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Death Toll Now Reported at 91 in Norway ‘Christian Fundamentalist’ Terror Attack UPDATE: Video Added; Gunman Posed as Policeman and Boasted, ‘I’ll Kill You All’

Posted on | July 23, 2011 | 184 Comments

The New York Times reports:

The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center here and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead.
The police said they did not know if the man, identified by the Norwegian media as Anders Behring Breivik, was part of a larger conspiracy. . . .
“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference, adding: “What we know is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist.” So far Mr. Breivik has not been linked to any anti-jihadist groups, he said. . . .
“Compared to other countries I wouldn’t say we have a big problem with right-wing extremists in Norway,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters at a news conference. “But we have had some groups, we have followed them before, and our police is aware that there are some right-wing groups.”

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Details of the bloody rampage:

A GUNMAN boasted “I’ll kill you all” as he hunted teenagers on an idyllic island, shooting 84 of them dead – just two hours after he detonated at least one bomb killing seven office workers.
The home-grown terrorist showed no mercy as he used at least two guns, including a machinegun and a pistol, to massacre the teens who were enjoying a summer camp on a Norwegian island.
Posing as a policeman, Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik beckoned people towards him on the Utoya Island and without warning pulled weapons from a bag and opened fire. . . .
The killer continued his carnage for up to two hours, hunting down teens and adults on the island and chasing them into the icy waters as he fired on them, killing at least 84. Some pretended to be dead, but Breivik returned to some victims to shoot them again with a second weapon. . . .
Breivik, 32, was described as a “madman” and was thought to have acted alone, targeting Norway’s ruling Labour Party. The party’s youth wing had organised the summer camp.

UPDATE II: Video news report from Britain’s SkyNews:

UPDATE III: Now that I’ve got you up-to-date on the latest news, while we wait to learn the identities of the victims and everyone is still absorbing the horror of this atrocity, let me turn aside to address some of the political blowback.

By the time I got on this story yesterday, Michelle Malkin had already been blogging it for an hour. Early on, she had provided background on Norway’s Muslim immigrant population and ongoing deportation proceedings against a radical Kurdish cleric, Mullah Krekar. As she also noted, Malkin got blowback on Twitter from somebody at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, who suggested Malkin was “jumping to conclusions.”

Look, this had all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation, especially the fact of the seemingly simultaneous attacks: the bomb (or bombs) in downtown Oslo and the shootings at the Utoya youth camp. The African embassy bombings, the 9/11 attacks, the attacks in London and Spain — over and over we’ve seen how al-Qaeda likes to stage multiple terror strikes simultaneously. It’s like their trademark.

Several mainstream news organizations were reporting some of the same background facts that Malkin included in her post, and also noting Norway’s NATO troop deployment to Aghanistan. These news organizations included those facts for the same reason that Malkin did — because the Norwegian attack seemed to fit a well-established pattern of radical Islamic terror attacks in Europe.

And it is important to note the obverse: There had been no similar pattern of right-wing “Christian fundamentalist” terror attacks in Europe. In fact, so far as I know, yesterday’s attack was the first incident of its kind — an absolutely unique and unprecedented event.

You may go read through my extensively updated post yesterday — more than nine hours of almost constant aggregation — and see exactly what I wrote and when, although the chronological sequence of the updates got a little scrambled after 3 p.m., as I tried to keep the top of the post fresh with breaking news. I didn’t say a word about motive or suspects until Da Tech Guy linked up with an item headlined: “I’m sure this terror attack in Oslo Norway has nothing to do with Islam.” And my response to that (at 11:48 a.m. ET) was to recycle a favorite old joke of mine about “radical Lutherans.”

UPDATE IV: James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly scolds Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post for having leapt to conclusions about a jihadist motive for the Norwegian atrocity.

Such criticism might be taken more seriously had not the Atlantic been the longtime publisher of Andrew Sullivan. There was certainly more reason to believe, at 5:06 p.m. ET Friday, that the Oslo bombing was the work of al-Qaeda than there ever was to believe — as Sully so often slyly insinuated — that Trig Palin was the incest-bred offspring of Bristol, whose mother had actively conspired to hide such a crime. And when the Atlantic forthrightly apologizes for having harbored Sullivan’s disgusting and unsubstantiated anti-Palin smears for so long, then Mr. Fallows might presume to lecture Jennifer Rubin.

