings in Florida, Michigan and Oregon.
In this April 14, photo, Imam Abdul Latif Azom walks past damage from an April 1, fire at the Masjid Al-Falah Islamic Center of North Detroit. Federal authorities were investigating the incident.
Paul Sancya / AP
“This attack in Norway should be a wake up for our decision makers,” said Daryl Johnson, the founder of DT Analytics [ http://www.dtanalytics.org/about.php ], a consulting firm that tracks extremist activity in the United States.
As a former top domestic terrorist analyst for the Department of Homeland Security, Johnson produced a 2009 report [ http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf ] that warned of a growing threat from right-wing extremists and domestic hate groups. The report produced a storm of controversy amid charges that the department was monitoring protected political speech. The report was ultimately removed from the Homeland Security website and Johnson says his unit was eventually dismantled.
DHS officials told NBC News that the domestic intelligence division of DHS was merely reorganized. And they say they are tracking the problem as closely as ever, but see no signs it is getting worse.
Johnson, however, sees parallels between the rhetoric of some domestic extremists and Breivik’s writings.
“We could have a similar attack here, and that’s my greatest fear,” he said. “We could have a Timothy McVeigh-type carry out a mass shooting event or a vehicle bomb attack that resulted in mass casualties.”
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Video [embedded, with transcript]:
US anti-Islamic rhetoric quoted in alleged killer’s manifesto
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© 2011 msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43887924/ns/us_news-security/t/norway-attacks-focus-attention-us-right-wing-extremists/ [with comments]
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Breivik's ideas 'shared by many'
BBC Radio 4
Page last updated at 07:48 GMT, Monday, 25 July 2011 08:48 UK
Embedded Audio (10min5sec)
Mass killers often turn the gun on themselves, but Anders Behring Breivik, the gunman in Norway who killed 93 people on Friday, has said he wants to explain his motives in the courtroom.
But should his motives be classified as the symptom of a deranged mind, or do they indicate something more widespread in the European psyche?
Norwegian philosopher Lars Gule believes he argued with Anders Breivik on an online forum, and he "did not stand out with a particularly aggressive or violent rhetoric... he was quite mainstream."
"When it comes to opinions and statements, he was not alone... it shows some of the warped sense of reality that is operating," in certain Norwegian communities, he said.
Matthew Goodwin, author of New British Fascism, said that he was "struck by the similarities" between Breivik's manifesto and some far right parties in Britain.
"There are also large sections of the public... who are very concerned over some of the same issues - the role of Islam in European society, immigration, multiculturalism."
"They might not endorse violence, but I think there is a pool of wider potential there."
BBC © 2011
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9547000/9547585.stm
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Norway attacks put spotlight on Europe's right-wing parties. Who are they?
Last week's attacks in Norway have put Western Europe's far right in the spotlight, despite their rapid condemnation of Anders Behring Breivik's actions. These parties share some of the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam opinions that spurred Mr. Breivik.
Who are some of these rising parties on the right?
Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer
July 25, 2011
Sweden Democrats (Sweden)
The leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, Jimmie Akesson (front l.), and his girlfriend Louise Erixson, wear traditional costumes on October 5, 2010 on their way to a church service at the Stockholm Cathedral in Stockholm ahead of the official opening ceremony of the parliament.
(Fredrik Persson/AFP/Newscom)
The Sweden Democrats won 20 seats (5.7 percent of the Swedish parliament) in the most recent parliamentary elections in 2010 on a campaign of cutting immigration rates by 90 percent. Its critics call it “racist” and “Islamaphobic,” but it clearly resonated with a section of the Swedish population, the Monitor reported in October 2010 [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1007/Why-Sweden-s-far-right-anti-immigrant-party-made-powerful-gains/(page)/2 ].
According to SD's website, the party rejects "multiculturalism," attributes increased crime to immigration, calls for an end to "public support for immigrant organizations," adding that "all other activities aimed at promoting foreign cultures and identities in Sweden should be canceled."
It also wants to outlaw “religious buildings, with a non-Swedish building style, strange architecture” and forbid public workers from wearing “conspicuous religious or political symbols, such as a head scarf or turban." What’s more, it calls for the government to support immigrants who want to return to their homelands.
The Sweden Democrats party was founded in 1988. In its early years, some members could still be spotted in Nazi uniforms at its meetings, although the practice was stopped as the party tried to move into the mainstream.
