Norway Terror Attacks a False Flag

More Than One Shooter on Island; Oslo Police Drilled Bomb Blasts; Was It NATO’s Revenge for Norway’s Decision to Stop Bombing Libya?
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
http://tarpley.net/2011/07/24/norway-terror-attacks-a-false-flag

Washington DC, July 24, 2011 – The tragic terror attacks in Norway display a number of the telltale signs of a false flag provocation. It is reported that, although the world media are attempting to focus on Anders Behring Breivik as a lone assassin in the tradition of Lee Harvey Oswald, many eyewitnesses agree that a second shooter was active in the massacre at the Utøya summer youth camp outside of Oslo. It has also come to light that a special police unit had conducted drills or exercises near the opera house in downtown Oslo which involved the detonation of bombs during 2010– exactly what caused the bloodshed a few hundred meters away this Friday. Further research reveals that United States intelligence agencies had been conducting a large-scale program of recruiting retired Norwegian police officers with the alleged purpose of conducting surveillance inside the country. This program, known as SIMAS Surveillance Detection Units, provided a perfect vehicle for the penetration and subversion of the Norwegian police by NATO.

A motive for the attack is also present: as part of its attempt to mount an independent foreign policy, including the imminent diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a general rapprochement with the Arab world, Norway was leading the smaller NATO states in dropping out of the imperialist aggressor coalition currently bombing Libya. Norway was scheduled to stop all bombing and other sorties against the Gaddafi forces as out of August 1 at the latest.

Finally, the CIA limited hangout operation known as Wikileaks has already furnished a prefabricated off-the-shelf case for incompetence and malfeasance against the current Norwegian government that is doing all these things – in the form of a series of real or doctored dispatches which document the alleged negligence of this government in dealing with the terrorist threat, all in the view of US State Department officials.

VG of Oslo: “Several” Eyewitnesses Say there were Two Shooters on the Island

As noted, world press and media of the Anglo-American school have immediately battened onto Breivik as an archetypal lone assassin cast in the mold of Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and so many others. The problem for the terror mythographs is that , in most of these cases, there is credible to overwhelming evidence that these figures could not have acted alone. Among more recent loan assassins, Breivik could be compared to Major Nidal Hasan of Fort Hood, Texas, whose shooting spree dates back to November 2009. Hasan is accused of having killed seven people. At the time, it was considered remarkable that Hasan had managed to kill so many armed soldiers on the military base. But early reports suggested that there were one or two other shooters in addition to Hasan. As usually happens, these extra shooters were soon expunged from the hegemonic media narrative.1

In the Norwegian case, the evidence that Breivik was not alone in claiming his fearful toll of victims is clear and convincing. Here are some excerpts from a report published by the Oslo newspaper VG:

“Several of the youths who were at the Utøya the shooting drama, told VG that they are convinced that there must have been more than one perpetrator. Marius Helander Røset believes the same thing: – I am sure that there was shooting from two different places on the island at the same time, he said.

Witnesses: – There were two people

Police believe Anders Behring Breivik (32) is the perpetrator who was dressed as a policeman , and have charged him for two terrorist attacks. Young people interviewed by VG describe an additional perpetrator – who was not wearing a police uniform. The person was following them around was 180 centimeters tall, had thick dark hair and a Nordic appearance. He had a pistol in his right hand and a rifle on his back. – I believe that there were two people who were shooting, says Alexander Stavdal (23)….

At the press conference Saturday morning opened the police said that there could have been several perpetrators and emphasized that there is an ongoing investigation.”2

The presence of a second shooter is of course most inconvenient for the lone assassin theory, since it represents incontrovertible evidence of a criminal conspiracy, the very thing which the media coverage is usually anxious to avoid. In the Norwegian case, the reports of a second shooter seemed to be persistent enough 36 hours after the main event so as to hold out some hope that the entire official version can be brought down on this particular.

Police Had Drilled Setting off Bombs in Same Area During 2010

Another telltale critical sign of a false flag operation is the holding of drills or exercises –allegedly for counterterrorism purposes — by the police or the military at the same time as the terror attack, or shortly before the real terror attack begins. Sometimes, the terror drills or exercises are scheduled to begin slightly after the time when the actual terror attack occurs. For large-scale terror actions, which the Norway attacks were, it is not uncommon for the drills to occur well in advance – 9/11, for example, was the result of capabilities which had been built up over a period of several years, as well as of future drills stretching well into 2002. In these cases, it is often discovered that the self-styled anti-terror drill or exercise contains a simulated action or event which strongly resembles the real world terror attack, the one which actually kills people. The media will then refer to an astounding coincidence or a weird happenstance, but the reality is that the terror drill has been taken live or flipped live in the form of real killings. Once the drill has occurred, the capabilities, hardware, etc., which it has created can remain in place to be mobilized at the desired moment. The secret is that the legally sanctioned drill has been used to conduit or bootleg the actual butchery through a government bureaucracy whose resources are required to run the terror but in which there are many officials who cannot be allowed to know what is happening.

The Norway events provide a very clear illustration of this principle. In Oslo, a powerful bomb went off in or near the building which houses the office of the Prime Minister. Exactly as we would expect, special anti-terror police had been drilling setting off bombs in a nearby part of the Norwegian capital in advance, specifically during 2010. The public had not been informed in advance, but found out what was happening when they began hearing bombs in the opera house district, less than a kilometer away from the prime minister’s office which was attacked on Friday. Here is a report from the newspaper Aftenposten:

“Armed police were seen in the area around the opera house in Oslo, and violent explosions could be heard over large parts of the city. No one knew that this was all a matter of practice. The Information Section of the Oslo police deeply regrets that the public was not made aware of the seemingly dramatic exercise….It was the emergency squad, the national police special unit against terrorism, which was conducting a drill in the cordoned off area at Bjørvika pier. According to a press release from the police, nearly a day after the exercise, the drill consisted of training in the controlled detonation of explosive charges….The exercise will continue for the rest of Wednesday night and a few more explosions are expected….The exercise followed a familiar pattern for all anti-terror forces around the world: The men lowered themselves down from the ceiling and into through the window that had just been blown out, while they fired hand their weapons.”3

Peter Power of Visor Consultants told BBC Radio Five in the wake of the London subway bombings of July 7, 2005 that his firm had been conducting an exercise based on explosions going off in substantially the same stations of the London underground at the same times when the real explosions had actually occurred. The Norwegian events exhibit the same kind of strange coincidence.