UPDATE V: Da Tech Guy owns up to his error by reference to the Bill Sparkman incident in Kentucky. Long time readers know the role I played in that 2009 story. It was Sully who blamed the death of the Census worker on “Southern populist terrorism,” inspiring me to rattle the tip jar to fund a trip to Kentucky.

No sooner had I begun reporting live from Manchester — where the facts on the ground were starkly at odds with Rick Ungar’s “Send the Body to Glenn Beck” nonsense — than the Left decided to grab themselves a fresh hot cup of STFU. The liberal bloggers who had been so certain that Sparkman’s death could be pinned on Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party fell utterly silent on the story until finally it was revealed that Sparkman had committed suicide, staging a hate-crime hoax with the apparent motive of insurance fraud.

So before the Left starts gloating about conservative “wingnuts” prematurely assuming a jihadist motive for the Oslo massacre, they’ll first need to admit their own multiple errors — including vicious smears that sprang from theories far less plausible than suspicions of an al-Qaeda attack in Norway.

And I am by no means through smacking around these arrogant liberal sons of bitches, but I’d be much obliged if some of our regular readers would hit the tip jar for $10 or $20 to make it worth my while.

UPDATE VI: Returning after a break between updates, I found that Gary Wellner — gary_wellner@myway.com — had sent me an e-mail with this provocative subject line:

“Look like you have a new hero to add
to your pantheon of murderers. Sieg heil!”

Gary Wellner — gary_wellner@myway.com — included in this e-mail a link to this BBC article:

Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old suspect in Friday’s attacks in Norway, held right-wing views, say police.
Police chief Sveinung Sponheim said his internet postings “suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views”.
“But whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen,” he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Mr Breivik appears to have created entries on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, though the accounts were set up just days ago on 17 July.
On the Facebook page attributed to him, he describes himself as a Christian and a conservative. The Facebook page is no longer available but it also listed interests such as bodybuilding and freemasonry.
A Twitter account attributed to the suspect has also emerged but it only has one post, which is a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.”
In a post in Norwegian in an online forum on December 2009, a user named Anders Behring Breivik claims there is not one country where Muslims have peacefully lived with non-Muslims, stating that instead it has had “catastrophic consequences” for non-Muslims.
Mr Breivik was a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi internet forum called Nordisk, according to Expo, a Swedish group monitoring far-right activity.

Now, I don’t consider myself responsible for the acts of every violent kook who quotes John Stuart Mill. I’ve never met or communicated with Anders Behring Breivik, whom I’d never heard of until last night. Hell’s bells, I don’t even speak a word of Norwegian!

So while my e-mail address has never been secret, I was rather surprised to find this “Sieg Heil” message accusing me of having made heroes of a “pantheon of murderers.”

And I hope Gary Wellner — gary_wellner@myway.com — will understand that I consider sending hateful e-mails to strangers rather a waste of time, and would strongly discourage my readers from emulating Mr. Wellner’s ill-advised and unseemly behavior.


UPDATE VII: Before I was so rudely interrupted, I had been about to make the point about what it is we do here in the blogosphere. I spent more than nine hours yesterday “aggregating like a mofo,” racing to provide readers with the most up-to-date facts as I could find them. Let anyone go count the links in yesterday’s relentlessly updated aggregation and see if they think I fulfilled that purpose.

My opinions are always less valuable than the facts. Maybe your opinions are worth more, and there may be some people who get paid for having The Correct Opinion, but I’ve never found anyone willing to hire me for that Charles Krauthammer-type work. So I was doing what I do best when there’s breaking news — piling up the facts and making a few jokes. And also occasionally, speaking from 25 years experience in the news business, offering words of caution like these:

(11:28 a.m. ET) Early reports on these kinds of events are always confusing. We await more details to clarify the story . . .

(2:45 p.m. ET) Which is to say, as I warned at the outset, there is always confusion in the early reports on a story like this. We must be patient and wait for facts, rather than speculating . . .

