Convicted: Norwegian Massacre Suspect Found Sane and Sentenced to 21 Years In Prison

Anders Breivik, the far right terrorist who murdered 77 people in the course of bombing government offices in Oslo and then shooting dozens of teenagers at a youth retreat, was found sane and sentenced to 21 years in prison. Under Norwegian law, that is the maximum sentence, but he can be incarcerated beyond that in seven year increments if he's deemed to be a threat. It's akin to the 20 to life sentences that are routinely issued in the US; parole can be denied by parole boards. In Norway, the convict can be further incarcerated if the convict is deemed a threat to society. I have no doubt that in 21 years time, the court will still find him a threat. Breivik has shown no remorse for his actions and isn't likely to ever show remorse. His manifesto indicated his intentions to commit mass murder, and he would likely try again if ever given the opportunity to do so.

He didn't exactly go quietly. At first he attempted to make a statement before the court that he didn't accept the court's legitimacy, made a Nazi salute, and was admonished by the court for that. Indeed, he said that he wished he could have killed more.


He then said that he wouldn't contest the sentence, because that would legitimize the court.

The New York Times further reports:

Mr. Breivik, 33, who had insisted that he was sane when he carried out the attacks last year as part of what he called a campaign against multiculturalism in Norway, smiled when the verdict was announced. As he arrived in court on Friday, wearing a dark suit and tie, he raised his right arm in a right-wing salute, his fist clenched.

His 10-week trial ended in June. Defense lawyers had sought a prison sentence, arguing that Mr. Breivik was sane when he bombed buildings in downtown Oslo, killing eight people, and then headed to Utoya Island, where he shot dead 69 people at a summer youth camp run by the Labour Party. Prosecutors said that he was mentally ill, was not criminally responsible and should be hospitalized instead. It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors planned an appeal.

Experts said they were not aware of any previous case in Norwegian legal history in which prosecutors had called for an insanity verdict and defense lawyers had advocated conviction.

Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen said on Friday that the decision reached by the five-member panel hearing the case had been unanimous. Reading from a 90-page judgment, she rejected Mr. Breivik’s assertion that he acted as part of a network called the Knights Templar, saying there was no evidence to prove its existence. Mr. Breivik has said he was present when it was founded in London in 2002.

Labour Party supporters in court on Friday hugged as the verdict was announced. Mr. Breivik is to be incarcerated in isolation at Ila prison on the outskirts of Oslo, news reports said, in a three-room cell with an exercise area, a television set and a laptop computer that is not connected to the Internet.

Breivik Wants Death Penalty or Acquittal

Anders Breivik wont get his wish for the death penalty or acquital, despite the fact that his claims that he was acting in self defense simply don't pass the smell test.

Norweigan law permits only a maximum of 21 years in prison.

The right-wing fanatic said he doesn't fear death and that militant nationalists in Europe have a lot to learn from al-Qaida, including their methods and glorification of martyrdom.

"If I had feared death I would not have dared to carry out this operation," he said, referring to his July 22 attacks — a bombing in downtown Oslo that killed eight people and a shooting massacre at a youth camp outside the Norwegian capital that killed 69.

Breivik's comments, on the third day of his terror trial, came as he was pressed to give details on the anti-Muslim militant group he claims to belong to but which prosecutors say doesn't exist as he describes. Several unrelated groups claim part of that "Knights Templar" name.

The 33-year-old Norwegian acknowledged that his supposed crusader network is "not an organization in a conventional sense" but insisted that it is for real.

"It is not in my interest to shed light on details that could lead to arrests," he said refusing to comment on the group's alleged other members.

The issue is of key importance in determining Breivik's sanity, and whether he's sent to prison or compulsory psychiatric care for the bomb-and-shooting massacre that shocked Norway.

If found sane, Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society. If declared insane he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he's considered ill.
"I view 21 years in prison as a pathetic sentence," Breivik said.

Breivik doesn't consider the courts to be legal; he has previously ridiculed the jurisdiction of the court to hear the case, but his claims focus mostly on the fact that he was fighting the first chapter of a larger conflict to preserve the white heritage of Norway and Europe against the rising tide of Muslims and outsiders.

Part of the problem in determining his sanity and his political claims is that he's refusing to give any information that might reveal the identities of the Knights Templar and other like-minded individuals with whom he's had contact and might confirm his claims that he's part of a wider right-wing white nationalist group intent on fighting against multiculturalism and igniting a race war in the process. Thus far, police have been unable to corroborate his claims of other cells in Europe or Norway.

It's also interesting that he considers al Qaeda to be methodological role models, even though Breivik claims that his goals are isolationist in nature.