A Motive: Norway Had Decided to Stop Bombing Libya August 1

The targets of the Norwegian terror attacks are all expressly political, including government offices and a summer youth camp of the ruling Labor Party, and thus point in the direction of politics. The government of Norway is currently a coalition composed of the Labor Party, the Socialist Left Party, and the Center Party. Norway has traditionally attempted to cultivate a pro-Arab foreign policy, as seen in its sponsorship of the Oslo peace accords between Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the mid-1990s. The current government has announced its intention of granting diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state in the near future. When the destabilization of Libya began last February, the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of the Labor Party warned Norway’s partners in the NATO alliance against getting involved.

But soon after this, Norway gave in to US pressure and agreed to participate in NATO’s bombing of Libya for an initial period of three months, sending six planes which have carried out an estimated 10% of all the bombing raids mounted by the Atlantic alliance. However, as the end of its three-month commitment had passed, Norway had reduced its contingent to four planes during the month of July, and had announced on June 10 that it was planning to withdraw altogether from the NATO bombing coalition no later than August 1.

The Norwegian decision to drop out of the NATO attack coalition was associated with a similar move by the Netherlands, which was announced on that same day of June 10. The Dutch had decided to maintain their contingent of six planes, but will no longer take part in bombing attacks on ground targets. Henceforth, the Dutch are willing only to help enforce the no-fly zone through air interdiction. There was therefore the potential that Norway’s example could trigger a general tendency by the smaller NATO states to quit the bombing coalition, in which their collective presence is highly significant.

Leading figures of the Norwegian government were among the first to undercut the supposed rationale for the NATO bombing, while urging negotiations: ‘”The solution to the problems in Libya are political, they cannot be solved by military means alone,” Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg told reporters gathered for a conference in Oslo on May 13. “We are very much supporting all efforts to find a political solution to the challenges we are facing in Libya,” he added. Norway’s government …pledged to scale down its role in NATO-orchestrated air strikes on Libya after its current three-month commitment ends on June 24.4

This was the policy of the entire Norwegian government: ‘Norway will scale down its fighter jet contribution in Libya from six to four planes and withdraw completely from the NATO-led operation by Aug. 1, the government said Friday…. Defense Minister Grete Faremo said she expects understanding from NATO allies because Norway has a small air force and cannot “maintain a large fighter jet contribution during a long time.” Norway’s air force, meanwhile says its F-16 jets have carried out about 10 percent of the NATO airstrikes in Libya since March 31. The parties in Norway’s center-left coalition government had been at odds over whether to extend the country’s participation, which was scheduled to expire June 24. The most leftist faction in the government, the Socialist Left Party, opposed an extension, but a compromise was reached to stay in the operation until Aug. 1 with fewer planes. “It is wise to end the Norwegian fighter jet contribution. Now Norway should apply its efforts to find a peaceful solution in Libya,” Socialist Left Party lawmaker Baard Vegar Solhjell said.’5

State Department Complained of Norway’s “Lack of Commitment” to Libyan Adventure

The Norwegian decision to stop waging war against Libya, the first of its kind by any member of the Atlantic alliance, has attracted the attention of diplomatic observers, one of whom commented that the current government in Oslo has advocated “a distinctly more peaceful approach to global policies by the Norwegian government…. [despite] recent pressure from the US on Norway to contribute more in Libya military campaign. Norway has been resisting that pressure and pushing for a more peaceful approach to the US-led NATO attacks on Libya and refused to provide weapons to NATO, finally announcing last month that Norway would quit its military role in Libya by August 1. In March, as the US was rallying unilateral support to invade Libya, Norway’s minister of foreign affairs Jonas Gahr Støre was one of the few nations to warn the US against armed intervention in Libya. Norway initially supplied six fighter jets for Libya operations and has carried out about 10% of the Libya strikes since 19 March. However, US officials singled out Norway and Denmark for their ‘lack of commitment’ to the mission to oust Gaddafi… Other Norway-Libya links include Norway’s major oil- and fertilizer-related interests in Libya: the Norwegian state-owned Statoil, which has about 30 employees at its Tripoli offices….[Norway’s] businesses have conducted major business operations in Libya, in co-operation with Qaddafi’s regime.”6

At the present stage of the inquiry, the best estimate of a motive for the Norwegian attacks is to punish the country for its independent and pro-Arab foreign policy in general, and for its repudiation of the NATO bombing coalition arrayed against Libya in particular.

Are SIMAS Surveillance Detection Units the New Gladio for Norway?

US and NATO intelligence have been shown to possess extraordinary capabilities inside Norway, many of which may be operating outside of the control of the Norwegian government. In early November 2010, the Oslo television channel TV2 exposed the existence of an extensive network of paid assets and informants of US intelligence recruited from the ranks of retired police and other officials. The ostensible goal of this program was the surveillance of Norwegians who were taking part in demonstrations and other activities critical of the United States and its policies. One of the Norwegians recruited was the former chief of the anti-terror section of the Oslo police.7 Although the goal was supposedly merely surveillance, it is possible to imagine some other and far more sinister activities that could be carried out by such a network of retired cops, including the identification and subversion of rotten apples on the active-duty police force. Some of the capabilities of a network of this type would not be totally alien to the sort of events that have just occurred in Norway.

The official name for the type of espionage cell which the United States was creating in Norway is Surveillance Detection Unit (SDU). The SDUs in turn operate within the framework of the Security Incident Management Analysis System (SIMAS). SIMAS is known to be used for spying and surveillance by US Embassies not just in the Nordic bloc of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, but worldwide. The terror events also raise the question of whether SIMAS has an operational dimension. Could this apparatus represents a modern version of the Cold War stay behind networks set up in all NATO countries and best-known under the name of the Italian branch, Gladio?

The Norwegian government needs to find out. Thus far Norwegian ministers have asserted that they never approved the SIMAS network of SDUs. “We never knew about it,” claimed Norway’s Justice Minister Knut Storberget and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in chorus. Hillary Clinton stated instead that the Norwegians had been informed.

CIA’s Wikileaks Limited Hangout Has Rationale for Toppling Norway’s Government

Thanks to document dumps by the CIA limited hangout subsidiary generally known as Wikileaks, an obvious path for using the Norwegian terror attacks as a rationale for overthrowing the current government has already been provided. Real or doctored State Department cables obligingly made available by Wikileaks portray the Norwegian government which NATO hates as a collection of bunglers and misfits, unable to take effective measures to safeguard the national security of the country.