True Finns (Finland)
The True Finns took the third-largest bloc of seats in Finland’s April 2011 parliamentary elections with 19 percent of the vote. The party espouses nationalism and social conservatism. In its charter it “identifies Christianity as a hallmark of Finnishness and rails against free immigration ... and the ‘Islamization’ of Europe,” the Monitor reported in May [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0517/Gains-of-True-Finn-party-point-to-Euroskeptic-surge-in-Finland/(page)/2 ].
The victory was mostly a reaction to the bailout of struggling European economies, but some Finns are also angry about the influx of immigrants and what some call an “erosion of ‘Finnish values.’ ”
Freedom Party (The Netherlands)
Much of the Freedom Party’s publicity is generated by its controversial leader Geert Wilders, who brought the party to an unexpected electoral victory last summer, snagging 23 seats in the Dutch Parliament [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0610/Dutch-voters-boost-far-right-party-of-Geert-Wilders ] and becoming the country’s third largest party.
The party’s winning platform included planks such as banning the Quran and mosque-building and implementing a “head-rag tax.” After the election, Mr. Wilders said on national television, "The Netherlands chose more security, less crime, less immigration, and less Islam.’
Wilders was acquitted earlier this summer [ http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2080256,00.html ] of charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. The acquittal is “a sign that his once radical views have become mainstream in a country that for decades was viewed as one of the most liberal and tolerant in the world. ‘The judgment doesn't turn the tide,’ says [Egbert] Dommering, [a lawyer and professor at the University of Amsterdam], ‘but it's symbolic of what's going on in the Netherlands’,” Time reports.
People's Party (Denmark)
Denmark’s People’s Party made headlines earlier this summer for its successful demand that the country implement some border controls [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0705/Denmark-imposes-new-border-checks-to-keep-out-immigrants-criminals ], which were banned under the Schengen Agreement of the 1990s.
The People’s Party makes up 13.9 percent of the Danish parliament. Founded in 1998, it has steadily gained followers and has shifted many mainstream parties to the right [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/europe/25denmark.html ] as they attempt to win back voters who turned to the right-wing party, according to The New York Times.
The party’s platform [ http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk/The_Party_Program_of_the_Danish_Peoples_Party.asp ] calls Christianity an “integral part” of Danish life and says that “Denmark is not an immigrant-country and never has been. Thus we will not accept transformation to a multiethnic society.”
National Front (France)
Under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, France’s National Front is moderating, but it can still be described as France’s right-wing party, the Monitor reported in January [ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0117/France-s-Marine-Le-Pen-aims-to-shape-a-21st-century-far-right ].
Indeed, Ms. Le Pen, in her first speech as party leader, immediately made overtures to both right and left. She called for economic and social “patriotism,” saying that France is not “a caliphate,” or Islamic state, and describing the trends of globalization that particularly concern the French left as “a cultural tsunami and a moral Chernobyl.”
She also spoke to core National Front views that France’s destiny as a great nation is being diluted and damaged by foreigners and by the European project of integration: "Our country is at risk of dismemberment. ... The values of our civilization, our traditions, our way of life, and our customs are being contested in many quarters – in schools, in the public sphere, and in entire neighborhoods.”
The National Front has failed to gain much ground in elections, but its presence in the political arena has likely been a factor in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s shift to the right. In recent local elections, the party claimed about 15 percent of the vote [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/20/us-france-sarkozy-idUSTRE72J41F20110320 ].
© The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0725/Norway-attacks-put-spotlight-on-Europe-s-right-wing-parties.-Who-are-they/Sweden-Democrats-Sweden [with comments]
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Norway massacre: Breivik manifesto attempts to woo India's Hindu nationalists
This image shows Anders Behring Breivik from a manifesto attributed to him that was discovered Saturday, July 23. Breivik is a suspect in a bombing in Oslo and a shooting on a nearby island which occurred on Friday, July 22.
Scanpix/AP
Norway massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto invites Jewish groups in Israel, Buddhists in China, and Hindu nationalist groups in India to contain the spread of Islam.
By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer / July 25, 2011
New Delhi
The Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik writes in a manifesto that he acquired some 8,000 e-mail addresses of “cultural conservatives” not just across Europe but North America, Australia, South Africa, Armenia, Israel, and India – ensuring scrutiny of anti-Muslim groups far beyond Europe.
