Category Archives: Issues

Norway believes democracy is the best way of challenging terrorism

Just imagine if these words had come out of George Bush’s mouth after 9/11: “The American response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.”

The Guardian reports:

The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, says his country will “not be intimidated or threatened” by Friday’s terror attacks, which left 76 people dead.

The country would “stand firm in defending our values” and the “open, tolerant and inclusive society”, he said. “The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.”

The “horrific and brutal” attacks were an assault on Norway’s “fundamental values”, added Stoltenberg. “We have to be very clear to distinguish between extreme views, opinions that it’s completely legal, legitimate to have. What is not legitimate is to try to implement those extreme views by using violence,” he said.

Earlier, police detonated a cache of explosives at a farm rented by Anders Behring Breivik. Detectives believe the 32-year-old made the bomb that killed eight people in Oslo on Friday using fertiliser he purchased under the guise of being a farmer.

The controlled explosion came after police named four of the victims, including three caught up in the city centre bombing and a 23-year-old shot dead on Utøya island. Police would not reveal the quantity of explosives found at the farm in Rena, about 100 miles north of the capital, Oslo.

As the investigation continues, security officials have cast doubt on Breivik’s claims that he has accomplices who are still at large. At his first court appearance in Oslo on Monday, he told a closed courtroom he had links to “two other terror cells”.

But Norway’s domestic intelligence chief, Janne Kristiansen, said no proof has yet been found to link Breivik to rightwing extremists in the UK or elsewhere. She told the BBC: “I can tell you, at this moment in time, we don’t have evidence or we don’t have indications that he has been part of a broader movement or that he has been in connection with other cells or that there are other cells.”

Kristiansen added that she did not believe the killer was insane, but was calculating and evil, and someone who sought the limelight.

Facebooktwittermail

Europeans against multiculturalism

At Boston Review, John R. Bowen writes:

One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.

Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street.

But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.

Political criticisms of multiculturalism confuse three objects. One is the changing cultural and religious landscape of Europe. Postwar France and Britain encouraged immigration of willing workers from former colonies; Germany drew on its longstanding ties with Turkey for the same purpose; somewhat later, new African and Asian immigrants, many of them Muslims, traveled throughout Western Europe to seek jobs or political refuge. As a result, one sees mosques where there once were only churches and hears Arabic and Turkish where once there were only dialects of German, Dutch, or Italian. The first object then is the social fact of cultural and religious diversity, of multicultural and multi-religious everyday life: the emergence in Western Europe of the kind of social diversity that has long been a matter of pride in the United States.

The second object—suggested by Cameron’s phrase “state multiculturalism”—concerns the policies each of these countries have used to handle new residents. By the 1970s, Western European governments realized that the new workers and their families were there to stay, so the host countries tried out a number of strategies to integrate the immigrants into the host society. Policymakers all realized that they would need to find what later came to be called “reasonable accommodations” with the needs of the new communities: for mosques and schools, job training, instruction in the host-country language. These were pragmatic efforts; they did not aim at assimilation, nor did they aim to preserve spatial or cultural separation. Some of these policies eventually were termed “multicultural” because they involved recognizing ethnic community structures or allowing the use of Arabic or Turkish in schools. But these measures were all designed to encourage integration: to bring new groups in while acknowledging the obvious facts of linguistic, social, cultural, and religious difference.

The third object that multiculturalism’s critics confuse is a set of normative theories of multiculturalism, each of which attempts to mark out a way to take account of cultural and religious diversity from a particular philosophical point of view. Although ideas of multiculturalism do shape public debates in Britain (as they do in North America), they do so much less in continental Europe, and even in Britain it would be difficult to find direct policy effects of these normative theories.

Politicians err when they claim that normative ideas of multiculturalism shape the social fact of cultural and religious diversity: such diversity would be present with or without a theory to cope with it. Nor are state policies shaped by those ideas, which tend to be recent in origin. Quite to the contrary, each European country has followed well-traveled pathways for dealing with diversity. Methods designed to accommodate sub-national religious blocs are now being adapted and applied to Muslim immigrants. Far from newfangled, misguided policies of multiculturalism, these distinct strategies represent the continuation of long-standing, nation-specific ways of recognizing and managing diversity.

Facebooktwittermail

Hardships in Tripoli buoy rebels

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Motorists in Libya’s capital can wait days for fuel, and when they get it they have to spend about $12 a gallon—when they used to pay 60 cents. Bank withdrawals are limited to 1,000 Libyan dinars (about $625) a month. The prices of bread and other food staples have doubled.

People who recently left Tripoli tell of a city whose struggle to carry on with life as normal masks a pervasive fear. They speak of near daily house raids by the Public Guards, Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s security force dedicated to stamping out any hint of dissent. But they also describe signs that the regime’s control may be weakening, as young loyalists are shipped to a front line that is creeping ever closer to the capital, and frustration mounts with growing shortages and rising prices.

Such reports hearten rebel leaders who hope a weakened security apparatus and frustrated populace will hasten the regime’s collapse.

Rebel commanders say they are counting on armed cells to lead an uprising of Tripoli residents when rebel fighters close in on the city. The mood of residents, the degree of security forces’ control, and the ability of rebels in the city to get weapons and organize will help determine the strength of that potential uprising.

Obtaining a clear picture of what is happening in Tripoli, where Western journalists are shadowed by minders and limited in their movements, is difficult.

Interviews with five people who left the city in recent days—and support the rebels—offer a picture of life in Tripoli as a growing struggle. Blackouts expand by the day, knocking air conditioners out of service as the summer hits full gear. Sanctions and rebel sabotage of an oil pipeline have resulted in fuel shortages.

In a report released Monday, a United Nations team that just completed a weeklong fact-finding mission to Tripoli reported threefold price increases for food and transportation, and shortages of cash, fuel and electricity.

In general, however, basic food supplies can still be found in shops and markets, said Laurence Hart, acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Libya, who was on the mission.

“The issue is how sustainable the situation can be,” he said. “The main reason the food stocks are up is because the supply chain between Tunis and Tripoli is under the control of the government. If that should fall under the antigovernment forces, that would cause a serious problem in Tripoli.”

He said medical supplies, cash and fuel supplies were running low. A fuel consumption quota is in place, and Libyan oil experts have warned fuel could run out in two weeks, he said.

Facebooktwittermail

CNN’s Piers Morgan ‘told interviewer stories were published based on phone tapping’

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Piers Morgan, the CNN broadcaster, has said that newspaper articles based on the findings of people paid to tap phones and rake through bins were published during his time as a tabloid newspaper editor, it can be disclosed.

Mr Morgan, a former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor who is now a high-profile television presenter in the US, has spent the past week categorically denying ever printing material derived from phone hacking.

He spoke out after being accused by a Conservative MP and political bloggers of being involved in the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, for which he used to work.

“For the record, in my time at the News of the World and the Mirror, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone,” he said last week on CNN, where he now hosts a talk-show.

But it has emerged that Mr Morgan gave a notably different response when asked during an interview with the BBC about his potential involvement in covert “gutter” journalistic practices during his time as a tabloid editor between 1994 and 2004.

“What about this nice middle-class boy, who would have to be dealing with, I mean essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones, people who take secret photographs, who do all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff,” he was asked on BBC’s Desert Island Discs in June 2009. “How did you feel about that?”

Mr Morgan replied: “To be honest, let’s put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That’s not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work.

“I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do,” he told the programme’s host, Kirsty Young.