Some of these tables have been published in the immediate wake of the terror attacks by the London Daily Telegraph, a newspaper reputedly close to NATO intelligence circles. According to this article, while ‘talking about an attempt by the Police Security Service (PST) to track one particular suspected Al Qaeda terror cell, a cable written by the US Ambassador to Norway, Barry White, describes [how Norwegian authorities] … refused the help of the UK authorities to put surveillance on a potential suspect and adds: “Not only will they not put their own resources on him…but they also just turned down the visiting UK intel service’s offer of two twelve-person surveillance teams.” The cable goes on to say the UK and US intelligence services analyzed coded conversation between terror suspects and decided it warranted surveillance. But, says the cable, “PST instead found a way to interpret the same translated coded conversation in a rosier, less threatening light, an interpretation which makes little sense to the US or UK.”’ A catalog of even the most recent failures and fiascos of the FBI and the CIA in the so-called Global War on Terror would help to put these hypocritical judgments into proper perspective, but it would also be too voluminous to be appended here.

Another damaging particular appears made to order for an attempt to blame the alleged bungling of the Norwegian government for the Oslo bomb attack: ‘The memo also reveals how, despite apparently having surveillance on the suspect, the PST lost track of bomb-making equipment which was being stored in an apartment after it was apparently removed without investigators’ noticing. The PST then failed to track one suspect for 14 days because the investigator assigned to him was called away on another job. The memo concludes: “The PST is in over its head…it simply cannot keep up.”’

Another State Department memo dished up by Wikileaks, supposedly written in 2007… adds: “The official police (PST) threat evaluation…states that international terror organizations are not a direct threat against Norway. A memo written in 2008 shows how the US felt that Norway was not awake to the possibility of a potential terrorist attack. The cable reads: “We repeatedly press Norwegian authorities to take terrorism seriously. We will seek to build on this momentum to fight the still-prevalent feeling that terrorism happens elsewhere, not in peaceful Norway.” And a cable written just last year adds: “The PST still viewed Denmark as more of a target than Norway, for reasons very specific to the cartoon controversy.” 8

The government of Norway needs to go on the offensive and establish the whole truth of what has just occurred. Otherwise, that government is likely to succumb to the internationally orchestrated campaign which the Wikileaks documents so clearly foreshadow.

References

1 http://tarpley.net/2009/11/16/nidal-malik-hasan-of-virginia-tech-bethesda-ond-fort-hood-a-major-patsy-in-a-drill-gone-live

2 See RIA Novosti, July 23, 2011, http://en.rian.ru/world/20110723/165350450.html; – From the VG website: “Flere av ungdommene som var på Utøya under skytedramaet forteller til VG at de er overbevist om at det må ha vært mer enn én gjerningsmann. Det mener også Marius Helander Røset.” “Jeg har overbevist om at det var to personer som skjøt, sier Aleksander Stavdal (23).” “Vedkommende var i følge dem rundt 180 centimeter høy, hadde tykt mørkt hår og så nordisk ut. Han hadde en pistol i høyrehånden og et gevær på ryggen.” http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/oslobomben/artikkel.php?artid=10080627

3 “Politiet glemte å informere om øvelse: Anti-terrorpolitiet avfyrte sprengladninger under en øvelse midt i Oslo, to hundre meter fra Operaen, men glemte å gi beskjed til publikum,” Aftenposten, c. July 20, 2011, http://mobil.aftenposten.no/article.htm?articleId=3569108

4 “Libya solution more political than military-Norway,” Reuters, 13 May 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/libya-solution-more-political-than-military-norway/

5 “Norway to quit Libya operation by August,” AP, June 10, 2011, http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jun/10/norway-to-quit-libya-operation-by-august/

6 Tragic Irony Surrounds Oslo Bombing, Phuket Word, July 23, 2011, http://www.phuketword.com/tragic-irony-surrounds-oslo-bombings

7 Thomas Borchert, “US-Geheimdienst mit Nordfiliale: USA lassen Norweger überwachen,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, November 4, 2010.

8 Mark Hughes, “WikiLeaks files show Norway unprepared for terror attack: Norway’s intelligence service had previously been criticized for its failure to keep track of suspected terror cells and the country was felt to be complacent about the prospect of a terror attack, secret cables from the WikiLeaks files reveal,” London Daily Telegraph, July 22, 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8655964/WikiLeaks-files-show-Norway-unprepared-for-terror-attack.html

Anders Behring Breivik: 'I'm surprised I wasn't stopped'

Norway gunman told lawyer he expected to be killed before he reached Utøya island
Mark Townsend in Oslo and Helen Pidd
The Guardian, Wednesday 27 July 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/26/norway-killer-breivik-surprised-stopped

The man behind Norway's terror attacks has told his lawyer he was surprised he was not stopped straight after he bombed Oslo city centre, and that he expected to be killed before he reached the island where he shot dead 68 people.

Anders Behring Breivik was a "very cold" man who had taken drugs to keep himself awake during the shootings, the lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told a press conference yesterday.

Breivik, who has confessed to killing 76 people in the atrocities in Oslo and on Utøya island, told Lippestad he was at war with the world, and that killing was justified in a war. "He was a little surprised he succeeded – in his mind succeeded," Lippestad said. "He was expecting to be stopped earlier by the police or someone else during the actual day. He was surprised that he reached the island.

"He thought he would be killed after the bombing, after the action in the island, and he also thought he would be killed at the trial. He believes someone will kill him."

Breivik also claimed that he was part of an anti-Islam network that has two cells in Norway and "several" more abroad.

Asked to explain Breivik's mindset, Lippestad said: "He says he is sorry he had to do this but it is necessary. He looks upon himself as a warrior. And he started this war, and takes some kind of pride in that.

"He believes this is the start of a war that will go on for 60 years," Lippestad said. "He believes the other cells will continue the war."

Lippestad said that after several meetings with his client, he believed Breivik was mentally ill. "This whole case indicated that he is insane," he said of the 32-year-old, who denies he is a criminal.

The lawyer, a member of Norway's Labour party whose youth wing was targeted by Breivik, said he did not know why the killer had chosen him to represent him. He added that if his client were to refuse to take psychological tests he would quit from his defence. Two psychiatric experts will now evaluate Breivik's mental state.

According to Lippestad, Breivik remains unaware of the revulsion his attacks have sparked and does not know the number of people he killed last Friday.

In isolation, a request by the suspect for a copy of the WikiLeaks files was reportedly rejected by the authorities last night.

It also emerged the Utøya Island massacre was, partly, drug-fuelled. Lippestad said the gunman had taken unspecified drugs in order "to be strong, to be efficient, to keep him awake" during the shootings.

Focus continues to intensify on links between British far-right groups and Breivik, with London the city where the suspect claimed to have launched his so-called organisation to "save Europe from Muslim takeover".

Johan Fredrikson, the chief of Oslo police, said that despite an international investigation, including involvement by British police, they still had no evidence that there was an accomplice or network behind the attacks.

Breivik's claims that he was surprised not to have been stopped earlier will add to pressure on police, who have been criticised for taking more than an hour to reach Utøya island.