Of course, I was also on Twitter offering to bet $10 that the persons responsible for this atrocity included at least one named “Mohammed.”

You know something funny? Not one liberal was willing to take that bet.

So let those gloating sons of bitches say what they will, they sure as hell weren’t eager to put their money on the line when the identity of the perp was still a mystery. And I will conclude by quoting Michelle Malkin’s own conclusion:

As the above WaPo article and countless Mainstream Media stories throughout the day noted, the context and timing most definitely suggested jihad and there should be no apologize for reading the signs and connecting several large, obvious dots.
Unlike those who speculated that the Giffords’ shooter was a Tea Party activist and held onto the assumption even after it was disproved, I will not continue to insist that jihadists bear blame for this heinous attack if it turns out they have not.

No shame in her game. And if you’ve ever jumped onto a breaking story an hour after Malkin started blogging it, you’d know how hard it is to keep up with her when it comes to high-speed news aggregation.

UPDATE VIII: Linked by 1389 Blog, Scared Monkeys and Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!


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Category: Conspiracy Theories, Michelle Malkin, Norway, Religion, Terrorism

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VOABDQNPU7TIKDX2C33ZWG4O6U Dobby

    I just read the killing stopped because the lunatic ran out of bullets.  He ran out of bullets.  The police never stopped him.  He ran out of freaking bullets. Amazing.

    A true story:  A couple years ago, the police came to my house and asked if I called 911.  They said someone phoned 911 from my house and hung up.  So they stopped by to investigate.  I asked them when did this call happen.  They answered, over 40 minutes ago.  I told them nobody made any calls to 911.  It must have been a phone glitch.  Then I asked them why did it take you so long to get here.  They told me they were busy.  Go figure.

  • Anonymous

    You pathetic, miserable IDIOT!

    So according to you, there is no difference between banning smoking and banning killing unborn babies at will?

    In fact, your idol DUMBAMA is much more comfortable with killing babies born alive from botched abortion (he voted for the legistalion allowing it in his native Illinois) than with having allowed to eat supersised burgers.

    While he is trying to deregulate the first, he is trying to regulate the latter.

    You display a typical deranged mind of a leftoid parasite.

  • Anonymous

    You ludicrous, deranged fool!

     NAZIS means the NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKERS’ PARTY.

    How many time does it have to be explained to the moron like you?

    Hitler himself had a short flirt with German Commies right after the WWI in the so called Bavarian Communist Republic but became disilusioned with it because of it’s lack of anti-semitism.

    That was his anti-semitism what made him to abandon commies and join the then NAZIS.

    His best pal Ernest Roehm was a Commie-Nazi.

    And by the way; The German Commies were cooperating with Nazis in their mutual drive to destroy the Weimar Republic, foolowing the direct order by Stalin given to Ernets Thalmann, the head of German Commies.

    The roots of NAZIS are deeply inserted in the idea of a radical socialism.

    Ever heard about Ribbentrop/Molotov Oact?

  • Anonymous

    KKK? Oh, that’s right, the group whose members were all Democrats. Slither along, Copperhead.

  • Anonymous

    Oh, you mean the guy the Republicans kicked out? Unlike Fred Phelps whose still a member in good standing of your Copperhead Party.

    And the only difference between Fascists and Communists is whether the State enslaves everyone directly or operates from behind the curtain. Fail again, Copperhead.

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  • Anonymous

    Yeah, it sure does sound nuts. I’ll bet my bippy this guy is seriously demented. If he were indeed schizophrenic, he’d likely have started having symptoms in his 20s, and the condition generally gets worse with age. My uncle came apart in his early 20s and was permanently hospitalized before age 30–fortunately, before he hurt anyone (and he came pretty close). It’s a very sad thing.

  • Anonymous

    Oh, look–it can quote scripture out of context! 

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  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Speaking for me and only for me-All I want is for women to be given the entire facts of what the procedure is and what it does and all the possible side-effects, many of which are long-term, maybe even irreversible. One of these is the possibility of never being able to have a child. Another is severe depression. There are other potential complications, most of which most pro-choice groups want to either gloss over or deny completely, and which they’ll raise holy hell about if anybody tries to point them out.