Mr. Breivik’s primary goal is to remove Muslims from Europe. But his manifesto invites the possibility for cooperation with Jewish groups in Israel, Buddhists in China, and Hindu nationalist groups in India to contain Islam.
"It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical," he wrote.
In the case of India, there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims. Human rights monitors have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue.
“Like Europe’s mainstream right-wing parties, [India’s] BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right – but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful,” writes senior journalist Praveen Swami in today’s edition of The Hindu.
“Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism,” he adds.
Last week, Breivik detonated a bomb in downtown Oslo and opened fire at a youth camp of the ruling political party, killing at least 76 people. He reportedly said in court today that the rampage was “marketing” for his manifesto, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.”
The manifesto
Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto calls preserving traditional European culture by cutting it off from immigration from the Muslim world. While he is against setting up a Christian theocracy, he envisions a revival of Christendom, where the church helps unify Europeans around a shared cultural identity.
In the manifesto, Breivik references India dozens of times. He included a five-page paper written by a man named Shrinandan Vyas that argues the Muslim invaders committed a “genocide” of Hindus in the Hindu Kush region of present-day Afghanistan. Efforts to track down Mr. Vyas have failed.
Invasions by Muslims into South Asia did include bloodshed, but use of the term “genocide” is highly controversial.
He goes on to cite dramatic drops in the Hindu populations in Pakistan and Bangladesh since Partition of British India – figures that Breivik also gives in his manifesto. Mr. Singhal and Breivik share a critical belief: Muslim majorities always subjugate religious minorities.
“I was with the shooter in his objective, but not in his method,” says Singhal of Breivik. “If you want to attract the nation’s attention, surely you need to do something drastic and dramatic, but not killing people.”
But Singhal goes on to say that sometimes violence must be fought with violence. He says people upset by violent responses to Islam must "go one step more to find why [Breivik’s] violence came in. Why was that western Christian talking in bad terms about Islam?” He says it’s because of violent verses in the Koran that continue to be preached in an intolerant way.
Singhal said India and Norway should deny voting rights to foreigners or "foreign religionists," meaning Muslims. That would solve the “bane of democracy,” says Singhal, where politicians who are strict with groups like Muslims are voted out.
Breivik also proposed curbing voting rights within democracy, and both men view their ideological opponents in the media and universities as communists.
Singhal has not corresponded with Breivik, nor does he see much need for alliances to counter Islam’s spread: “Every country will have to find its own solutions,” he says.
Knights Templar
It’s unclear as of yet who Breivik reached out to in India and what the depth of the interactions was. His manifesto says he is among 12 “knights” fighting within a dozen regions in Europe and the US, but not India. It’s not known yet whether this group, which he calls the Knights Templar Europe, actually exists.
Breivik describes months of tedious work farming “high quality” e-mail addresses off the Internet by friending networks “representing all spheres of cultural conservative thought” on Facebook, then acquiring members’ e-mail addresses. The goal appeared to be to generate a list to send his manifesto to just prior to his rampage.
Officials in India’s Home Ministry would not comment on whether they are tracking down Breivik’s e-mails to India. Mr. Swami, who has sources inside India’s intelligence community, told the Monitor that India does not have the capacity to do those traces easily until Norway provides information from Breivik’s computers.
“I’ve been trying to ask around if anyone knows about a substantial correspondence of any kind and haven’t come up with anything,” says Swami.
The Internet has made it easier for extremists to follow one another internationally, he points out. But, historically, European and Indian far right groups have not worked with each other – nor do they have much practical reason to cooperate now.
“I think irrespective of the Norwegian [attacks], the government needs to keep a much closer eye on the activities of the Hindu fundamentalist groups … and crack down on hate speech whether it’s Hindu, Muslim, or otherwise,” says Swami.
© The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0725/Norway-massacre-Breivik-manifesto-attempts-to-woo-India-s-Hindu-nationalists [with comments]
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Norway gunman claims he had nine-year plan to finance attacks
Anders Behring Breivik says in manifesto he started a business, played the markets and used nine credit cards to fund massacre
25 July 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/25/norway-gunman-attack-funding-claim
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‘He Walked Around the Island as if He Had Absolute Power’
July 25, 2011
It has been a rite of passage for Norway’s liberal elite for decades: a summer camp set on a verdant Nordic isle called Utoya, where this week hundreds of young people gathered to meet government ministers, dive into election strategy sessions and maybe find a little summer romance.