It emerged on Tuesday that the nearest police helicopter available was not able to intervene because its pilots were on holiday.

Teenagers trapped on the island during the shootings last Friday claimed that they were told to stay off the line because authorities were dealing with the earlier Oslo bombing, according to relatives and local reports.

Broader questions have since emerged concerning the failure of Norwegian intelligence over the attacks. Breivik was allegedly placed on a watchlist after buying fertiliser in Poland that may have been used to build the Oslo bomb. It is thought that no further action was taken.

On Tuesday night, Norwegian police detonated a cache of explosives found at a farm leased by Breivik. "Explosives were found at the farm," police prosecutor Trine Dyngeland told Reuters. "The police carried out a controlled detonation of the explosives." She said no one was hurt in the controlled blast, at Rena, about 100 miles (160km) north of Oslo.

Officials confirmed they have opened an investigation into a Polish chemist after he admitted supplying chemicals to Breivik.

The internal security agency in Warsaw said that a Polish man faces up to eight years in prison for selling to Breivik via the internet "substances that could be potentially dangerous to the life and health of many people".

The device that exploded on Friday had a devastating ferocity. Since the blast, the justice minister, Knut Storberget, has revealed that employees from his department still remain missing in the ruins of the destroyed government building.

Anders Breivik took drugs to make himself 'strong' before shooting

Norway massacre: Anders Breivik took drugs to make himself 'strong' before shooting
Anders Behring Breivik had taken drugs to make himself "strong, efficient and awake" before he embarked on his mass killing spree, his lawyer said.
Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
26 Jul 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8662603/Norway-massacre-Anders-Breivik-took-drugs-to-make-himself-strong-before-shooting.html

Geir Lippestad Mr Lippestad said it was “too early” to say if his client was mad, but added: “The whole case has indicated that he is insane.”

He said his client had taken drugs before going on the rampage “to be strong, efficient and awake” and was “sorry that he had to do this but it was necessary because he is in a war”.

Asked to describe Breivik, Mr Lippestad said he is “a very cold person” but “I can’t describe him because he is not like anyone else”.

The lawyer also confirmed that Breivik did make visits to Britain as he planned his “war” against Islam, and he said Breivik had referred to other “cells” outside Norway that were ready to follow his example.

“He says there are two cells in Norway and others from the Western world,” Mr Lippestad said at a press conference in Oslo.

Scotland Yard officers are trying to unravel Breivik’s links to British extremists after it emerged he had extensive contact with members of the right-wing English Defence League.

Mr Lippestad said his client had told him “he travelled to Britain” but did not say when or where.

Members of the EDL have said Breivik came to London in March 2010 when the far-right Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, visited the House of Lords. He is also reported to have been on an EDL march in Newcastle.

Mr Lippestad said his client had pleaded not guilty to murder when he appeared in court yesterday because: “He believes that he is in a war and he believes that when you are in a war you can do things like that without pleading guilty.

“He looks upon himself as a warrior who has started a war and he takes some pride in that.

“He expects this is the start of a war that will last for 60 years. He thinks the rest of the world don’t understand his point of view but in 60 years’ time we will all understand him.”

Mr Lippestad, who is a member of the Labour Party, the target of Breivik’s attacks last Friday, said his client had been “surprised” that he was not stopped sooner as he bombed Oslo and gunned down students on the island of Utoya.

Police have come in for heavy criticism for taking 90 minutes to reach the island, where Breivik shot dead 68 people.

“He was a little surprised that he succeeded,” said the solicitor. “He was expecting to be stopped earlier by the police or someone else on the actual day.”

Mr Lippestad said he did not know why Breivik had chosen him as his legal representative, and was shocked when he got a call from police on Saturday morning.

“I thought about it for 10-12 hours,” he said. “But it’s important in a democracy to hold democracy high and the legal system is an important part of a democracy.”

The BBC continue to normalise a hateful narrative

Jody McIntyre
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/07/26/the-bbc-continue-to-normalise-a-hateful-narrative/

“The central question still remains,” Jeremy Paxman began on BBC Newsnight last night, “was this the action of a solitary, deranged individual, or do his actions reflect a wider unease both in Norway and perhaps beyond, about immigration and asylum seekers, which people like Breivik can exploit?” The third, and most obvious answer is left ignored; that Breivik was a white supremacist emboldened by the right-wing, Islamophobic rhetoric of European governments. When Muslim extremists commit atrocities, their entire ideology, beliefs and even religion are examined, analysed and condemned, but in the case of Breivik, his are real problems in society that one man took too far. Indeed, if this had been carried out by a Muslim attacker, or any person with brown skin, we would currently be witnessing a media frenzy of racist and xenophobic propaganda. Because Breivik is a white, Christian, European man, only the individual, and not those elements of his identity, is blamed.

It seemed that the “#blamethemuslims” trend, so aptly initiated by Sanum Ghafoor in the wake of the Norwegian tragedy, had died down, but BBC Newsnight continued with the myth:

“Many in Norway presumed they were being attacked by Islamic terrorists,” the report continued. How does this make sense, when the first person arrested was a Nordic man with blond hair and blue eyes? How does this make sense, when, as Gary Younge observed in his Nation column this week:

“According to Europol, between 2006 and 2008 only 0.4 percent of terrorist plots (including attempts and fully executed attacks) in Europe were from Islamists. The lion’s share (85 percent) were related to separatism.”

Nevertheless, the Newsnight reporter seemed genuinely surprised when he said, “But this wasn’t the work of al-Qa’ida,” as if that was the logical conclusion. So-called ‘experts’ reminisced of a time when “Norway was lily-white”. Never one to fail to provide an opportunity for self-glorification and pity, the BBC had once again invited the leader of the EDL, Stephen Lennon, for an extended interview.

Paxman is notorious for his harsh and confrontational interviewing style, but with Lennon, this never seems to have been the case. Lennon is not interrupted often, and allowed to repeat a hateful narrative of intolerance over and over again. Not once does Paxman raise the point that the frustration and anger of Muslims living in England may have something to do with the foreign policy of the British state, which has recently engaged in the bombing of three predominantly Muslim countries; Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

The EDL are consistently emboldened and empowered by these much-discussed media opportunities; it legitimises their rhetoric, and provides them with the platform they thrive on. So much is their confidence growing that, throwing off the pretence of a focus on “Islamic extremism [and/or] fundamentalism”, Stephen Lennon now has no qualms with announcing, on national television, that “Islam is a threat.” I cannot begin to imagine the stream of apologies that would be emanating from BBC headquarters had an interviewee made this assertion about any other religion. At one point, Paxman and Lennon were even finishing each other’s sentences:

“No-one is denying there is great anxiety,” Paxman began.

“About Islam,” Lennon agreed.