“I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports:

Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, has lambasted Rupert Murdoch, saying the chairman of News Corporation had shown a complete denial of responsibility for what had gone on in his company.

He contrasted Murdoch’s behaviour with the leadership shown by Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan police commissioner who quit last week over his indirect links with former News of the World editors.

Orde is tipped as a possible replacement for Stephenson, and it is the second time in a few days that he has attacked the irresponsibility of News Corps.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme, Orde said “You saw the chief officer of the police service of this country, Sir Paul Stephenson, saying, ‘Look this happened on my watch. I am responsible. I am therefore … It’s on my watch. I am resigning.’ Compare that to Rupert Murdoch – complete denial of any responsibility of his organisation.”

Facebooktwittermail

Suicide bomber kills Kandahar mayor

The New York Times reports:

In a further strike against the authorities in war-torn southern Afghanistan, the mayor of Kandahar was killed in his office on Wednesday when a suicide bomber detonated explosives hidden in his turban, officials said.

The killing heightened concerns that the tenuous security gains in the violent south are unraveling despite months of intensified fighting by NATO and Afghan forces.

The mayor, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, was killed in his office in central Kandahar, and one other person was injured, according to Zalmay Ayoubi, an official spokesman. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, news agencies reported.

He was the second senior official killed this month after the leader of the Kandahar provincial council, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a half brother of President Hamid Karzai, was assassinated in his compound by a close associate on July 12. Mr. Hamidi, the mayor, had been mentioned as a possible successor to Mr. Karzai as factions jostle to replace him, news reports said.

Mr. Hamidi was close to Ahmed Wali, but many Kandahar residents described him as distant because he had spent many years in the United States.

Mr. Hamidi had launched a contentious campaign to destroy illegal homes in northern Kandahar city. The campaign was strongly resisted by the people who lived there, many of whom had been there for years. A day earlier, there had been a protest and the mayor agreed to meet with the protesters on Wednesday.

The bomber entered the mayor’ s compound with the protesters’ delegation, said Mr. Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, Toorylai Wesa.

Facebooktwittermail

Palestinian teens arrested by Israelis for playing soccer?

Mairav Zonszein reports:

While Israelis are busy pitching tents across the country, in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, life under occupation goes on as usual, far away from the media’s eyes. In the shocking footage below, taken with a surveillance camera last Friday, July 22, Palestinian teens playing soccer in the street are suddenly abducted by Israeli soldiers in an undercover vehicle and hauled away. Whether guilty of stone throwing or not, this is not the way to go about conducting justice in a country’s capital.

As Sloveninan philosopher Slavoj Zizek has expressed many times, when there are no big headlines in the news about confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians, one should assume the mundane atrocities of daily occupation are taking place, in what is a very asymmetrical conflict.

Facebooktwittermail

Iranian scientist likely killed by CIA or Mossad

Reuters reports:

Western security agencies were most likely behind the killing of an Iranian scientist in an operation that underlines the myriad complications in the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, analysts say.

Darioush Rezaie, 35, a university lecturer, was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran Saturday, the third murder of a scientist since 2009. One was killed in a car bomb, the second by a device detonated remotely.

The Iranian government’s responses to past such incidents have appeared confused but the Rezaie case has surpassed previous levels, with the authorities speaking in strikingly different voices from the outset.

“Assassinations will continue to be a tool used in this covert war. While it’s impossible to tell with certainty whether Rezaie was an active nuclear scientist, his death appears to be another episode in that war,” said London-based analyst Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates.

“The Iranian narrative has been confused about Rezaie’s work and this adds credence to the speculation that he has been involved in the nuclear program.”

When news of the shooting first came out, semi-official news agency Mehr published information on Rezaie’s background which indicated involvement in Iranian nuclear activities that have brought international sanctions on the Tehran government.

But the report was then immediately withdrawn by Mehr and Iran’s intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi and other officials denied Rezaie had any links to the nuclear energy program.

The New York Times reported last week:

Eight months after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt on the streets of Tehran, Fereydoon Abbasi, the nuclear physicist whom Iran’s mullahs have put in charge of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, is presiding over what intelligence officials in several countries describe as an unexpected quickening of Iran’s production of nuclear material.

The selection of Dr. Abbasi earlier this year was itself a clear message to the West. As a university scientist, he was barred from traveling outside Iran by the United Nations Security Council because of evidence that his main focus was on how to build nuclear weapons, rather than power plants. But in recent weeks he has publicly declared that his country is preparing to triple its production of a type of nuclear fuel that moves it far closer to the ability to produce bomb-grade material in a hurry.

Filtering out the hyperbole surrounding recent proclamations about Iran’s tangible progress is always difficult, especially at a time when the country is determined to show that neither the Stuxnet computer worm, which crippled part of its nuclear infrastructure last year, nor Western sanctions have proved to be more than modest setbacks. Dr. Abbasi himself is rarely seen or heard outside of Iran.

But international nuclear inspectors and American officials say that all the evidence points to the imminent installation of centrifuges at an underground nuclear plant on a military base near the city of Qum. Iran revealed the existence of the plant in 2009, after learning that the United States and European powers were about to announce that they had discovered the complex, deep inside the Iranian base.

Facebooktwittermail

Norway gunman a frightening reminder of radical right terrorist threat in the US

At the Southern Poverty Law Center, Heidi Beirich writes about the ideological trends in the United States that parallel those articulated by Anders Behring Breivik, who rails against cultural Marxism in his manifesto.

Fears of “cultural Marxism” have a long pedigree in this country. It’s a conspiratorial kind of “political correctness” on steroids — a covert assault on the American way of life that allegedly has been developed by the left over the course of the last 70 years. Those who use the term posit that a small group of German philosophers, all Jews who fled Germany and went to Columbia University in the 1930s to found the Frankfurt School, devised a cultural form of “Marxism” aimed at subverting Western civilization. The method involves manipulating the culture into supporting homosexuality, sex education, egalitarianism, and the like, to the point that traditional institutions and culture are ultimately wrecked.

A number of hate groups, including the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), have raised the spectre of cultural Marxism as a way to explain contemporary events (click here to watch the CCC’s DVD on the theory). Some prominent conservatives also adopted the conspiratorial theory (culturalmarxism.org features MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan and Texas Congressman Ron Paul). In 2002, William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation, a far-right outfit long headed by the now deceased Paul Weyrich (one of the founders of the Moral Majority), gave a speech about the theory to a Holocaust denial conference. Saying he was “not among those who question whether the Holocaust occurred,” Lind went on to lay blame for “political correctness” and other evils on so-called “cultural Marxists,” who, he said, “were all Jewish” (Lind is mentioned in passing in Breivik’s manifesto).

Breivik shares more than fears of cultural Marxism with America’s radical right. A recent SPLC report documented an increasingly reckless campaign to vilify American Muslims, driven in some cases by mainstream poltical figures. If irresponsible ideologues or public figures use the upcoming ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to further demonize American Muslims, this population may be great danger (in the past year, there have been serious attacks on mosques and other Islamic institutions. For more, read here and here).

Tensions are arising here for very much the same reasons as they are in Europe: societies on both sides of the pond are becoming more demographically diverse. In Europe, the targets of radical-right extremists are typically Muslims, because they make up a large share of European immigrants. In the U.S., until recently, ire has mostly been directed at Latinos and Latino immigrants. This growing population is blamed by racist ideologues for the impending end of a white majority, which will come midcentury according to the Census.