Breivik Admits Murdering 77, Claims Self Defense As Lay Judge Is Replaced

The trial of Anders Breivik continues, and while a lay judge was replaced with an alternate, the focus should be on Breivik's strategy of claiming that he murdered 77 people in self-defense.

He claimed to be speaking as a commander of a Norwegian and European "anti-communist" resistance movement and an anti-Islam militant group he called the Knights Templar. Prosecutors have said the group does not exist.

Maintaining he acted out of "goodness not evil" to prevent a wider civil war, Breivik insisted, "I would have done it again."

The statement came after a citizen judge was dismissed Tuesday for his comments online the day following the July 22 attack that Breivik deserves the death penalty. Lawyers on all sides had requested that lay judge Thomas Indreboe be taken off the trial.

Breivik is being tried by a panel of two professional judges and three lay judges, local politicians who are appointed for four-year terms and participate on an equal basis as the judges in deciding guilt and sentencing. The system is designed to let ordinary people have a role in the Norwegian justice system, though the lead judge still runs the trial. Indreboe was replaced by backup lay judge Elisabeth Wisloeff.

This is a strategy that is destined to fail, particularly since none of children Breivik murdered actually engaged in acts that could ever be construed to be acts from which one would ever need to use violence to prevent harm to oneself.

The 69 people Breivik murdered at the youth camp at Utoya Island were not taking up arms or preparing for a war - that was Breivik. Breivik was acting in furtherance of his beliefs that he was the vanguard for a war against non-Norwegians; he was an Islamophobe and xenophobe. He hated those who weren't like himself, and vowed to take up arms in furtherance of his cause.

Now, he wraps himself in the belief that his actions were self-defense, which he's using in the most perverted of manners.

UPDATE:
Ausador at LGF provides a glimpse into the worldview and thinking of Breivik and why he could possibly think that he was engaging in acts of self-defense when carrying out mass murder. The presumption is that if you believe in the supremacy of "white" "culture", and see it beset upon all sides and nonwhites horning in on the culture and society of whites, then acts to protect the white culture is justified.

That's the general line of thinking, and it's an ideology shared by white nationalists in the US and across Europe, and it is a hate-filled ideology that justifies the use of violence to cleanse the world of non-white influences, ideology, and enforce the supremacy of whites.

Breivik's acts are a logical extension of this hate-fueled ideology.

Norwegian Right Wing Massacre Suspect Claims Self Defense

Anders Breivik made an appearance in an Oslo courtroom and was not only defiant about his course of action, but actually claimed that his murder of 77 people, including 69 people who were shot and killed on Utoya Island at a youth camp operated by a liberal political party, was self-defense.

Breivik further claimed that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case because it is comprised and derives authority from the same government he claims has no power and is subverting Norway through its multicultural policies.

In remarkable evidence played to a packed and shocked courtroom, recordings of cellphone calls made by the gunman to the police suggested that he tried twice to give himself up and simply went on killing in the absence of officers to accept his surrender. In the period after the first call to his final shot being fired, prosecutors said, 41 people died.

Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted on several occasions that he carried out the rampage on July 22, in which 69 people were shot and killed on Utoya Island, near Oslo, where the youth wing of the governing Labor Party was holding a summer camp. Hours earlier, a car bombing in central Oslo killed eight people.

As the grisly evidence unfolded, and some of the bereaved families and survivors in the courtroom sobbed inconsolably, Mr. Breivik remained mostly impassive, and at one point seemed to a reporter watching him to stifle a yawn. Only as the court viewed a video that Mr. Breivik had made before the attacks to publicize his cause, did he break down in tears, dabbing at his face.

Asked by a judge on Monday whether he wished to plead guilty, Mr. Breivik said, “I acknowledge the acts, but I don’t plead guilty as I claim I was doing it in self-defense.” He had previously denied criminal responsibility on the ground that he was protecting Norway against Islamic immigration.

Mr. Breivik showed no emotion on Monday as the prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh solemnly and painstakingly intoned the names of the dead. “I do not recognize the Norwegian courts,” Mr. Breivik said at another point in the hearing. “You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism. I do not acknowledge the authority of the court.”

Hundreds of reporters and video crews have flooded into Oslo to cover Mr. Breivik’s hearings, which are evoking both drama and outrage as Norway relives the horror last summer that shattered its self-image as a well-ordered place of relative tranquillity and tolerance.

The bloody intrusion of urban terrorism into ordinary lives was rekindled in dozens of images of wreckage and explosions recorded by security cameras at the time of the Oslo bombing — before the killings on Utoya — and shown to the court on Monday, prompting survivors, bereaved families and journalists to gasp in shock, some of them covering their mouths with their hands.

Then, in perhaps the most wrenching moment of the first day’s hearing, the court heard a two-minute recording of the voice of an unidentified girl hiding in a toilet on the island. “He’s coming. He’s coming. Please...”