The argument that rational-minded people will see Lennon’s racism for what it is does not hold water when one takes into account the constant attack on Muslims and immigrants by government officials and respectable media sources. With increasing frequency, the EDL are being presented as the genuine and legitimate voice of a disillusioned population. Tommy Robinson warns that a Breivik-style attack could happen in England within the next few years. If it does, then the BBC, which continues to provide the platform for right-wing leaders such as Stephen Lennon and Nick Griffin to spread their ideals without rigorous questioning, will have to recognise the role they have played.

Unanswered questions in Norway terror attack

By Susan Garth
28 July 2011
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/jul2011/norw-j28.shtml

It is now almost a week since the fascist atrocity in Norway—the blowing up of government offices in central Oslo, killing eight people, and the cold-blooded murder of 68 young people on the nearby island of Otøya.

This terrorist attack, the most deadly in post-war Norwegian history, has been consistently reported as the work of a crazed gunman who acted alone. The media and politicians are working assiduously to obscure the political motives of the killer, his connections to far-right and fascist organizations, and the political and moral responsibility borne by establishment parties and politicians in Europe and the US who have sought to appropriate the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim program of the extreme right wing.

This is not an easy task, since the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, announced to the world that he was setting out to destroy the Norwegian Labour Party and kill as many of its officials and members as possible because he associated the party with “Marxist multiculturalism.” In a 1,500-page manifesto posted on the Internet only hours before the attack, Breivik, the son of a former Norwegian diplomat, proclaimed his bloody act to be part of a campaign to purge Muslim influence from Norway and defend “Western civilization.”

His action, he explained, should signal the start of a European civil war and serve as a rallying point for anti-Muslim fanatics. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad said on Tuesday, “He believes this is the start of a war that will go on for 60 years.”

In the rush by the media and political establishment to derail any serious discussion or examination of the facts of the attack and its political implications, a number of glaring anomalies and troubling questions are being passed over in silence.

There is the fact that it took the police 90 minutes to arrive on Otøya, 25 miles from Oslo, after they began receiving desperate telephone calls from Labour Party youth reporting that scores of people were being executed by a gunman. The official story is that no helicopters were available.

If that is true, it only demonstrates the fraud of the so-called “war on terrorism.” Norway has sent troops to Afghanistan and is supporting the US-NATO air war against Libya supposedly because such interventions are necessary to protect the people of Norway and Europe as a whole from the ever-present threat of terrorist attack. But an actual terrorist attack on Norwegian soil—not by an Islamic extremist but by a native-born middle-class Norwegian—immediately exposes the fact that no preparations have been made to protect the population.

Why? Because the Norwegian ruling class and all of its parties—social democratic as well as conservative—understand that the so-called “war on terror” is an elaborate pretext for military aggression abroad on behalf of the imperialist economic and geo-political interests of the financial elite, and an assault on democratic rights at home to prepare for state repression against working class opposition to austerity measures. It has nothing to do with defending the people against external attack.

Far from offering a serious explanation for the delayed police response, which gave Breivik all the time he needed he murder one youth after another without hindrance, Justice Minister Knut Storberget on Tuesday praised the “fantastic work” of the police.

“I would like to emphasize that the police have done a magnificent job and I do not think it is appropriate to criticise the police,” he said when journalists questioned him about the 90 minute delay. “It is important for me to congratulate all policewomen and policemen working on the streets, as well as all senior police officials,” Storberget insisted.

Nor was the performance of Norway’s Delta Force, presumably the first line of defence against terrorist attacks, any better. The head of the force, Anders Snortheimsmoen, said this week that it arrived at the same time as the local police.

According to his lawyer, Breivik himself was surprised that he was able to carry out the massacre on Otøya after exploding the bomb in Oslo. He expected to be killed immediately after the Oslo bombing. The ease and speed with which Breivik reached the island and put his terrorist plan into operation stands in marked contrast to time it took the police to make the same journey to apprehend him.

The delay in the police response is only one of many troubling unanswered questions. It is widely reported that Breivik was wearing as police uniform. How did he obtain it?

Early reports said that six people were arrested in Breivik’s apartment. They were later said to have been released because they had no connection with the case. But why were six people at the home of a man who has been described as a loner?

Breivik initially claimed to be working alone, but he later said there were two other terrorist cells in Norway, as well as others abroad. Norwegian police have been quick to deny that Breivik had any accomplices.

Janne Kristiansen, head of domestic intelligence, said it was “highly unlikely” that other cells existed, despite the fact that other security agencies worldwide are searching for links to Breivik. On what facts or evidence is Kristiansen’s conclusion based? The mainstream media do not bother to even ask.

Evidence of Breivik’s links to right-wing organisations is mounting. The English Defence League (EDL), which initially denied any connection with him, has now back-tracked and is examining the possibility, after the UK-based Searchlight magazine, which investigates right-wing groups, published material indicating that contacts existed between the EDL and Breivik.

If Breivik operated alone, it is difficult to explain how he assembled the chemicals and weapons he needed for his attack. Norwegian police blew up explosives at a farm rented by Breivik. They refused to say what quantity of explosives was involved. Some reports have suggested that he had a total of 6 tonnes of explosives sourced from different companies, some of them outside Norway.

His purchases brought him to the attention of Norwegian customs, who reported him to the security services. His name was on an Interpol and a Norwegian watch list. How, then, was he able to proceed with impunity in carrying out his murderous plan?

The attempt to separate the terrorist attack in Norway from the increasing integration of fascistic tendencies into mainstream European bourgeois politics pervades the media coverage and official commentary. Every effort is being made to portray this politically motivated crime as an isolated event that has no wider political significance.

Writing in the Guardian, British journalist Simon Jenkins declared: “The Norwegian tragedy is just that, a tragedy. It does not signify anything and should not be forced to do so. A man so insane he can see nothing wrong in shooting dead 68 young people in cold blood is so exceptional as to be of interest to criminology and brain science, but not to politics.”

Meanwhile, some spokesmen for right-wing parties that share government power are defending the political outlook of Breivik. Interviewed on a popular radio show, Francesco Speroni, a leading member of the Northern League, the junior partner in Silvio Berlusconi's conservative coalition, said, “Breivik’s ideas are in defence of Western civilization.”

Another Northern League politician, member of the European parliament Mario Borghezio, told radio Il Sole-24 Ore that he sympathised with Breivik’s ideas. “Some of the ideas he expressed are good, barring the violence. Some of them are great,” Borghezio said.

Breivik is a former member of the Norwegian Progress Party, which calls for tighter curbs on immigration. In 2009, Siv Jensen, leader of the party, identified what she called “a kind of sneak-Islamisation of this society,” for which she blamed the Labour Party. “We are going to have to stop this,” she said.