That racial fears could drive someone to kill on a massive scale should come as no surprise. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in 1995, taking his blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing from the gruesome race-war novel, The Turner Diaries, written by neo-Nazi leader William Pierce. Between McVeigh’s April 19, 1995 bombing and early 2011, the SPLC has documented some 100 domestic terror plots by right-wing extremists. In recent years, these attacks have been propelled by additional factors such as the election of the nation’s first black president and the troubled economy.

The obvious danger from radical-right domestic terrorism makes it all the more galling that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has largely given up its efforts to monitor such threats. In April 2009, the department released a report, “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” warning of possible violence from racists, radical antigovernment types and others. The report was prescient; within a few month of its release two major domestic terrorist attacks took place. But that didn’t stop conservative analysts from savaging the report after it was leaked shortly after its release.

It was one thing for the right-wing media to savage the report; what was truly shocking was DHS’s reaction. The department ended up gutting its non-Islamic domestic extremism intelligence unit, which had been led since its inception by veteran intelligence analyst Daryl Johnson. Johnson recently talked to the SPLC about how the DHS bowed to the political pressure and basically abandoned its role in protecting the country from radical-right threats (The Washington Post provided further evidence here).

“[M]y greatest fear is that domestic extremists in this country will somehow become emboldened to the point of carrying out a mass-casualty attack, because they perceive that no one is being vigilant about the threat from within,” Johnson told SPLC referring to the fact that DHS is out of the non-Islamic domestic terrorism business. “That is what keeps me up at night.”

The SPLC’s CEO J. Richard Cohen recently asked DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to reconsider the department’s actions. The Oslo attacks are a reminder of why this is so critically important.

Facebooktwittermail

The Anders Behring Breivik interview

Anders Behring Breivik’s attorney, Geir Lippestad, says his client appears to be insane. Whether this is what Lippestad actually believes or whether he is simply laying the groundwork for an insanity defense, is unclear. But the idea that only a madman could do what Breivik did, is an idea with dangerous and popular appeal.

We would all like to believe that normal people are incapable of doing dreadful things. We want to imagine that Breivik is one of a kind.

Those who share Breivik’s antipathy for Islam, who promote the idea that the West is being taken over by Muslims and who warn that Europe and America are in jeopardy of coming under the rule of Sharia law, are now trying to protect their investment in this pernicious ideology by joining in the chorus that Breivik is a psychopath.

“The manifesto of the perpetrator makes clear that this is a madman,” writes Geert Wilders.

Pamela Geller follows the same tack:

Conservative blogger and anti-jihadist Pamela Geller told The Daily Caller it’s “outrageous” that she’s been “assign[ed] blame” for Oslo shooter Anders Behring Breivik’s actions.

“It’s like equating Charles Manson, who heard in the lyrics of Helter Skelter a calling for the Manson murders,” Geller said in an exclusive phone interview. “It’s like blaming the Beatles. It’s patently ridiculous.”

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch refers to Breivik as the “mad murderer in Norway.”

In each instance, the reason the anti-Jihadists want to characterize Breivik as insane is rather transparent: they want to create the widest possible distance between Breivik and their ideology.

The truth is way too uncomfortable — that Breivik, Wilders, Geller, and Spencer all view the world through the same ideological prism; they merely have a tactical disagreement about the best way of promoting their views.

When Wilders asserts that Breivik’s writings make it clear he’s a madman, Wilders is relying on the fact that most people won’t read Breivik. If they do they will quickly discover how closely aligned he is with his anti-Jihadist detractors.

In his compendium, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik interviews himself. There we learn that his extremism is mixed with a large measure of political pragmatism.

Even if neo-Nazis and cultural conservatives (like him) share common ground he sees no chance that they can form an alliance. “It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy.”

He sees himself as part of “a relatively cynical/cruel/goal oriented armed resistance group” that nevertheless has “foundational principles” that would appeal to the majority of Europeans.

There are plenty of views expressed here that most people will find offensive, and though the fears that Breivik shares with other anti-Jihadists might be irrational or overblown, there is little evidence he is mad.

Q: Is it possible that cultural conservatives and National Socialists will
cooperate in the future?

A: It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the
Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy. Their Jew obsession and support to Islamic regimes
will severely hinder any direct cooperation. They are blinded by their Jew hate to a
degree where they fail to see the imminent threat to Europe represented by Islam.
The following poll was taken from eNationalist, a rather hardcore NS site:

eNat Poll[4]: Can the Arab world and part of the Islamic world be our allies?
Yes: 44%
No: 52%

This poll indirectly illustrate that the hardcore NS community reject the concept of
European Christian solidarity and thus rejecting the support to our Eastern Christian
cousins (Greek, Maronite, Assyrian, Copt) with the long term goal of creating future
Christian (Islamic free) zones. It also shows that they are generally supportive of
alliances with Islamic countries.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that many in the NS movements rejected Christendom
completely and instead support Odinism. It is however understandable that they view
modern humanist Christendom as weak and therefore unworthy of support (a view which
I partly agree with). However, the solution is not to reject Christianity but rather to
reform Christianity to re-introduce the concepts of “self-defence” as propagated by
former Crusader Popes. Also, we shouldn’t forget that Nazi Germany allied itself with the
Ottoman Caliphate/Turkey on two occasions and supported the Christian Armenian
genocides.

Many NS support the Islamic conspiracy theory that Jews organised the 9/11 attacks and
both reject that the Holocaust took place. In light of these opposing views it’s hard to
imagine that the “new Western European right” will be willing to trust National Socialists.

One of the reasons why hardcore anti-Semites (David Duke would be a case in point) are
unreliable allies is that they hate Jews so much that it shuts down the rational parts of their brain and they end up making common cause with Muslims, based on mutual hatred.
Fjordman

However, we have certain things in common that shouldn’t be underestimated.
We share the same anti -EU, -UN and –immigration/multiculturalism (Muslim immigration
at least) sentiments and the goal of “preserving European traditions, culture etc” which is
the primary reason why more and more ex-NS people are conforming and joining the
new “European right”.

As a message to those hardcore NS’s who are simply unable to compromise; Conform
and join our armed struggle against the European cultural Marxists/multiculturalists (the
enablers of the Islamisation of Europe), or continue to be sidelined and marginalised.
Multiculturalism is the hole in the dike. Islam is the water pouring in. Everything else
should be irrelevant. Your “Jew” obsession is undermining your own struggle against
multiculturalism.

The cultural conservatives of Western Europe will seize power by 2080, if you want to be
a part of this you will have no choice but to compromise. I would imagine that a
continued Judeo Christian Europe would be considerably better than a European
Caliphate even for the most hardcore NS.

Q: Some “Ghandist/pacifist” members of the conservative resistance will claim
that violence will not solve anything and will instead only give our enemies
more rhetorical ammunition and make it easier for them to gain the moral
ground. They will finally be able to say; “terrorism has no religion”. “By using
terror you are undermining your own struggle and hurting the nationalist
cause”.

How would you react to statements like this?

A: Well, first of all, I would tell him he obviously didn’t have a clue what he was talking
about. Pacifist approaches have been tried in the past; in Lebanon where the Christians
waited until the Muslims made up 60% of the population. The Copts in Egypt have been
relatively pacifist and look what it got them… They are almost extinct due to their
pacifist stance. The same can be said about the Christian Assyrians and Armenians. They
waited and waited, like loyal little dhimmis and “hoped” for a better future, until the day
the Muslims decided to massacre them. Ghandi pacifism worked against the Brits in India
because Christian Europeans aren’t primitive barbarians… However, pacifism doesn’t
work at all against an Islamic entity. As soon as they become a form a majority (and this
will happen unless we can start the deportation campaigns in time) they will strike and
eventually massacre us as history has shown again and again.