Then there was only the sound of shots being fired.

Let's not forget that Breivik believes that he was firing the first shots in a race war and he was defending white people from the others. It's racist and violent xenophobia at its most stark and naked core.

Within the past several weeks, several psychiatrists have examined him, and while two early examinations found him insane, a more recent examination found him competent to stand trial. His views are extreme, but that doesn't make him insane. He clearly seems to know right from wrong, which is something that goes to the core of whether someone can have criminal intent, particularly intent to kill.

Here, Breivik was knowingly and purposefully killing his victims because he believed that he was fighting against the Islamization-multicultural overtaking of Norway and its heritage. He understood that he was doing wrong, but did it anyways. He's providing justifications for his acts, but they are empty gestures by a hate-filled individual who shows no remorse for his actions. He clearly didn't have a problem with slaughtering dozens upon dozens of children to further his own agenda.

Norway Terror Attack Included Assassination Attempt On Former Prime Minister

Anders Breivik is more than a little chatty when it comes to spilling details about his evil plot to engage in mass murder, using the bombing of government offices in Oslo as a diversion from his main plan to murder dozens of kids attending a youth camp organized by the Norwegian Labour Party. More than 90 people were killed in the dual attacks, and Breivik intended that one of the targets was the former Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland. On top of the mass murder, he wanted to throw assassination of public officials in for good measure in hopes of sparking a Christian war.

"Anders Behring Breivik had plans to come to Utoeya (island) while Gro Harlem Brundtland was visiting on Friday, but claims under interrogation that he was delayed," Aftenposten reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

The newspaper said the 32-year-old right-wing fanatic wanted to "hit Gro".

Brundtland, a Harvard-educated physician, has been a champion of social democratic policy approaches worldwide, and served as president of the World Health Organisation from 1998 to 2003.The report said Breivik made the remarks under questioning by police in advance of a court hearing on Monday.

He invokes Christianity all while those who knew him didn't find him particularly political or religious. They seem to suggest that inadequacies over finding a girlfriend spurred him to engage in to this descent to hell, using a melange of Unabomer and other assorted pseudo-political rhetoric to somehow justify his intentions to murder as many people as possible.

The Norwegian justice system will have a hard time trying to come to grips with this mass murder - the maximum sentence that can be handed down under these circumstances is 21 years; they cannot sentence Breivik to have consecutive sentences. Norway will have to decide whether that particular law needs to be adjusted going forward, but that too will be cold comfort to his victims' families.

Norwegian police have responded to accusations that they were delayed in properly responding to the events unfolding on the island.

The first report of the July 22 shooting was received at 5:27 p.m. by police in the Nordre Buskerud district in which Utoeya is located and the gunman was apprehended at 6:27 p.m. by the Emergency Response Team from Oslo, two minutes after they arrived on the island, spokesman Henning Holtaas said by phone. Officers in Oslo were dealing with the aftermath of a related bomb attack in the capital as the island shooting began.

“I completely understand that for those caught in the line of fire as well as for their relatives the response time felt long,” Chief of Police Sissel Hammer of Nordre Buskerud Police District said in a statement yesterday. “However, I ask for understanding of the fact that the deployment of armed police personnel will always require time. Personnel need time to be equipped and armed as well as transported to the scene.”

The twin attacks on Utoeya and in Oslo killed as many as 93 people, with most of the victims shot on the island, about 40 kilometers (28 miles) from the capital by car. The police will have to answer questions about the speed of their response to events on Utoeya, Dagbladet, an Oslo-based newspaper, reported.

The Emergency Response Team had already been assembled in Oslo following the bomb attack two hours earlier, which claimed the lives of seven people, and travelled to the island by car because the only helicopter available to the police was not equipped for the task, Holtaas said. Police in Norway do not routinely carry firearms.

“Considering the equipment that they needed, it was easier as they sat in their cars, just to drive directly out there,” Holtaas said. Norway’s only police helicopter is used for monitoring and surveillance and “doesn’t have the capacity in that helicopter to bring personnel.”

Breivik’s rampage on the island lasted 90 minutes, during which he is alleged to have called on the youths to come to him for police protection, before shooting them point-blank. He was wearing a fake police uniform.

UPDATE:

None of what he did happened in a vacuum. He had influences, and trying to claim that this was done because he was inadequate to get the attentions of women ignores what he actually wrote - and what he's actually saying.

He believed it to the point of murdering nearly 100 people.
He intended to murder many more - including assassinating a former PM.

This isn't just about inadequacies around women. This is about buying into a worldview that sees the "other" as the enemy - and the current scapegoat is Muslims - all Muslims. In another day and age, it would be the Jews. Or those who aren't blonde and blue eyed.