But for Helen Andreassen, a 21-year-old aspiring politician, a celebration of bright futures became something horrifyingly different when she and her friends jumped from a second-story window to escape the bullets of a man who was hunting them specifically because of their politics.
They ran for their lives, she said, tumbling down the rocky heights to the sea shore, hoping the man in the police officer’s uniform would not pursue them into the water. But he kept shooting. “He was standing just by the water, using his rifle, just taking his time, aiming and shooting,” Andreassen said. “It was a slaughter of young children.”
For more than an hour, the gunman stalked the forests and steep, rocky shores of the island. There were no bridges to provide escape. Time was on his side.
The young people desperately silenced their cellphones and stripped off colorful clothing. But the shooter was methodical. After killing several people on one part of the island, he went to the other, and, dressed in his police uniform, calmly convinced the children huddled there that he meant to save them. When they emerged into the open, he fired again and again. Witnesses told Norwegian news agencies that the shooter sprayed bullets into piles of dead bodies, apparently seeking those that were hiding among them.
“He seemed he was enjoying it,” Magnus Stenseth, a youth leader, told the Norwegian newspaper VG. “He walked around the island as if he had absolute power.”
As witnesses began to recount Friday’s events, 90 minutes of terror came into focus.
3:30 p.m.:
Three days into the annual summer camp, some 600 Labor Party youth activists from all over Norway hear the first, vague news of a bombing in the capital, Oslo, some 30 kilometers away.
5 p.m.:
Amid the coming and going of several small boats, a lone policeman arrives. The officer — armed, unusually, with two firearms visible on his hip and shoulder — says he’s there to boost security. Then, witnesses say, he raises his assault rifle and opens fire with bursts of automatic fire. His hunt of defenseless left-wing political activists has begun.
5:10 p.m.:
At the camp’s food hall, Jorgen Benone is still talking with friends about the Oslo attack as they “hear panic down by the water.”
“Then we started to understand that people actually had been shot. Chaos broke out everywhere, and everyone started to run.” People at the camp report trying to call Norway’s emergency services but are told to keep off the line unless they’re calling about the Oslo bomb.
5:15 p.m.:
Witnesses say the gunman enters a village of tents, the residential heart of the weeklong retreat, and spots desperate individuals hoping he’ll spare them if they run back inside their homes. But the killer is seen working his way tent by tent, shooting many point-blank, one by one.
5:30 p.m.:
As the gunman picks off lone campers who run from their hiding spots as he draws near, many find themselves at the shoreline with only one apparent escape route — the water.
5:38 p.m.:
Police say an armed SWAT team is deployed from Oslo. They drive rather than take a helicopter, police say — because the chopper would take too long to prepare for flight.
5:45 p.m.:
At another camp site on the mainland shore near Utoya Island, camp owner Brede Johbraaten has been listening to the sound of gunfire — sometimes lone pops, other times staccato bursts —waft across the humid evening air for more than half an hour.
But it’s only now that he discovers the horror unfolding some 800 meters of frigid water away. The first survivors, among the strongest and luckiest, have swum the full distance. They aren’t wounded but say many of their campmates are dying in the water behind, some bleeding to death from bullet wounds, others cramping up and drowning.
Johbraaten and other campers ready several small craft to join a local flotilla converging on the island from several points, including another island to the north. They pluck both flailing swimmers and lifeless bodies from the surface. Amid the chaos, the arriving police SWAT team complains that no boats have remained on shore as they’d expected, compounding the delay. 6 p.m.:
Witnesses lying low behind rocks, aware that the “policeman” is really the threat, watch helplessly as four campers run to the officer for help — and are each killed with shots to the head.
6:20 p.m.:
Police say the SWAT team finally reaches the island and fans out, still unaware of how many gunmen they’re trying to find.
6:35 p.m.:
Police say they find the gunman and order him to lay down his weapons. He complies and is arrested.
AP, NY Times
Copyright ©2011 Jakarta Globe
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/he-walked-around-the-island-as-if-he-had-absolute-power/455010 [with comments]
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Unsettling Wariness in Norway, Where Police Are Rarely Armed
Norwegian police officers guard the courthouse in downtown Oslo where Anders Behring Breivik was arraigned on Monday.