A great majority of the European conservatives have chosen dialogue and pacifism since
1955 until today. And what exactly has it gotten us…? During the last 55 years of pacifist
dialogue, the multiculturalists have been allowed to open the gates and flooded our
ancestral lands with 30 million Muslims and they even continue to do so today. Should
we perhaps try dialogue for another 40 years and see what that brings us…? Only a
suicidal individual would accept this. Not acting would be the biggest of all crimes.
The time for dialogue is over for an increasing number of Western Europeans. The
European civil war will progress the coming decades and our traitor enemies will
eventually be defeated and executed.

Your personal life and convictions
Q: How did you first get involved in your current activities?

A: Well, I gained awareness of certain issues at that time. My best friend for many years,
a Muslim, had lived his whole life in Oslo West with limited contact with the Norwegian-
Pakistani community. Yet, he and more or less 100% of youngsters like him still failed in
many ways to be integrated. He attended Urdu classes at school from early childhood. He
went to the mosque occasionally after he was 12. Like most Norwegian-Pakistanis he felt
really torn between the Norwegian community and the Pakistani community. However, I
was wrong when assuming that he would chose to follow my path and the Norwegian
way. I understood early that he resented Norwegians and the Norwegian society. Not
because he was jealous, after all he could have conformed if he wanted to. He resented it
because it represented the exact opposite of Islamic ways. Shortly after we broke of
contact he left Jon Trygve and Richard and started hanging out with his cousin and other
Pakistanis. Since then he has been a part of the Pakistani community in Oslo and has, as
far as I know, minimal contact with the Norwegian community. Since then he and his
Muslim friends have beaten and harassed several ethnic Norwegians, one of them being
my friend, Kristoffer.

According to Kristoffer, Arsalan and a bunch of Pakistanis tried to rob him (See: Jizya).
When he refused to pay them, they beat him badly. Luckily, there were witnesses around
and this incident in addition to Arsalans other acts of violence against ethnic Norwegians
resulted in him being incarcerated for 6 months. Another incident, which was confirmed
from reliable sources, happened on New Year’s Eve in Frognerparken, Oslo. Arsalan and
his Pakistani friends allegedly gang raped an ethnic Norwegian girl. I believe this was in
95 or 96. As far as I know, they were never charged with this crime due to the lack of
witnesses.

Muslim girls were off limits to everyone, even the Muslim boys. The only available
“commodity” at this point was therefore ethnic Norwegian girls, referred to as “whores”.
Due to the tolerance indoctrinated through Norwegian upbringing – girls aren’t brought
up to be sceptics, racists or anti-immigrant, just like most boys. They are all brought up
to be very tolerant. As a result, many ethnic Norwegian girls, especially in Muslim
dominated areas, despise ethnic Norwegian boys because they consider them as weak
and inferior with lack of pride, seeing as they are systematically “subdued” by the
“superior Muslim boys”. Ironically, Muslim boys are raised to view Norwegian girls as
inferior “whores”. Their only purpose is to bring pleasure until the Muslim guys are
around 20-25 when they will find a pure, “superior” Muslim girl, a virgin. At this point,
the ethnic Norwegian “whores” is discarded, and most of the girls go back to their old
“tribe”. They are welcomed back in the name of tolerance.

More or less all Muslim parents will tell their sons the following: “You can have fun with
the Norwegian whores, as long as you marry a Muslim”. If, against all odds, a Muslim guy
wants to marry one of these “whores”, she has to convert to Islam – no exception. The
Muslim girls however are guarded by their male family members like they were made of
pure gold. If a Muslim girl, against all odds, engages in a relationship with an ethnic
Norwegian guy, then the Muslim males from her family or “tribe” will kill her or forcefully
take her to their country of origin to be “educated” for a few years. They will attempt to
lure her on a vacation to Pakistan, Morocco, Somalia etc. and possibly kill her there, if
she still refuses to conform. An alternative strategy is to forcefully marry her off to a local
Muslim guy and keep her in their country of origin until she is sufficiently “tied down”
through impregnating her and systematical indoctrination. When she is “tied down” with
2 or more children there isn’t much she can do. Also, it’s not very risky to kill Muslim girls
in Muslim countries as most government officials are corrupt and “very understanding”,
especially in cases where a family wants to “restore their pride”. This is the main reason
why Muslim girls are occasionally sent back to their country of origin, in order to prevent
them from becoming too “European”. They are often sent back to Europe, after several
years of abduction and indoctrination when they are sufficiently subdued and under
control of the Muslim society. It’s not very tempting for Muslim girls to file a divorce and
risk getting frozen out of the Muslim community or risk getting killed when they have 2-4
children.

I also remember from my earlier childhood, two Pakistani and one Turkish girl from
Smestad school, the primary school I attended; Baligha, Modazzer and Eilif. Baligha was
Faizals, my friend’s, sister, I didn’t know Modazzer although she was my neighbour, but I
used to play with Eilif, Onors sister. At that time there were three Pakistani families in
that area and one Turkish, all except the latter lived in publicly subsidised apartments, in
accordance with the government’s integration program. I remember the day when
Modazzers chair was empty. We didn’t get an answer from our teacher regarding her
whereabouts. She was supposed to have returned from her summer vacation in Pakistan.
The next year Eilif was sent to Turkey. I heard her father thought she had become “too
Norwegian”. A few years later, the exact same thing happened with Baligha. One day she
didn’t show up for school after her vacation in Pakistan. I was only 10 years old at that
time and didn’t really know what was going on. In retrospect I know that they were sent
back to their country of origin, and no one as far as I know has heard from them again.
They were most likely either married away at young age or killed. I know exactly where
those families live(d) and I know for a fact that they vanished and didn’t return for
several years. At this point I knew nothing about Islam. I only learned at school that
Islam was peaceful and tolerant, very similar to Christianity. I was therefore unable to
make the correct conclusions and identify that both Baligha and Modazzer had in fact
been abducted.

Anyway, back to the topic. When I was around 16-17 years old I joined the Progress
Party Youth organisation (FpU) as they were anti-immigration and pro-free-market. Every
single journalist in the country regarded them as racist because of their anti-immigration
program. FrP were under constant attacks from every single media organisation, NGO’s
and all the other political parties. They were called racists and Nazis and were generally
labelled as “fascist pigs”. FrP appealed to me because I had experienced the hypocrisy in
society first hand and I knew already then that they were the only party who opposed
multiculturalism.

It became obvious to me early on that the hypocrisy in society was so prevalent and
overwhelming. I now started to see the connection between Islam, Western media, the
extreme left and the government. I started studying Islamism, Socialism, egalitarianism
and other directions of Political Science and became more aware of what was going on. I
then, for the first time, understood why I hadn’t learned anything of relevance about
Islam at school, and the motives for suppressing the truth on these issues – political
correctness.

Around year 2000 I realised that the democratic struggle against the Islamisation of
Europe, European multiculturalism was lost. It had gone too far. It is simply not possible
to compete democratically with regimes who import millions of voters. 40 years of
dialogue with the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists had ended up as a disaster. It would
now only take 50-70 years before we, the Europeans are in a minority. As soon as I
realised this I decided to explore alternative forms of opposition. Protesting is saying that
you disagree. Resistance is saying you will put a stop to this. I decided I wanted to join
the resistance movement.

