22 July 2011 will be engraved in Norwegian history like 9 April 1940, the German invasion.\u00a0 Words pale faced with this enormity.\u00a0 The ministerial area in the center of Oslo looks more like a war-zone than during the Second World War, with some bombing from the resistance and from England.\u00a0 And then the massacre of Labor Party youth at Ut\u00f6ya near Oslo.\u00a0 8+68=76 killed, many badly wounded.<\/p>\n
And then 32 year-old Anders Breivik, blond, blue-eyed, “nice and polite” as neighbors say, confessing–to be verified–to both.\u00a0 A 1,500-page manifesto details his political philosophy: He sees a civil war in Europe–weakened by marxism and multi-culturalism– between islam and christianity.\u00a0 Muslims: leave or face execution. He hates journalists and social democrats for multi-culturalism. And this mass murderer is one of us<\/em>.\u00a0 He is the enemy within.<\/p>\n In this moment hearts from all over the world reach out to the bereaved and to a country–mine–in a state of shock.\u00a0 Analysis is cold and intellectual, contrary to emotions of sadness and anger.\u00a0 And yet it has to be done.\u00a0 Understanding is indispensable; so are reflections on what we can learn.\u00a0 All events have causes.\u00a0 Find them, remove them, change them, if the events are unacceptable.<\/p>\n So, 7\/22 reminds us of what?\u00a0 IHT<\/em> evokes 9\/11<\/em> this weekend, with the unverified claim by Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami<\/em> (the Helpers of the Global Jihad) as response to Norwegian forces in Afghanistan and insults to the prophet.\u00a0 The forces have license to kill (Med mandat til \u00e5 drepe<\/em>, Oslo: Kagge, 2010), and Norway, strong on the freedom of expression, is deficient on the freedom from insults for muslims.<\/p>\n The choice of targets also carry a 9\/11<\/em> type message.\u00a0 The Prime Minister’s office, those dear to him, the oil ministry–does that not remind us of NATO targeting Gaddafi, his compound, with rebel oil contracts as rewards?\u00a0 It does.\u00a0 But there is no claim.<\/p>\n Enters 4\/19<\/em>, 19 April 1995, Timothy McVeigh and helpers also used a fertilizer based bomb, on the Oklahoma City federal building. 168 killed.\u00a0 He hated federal US–trained militarily by them–for the Waco massacre, he claimed.\u00a0 A similarity–Anders Breivik was 7 at the time and may have been inspired also by this US violence.<\/p>\n But the massacre on the island differs from all the above.\u00a0 Up comes Hitler’s Willing Executioners<\/em> (by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen), as fueled by anti-semitism and civil war between Aryans and Jews (Goebbels: “plutocratic in London and bolshevik in Moscow”), as Breivik seems to be by anti-islamism and his civil war.\u00a0 And like the nazis he hates marxists, social democrats and any mixing.\u00a0 He sees his act as “terrible but necessary”.\u00a0 Killing 84 face to face in cold blood for 90 minutes (he had a weapons license) beats even most nazi horrors.<\/p>\n The massacre fits the nazi model as latter-day Western neo-fascism.\u00a0 But why killing labor party youth, as little left wing and marxist as the Progress Party is right wing?\u00a0 The two parties agree both on the NATO Libya bombing and on buying, at enormous costs, US F35 planes.\u00a0 Why did he not hit an immigration agency, mosques, muslim meetings?\u00a0 His thinking neither reflects nor is reflected by Norway’s political landscape. In Norway a loner, a nazi.<\/p>\n But, let us not narrow the interpretation horizon to one point.<\/p>\n On one end is the islamophobic loner with links to some groups.\u00a0 If he could be defined as crazy, the political brunt is removed.\u00a0 He becomes a causa sui<\/em>, his own cause.\u00a0 Norway could lift from US 9\/11 speeches about “evil”, “nothing to do with anything we have done”.\u00a0 But maybe “something we have not done”, like not spotting him?<\/p>\n On the other end is the islamist Helper of the Global Jihad a bankrupt Washington could use to get money for “war against terror”.<\/p>\n And in-between is Breivik, at some stage using Libya as a cover, and they at some stage him as a bomber?\u00a0 A tacit cooperation?<\/p>\n Let us straighten the back, looking forward: And then, what<\/em>?<\/p>\n [1] The PM put it well, nobody shall frighten Norway away from its democracy.\u00a0 BUT, democracy is more than everybody sitting in some narrow ideological niche, as fundamentalist Christian, Progress Party youth, free mason.\u00a0 Democracy is dialogue, challenge, confrontation with others, not merely counting niche settlers every four years.\u00a0 Breivik should have met more people.\u00a0 We all should.\u00a0 Parliament and people should discuss all such issues openly.<\/p>\n [2] Violence is the antithesis of dialogue.\u00a0 NATO had as of 18 July 5858 sorties in Libya; 535 by Norway, dropping 501 bombs.\u00a0 But the targets were military!?\u00a0 Maybe yes, but if in NATO an attack on one is an attack on all then an attack from one is an attack from all–based on a shaky UNSC mandate with 5 abstentions and no Muslim veto power. Maybe dialogue would have been better than depleted uranium bombing?<\/p>\n [3] Norway did not like that single bomb.\u00a0 Maybe Libya dislikes 501?<\/p>\n [4] Norway did not like civilians massacred.\u00a0 Maybe so do Afghans?<\/p>\n [5] Beyond that, politics is about conflicts crying for creative, constructive, concrete solutions.\u00a0 Schools and media should train in conflict solution, for a conflict hygiene like we have for health.<\/p>\n [6] Maybe better leave the 7\/22 explanation to a competent UN body? [7] Maybe more knowledge about the history of West-Islam relations?<\/p>\n [8] Maybe having dialogues with “extremists” before labeling them, searching for their, possibly, legitimate goals?<\/p>\n [9] Maybe seeing illegitimacy as something that can occur all over the political spectrum, not only far away from oneself?<\/p>\n [10] Maybe changing the amateurish secret police PST, close to CIA-FBI, with a left eye so sharp that it even sees the non-existing but so right eye blind that Breivik passed undetected and unprevented?<\/p>\n There is that excellent US expression, a “wake-up call”.\u00a0 A brutal one, pointing beyond monitoring fertilizers and gun licenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why did he not hit an immigration agency, mosques, muslim meetings? His thinking neither reflects nor is reflected by Norway’s political landscape. In Norway a loner, a nazi. But, let us not narrow the interpretation horizon to one point. On one end is the islamophobic loner with links to some groups. If he could be defined as crazy, the political brunt is removed. He becomes a causa sui, his own cause. On the other end is the islamist Helper of the Global Jihad a bankrupt Washington could use to get money for “war against terror”. And in-between is Breivik, at some stage using Libya as a cover, and they at some stage him as a bomber? A tacit cooperation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}