    Also, the notion that a fetus is nothing but a mass of tissue and not fully human is a lot of pc nonsense that has been disproven by an abundance of scientific evidence. That bit of fairy tale politics needs to be shown the door and straight out to the ash heap of history where it belongs.

    Having said all that, all I, personally, want is for Roe to be overturned and abortion laws decided in each individual state.

    All you evidently want is for this country to be Belgium. Too bad, there’s no constitutional right in the constitution to an abortion, therefore it is not the proper place of the federal government to decide it is, based on a reading of privacy rights that don’t exist.

    I know there are many pro-life groups that won’t settle for that and want to impose some kind of nationwide abortion ban. Shame on them, they are just as wrong as you are.

    But you’re hardly the one to point that out.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Where’s the evidence for these millions of Indians killed by fundamentalist Christians? How do you know how many of them were actual believing, practicing Christians, let alone fundamentalist Christians?

    And MILLIONS of Indians? Really, millions?

  • timburns116

    Fallows is not responsible for Sullivan.  In fact, he’s less respinsible for Sullivan than Stacy is for allowing your homophobic, fact-free rant to exist in his comments.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Chuck-Coffer/1296650908 Chuck Coffer

    I don’t get how anyone can call the guy a “Christian fundamentalist” in any meaningful sense of the term. One might as well call Reverend Wright the same thing or even Jim Jones. This is especially true when you consider that Muslims who do this kind of shit  (every day) are never referred to as “fundamentalists”. They’re called extremists or militants.

  • timburns116

    Well, it would take more than their name.  The name was to confuse. 

    Hitler killed all the Communists.  He attacked Russia because they were Communist.  He burned down the Reichstag and declared it was the work of the Communists, so that he could wrest power away from the legislature.  I am sorry that you think a guy who

    “On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire… The central government responded with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus. In particular, activities of the German Communist Party were suppressed, and communist party members were arrested, forced to flee, or murdered.”

    He destroyed the commies, but Jonah Goldberg, a moron, claimed he was a vegetarian, so his Commie killing party because a “left movement” here in the fever swamps.

    Hitler ended democratic rule in Germany with the Enabling Act, where he was opposed by “Social Democrats.” “The Communists, as well as several Social Democrats,
    were barred from attending the vote. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler’s government into a de facto dictatorship.”

    He was also a “leftist” who abolished Trade unions…, as well as collective bargaining and the right to strike.

    Heck, sounds more like Scott Walker than Jerry Brown!
    “National Socialism had some of the key ideological elements of fascism which originally developed in Italy under Benito Mussolini; however, the Nazis never officially declared themselves fascists. Both ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism and paramilitary forces, and both intended to create a dictatorial state.”

    Let’s make it easy for you:  In 1936 the Spanish military went to war with the Communists and trade unionists in their midst.  Hitler helped the military, run by Francisco Franco and the Russians and Socialists everywhere flocked to the other side (including, for instance, Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell).  Franco won and became the fascist dictator of Spain for the next 40 years.

    In 1957, Buckley in National Review wrote this about Franco:

    “October 26, 1957: General Franco is an authentic national hero…
    [with the] talents, the perseverance, and the sense of the righteousness
    of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the
    visionaries, ideologues, Marxists, and nihilists that were imposing… a
    regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny,
    even, Spain’s historical destiny. He saved the day…. The need was
    imperative… for a national policy [to]… make this concession to
    Churchill this morning, that one to Hitler this afternoon…. Franco
    reigns… supreme. He is not an oppressive dictator…. only as
    oppressive as is necessary to maintain total power…

    March 9, 1957: Franco is a part, and an integral part, of Western
    civilization… [the] convergence of the multifarious political
    philosophical, religious, and cultural tendencies that have shaped
    Spanish history… the man to whom the Spanish people look–as the
    Chinese have looked to Chiang [Kaishek], for all his faults–for
    leadership.”Pat Buchanan also praised Franco, as did Nixon.  IF Hitler was such a left-winger, why was he such a virulent anti-Communist?  Why did he oppose with German planes, troops, and money a Spanish Revolution of Commies and left-wingers? Why did he torture and send to prison German Communists?  Stop reading political pundits whose mommy got a job for them and read actual history.  I would suggest John Keegan’s Second World War as a fine jumping off point for a readable text written by a Tory.