However, the main problem then was that there weren’t any alternatives for me at all.
There weren’t any known armed cultural conservative, or Christian, anti-Jihad
movements.

An NS or racist/anti Jewish movement was completely out of the question, as they
represented much of what I oppose. I came in contact with Serbian cultural conservatives
through the internet. This initial contact would eventually result in my contact with
several key individuals all over Europe and the forming of the group who would later
establish the military order and tribunal, PCCTS, Knights Templar. I remember they did a
complete screening and background check to ensure I was of the desired calibre. Two of
them had reservations against inviting me due to my young age but the leader of the
group insisted on my candidature. According to one of them, they were considering
several hundred individuals throughout Europe for a training course. I met with them for
the first time in London and later on two occasions in Balticum. I had the privilege of
meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader
and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged
crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia
once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

I was the youngest one there, 23 years old at the time. One of the key founders
instructed the rest of the group about several topics related to the goal of the
organisation. I believe I scribbled down more than 50 full pages of notes regarding all
possible related topics. Much of these notes are forwarded in the book 2083. It was
basically a detailed long term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe. I did not
fully comprehend at the time how privileged I was to be in the company of some of the
most brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe. Some of us were unfamiliar with
each other beforehand so I guess we all took a high risk meeting face to face. There were
only 5 people in London re-founding the order and tribunal (1 by proxy) but there were
around 25-30 attending in Balticum during the two sessions, individuals from all over
Europe; Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Balticum, Benelux, Spain, Italy,
Greece, Hungary, Austria, Armenia, Lebanon and Russia. Electronic or telephonic
communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our
last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of
contact with other cells was strictly prohibited.

This was not sessions were regular combat cells were created. It was more like a training
course for pioneer cell commanders. We were not instructed to attack specific targets,
quite the opposite. We were encouraged to rather use the information distributed to
contribute to build and expand the so called ”cultural conservative anti-Jihad movement,
either through spreading propaganda, provide funding for the creation of new groups
through various forums or by recruiting other people directly. All individuals attending the sessions learned about PCCTS, the Knights Templar but they were not specifically
instructed to represent that particular order and tribunal. Everyone was encouraged but
at the end, it was their own decision how they decided to manifest their resistance. A
special emphasis was put on the long term nature of the struggle (50-100 years). Our
task was to contribute to a long term approach and not to act prematurely. If there was a
large scale attack the next 10 years it was said, we should avoid any immediate follow up
attacks as it would negate the shock effect of the subsequent attacks. A large successful
attack every 5-12 years was optimal depending on available forces.

This was not a stereotypical “right wing” meeting full of underprivileged racist skinheads
with a short temper, but quite the opposite. Most of them were successful entrepreneurs,
business or political leaders, some with families, most of them Christian conservatives
but also some agnostics and even atheists. I remember it struck me how impressed I
was regarding how they had set up the screening parameters (for accepting new
candidates). They obviously wanted resourceful pragmatical individuals who were able to
keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by
their governments. Every one of them was supportive of a Judeo Christian Europe and
did not have any reservations against cooperating with non-European Christians Hindu or
Buddhist nationalists. I had or have a relatively close relationship with at least one of
them, an Englishman, who became my mentor. He was the one who first described the
“perfect knight” and had written the initial fundament for this compendium. I was asked,
not only once but twice, by my mentor; let’s call him Richard, to write a second edition of
his compendium about the new European Knighthood. As such, I spent several years to
create an economic platform which would allow me to study and write a second edition.
And as of now, I have spent more than three years completing this second edition.
Perhaps, someone out there will be able to contribute by creating a third edition one day.

Q: What tipped the scales for you? What single event made you decide you
wanted to continue planning and moving on with the assault?

A: For me, personally, it was my government’s involvement in the attacks on Serbia
(NATO bombings in 1999) several years back. It was completely unacceptable how the
US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to
drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania. When the Albanians
refused, they really didn’t have any choice but to use military force. By disallowing the
Serbians the right for self-determination over their sovereign territory they indirectly dug
a grave for Europe. A future where several Mini-Pakistan’s would eventually will be
created in every Western European capital. This is unacceptable, completely
unacceptable.

There have been several issues that have reaffirmed my beliefs since then. Among them;
my governments cowardly handling of the Muhammad Cartoon issue and their decision to
award the Nobel peace prize to an Islamic terrorist (Arafat) and appeasers of Islam.
There have been tens of other issues. My government and our media capitulated to Islam
several years ago, after the Rushdie event. Since then, it has gone downhill. Thousands
of Muslims pouring in annually through our Asylum institution, or by family reunification.
The situation is just chaotic. These suicidal traitors must be stopped. Continue reading

Facebooktwittermail

Norway killer had extensive links to English Defence League

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Anders Behring Breivik had extensive links to the far-Right English Defence League, senior members of the group have admitted.

Breivik was understood to have met leaders of the EDL in March last year when he came to London for the visit of Geert Wilders, the Dutch Right-wing politician. Daryl Hobson, who organises EDL demonstrations, said Breivik, who told police there were “two more cells” ready to follow him, had met members of the group.

Another senior member of the EDL said Breivik had been in regular contact with its members via Facebook, and had a “hypnotic” effect on them.

Scotland Yard was investigating Breivik’s claims that he began his deadly “crusade” after being recruited to a secret society in London, and that he was guided by an English “mentor”. David Cameron, who was being kept updated on developments, said Breivik’s claims were being taken “extremely seriously”.

Breivik wrote of having strong links with the EDL, saying he had met its leaders and had 600 EDL members as Facebook friends.

Mr Hobson said in an online posting that: “He had about 150 EDL on his list … bar one or two doubt the rest of us ever met him, altho [sic] he did come over for one of our demo [sic] in 2010 … but what he did was wrong. RIP to all who died as a result of his actions.”

Another senior member of the EDL, who spoke to The Daily Telegraph on condition of anonymity, said he understood Breivik had met EDL leaders when he came to Britain to hear Wilders speak in London last year.

“I spoke to him a few times on Facebook and he is extremely intelligent and articulate and very affable,” said the source. “He is someone who can project himself very well and I presume there would be those within the EDL who would be quite taken by that. It’s like Hitler, people said he was hypnotic. This guy had the same sort of effect.”

Facebooktwittermail

Glenn Beck compares Norway victims to Hitler Youth

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Glenn Beck, who in June aired his final cable tv show on Fox News, is still on the radio and has found a new way to get his name into the headlines around the globe.

Instead of calling the president of the United States a racist, Beck focused on the scores of young people gunned down at a camp in Norway. Beck said the camp reminded him of Adolf Hitler’s infamous Hitler Youth.

“There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing,” Beck stated in the first minute of his syndicated radio show Monday.

Torbjørn Eriksen, the former press secretary to Norway’s prime minister, was not amused.

“Young political activists have gathered at Utoya for over 60 years to learn about and be part of democracy, the very opposite of what the Hitler Youth was about,” Eriksen told The Daily Telegraph. “Glenn Beck’s comments are ignorant, incorrect and extremely hurtful,” he added.

Facebooktwittermail

Anders Behring Breivik: Tunnel vision in an online world

Thomas Hylland Eriksen writes:

Anders Behring Breivik’s world view seems to have been shaped by online fantasy games and the anti-Islamist blogosphere – a recipe for national fragmentation.

There is a reason why the Norwegian police have not been overly concerned with rightwing extremism in recent years. It is plainly not very visible. An estimated 40 Norwegians currently belong to self-proclaimed extreme rightwing groups.