It's all the same kind of recycled hatred, and we ignore this hate at our own peril.

UPDATE:
While the ultimate death toll still isn't known, the identities of some of the victims are being released. Among those killed is a stepbrother to Norway Crown Princess Mette-Marit, Trond Berntsen. He was gunned down by Breivik trying to protect others as a security guard. The investigation has also gone to France, where law enforcement was searching the home of Breivik's father:

Meanwhile, French police are searching the suspect's father's home Monday. About a dozen officers surrounded the house in Couranel in southern France, entering and leaving at irregular intervals. The house is cordoned off, and reporters do not have access.

The regional gendarme service confirmed the house was that of Anders Behring Breivik's father but would not comment on the search operation. News reports have said Breivik's father, Jens Breivik, has not been in touch with his son in many years.

Questions Arise Over Norwegian Police Response To Utoya Massacre

Norway continues to mourn and come to grips with the horrible terror attacks that killed more than 90 people.



As authorities continue their investigation into Anders Breivik and how he managed to murder more than 90 people, many of them teens at a youth camp on the island retreat of Utoya, there are new questions over the speed of the police response. It appears that police took more than an hour to arrive on the scene.

A SWAT team was dispatched to the island more than 50 minutes after people vacationing at a campground said they heard shooting across the lake, according to Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim. The drive to the lake took about 20 minutes, and once there, the team took another 20 minutes to find a boat.

Footage filmed from a helicopter that showed the gunman firing into the water added to the impression that police were slow to the scene. They chose to drive, Sponheim said, because their helicopter wasn’t on standby.

“There were problems with transport to Utoya,” where the youth-wing of Norway’s left-leaning Labor Party was holding a retreat, Sponheim said. “It was difficult to get a hold of boats.”

At least 82 people were killed on the island, but police said four or five people were still missing.

Divers have been searching the surrounding waters, and Sponheim said the missing may have drowned. Police earlier said there was still an unexploded device on the island, but it later turned out to be fake.

The latest reports indicate that Breivik acted alone, but that he left a 1,500 page manifesto that investigators will pore though to examine his motivations and for additional evidence.

He added that the actions had been planned for some time.

The suspect is reported to have had links with right-wing extremists.

Still pictures of him, wearing a wetsuit and carrying an automatic weapon, appeared in a 12-minute anti-Muslim video called Knights Templar 2083, which appeared briefly on YouTube.

A 1,500-page document written in English and said to be by Mr Breivik - posted under the pseudonym of Andrew Berwick - was also put online hours before the attacks, suggesting they had been years in the planning.

The document and the video repeatedly refer to multiculturalism and Muslim immigration; the author claims to be a follower of the Knights Templar - a medieval Christian organisation involved in the Crusades, and sometimes revered by white supremacists.

He spent years putting together this particular manifesto, and was quite meticulous in how he planned the attacks.

Mr Breivik went to elaborate lengths to conceal his purpose. People who wanted to visit were told he was busy with the summer harvest, though he knew nothing of farming. He was apparently content to let a rumour circulate that he had dropped out of circulation in shame over a homosexual affair.

Mr Breivik's manifesto-- “2083. A European Declaration of Independence”--also provides some insight into his motivations. His ideology appears to be a form of reactionary Christian fundamentalism, fuelled by hatred of Islam, Marxism and non-whites.

Page after page detail his thoughts on politics and society. He rails against the European Union, the United Nations and other transnational organisations. Norwegian politicians are castigated: the right-wing Progress Party (to which he once belonged) is condemned as too tame and the ruling Labour Party comes in for particularly vicious attack.

Mr Breivik’s hatred has stunned Norwegians. The country has a proud reputation as an international peace-broker, is home to the Nobel peace prize and has scant appetite for rightist radicalism. Even during its heyday under the Nazi occupation, Vidkun Quisling’s fascist Nasjonal Samling Party mustered no more than 2.5% of the vote. In 2009's general election, the neo-Nazi party Vigrid won just 179 votes.

The only serious far-right violent incident in recent years was the murder, in 2001, of Benjamin Hermansen, the 15-year-old son of a Norwegian mother and Ghanaian father. Two members of BootBoys, a neo-Nazi group, were convicted of the killing.

Norway Awakens To Horrifying Details About Terror Attacks

91 people are now confirmed killed in the combined bombings in the heart of Oslo and at a Labour Party youth camp taking place on Utoya Island. The overwhelming majority of those killed are teenagers attending the camp. Norwegian soldiers have secured Oslo and are assisting in securing the Utoya locations as the search for victims continues.

The horrifying events in Oslo and then at a youth camp have shocked Norwegians and everyone is struggling to find out who did this and why. A suspect is in custody, and while law enforcement hasn't officially indicated the name, multiple Norwegian news outlets have indicated that the suspect is Anders Behring Breivik.