Breivik reportedly left the Progress Party because he deemed it insufficiently right-wing.

What has taken place in Norway is a fascist terror attack. Its immediate target was the Norwegian Labour Party, but there should be no mistake that the objective of the forces to which Breivik belongs is a war on the working class.

The Norwegian Labour Party, like every other social democratic party, has adapted its policies to the extreme right. The effect of last Friday’s attack will be to drive it even further to the right, and other parties, social democratic and otherwise, will follow suit.

The Norway terror attack is the outcome of a process in which fascistic elements have been nurtured over many years and are now being brought into official political life. The massacre exposes the putrefaction of the entire political system in Europe and beyond.

How a clueless "terrorism expert" set media suspicion on Muslims

How a clueless "terrorism expert" set media suspicion on Muslims after Oslo horror

Benjamin Doherty
Sat, 07/23/2011
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/benjamin-doherty/how-clueless-terrorism-expert-set-media-suspicion-muslims-after-oslo-horror

Immediately after news of the bombing of government buildings in Norway’s capital Oslo, the Internet buzzed with speculation about who might have done it and why. Most speculation focused on so-called Islamist militancy and Muslims. The urge to speculate after grave events is understandable, but the focus of speculation, its amplification through social media, its legitimization in mainstream media, and the privilege granted to so-called experts is a common pattern.

The danger of such speculation is that it adds little knowledge but causes real harm by spreading fear and loathing of Muslims, immigrants and other vulnerable and routinely demonized populations, and whether intentional or not, assigns collective guilt to them.

“Experts” who supposedly study this topic — almost always white men and very often with military or government backgrounds — direct suspicion toward Muslims by pointing to claims of responsibility on “jihadi” web sites that only they have access to. Notorious attacks invariably inspire false claims of responsibility, or false reports of claims of responsibility, but this apparently doesn’t discourage the media and experts from giving them undue attention.

From the “experts” to The New York Times to the world…
The New York Times originally reported:

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.

In later editions, the story was revised to read:

Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist.

The source is Will McCants, adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. On his website he describes himself as formerly “Senior Adviser for Countering Violent Extremism at the U.S. Department of State, program manager of the Minerva Initiative at the Department of Defense, and fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.” This morning, he posted “Alleged Claim for Oslo Attacks” on his blog Jihadica:

This was posted by Abu Sulayman al-Nasir to the Arabic jihadi forum, Shmukh, around 10:30am EST (thread 118187). Shmukh is the main forum for Arabic-speaking jihadis who support al-Qaeda. Since the thread is now inaccessible (either locked or taken down), I am posting it here. I don’t have time at the moment to translate the whole thing but I translated the most important bits on twitter.

The Shmukh web site is not accessible to just anyone, so he is the primary source for this claim. McCants stated from the beginning that the claim had been removed or hidden, and on Twitter he even cast doubt on whether it was a claim of responsibility at all.

The Slaughter in Norway

Robert Parry
July 24, 2011
http://consortiumnews.com/2011/07/24/the-slaughter-in-norway

A right-wing Christian fundamentalist has reportedly taken credit for the terrorist slaughter of scores of people in Norway on Friday. The alleged perpetrators’ stated goal was to spark a Christian war against Muslims, a reaction to what he saw as a growing multiculturalism, an echo of Christian Right extremism elsewhere, notes Robert Parry.

News that a Christian extremist has taken credit for the terror attacks in Norway, including the systematic slaying of scores of youth at a summer camp, may be shocking but it shouldn’t be surprising.

Over the past decade, the Christian Right and many Jewish neoconservatives have pushed the propaganda theme that Islam is a uniquely violent monotheistic religion that requires special suppression if the West is to avoid having Sharia law imposed on everyone.

Of course, in making that argument, one has to wonder if these Christian/Jewish zealots have ever read the Hebrew Torah or studied the history of Christianity.

The obvious truth is that the Torah (or Old Testament) is filled with story after story of ancient Israelites striking down their enemies with ruthless force and without remorse. Christianity, at least since its merger with the Roman Empire early in the Fourth Century, has been the world’s preeminent violent religion bathed in blood and steeped in hypocrisy.

It is certainly true that radical Muslims have misused the teachings of Islam to justify horrendous slaughter of innocents, with al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks as standing as the most outrageous example. There also have been cases over the centuries of Islamic armies acting in barbaric ways.

But those atrocities have nothing over the genocides and the massacres committed by Christian armies and Christian zealots.

When the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, the crusaders slaughtered both Muslims and Jews, leaving parts of the Holy City awash in Muslim blood. When Jews sought refuge in a synagogue, it was burned over their heads killing everyone inside as Crusaders sang songs praising Jesus.

Divisions within Christianity itself set off centuries of killing across Europe, with defenders of the Roman Catholic faith devising new and ingenious ways to torture supposed “heretics” and with European explorers carrying their righteous Christian violence across the Atlantic Ocean to where Bible-toting Christians inflicted more centuries of genocide against the native populations.

In more modern times, the anti-Semitism of some Christians, including leaders of the Catholic Church and some Protestant sects, set the stage for the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews during World War II. After the war, Jewish refugees formed Israel as a “Jewish state” and immediately began persecuting and killing Arabs whose ancestors had lived in Palestine for centuries.

During the Cold War, Christian leaders justified widespread “death squad” operations to eradicate both “godless commies” and their sympathizers, including liberal clerics known as “liberation theologists.”

Christian/Jewish-tinged violence has continued into the new millennium with anti-Islamic sentiments an underlying factor in George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” which included the occupation of Afghanistan and the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, always somehow justified by the glories of Jesus Christ or the teachings of the Torah.

In fall 2002, Bush and his team created the propaganda framework for attacking Iraq, then took the Christmas season off in honor of the Prince of Peace, before revving the war machine back up for the March 19, 2003, attack.

That sort of hypocrisy – praising Jesus for his commitment to non-violence while using the religion he inspired as a way to justify mass murder – has been central to the history of Christianity.

So, who can be truly surprised that a Norwegian man, identified as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, has reportedly admitted to his role in the Oslo terror attacks on Friday?

According to press reports, acquaintances describe Breivik as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

Though not admitting criminal guilt, Breivik explained his actions in a detailed manifesto calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination.

The attacks on Friday included a bombing in central Oslo and then the shooting of young people at a camp sponsored by Norway’s ruling Labor Party.

For more on these topics, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a two-book set for the discount price of only $19. For details, click here.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book,Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.