However, anyone familiar with the darker waters of the blogosphere would for years have been aware of the existence of a vibrant cyberscene characterised by unmitigated hatred of the new Europe, aggressive denunciations of the “corrupted, multiculturalist power elites” and pejorative generalisations about immigrants, targeting Muslims in particular.

Contributors to these websites, blogs and chat groups cannot merely be labelled “rightwing”. One member of the Norwegian “Forum Against Islamisation” was also a member of the Socialist Left party. Others see themselves as the true heirs of social democratic values, or as the last carriers of the torch of the Enlightenment. Many talk about gender equality, some about social injustices and class. Others hold more conventional rightwing views, ranging from downright racism to paranoid conspiracy theories about Muslims plotting to take political control of western Europe. Some are online daily; others drop in once a month. They constitute loose networks and cannot easily be counted.

What the denizens of this blogosphere have in common is, first and foremost, a resentment of the defenders of diversity. These “elite” are often described as “traitors”, “sellouts” or just “naive multiculturalists”. They also share the conviction that Islam is incompatible with the democratic values of the west. This view is problematic in a country where the Muslim population is over 150,000 and growing. Nobody knows how widespread such views are, but they can no longer be written off as harmless.

The fact that Breivik was Made in Norway, a homegrown terrorist with a hairdo and an appearance suggesting the west end of Oslo, and not a bearded foreign import, should lead not only to a closer examination of these networks, but also to a calm, but critical reflection over the Norwegian self-identity itself. It would come as a relief to many if the leadership of the country were to state unequivocally that religion and skin colour were irrelevant to membership in the Norwegian nation. King Haakon VII, who reigned from 1905 to 1957, famously said that he was “the king of the communists, too”. King Harald V could hardly do better, in the current situation, than pointing out that he is “the king of Norwegian Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and Hindus, too”. Perhaps it goes without saying, yet a statement of this kind would cleanse the air in a situation where extreme xenophobia and religious prejudice have been the source of inspiration for unspeakably atrocious acts.

Every country needs some degree of cohesion. Just how much is a legitimate matter of dispute. Some believe that cultural pluralism is a recipe for fragmentation and the loss of trust. This may be the case, but not necessarily. So long as common institutions function impartially – education, housing, work etc – a society can live well with considerable diversity. However, the moment we cease to speak to each other, something serious is under way. This is exactly what happened with Breivik and many of his co-believers: they developed a parallel reality on the internet.

Facebooktwittermail

Some Israelis think Norway got what it deserved

At The Forward, J J Goldberg reports:

The Norway massacre has touched off a nasty war of words on the Israeli Internet over the meaning of the event and its implications for Israel. And I do mean nasty: Judging by the comments sections on the main Hebrew websites, the main questions under debate seem to be whether Norwegians deserve any sympathy from Israelis given the country’s pro-Palestinian policies, whether the killer deserves any sympathy given his self-declared intention of fighting Islamic extremism and, perhaps ironically, whether calling attention to this debate is in itself an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act.

The debate seems to be taking place almost entirely on Hebrew websites. There’s a bit of bile popping up on the English-language Jerusalem Post site as well (for example, there are a handful of choice comments of a now-they’ll-know-what-it-feels-like variety following this Post news article reporting on Israel’s official offer of sympathy and aid). In Hebrew, though, no holds are barred. I’ve translated some of the back-and-forth from the Ynet and Maariv websites below, to give you taste.

The debate exploded above ground on Saturday in an opinion essay at Ynet (in Hebrew only) by Ziv Lenchner, a left-leaning Tel Aviv artist and one of Ynet’s large, bipartisan stable of columnists. It’s called “Dancing the Hora on Norwegian Blood.” He argues that the comment sections on news websites are a fair barometer of public sentiment (a questionable premise) and that the overwhelming response is schadenfreude, pleasure at Norway’s pain. As I’ll show below, that judgment seems pretty accurate.

He goes on to blame the Netanyahu government, which he accuses of whipping up a constant mood of “the whole world is against us.” Again, a stretch—a government can exacerbate a mood, but it can’t create it out of whole cloth. Israelis have been scared and angry since long before this government came in two and a half years ago, for a whole variety of reasons. The government isn’t working overtime to dispel the mood, but it can’t be blamed for creating it. Finally, Lenchner argues, on very solid ground, that the vindictive mood reflected on the Web is immoral and un-Jewish, citing the biblical injunction “do not rejoice in the fall of your enemy.”

His article has drawn hundreds of responses—more than any of the articles he complains about. They fall into four basic categories in roughly equal proportions: 1.) Hurray, the Norwegians had it coming; 2.) What happened is horrible but maybe now they’ll understand what we’re up against; 3.) What happened is horrible and the celebrations here are appalling; 4.) This article is a bunch of lies, Ziv Lenchner invented this whole schadenfreude thing because he’s a lying leftist who wants to destroy Israel.
[…]
When the news came out on Saturday that the killer was not a Muslim but a right-wing Norwegian nationalist angered at multiculturalism, liberalism and tolerance of Islam, the tone sharpened. Suddenly there was a rush of comments claiming the killer was right and the victims had it coming.

Facebooktwittermail

Did Anders Behring Breivik act alone? — Updated

(Update below.)

In his manifesto, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, Anders Behring Breivik — who will soon go on trial for murdering at least 93 fellow Norwegians — writes:

Solo-cell systems in combination with martyrdom is the most efficient and deadly form of modern warfare. This strategy was adapted by Jihadist groups. And now we will be using it as well. It is even more valuable to us as we enjoy more “invisibility” than individuals who have Arabic/Asian appearance and customs.

This compendium of his writings, whose promotion was his central objective, describes in great detail the lonely pursuit of his “assault operation.” But though what he did would seem to epitomize the “solo-cell” action he promotes, there are several indications that indirectly and perhaps directly other individuals were involved in the July 22 attacks.

Breivik writes that in 2002 he attended of a self-described Knights Templar group in London. At the age of 23, he was the youngest member there.

He writes: “I joined the session after visiting one of the initial facilitators, a Serbian Crusader Commander and war hero, in Monrovia, Liberia,” indicating that Breivik did not initiate the formation of this group. “Certain long term tasks are delegated and I am one of two who are asked to create a compendium based on the information I have acquired from the other founders during our sessions.”

The group is hosted by an English Protestant, joined by an English Christian atheist, a French Catholic, a German Christian atheist, a Dutch Christian agnostic, a Greek Orthodox, a Russian Christian atheist, a Norwegian Protestant (presumably Breivik himself), a Serbian Orthodox (“by proxy, location: Monrovia, Liberia”), while unable to attend were individuals from Sweden, Belgium and a “European-American.” Breivik does not reveal anyone’s name.

In a self-interview, Breivik recounts how he was recruited to the Knights Templar:

I came in contact with Serbian cultural conservatives through the internet. This initial contact would eventually result in my contact with several key individuals all over Europe and the forming of the group who would later establish the military order and tribunal, PCCTS, Knights Templar. I remember they did a complete screening and background check to ensure I was of the desired calibre. Two of them had reservations against inviting me due to my young age but the leader of the group insisted on my candidature. According to one of them, they were considering several hundred individuals throughout Europe for a training course. I met with them for the first time in London and later on two occasions in Balticum [the Baltics]. I had the privilege of meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

I was the youngest one there, 23 years old at the time. One of the key founders instructed the rest of the group about several topics related to the goal of the organisation. I believe I scribbled down more than 50 full pages of notes regarding all possible related topics. Much of these notes are forwarded in the book 2083. It was basically a detailed long term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe. I did not fully comprehend at the time how privileged I was to be in the company of some of the most brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe. Some of us were unfamiliar with each other beforehand so I guess we all took a high risk meeting face to face. There were only 5 people in London re-founding the order and tribunal (1 by proxy) but there were around 25-30 attending in Balticum during the two sessions, individuals from all over Europe; Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Balticum, Benelux, Spain, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Armenia, Lebanon and Russia. Electronic or telephonic communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of contact with other cells was strictly prohibited.