While police have not officially named him, Norwegian television and newspaper reports have identified the suspect as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, of Norwegian origin.

A picture is emerging, gleaned from official sources and social media, of a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who may have had an issue with Norway's multi-cultural society.

Norwegian and international news outlets have run photographs of a blond man with blue-green eyes and chiseled features, dressed in a preppy style.

A victim who was shot during the attack at the youth camp on Utoya island told CNN Saturday that he had seen pictures of Breivik taken from what is believed to be his Facebook page and shown on NRK and TV2. The victim said he recognized the man from the news reports as the gunman.

Breivik is a member of the Oslo Pistol Club and has three weapons registered in his name, according to leading Norwegian newspaper VG, citing Norway's official weapons register. They are a Glock pistol, a rifle and a shotgun, VG reported.

Police aren't sure whether he had worked alone or had help.

Other reports indicate that he owned and/or operates a farm, and that he had placed an order for six tons of fertilizer on May 4. That isn't out of the ordinary for a farm, but such materials can be used to make a fertilizer bomb and could inflict the kind of damage seen in Oslo. Expect police to test bomb residue to determine the composition of the bomb and whether it used the kind of fertilizer that Breivik had obtained or had access to. Reports this morning indicate that it was indeed a fertilizer bomb.

Yet, no one can quite understand what would drive this person or person to murder so many children in such a brutal fashion.

Survivors indicated that the gunmen yelled that all those teens must die:


Other survivors played dead to avoid being killed.

UPDATE:
Perhaps the scariest thing is that he doesn't appear to have done this with help - he acted alone. He managed to build and detonate a bomb, and then murder so many people on his own.

That's perhaps the worst case scenario for law enforcement the world over.

It's one thing to try and disrupt terror cells (someone can talk). But someone who has access to the materials as Breivik did (fertilizer for the bomb) and the willingness to act on whatever deranged worldview he had; and it seems that he was opposed to the Norwegian government's immigration position; and can carry out this attack on his own is a new and dangerous dimension that will make it more difficult down the road for security officials around the world.

UPDATE:
The Daily Mail is reporting that Breivik was a poster on a Swedish Nazi website.

It has emerged that the man at the centre of the attack is also a member of a Swedish Nazi forum which encourages attacks on government buildings.

The revelations were revealed by Swedish newspaper Expo who claim Anders Breivik is part of 'Nordisk' which has 22,000 members and focuses on political terrorism.

The 32-year-old who has been identified as the suspect by Norwegian media is also said to have anti-Muslim viewed.

Police are searching the blond, blue-eyed man's flat in Oslo and are still searching the surrounding waters, where people fled the attack.

It has also just been revealed that there is a new bomb alert in the capital and police have reportedly sealed off an area called Solli Plass, an area close to the royal palace.

80+ Killed In Norway Terror Attacks

At least 80 people, many of them teenagers at a youth camp organized by the Norwegian Labour Party, are dead after a bombing in Oslo and at a nearby island retreat. A right wing extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, is in custody in connection with both incidents.

After the shooting the police seized a 32-year-old Norwegian man on the island, according to the police and Justice Minister Knut Storberget. He was later identified as Anders Behring Breivik and was characterized by officials as a right-wing extremist.

The acting chief of police, Sveinung Sponheim, said Mr. Breivik, who is not known to have any ties to Islamic extremists, had also been seen in Oslo before the explosions. The police and other authorities declined to say what the suspect’s motivations might have been, but many speculated that the target was Mr. Stoltenberg’s liberal government.

“The police have every reason to believe there is a connection between the explosions and what happened at Utoya,” the police said. They said they later recovered explosives on the island.

Mr. Breivik had registered a farm-related business in Rena, in eastern Norway, which authorities said allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. Authorities were investigating whether the chemical may have been used in the bombing.

As the investigations continued, the police asked people to leave the center of Oslo, stay indoors and limit their cellphone use. They also said they would initiate border checks.

The attacks bewildered a nation better known for its active diplomacy and peacekeeping missions than as a target for extremists.

In Oslo, office workers and civil servants said that at least two blasts, which ripped through the cluster of modern office buildings around the central Einar Gerhardsen plaza, echoed across the city in quick succession around 3:20 p.m. local time. Giant clouds of light-colored smoke rose hundreds of feet as a fire burned in one of the damaged structures, a six-story office building that houses the Oil Ministry.

Other outlets are putting the death toll at least 87.

The CSM is reporting that Brevik had posted nationalistic and anti-immigrant positions online, and I'm sure that much more information will be forthcoming about whether he had accomplices.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Norwegians on this terrible day.