Seeing 'Islamic Terror' in Norway

Learning No Lessons From Oklahoma City Mistakes
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 25, 2011]
CONTACT: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Steve Rendall
srendall@fair.org
Tel: 212-633-6700 x13

WASHINGTON - Right-wing terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik reportedly killed 76 people in Norway on Friday, by all accounts driven by far-right anti-immigrant politics and fervent Islamophobia. But many early media accounts assumed that the perpetrator of the attacks was Muslim.

On news of the first round of attacks--the bombs in Oslo--CNN's Tom Lister (7/22/11) didn't know who did it, but knew they were Muslims: "It could be a whole range of groups. But the point is that Al-Qaeda is not so much an organization now. It's more a spirit for these people. It's a mobilizing factor." And he speculated confidently about their motives:

You've only got to look at the target--prime minister's office, the headquarters of the major newspaper group next door. Why would that be relevant? Because the Norwegian newspapers republished the cartoons of Prophet Mohammad that caused such offense in the Muslim world.... That is an issue that still rankles amongst Islamist militants the world over.

CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank (7/22/11) took to the airwaves to declare that "Norway has been in Al-Qaeda's crosshairs for quite some time." He added that the bombing "bears all the hallmarks of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization at the moment," before adding, almost as an afterthought, that "we don't know at this point who was responsible."

On Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor (7/22/11), guest host Laura Ingraham declared, "Deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists." Even after Norwegian authorities arrested Breivik, former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton was in disbelief. "There is a kind of political correctness that comes up when these tragic events occur," he explained on Fox's On the Record (7/22/11). "This kind of behavior is very un-Norwegian. The speculation that it is part of right-wing extremism, I think that has less of a foundation at this point than the concern that there's a broader political threat here."

Earlier in the day on Fox (7/22/11), Bolton had explained that "the odds of it coming from someone other than a native Norwegian are extremely high." While he admitted there was no evidence, Bolton concluded that "it sure looks like Islamic terrorism," adding that "there is a substantial immigrant population from the Middle East in particular in Norway."

An early Wall Street Journal editorial (7/22/11) dwelled on the "explanations furnished by jihadist groups to justify their periodic slaughters," before concluding that because of Norway's commitment to tolerance and freedom, "Norwegians have now been made to pay a terrible price."

Once the alleged perpetrator's identity did not conform to the Journal's prejudice, the editorial was modified, but it continued to argue that Al-Qaeda was an inspiration: "Coordinated terrorist attacks are an Al-Qaeda signature. But copycats with different agendas are surely capable of duplicating its methods."

Many pundits and outlets had to scramble to justify their ideological presumptions in the wake of the unexpected suspect. Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin (7/22/11) had called the Norwegian violence "a sobering reminder for those who think it's too expensive to wage a war against jihadists," citing Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard's assertion that "in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra." In a follow-up post (7/23/11), Rubin insisted that even though she was wrong, she was right, because "there are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West."

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (7/25/11) likewise argued that we should respond to the horror in Norway by paying more attention to the alleged perpetrator's point of view:

On the big picture, Europe’s cultural conservatives are right: Mass immigration really has left the Continent more divided than enriched, Islam and liberal democracy have not yet proven natural bedfellows and the dream of a postnational, postpatriotic European Union governed by a benevolent ruling elite looks more like a folly every day.... Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have an obligation to acknowledge that Anders Behring Breivik is a distinctively right-wing kind of monster. But they also have an obligation to the realities that this monster’s terrible atrocity threatens to obscure.
The New York Times' July 23 report explained that while early speculation about Muslim terrorists was incorrect,

there was ample reason for concern that terrorists might be responsible. In 2004 and again in 2008, the No. 2 leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over after the death of Osama bin Laden, threatened Norway because of its support of the American-led NATO military operation in Afghanistan.
Of course, anyone who kills scores of civilians for political motives is a "terrorist"; the language of the Times, though, suggested that a "terrorist" would have to be Islamic.

The Times went on:

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al-Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.

"If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al-Qaeda," said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

It is unclear why any of Breivik's actions would be considered connected in any way to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, which certainly did not invent the idea of brutal mass murder. But the Times was able to turn up another expert the following day who saw an Islamist inspiration for Islamophobic terrorism (7/24/11):

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

"It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al-Qaeda, exactly in reverse," Mr. Hegghammer said.

To the paper's credit, the Times' Scott Shane wrote a strong second-day piece (7/25/11) documenting the influence of Islamophobic bloggers on Breivik's manifesto:

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch website, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.... Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among websites.
(Spencer was one of the anti-Muslim pundits profiled in FAIR's 2008 report, "Meet the Smearcasters: Islamophobia's Dirty Dozen.")

Shane's piece noted that the document, rather than being an Al-Qaeda "mirror," actually copied large sections of Ted Kaczynski's 1995 Unabomber manifesto, "in which the Norwegian substituted 'multiculturalists' or 'cultural Marxists' for Mr. Kaczynski’s 'leftists' and made other small wording changes."

It is not new for media to jump to the conclusion that Muslims are responsible for any given terrorist attack; the same thing was widespread after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings (Extra!, 7-8/95). "It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East," syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune, 4/21/95) asserted. "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working," wrote New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal (4/21/95). "Knowing that the car bomb indicates Middle Eastern terrorists at work, it's safe to assume that their goal is to promote free-floating fear," editorialized the New York Post (4/20/95). It is unfortunate that so many outlets have failed to learn any practical lessons from such mistakes--or question the beliefs that drive them.
###
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.

Norwegians incensed over Barack Obama's snubs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/09/obama-nobel-peace-prize-snub

Nobel peace prize: Norwegians incensed over Barack Obama's snubs
Gwladys Fouché and Ewen MacAskill
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 December 2009

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.

Although Obama will not lunch with King Harald, he will see him on a visit to the royal palace.

Peace activists opposed to the Afghanistan war are planning a 5,000-strong protest in Oslo.

The visit will test Obama's rhetorical skills as he seeks to reconcile acceptance of the Nobel peace prize with sending an extra 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan.

White House officials said that Obama, who was planning to work on the final draft of his speech on his flight from Washington to Oslo, would directly address the issue of the irony of being awarded the peace prize while escalating the war.

The Nobel peace committee has been criticised for awarding Obama the prize before he has any major accomplishments in international relations.

A White House official said that it was not necessarily an award that Obama would have given himself.

Until the Light Takes Us

http://salon.com/entertainment/until_the_light_takes_us/index.html

Until the Light Takes Us
Sunday, Dec 6, 2009
Beyond The Multiplex Sympathy for the devil worshipers
Inside Norway's infamous black-metal scene: Misunderstood Robin Hoods or Satanic church-burning maniacs?
By Andrew O'Hehir

Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell, from the black-metal band Darkthrone.It's taken more than a full decade for the most widely demonized and vilified music scene in rock history -- the Norwegian black metal scene of the early to mid-'90s -- to get anything close to a fair treatment in a documentary film. In truth, the job isn't finished yet. As crafty and compelling as Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's "Until the Light Takes Us" is, it may go too far in its understandable desire to correct the bias and prejudice of mainstream journalism.