  • timburns116

     Because you don’t favor those things, unless you are a libertarian.

     Conservatives want more regulation of women’s bodies, book and movie choices, the ability of a person to sue a corporation, the redistribution of wealt upwards toward the upper classes.

    The conservative legislature in my state just forbade funding to Planned Parenthood, stopped teachers from organizing, gave public money for schools to private companies to start charter schools, passed a bill to allow police officers to stop drivers and ask for their papers, announced that energy companies didn’t have to follow duly enacted federal law, and provided more tax credits and breaks to businesses.

    Not my definition of smaller government, but you probably think public money to private corporations IS smaller govt.

  • timburns116

    Yeah, one cannot keep expressing the truth to the true believers.

    Go to Stormfront and tell ‘em you’re a lib, Dave.  Have fun with that

  • timburns116

    Go read a book by Chales Mann called 1491.  Central Mexico itself was home to 25 million Native Americans.  The Spanish at Cajamarca kicked off the festivities where they killed 7000 unarmed Incas by having a priest present the bible to the Inca king.  When he rejected the Bible, they killed 7000 and lost not one soldier and did it, they said, with the blessing of God.

    It’s not my fault you don’t know your history.  It’s yours.  Go to the library and get any book on pre-columbian civilization written after 1970 and you can see what genetics and carbon dating tell us about the past.

  • timburns116

    Which is why it was okay for a fundamentalist Christian whackjob to murder him at church, eh, Gator?

  • timburns116

    They have never heard of those things here

  • timburns116

    Ah, that lie from that discredited nurse rears its head again.  You may want to check snopes.com on that, lad

  • timburns116

    You mean, like Stacy was a Democrat, before the Dems purged racists? 

    Noce try, SDN, but your understanding of history, such as it is, stopped in 1870

  • timburns116

    Yeah, sure, I understand he was next in line to run the DNC.  That’s why he went to South America in the first place, because he was huge into local politics

  • timburns116

    After seeing the rhetoric here toward liberals; it’s unsurprising that an anti-Muslim bigot would attack “lefties”

    Jim David Adkisson sure as hell wasn’t rational in his political beliefs

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting

  • Gastorgrab

    Sorry.  Hitler was a vegetarian AND a leftie.

  • timburns116

    good point.  It’s an unfortunate use of the term, with which, many Christians use as a badge of honor.  My entire family is made up of proud fundamentalists (I’m a bit of a black sheep to them).

    He’s obviously, like a McVeigh or an Adkinsson or, helll, even a Hussan, a person who just used a label to explain his crimes and the label just does not fit

  • timburns116

    Since you refuse to look it up on your own, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperheads

    YOU are the Copperhead.  You are the one haging with a gent who admirers Confederate leaders, explainsd their justification, and claim secession is legal.  I am the sort who would have been an abolitionist and would have been cheering Sherman and Grant.

    Learn the difference.

     The ironic thing is that it offends me as amateur historian way more than it does politically.  You think you injure me by mis-using the language, but you just offend me by using historical analogy so desperately wrongly.  It would like calling Bill Gates a Luddite.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere
  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    I’ve just read all of your comments on this post and I must say: I have never met such a rank ignoramus before.  And, worst of all, in my opinion, you’re a crashing boor.

  • Anonymous

    Copperheads supported slavery. They got real upset when the slaves left the plantation.

    Democrats support slavery. They get real upset when the slaves try to leave the collective.

    You are a supporter of slavery. Period. End of sentence.
    The only accurate word in your post is “amateur.” Fuck off and die.

    Now slither along, Copperhead.

  • Anonymous

    Written after 1970? Would that be so we only get the history approved by the Copperheads who slithered into academia?

  • Prospectorrat

    Remember, these are Norwegians.
    The Nazis concurred the whole nation using less than 12,000 troops.

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