Developing: Bombing in Oslo Norway and Shootings At Youth Camp; Multiple Casualties Reported

Multiple casualties are being reported with at least two confirmed dead in a massive explosion in downtown Oslo, Norway, near the Prime Minister's office.

Oslo police said the explosion was caused by a bomb, the NTB news agency said.

A Reuters correspondent counted at least eight injured people.

The blast blew out most windows on the 17-story building housing Stoltenberg's office, as well as nearby ministries including the oil ministry, which was on fire.

Heavy debris littered the streets and a tall plume of brown smoke rose over the city center. The tangled wreckage of a car could be seen near the blast site.

The Reuters correspondent said the streets had been fairly quiet in mid-afternoon on a Friday in high summer, when many Oslo residents take vacation or leave for weekend breaks.

Government minister Hans Kristian Amundsen told the U.K.'s BBC News that there were believed to be a number of people trapped in the building.

"We are trying to stay focused, and we are focused, on the rescue operation," he told the BBC.

Reports of shootings at a Labor Party Youth Camp are now confirmed with at least 5 casualties. Allegedly, someone dressed in a police uniform opened fire on crowds at a youth camp near Oslo.

This may be related to the bombing in Oslo, but no way to know for sure.

Based on the speculative reporting, it seems that some terror group was attempting to carry out attacks against the Prime Minister and major political targets. Police operations are ongoing at a youth camp.

UPDATE:
According to Midnight Watcher:

“30 mins ago, a man posing as a police officer has fired several shots at a Labour Party Youth convention, over 700 people attending, on Utøya, an island west of Oslo. It has been reported that the man in a police uniform identified himself as a police officer when boarding the boat to the island. He said it was a ‘routine control’ in connection with the terrorist bombing earlier in Oslo city.

The shooter has not been caught as yet and people are hiding where they can. The police have sealed off the island.

It has not been confirmed that the Oslo bombing and Shooter incidents are connected.

Multiple casualties are reported and there's quite a lot of confusion.

UPDATE:
The two incidents may be related to each other, particularly since the youth camp had a political component and that leading politicians were expected to speak at various points during the current and upcoming week.

Around 1,000 young Labour supporters gathered at Utøya last Wednesday for a five-day summer camp. Prime Minister Stoltenberg, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland were due to make appearances over the course of the week, newsinenglish.no reports.

The BBC reports that Stoltenberg was not supposed to be on Utøya today, but that the former Prime Minister was due to speak on the island today.

Norwegian journalist Ketil B Stensrud tweeted this afternoon that there had been “reports of shots fired and people ‘swimming’ away in despair” at the location.

The Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that a situation was developing at Utøya, but did not give any details: ”There is a critical situation at Utøya, and several ongoing operations as we speak,” Stoltenberg said.

There's lots of speculation around whether Libya or pro-Libyan terror groups are involved in the actions. Thus far no one has come forward to claim responsibility for the attacks.

UPDATE:
It looks like that there were at least two significant explosions, although the second explosion could have been a secondary blast and not the result of a bomb:



UPDATE:
Via BBC, very bad news about the events on Utøya:

1848:
Eyewitness Andre Scheie told NRK: "There are very many dead by the shore... There are about 20-25 dead." Mr Scheie also said he saw people dead in the water at the camp.
1844:
An eyewitness has told the Norway national broadcaster NRK that he saw more than 20 bodies at the Labour Party youth camp in Utoeya.
1936:
Mr Stoltenberg tells Norwegian broadcaster NRK: "Co-workers have lost their lives today... It's frightening. That's not how we want things in our country.

The shooter involved in the youth camp shootings has apparently been taken into custody. While the BBC reports that no one has come forward to claim responsibility, although other reports indicate that a new group calling itself Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami has claimed responsibility.

A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism. The message said the attack was a response to Norwegian forces’ presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad. “We have warned since the Stockholm raid of more operations,” the group said, according to Mr. McCants’ translation, apparently referring to a bombing in Sweden in December 2010. “What you see is only the beginning, and there is more to come.” The claim could not be confirmed.

Norway is a member of the NATO alliance and has a small fighting contingent in Afghanistan. It was one of several countries named by Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, as potential targets for attack. In 2006, Norwegian newspapers reprinted Danish cartoons that angered Muslims by lampooning Muhammad. Norway has also historically been a frequent participant in peacekeeping missions and a host for diplomatic talks, including the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of the Norwegian Parliament.

Muslim leaders in Norway swiftly condemned the attacks. “This is our homeland, this is my homeland; I condemn these attacks and the Islamic Council of Norway condemns these attacks, whoever is behind them,” said Mehtab Afsar, secretary general of the Islamic Council of Norway.

