14 thoughts on “Norway open thread.”

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2. Does Norway have the death penalty?

   Nor do they have life in prison.  From the twitter feed I posted yesterday:

   Norway does not have life in prison, but something called detention. If person perceived as persistent threat, can be held indefinitely.

   With detention, person would be subject to hearings to decide whether he or she is ready to reenter society.

   http://twitter.com/#!/huffpost…

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   1. This sicko qualifies. Put him to sleep like Tim McVeigh and other such animals.

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   2. is about 1/2 ours

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3. they are very likely to find out what prompted his criminal act. I’m sure when they are done questioning the US will still be the only ‘civilized’ country to be using torture.

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4. but after a day of reflection I can’t let it go. Normally I don’t post stuff from places I consider partisan, but the points raised in this piece on Salon.com can’t be ignored, esp when certain Polsters started playing the “Muslim Terrorist” card:

   
   The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of “Terrorism”

   For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits.  The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates.  

   But now it turns out that the alleged perpetrator wasn’t from an international Muslim extremist group at all, but was rather a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a history of anti-Muslim commentary and an affection for Muslim-hating blogs such as Pam Geller’s Atlas Shrugged, Daniel Pipes, and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.  Despite that, The New York Times is still working hard to pin some form of blame, even ultimate blame, on Muslim radicals.

   http://www.salon.com/news/opin…

   But here’s the money quote from that article:

   
   In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know — by definition — that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant — also by definition — that it was an act of Terrorism.

   I’m sure Rep King was firing up the Right-wing noise machine to support expanding his witch-hunt hearings on Muslims in the US when this news first broke. If he had stuck with the NY Times as his only news source, he still might.

   But now that we know the shooter (or shooters) were Blond-haired native son(s) with concrete ties to their nation’s Extremist Far Right, we can extinguish the torches and put away the pitchforks…for the moment.

   But note that the cry to start investigating our own Neo-Nazi fringe has not started…nary a wimper, really. With the pain of 9/11, this nation seems to forget the 2nd worst act of terror this nation has seen was perpetrated on our soil was by someone with very similar political views and smoldering intolerance for “the left.”

   But Dennis Kucinich is not threatening to hold hearings on the Idaho Militia. Senator Bernie Sanders is not calling for the Extreme Right to be purged from government service. It seems that when the other ideological threat to a nation commits another hideous crime, we should shrug our collective shoulders and ignore the threat.

   After all, we could NEVER have a terrorist act committed by right-wing anti-government extremists happen here…

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   2. It takes your argument a step further

      http://warincontext.org/2011/0…

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   3. The manifesto, bylined by someone calling himself Andrew Berwick, is entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” and was posted on Stormfront.org, a white supremacist website, and discovered by American blogger Kevin I. Slaughter. [UPDATE: Norwegian TV has confirmed that the author is indeed the Oslo shooter, according to the New York Times.]

      In it, “Berwick” declares himself a “Justiciar Knight Commander,” a leading member of a “re-founded” Knights Templar group formed at an April 2002 meeting in London. He claims the founding group has 9 members, whom he does not name, and that three other sympathizers were not able to attend the original meeting.

      “Our purpose,” the document reads, is to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”

      In grim, apocalyptic language, it advocates attacks on “traitors” across Europe who are supposedly enabling a Muslim takeover of the continent.

      “[W]e should… not exceed (per 2010) aprox. 45 000 dead and 1 million wounded cultural Marxists/multiculturalists in Western Europe,” the author writes. “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”

      http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/…

      “Armed Resistence?” “Reload America?” Some things are starting to look the same…

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      1. Fear breeds anger and all that.

         The New York Times is now positing that this guy intentionally mirrored Al-Qaeda’s mission statements, but from a right wing, Christian perspective. It’s like he knew he was exactly like what he hates, and he embraced that.

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   4. And when people are afraid to address terrorism from the right, then it is allowed to grow and commit more horrible crimes. At present in this country people are not only afraid to call out the terrorists on the right, but they have many fellow travellers speaking up for them using code phrases.

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      1. we’re endlessly reactionary, and woefully inadequate in preventative vigilance.  Blame human nature, blame our media, blame our toadying politicians, blame ourselves . . .  (I would bet that there’s more folks than I can count who start a weight loss program AFTER that first myocardial infarction.)

         I recall a plethora of post-Waco, post-Oklahoma City, right wing militia concerns, operations, and investigations.  (Maybe my memory is skewed because of the number of close friends I have in the Bureau.  Great story to tell sometime about an autumn operation to infiltrate a bunch of out-of-state gun toters establishing a “compound” in one of our local high mountain forests.  Turned out to be an outfitter and several of his client hunters.)  Then came 9/11 . . . squirrel . . . and now granny gets her boobs twisted to determine if she’s packing more than three ounces.

         Our biggest threat is always from what just surprised us if you ask our law enforcement, military, or politicians.  We are not an anticipatory people.

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         1. I remember that Clinton as president wanted to go after Al Qaeda big time because he saw them as a serious threat. But he calculated that the American people would not support such an effort.

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   5. Despite the Norway killings, Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he had no plans to broaden contentious hearings about the radicalization of Muslim Americans and would hold the third one as planned on Wednesday. He said his committee focused on terrorist threats with foreign ties and suggested that the Judiciary Committee might be more appropriate for looking at non-Muslim threats.

      In 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security produced a report, “Rightwing Extremism,” suggesting that the recession and the election of an African-American president might increase the threat from white supremacists, conservatives in Congress strongly objected. Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, quickly withdrew the report and apologized for what she said were its flaws.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07…

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