This was not sessions w[h]ere regular combat cells were created. It was more like a training course for pioneer cell commanders. We were not instructed to attack specific targets, quite the opposite. We were encouraged to rather use the information distributed to contribute to build and expand the so called “cultural conservative anti-Jihad movement, either through spreading propaganda, provide funding for the creation of new groups through various forums or by recruiting other people directly. All individuals attending the sessions learned about PCCTS [Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici (Latin) or Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon], the Knights Templar but they were not specifically instructed to represent that particular order and tribunal. Everyone was encouraged but at the end, it was their own decision how they decided to manifest their resistance. A special emphasis was put on the long term nature of the struggle (50-100 years). Our task was to contribute to a long term approach and not to act prematurely. If there was a large scale attack the next 10 years it was said, we should avoid any immediate follow up attacks as it would negate the shock effect of the subsequent attacks. A large successful attack every 5-12 years was optimal depending on available forces.

This was not a stereotypical “right wing” meeting full of underprivileged racist skinheads with a short temper, but quite the opposite. Most of them were successful entrepreneurs, business or political leaders, some with families, most of them Christian conservatives but also some agnostics and even atheists. I remember it struck me how impressed I was regarding how they had set up the screening parameters (for accepting new candidates). They obviously wanted resourceful pragmatical individuals who were able to keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by their governments. Every one of them was supportive of a Judeo Christian Europe and did not have any reservations against cooperating with non-European Christians Hindu or Buddhist nationalists. I had or have a relatively close relationship with at least one of them, an Englishman, who became my mentor. He was the one who first described the “perfect knight” and had written the initial fundament for this compendium. I was asked, not only once but twice, by my mentor; let’s call him Richard, to write a second edition of his compendium about the new European Knighthood. As such, I spent several years to create an economic platform which would allow me to study and write a second edition. And as of now, I have spent more than three years completing this second edition. Perhaps, someone out there will be able to contribute by creating a third edition one day. [Emphasis mine.]

In the final part of his compendium, where Breivik describes the process of collecting materials and constructing the bombs he exploded in Oslo on July 22, there is one sentence which might indicate that other individuals were directly involved:

Will attempt to initiate contact with cell 8b and 8c in late March. [p.1437]

Perhaps significantly, he writes nothing about the process of selecting and gathering intelligence on his targets. Is that because he didn’t want to commit such information to writing or because this part of his operation was handled by others?

Update: BBC News reports:

Norwegian police are investigating claims by Anders Behring Breivik, who has admitted carrying out Friday’s twin attacks in Norway, that he has “two more cells” working with him.

Mr Breivik made the claim as he attended his first court hearing following the bombing in Oslo and a massacre on an island youth camp that killed at least 93 people in total.

Mr Breivik said his attacks were a “shock signal” to Norway’s people.

He was detained for eight weeks.

Oslo police asked for Mr Breivik to be held in full isolation for the first four weeks.

Judge Kim Heger agreed, saying Mr Breivik could receive no letters, nor have visitors except for his lawyer.

Judge Heger said police must be able to proceed with the investigation into Mr Breivik’s claims without the accused being able to interfere.

Facebooktwittermail

Norway killings put U.S. extremists in spotlight

The New York Times reports:

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

In the document he posted online hours before the attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, the sole suspect in the bombings and shootings that left at least 93 people dead, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

His manifesto quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch website, 64 times, and cited other American and European writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.

More broadly, the mass killings in Norway, with their echo of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by an anti-government militant, have focused new attention on the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists and renewed a debate over the focus of Congress and the executive branch on counterterrorism.

Critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously downplaying the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives, repeated Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.

The revelations about Breivik’s U.S. influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.

Spencer wrote on his website, jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.

The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday “due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.”

Its operator, who describes himself as a Virginia consultant and uses the pseudonym “Baron Bodissey,” wrote on the site Sunday that “at no time has any part of the Counterjihad advocated violence.”

The name of that website — a reference to the siege of Vienna in 1683 by Muslim fighters who, the blog says in its headnote, “seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe” — was echoed in the title Breivik chose for his manifesto: “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” He chose that year, the 400th anniversary of the siege, as the target for the triumph of Christian forces in the European civil war he called for to drive out Islamic influence.

Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer and consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which al-Qaida emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

Sageman, who is also a forensic psychiatrist, said he saw no overt signs of mental illness in Breivik’s writings. He said Breivik bears some resemblance to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who also spent years on a manifesto and carried out his mail bombings in part to gain attention for his theories. One obvious difference, Sageman said, was that Kaczynski was a loner who spent years in a rustic Montana cabin, while Breivik appears to have been quite social.

Breivik’s declaration did not name Kaczynski or acknowledge the numerous passages copied from the Unabomber’s 1995 manifesto, in which the Norwegian substituted “multiculturalists” or “cultural Marxists” for Kaczynski’s “leftists” and made other small wording changes.

By contrast, he quoted the American and European counterjihad writers by name, notably Spencer, author of 10 books, including “Islam Unveiled” and “The Truth About Muhammad.” (Spencer could not be reached for comment Sunday.)

Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among websites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other anti-jihad writers bore any responsibility for Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”

“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.

Breivik also quoted European blogs and writers with similar themes, notably a Norwegian blogger who writes under the name “Fjordman.” Immigration from Muslim countries to Scandinavia and the rest of Europe has set off a deep political debate across the continent and strengthened a number of right-wing anti-immigrant parties.

In the United States, the shootings resonated with years of debate in the United States over the proper focus of counterterrorism.

Despite the Norway killings, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., 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.

Daryl Johnson, the Department of Homeland Security analyst who was the primary author of the report, said in an interview that after he left the department in 2010, the number of analysts assigned to non-Islamic militancy of all kinds was reduced to two from six. Johnson, who now runs a private research firm on the domestic terrorist threat, DTAnalytics, said about 30 analysts worked on Islamic radicalism when he was there.

The killings in Norway “could easily happen here,” he said. The Hutaree, an extremist Christian militia in Michigan accused last year of plotting to kill police officers and planting bombs at their funerals, had an arsenal of weapons larger than all the Muslim plotters charged in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks combined, he said.

Homeland Security officials disputed Johnson’s claim about staffing, saying they pay close attention to all threats, regardless of ideology. And far from ignoring the Hutaree threat, the FBI infiltrated the group and made arrests before any attack could take place.

John D. Cohen, principal deputy counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security, said Napolitano, who visited Oklahoma City last year for the 15th anniversary of the bombing there, had often spoken of the need to assess the risk of violence without regard to politics or religion.

“What happened in Norway,” Cohen said, “is a dramatic reminder that in trying to prevent attacks, we cannot focus on a single ideology.”

Facebooktwittermail

From Pamela Geller to Anders Behring Breivik — how Islamophobia turned deadly in Norway

When terrorism has a white face it invariably gets marginalized in the popular narrative. The lone wolf, the outsider, the sociopath — in many cases these portraits of misanthropic, isolated individuals who turn to violence are quite accurate.