Authorities indiciate that these were coordinated attacks, including targeting the Prime Minister's offices.

A Norwegian Connection In Subway Bomb Plot In US and UK

In addition to the indictment handed down yesterday against Adnan Shukrijumah, it looks like authorities in Norway have arrested three people in connection with a plot that appears to have links with the US subway bomb plot led by Najibullah Zazi and a similar plot in Britain.

The three men, whose names were not released, had been under surveillance for more than a year. Officials believe they were planning attacks with portable but powerful bombs like the ones at the heart of last year's thwarted suicide attack in the New York City subway.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has called that one of the most serious terrorist plots since 9/11. On Wednesday, prosecutors revealed the existence of a related plot in Manchester, England.

Officials believe the Norway plan was instigated by Salah al-Somali, al-Qaida's former chief of external operations, who was in charge of plotting attacks worldwide until he was killed in a CIA drone airstrike last year.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. The Norwegian Police Security Service said only that the three were arrested on suspicion of "preparing terror activities."

Al-Somali has been identified in U.S. court documents as one of the masterminds of the New York subway plot. Two men have pleaded guilty in that case, admitting they planned to detonate explosives during rush hour. A third man awaits trial.

Officials said it was not clear the men had selected a target for the attacks but they were attempting to make peroxide bombs, the powerful homemade explosives that prosecutors say were attempted in both New York and England.

U.S. and Norwegian counterterrorism officials worked closely together to unravel the Norwegian plot, officials said. Janne Kristiansen, the head of the Police Security Service, traveled to the U.S. this spring to discuss some of the closely held intelligence that been gathered in the case.

So why was Norway chosen? Well, Norway has a contingent of 500 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO ISAF.

Much more likely is that it is yet another outgrowth of the cartoon jihad sparked by the publication of a series of Mohammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, which caused riots in many Islamic countries and embassies of several nations were torched, including the Norwegian embassy in Syria, primarily because the Scandanavian countries were seen as being of a similar mind about the publication and freedom of speech that it represents.

UPDATE:
So how did Shukrijumah get implicated? Well, it looks like Zazi cooperated with federal authorities to the extent that they're even considering putting him and fellow terrorist Zarein Ahmedzay into witness protection.

Federal Judge Raymond Dearie agreed yesterday to unseal the cooperation agreements. Medunjanin's co-defendants - Zazi, who was the New York plot's pointman, and Ahmedzay - both apparently may get a sweet deal.

Zazi and Ahmedzay could have their life sentences reduced and enter the witness protection program if the Justice Department agrees with prosecutors' recommendations. Zazi could also receive the "S" visa.

On Implementing A Nonpolitical Health Care Cost Cutting Practice

Norway has managed to pretty much curb the spread of MRSA, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. If the US adopted the Norwegian model, it could potentially reduce the number of MRSA related deaths by 19,000 and reduce health care costs at the same time.

How has it managed to do it? Norway has all but eliminated the wanton prescription of antibiotics for all but the most serious cases that warrant such medications.

Norway's model is surprisingly straightforward.

* Norwegian doctors prescribe fewer antibiotics than any other country, so people do not have a chance to develop resistance to them.
* Patients with MRSA are isolated and medical staff who test positive stay at home.
* Doctors track each case of MRSA by its individual strain, interviewing patients about where they've been and who they've been with, testing anyone who has been in contact with them.

Haug unlocks the dispensary, a small room lined with boxes of pills, bottles of syrups and tubes of ointment. What's here? Medicines considered obsolete in many developed countries. What's not? Some of the newest, most expensive antibiotics, which aren't even registered for use in Norway, "because if we have them here, doctors will use them," he says.

He points to an antibiotic. "If I treated someone with an infection in Spain with this penicillin I would probably be thrown in jail," he says, "and rightly so because it's useless there."

"We don't throw antibiotics at every person with a fever. We tell them to hang on, wait and see, and we give them a Tylenol to feel better," says Haug.

Convenience stores in downtown Oslo are stocked with an amazing and colorful array — 42 different brands at one downtown 7-Eleven — of soothing, but non-medicated, lozenges, sprays and tablets. All workers are paid on days they, or their children, stay home sick. And drug makers aren't allowed to advertise, reducing patient demands for prescription drugs.

So, instead of running to the doctor and demanding antibiotics for every cough and sniffle, Norwegians do without the antibiotics. The same individual in the US usually has a first inclination to demand antibiotics from their doctors, despite that many of those suffering from sniffles and coughs are suffering from viral infections that are untreatable by antibiotics. That increases the costs to the individual and over time adds up for the nation at large.