Johan Spanner for The New York Times
More Photos »
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/07/26/world/europe/20110726_OSLO.html
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Published: July 25, 2011
OSLO — When a man dressed in a police uniform began slaughtering young people at a Norwegian summer camp last week, one of the first to be killed was a real police officer named Trond Berntsen, who for years had worked in security at the camp.
Whether Officer Berntsen tried to stop the gunman is still being debated. But facing a man carrying multiple guns and ample ammunition, there was little he could do. Like most other police officers here, he had no weapon.
By law, Norwegian police officers must have authorization from their chief to gain access to a firearm, but they have rarely needed to ask, until recently. Violent crime has been steadily increasing, jolting a society used to leaving doors unlocked and children to play without fear. Coupled with growing criticism over the police’s slow response time to the attacks and confusion about the death toll, which was lowered Monday to 76 from 93, there are growing questions about whether the police are equipped to deal with the challenges.
“Criminals are now carrying weapons, so some people now think that police officers should have weapons as well,” said Gry Jorunn Holmen, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian police union. Though she said it was too early to make any assessments, Ms. Holmen said the union had formed a commission to explore the issue. For the police, she said, “it’s getting tougher.”
It took police SWAT units more than an hour to reach the camp, on Utoya Island, after reports of the shooting came in. Officers had to drive to the shore across from the site of the shooting attack, and use boats to get to the island. A police helicopter was unable to get off the ground; news crews that reached the island by air could only watch as the gunman continued the massacre.
Anne Holt, Norway’s former justice minister, told the BBC: “That makes him a person that killed one person every minute. If the police had actually been there just a half an hour earlier, then 30 young lives would have been saved.”
Officer Berntsen, 51, who was the stepbrother of Norway’s crown princess, was remembered in a service on Monday. It was among the first of dozens of memorial services and funerals expected in the coming days after the rampage. The man identified by the police as the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, most likely shot more rounds in the hourlong rampage than most Norwegian officers typically fire in a career.
Norway is internationally renowned for its low rates of violent crime, a fact that is a point of pride for many Norwegians. Murders, when they do occur, are front-page news here. In 2009, the last date for which official statistics were available, there were 29 murders in this country of 4.6 million. In Oslo, the capital, high-ranking officials rarely even bother with a security detail.
“You can walk around this city and bump into a leading government minister out promenading on the street and strike up a little conversation before you move on,” said Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo [ http://www.prio.no/ ].
So it has been jarring for many in the wake of the attacks to see heavily armed commandos stationed outside the gingerbread facades of government buildings. The nation is now plainly on edge, and it is clear, experts say, that some things might have to change.
Norway is one of only three Western European countries lacking a fully armed police force. Most police officers in Britain and Iceland do not carry firearms, either. Norway’s neighbor, Sweden, began requiring its officers to carry guns in 1965.
Over the last decade, the frequency of rape and other assault has inched ever higher, statistics show. Murder rates, however, have remained stable.
The increasing presence of foreign criminal networks active in Norway is part of the reason for higher crime rates, Ms. Holmen and others said, though domestic criminal groups have also become more brazen. Just two days after the attacks, men in military fatigues shot a 27-year-old man to death in his home in southern Norway, Norwegian news outlets reported.
While Norwegian crime rates still look insignificant compared with a country like the United States, the uptick in violence, however small, has unsettled many here.
Currently, only beat police officers in patrol cars have immediate access to weapons. By law, however, they have to remain unloaded and locked in a box in the car unless authorization is given.
Some experts worry that arming police officers all the time will only lead to an escalation of violence as criminals arm themselves in response. For many, though, resistance to the idea has more to do with national pride.
“I would prefer to live in a society where police normally work unarmed,” said Johannes Knutsson, a professor of police research at the Norwegian Police University College. “It is a very forceful and symbolic sign to the citizens that this is a peaceful society.”
Elisa Mala contributed reporting.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/world/europe/26police.html
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Norway Attacks: Police Lower Youth Camp Death Toll To 68
7/25/11
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Police have lowered the death toll in the youth camp massacre outside the Norwegian capital to 68, down from 86.
Police spokesman Oystein Maeland said that higher, erroneous figure emerged as police and rescuers were focusing on helping survivors and securing the area.
Maeland also said the death toll in the bomb blast in Oslo before the shootings had gone up to eight, from seven. That puts the total number of people confirmed killed in the twin attacks at 76, down from 93.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/25/norway-attacks-police_n_908647.html [with comments]
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