The Oslo killings, however, should be seen in a different light since there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the perpetrator of this atrocity, even if it turns out he was acting alone, was very much part of a political movement — a movement whose leading ideologues regularly appear on Fox News and have high public profiles.

Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian man widely assumed to be responsible for the mass murder that took place in Oslo yesterday, is being referred to as a Christian fundamentalist in many press reports.

His comments appearing on the political website Document.no suggest however that this is a rather misleading description. His views, as revealed there, are ideological rather than religious with his preeminent focus being his opposition to multiculturalism. (Quotations of Breivik appearing below come from a translation provided by Doug Saunders.)

In the United States, one of the most prominent public faces of the movement to which Breivik belongs is that of the notorious right-wing, pro-Israel, Islamophobic blogger, Pamela Geller, whose principal mouthpiece is Atlas Shrugs.

The poster below shows a recent event which she backed, along with Robert Spencer who operates Jihad Watch.

The World War Two iconography they employ — battleships, tanks and squadrons of bombers — makes it clear that they regard their campaign against “Islamization” as a kind of war. One of the battles in that war played out in Oslo yesterday.

Breivik, who probably sees himself as one of SIOE’s “freedom fighters,” describes himself as a cultural conservative and anti-Marxist liberal. In his comments at Document.no, he says little about his religious beliefs and seems to see his Christian identity primarily as a cultural identity. He writes:

I myself am a Protestant and baptized / confirmed to me by my own free will when I was 15

But today’s Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like the minimalist shopping centers. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic. In the meantime, I vote for the most conservative candidates in church elections.

The only thing that can save the Protestant church is to go back to basics.

Breivik is much more specific in identifying the sources from whom he takes his own ideological direction: Robert Spencer, Fjordman, Atlas [Pamela Geller], Analekta [Informatics], Gates of Vienna, The Brussels Journal, and The Religion of Peace.

These are the preeminent voices promoting fear and hatred of Islam across Europe and America. But they also form — at least in Breivik’s mind — the “epicenter” of “political analysis” on the threat posed to cultural conservatives by multiculturalism in Europe and America. He recommends Fjordman’s book, “Defeating Eurabia,” as “the perfect Christmas gift for family and friends.”

Do any of the leaders of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE) advocate that their “freedom fighters” should adopt violent tactics such as those employed by Breivik? Perhaps not. Indeed, I have little doubt that in the coming days we will hear many vociferous disavowals of their having any association with the Norwegian. But have no doubt, while they might have a sincere revulsion for Breivik’s actions, they cannot so easily disassociate themselves from the ideas that drove him to murder almost a hundred innocent people.

Two years ago, Breivik called on fellow Norwegians to form a youth action group “that represents our ideological platform (anti-racist but critical of multiculturalism / Islamization etc).” He saw the group developing as part of Stop Islamization of Europe or as a new group that would model itself on SIOE and the English Defense League.

“For me it is very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists differ[ently]. They are all supporters of hate-ideologies,” Breivik writes. There is a whiff of the Bush doctrine here — that we should not differentiate between terrorists and those who harbor them. There’s also a hint of Bin Laden’s idea of the near enemy and the far enemy.

Breivik argues that cultural conservatives should not identify their main opponents as Jihadists, but instead should focus their attention on those he regards as the “facilitators” of Jihadists, namely, the proponents of multiculturalism. Hence his vehement opposition to Norway’s Labour Party and its leader, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

Those in the anti-Islam movement who now want to distance themselves from Breivik will proclaim that they are opponents of hatred and maybe that’s true — but that’s how he sees himself too: as a man dedicating his life to combating the “hate ideologies.”

As the last decade has demonstrated, whether it’s on the level of governments or individuals, those who take up a banner in the name of a crusade against hatred have a surprising willingness to employ violence in pursuit of that goal.

Facebooktwittermail

The ‘For Neville’ email: two words that could bring down an empire

The Guardian reports:

Many angry victims of the News of the World’s journalism used to try their hand at suing, and the paper’s battle-hardened lawyers were good at seeing them off. Still they regularly paid out £1.2m a year on a variety of libel claims.

But in May 2008, Tom Crone, the paper’s veteran head of legal, got a nasty shock. His opponents in one lawsuit against the paper suddenly appeared to have got hold of a smoking gun.

It was a piece of evidence that seemed to guarantee that the complainant in question, Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association, could virtually write his own cheque in privacy damages and blow a major hole in the tabloid’s budget.

Worse, much worse, was the fact that this single document, later christened the “For Neville” email, was capable of wrecking all the previous NoW efforts to cover up its hacking scandal. In the end, this piece of evidence would not only cost Crone his own job, but also help destroy the entire newspaper for which he worked, the flagship of Rupert Murdoch’s British fleet.

News of the “For Neville” email originally arrived on Crone’s desk at Wapping, in the form of an “amended particulars of claim” from Taylor’s lawyers, dated 12 May 2008. It used dry legal language, but Crone immediately saw its force.

It detailed the contents of one of the documents seized in the raid on Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World’s private detective who had recently been jailed for phone hacking along with “rogue reporter” Clive Goodman. What it revealed was the way senior staff at the NoW had been involved in systematic hacking – the very thing the paper had been strenuously denying all along, not only to Taylor’s lawyers, but to its readers, parliament and public. The legal pleadings said: “Prior to 29th June 2005, Mr Ross Hindley acquired a transcript of 15 messages from the claimant’s mobile phone voicemail and a transcript of 17 messages left by the claimant on Ms Armstrong’s [a business associate of Taylor] mobile phone voicemail. At all material times, Mr Hindley was a journalist employed by NGN working for the News of the World.”

“By email dated 29th June 2005, Mr Ross Hindley emailed Mr Mulcaire a transcript of the aforesaid 15 messages from the claimant’s mobile phone voicemail and 17 messages left by the claimant on Ms Armstrong’s mobile phone voicemail. The transcript is titled ‘Transcript for Neville’ and the document attached to the email was called ‘Transcript for Neville’. It is inferred from the references to Neville that the transcript was provided to, or was intended to be provided to, Neville Thurlbeck. Mr Thurlbeck was at all material times employed by NGN as the News of the World’s chief reporter.”

Taylor’s lawyers had obtained a copy of the “For Neville” email, with its lists of carefully transcribed hacked private messages, from the police under a court order. It was one of the 11,000 files seized from Mulcaire that were mouldering in bin bags since Scotland Yard had been persuaded to drop their pursuit of a case so potentially embarrassing to their tabloid journalist friends. Crone must have been shocked to realise the incriminating nature of the information the Metropolitan police possessed which could be used in future against his own employers.

Faced with such a crisis, Crone decided he had to consult his new boss, who was to authorise a huge, secret payout which buried the “Neville” dossier. He went to see the abrasive and self-confident younger son of the proprietor, 36-year-old James Murdoch.

Meanwhile, another report says:

Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s former director of communications, is being investigated by police for allegedly committing perjury while working for David Cameron in Downing Street.

The development renews pressure on the prime minister over his judgment in hiring the former News of the World editor and represents the third criminal investigation Coulson faces, adding to allegations that he knew of phone hacking while in charge of the tabloid and authorised bribes to police officers.

Strathclyde detectives confirmed that they had opened a perjury inquiry centred on evidence Coulson gave in court last year that led to a man being jailed.

Facebooktwittermail