In adopting the antibiotic methodology, Norway has managed to bring MRSA rates down to less than 1% of staph infections. That compares to 80 percent in Japan (highest in the world), and 63% in the US. MRSA-related costs in the US top $6 billion and while some individual hospitals have adopted methods to reduce MRSA infections, it would take a national rethinking about antibiotics to not only reduce MRSA, but to reduce overall health care costs.

Reducing antibiotic use also has other benefits - it slows the ability of bacteria to gain resistance to the antibiotics, meaning that they can be used for far longer and allows doctors to use them in a more effective manner.

In sum, reducing widespread antibiotic use can:
1) reduce overall health care costs;
2) reduce MRSA-related health care costs;
3) reduce deaths and complications due to MRSA; and
4) improves effectiveness of existing antibiotics to combat illnesses by targeting only those that need antibiotic treatment - extending the usefulness of such drugs;

Who would complain about such things? Well, makers of antibiotics wouldn't necessarily like the fact that their particular drugs aren't getting as much use, but that would be tempered by the fact that most Americans would see their health care costs decline and we'd be healthier for it.

Alas, the government wouldn't exactly be playing a role in how this happens -since it would be up to doctors to reduce their wanton prescription of antibiotics, as well as the reflexive inclination of patients to demand antibiotics for every cough, wheeze, and sneeze.

Obama Can't Win For Winning

President Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize despite having a paltry record on which to be judged. He won because of what the Prize Committee hoped for Obama to achieve in his position as President of the United States. The Committee is set to present the Prize this week, but President Obama isn't exactly following protocol set by past recipients and that's rankling those involved in the process.

Barack Obama's trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children's event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.

"Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king," said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. "This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy," she told VG.

The Norwegian Nobel committee, which awards the peace prize, dismissed the criticism. "We always knew that there were too many events in the programme. Obama has to govern the US and we were told early on that he could not commit to all of them," said Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee.

Norwegians think the President is rude to not meet with the King, even though the Committee is doing its best to cover its disappointment in the inability to hold all the usual scheduled events.

I can't fault the President for not attending all the events as scheduled as there are other issues to deal with on this latest trip to Europe, even as protocol would dictate his attendance and foreign policy and diplomacy can and do get furthered by these very kinds of events. Lundestad, who has written books on international relations, knows very well how diplomacy operates so he's playing down the snubs.

Bamboozling?

Norway has made the very public claim that it will go carbon neutral in emissions by the year 2030. Great.

There's just a problem with those plans. Huge, in fact.

Norway’s bold promise raised the bar for other nations, which were mostly still struggling to figure out how to reduce emissions, by even a fraction. Then, in January, the Norwegian government went a step further: Norway would be carbon neutral by 2030, it said.

But as the details of the plan have emerged, environmental groups and politicians — who applaud Norway’s impulse — say the feat relies too heavily on sleight-of-hand accounting and huge donations to environmental projects abroad, rather than meaningful emissions reductions.

That criticism has not only set off anguished soul-searching here, but may also come as a cold slap to the many countries, companies, cities and universities that have lined up to replicate Norway’s example of becoming carbon neutral — with an environmental balance sheet showing that they absorb as much carbon dioxide as they emit.

Many signed on not only to set an example of their own but also for a kind of public relations boon, or to pre-empt or get out ahead of government regulations they feel are probably inevitable. In the past year, the Vatican announced that it was carbon neutral, and companies like Wal-Mart say they are aiming for that goal.

But their claims — like Norway’s — all require asterisks, like home-run records buoyed by steroids. And as the Norwegian plan shows, achieving a carbon-neutral state, for now, often depends as much on how you make the calculation and how much money you spend, as it does on hard work, sacrifice or even innovation.

Indeed, it's done with sleight of hand and doesn't actually reduce tailpipe or smokestack emissions, but rather offsets them with spending on projects elsewhere (like planting trees).

This is a complete joke and it's actually on the taxpayers who are funding all this craziness.

It's one thing to support reduced pollution emissions because it improves air quality. It's quite another when the science is barely there to actually support such drastic moves that may have absolutely no effect on emissions whatsoever.

Oh, and are those carbon-neutral plans taking into account a growing population - after all, everyone exhales carbon dioxide which these plans are all purporting to make disappear in carbon-neutral schemes.

Jammie notes that the global climate data suggests that global warming may have actually ended a decade ago. If carbon emissions were truly driving global climate change, temperatures would continue on an upwards projection. However, they aren't, which suggests that something else is affecting global climate in ways that COx emissions isn't. Indeed, I've got a possible culprit right here:


Yes folks, that is the sun. That great glowing orb in the sky whose presence during the daylight hours warms the planet up and when the sun sets, will cool things off. It drives the solar wind, climate changes on planets near and far in the solar system, and whose full impact on the Earth's climate is still coming into focus, even as we have started to understand how solar cycles affect the Earth's climate.