Black metal burst onto the international scene like an explosion of media catnip 16 or 17 years ago with a wave of church burnings in Norway and other Scandinavian countries that destroyed numerous historical landmarks, including the legendary Fantoft stave church, originally built in 1150. A few weeks after the fires started an articulate young musician named Varg Vikernes (aka Count Grishnackh, of the one-man band Burzum) discussed them with a reporter, suggesting that he knew who was responsible and elaborating a complicated litany of motives, from neo-paganism and anti-Christianity to Nordic nationalism and anti-Americanism.

Vikernes was immediately arrested and almost as quickly released; indeed, while he was later convicted of many other crimes, it remains unclear whether he started the Fantoft fire. Nonetheless, all his erudite self-taught ideology, much of it crazy but a lot of it surprisingly insightful, got almost instantly boiled down to one concept: Vikernes was a Satanist, and he and his fellow devil-worshipers were running amok in northern Europe.

This turned Oslo's tiny black metal scene -- three or four bands, a storefront and a basement record company -- into Pop Culture Public Enemy No. 1 and, of course, made millions of teenagers around the world yearn to sign up, without the slightest idea what they were signing up for. Copycat church attacks followed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, often accompanied with spray-painted pentacles and 666's and so forth, and whatever had once been distinctive about the Norwegian scene just became, in Vikernes' words, "a bunch of brain-dead heavy-metal guys."

But as Aites and Ewell's film reveals -- the two American filmmakers moved to Norway for several years to gain the trust of their subjects -- both the music and the ideology of black metal were always more interesting than that summary suggests. With its emphasis on coldness, darkness and hardness and its Nordic, often symphonic sense of space, the music of Vikernes' Burzum and such bands as Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Darkthrone and Satyricon is surprisingly varied and weird, and often doesn't sound much like rock at all.

Interweaving grainy home videos of early Oslo live shows and interviews with survivors of the scene (at least two of whom appear anonymously), Aites and Ewell depict a vibrant, adventurous and often ghoulishly self-destructive world, where conversations about the negative effects of Christianity, American-style democracy, NATO and commercial globalization sometimes blended into outright nihilism. Even before the church burnings began, Mayhem vocalist Pelle Ohlin (aka "Dead") lived up to his nickname by literally blowing his brains out with a shotgun. Before calling the police, one bandmate snapped a notorious photo of Ohlin's mutilated corpse, which later appeared on the cover of the Mayhem live album "Dawn of the Black Hearts."

If you believe the testimony of Vikernes, Darkthrone drummer Gylve Nagell (aka Fenriz) and Satyricon drummer Kjetil Haraldstad (aka Frost), no one in black metal ever wanted to get famous or reach a mass audience, let alone spark an international trend of kids in corpse paint and black overcoats. Against the changed landscape of multicultural 21st-century Europe, musicians like Fenriz and Frost -- who were never directly involved with Vikernes' quasi-terrorist campaign -- seem semi-reconciled to their fate as professional entertainers, scraping out a living deep into middle age from the stylized remnants of adolescent pain and anger.

Neither of those guys, likable and wounded characters that they are, has the star power or philosophical depth of Vikernes, whom the filmmakers interviewed extensively in the relatively posh surroundings of his Norwegian prison cell. (Vikernes was released last May, after "Until the Light Takes Us" was completed.) With a tidy little goatee and a short jailhouse haircut, he looks like an unusually gym-toned specimen of late-30s academic. Loquacious and funny, he discourses at length, and in excellent idiomatic English, on the many crimes of Christianity and American-style commercial capitalism, which he blames for uprooting indigenous religious cultures not just in the Nordic countries but all over the world. He makes the church fires sound almost innocuous, a slightly overzealous effort to make the public "wake up" to the evils of mainstream religion.

That's all fascinating as far as it goes, but to some degree Vikernes is playing his liberal American guests, coming off as a Robin Hood combination of anti-globalization activist, Situationist intellectual and neo-Norse acolyte of Odin and Thor. In fairness, Aites and Ewell pull back the curtain on Vikernes little by little, revealing first why he spent so long in prison (for a gruesome crime whose details he recounts without emotion) and then the precise nature of his objections to Christianity. Its repression of women and gay people? Um, not exactly. Its crushing of open dissent and heresy? Its toadying to despots of all stripes? No and no. But the fact that Christianity is a historical offshoot of Judaism -- now that's a problem.

Do Aites and Ewell owe the viewership a clearer explication of Vikernes' ties to white nationalist groups, his long record of troubling racial, sexual and religious rhetoric and his public flirtation with Nazi ideology? You won't learn this in the film, for instance, but Vikernes is viewed as the philosophical father of the musical-political subgenre called "National Socialist black metal," or NSBM. Or is it fairer to this disturbing and complicated figure to present him on his own terms, without recourse to prejudicial buzzwords? (For the record, Vikernes has not called himself a Nazi since the late '90s, preferring the invented term "Odalism," said to signify "paganism, traditional nationalism, racialism and environmentalism," along with an opposition to modern civilization in all its forms.)

I can see both sides of the argument, and I've long been interested in the "Ezra Pound problem," meaning the tendency of underground aesthetic rebels to become enmeshed in noxious political ideologies. Maybe it doesn't invalidate Vikernes' music in particular (his forthcoming post-prison album was originally to be called "The White God") or the entire anti-modernist, atavistic spirit of black metal to observe that it comes with some heavy and evil-smelling baggage. But I suspect it's worth, you know, actually noticing and talking about.

"Until the Light Takes Us" is now playing in New York, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Providence, R.I. It opens Dec. 8 in New Orleans, Dec. 10 in Houston, Dec. 11 in Los Angeles, Jan. 8 in Chicago, Jan. 15 in Seattle, Jan. 22 in Milwaukee and Jan. 29 in Denver, with more cities to follow.

Norway's Longest Name?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/11/julius-andreas-gimli-arn_n_284276.html

Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov: Norway's Longest Name?
09-11-09

According to Norwegian site VG Nett, bus driver Andreas Jankov has formally changed his name to Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov. "I wanted to show that it is possible to be serious and at the same time take the name you like," said the film enthusiast. "I wanted to see how far I could take it with respect to the number of names. I started thinking about this three years ago and it was approved in January this year." Apparently, he's had his passport and bank card reissued, but the name was too long so he dropped "Highlander."

Thanks to our commenters, we've been able to break down the name:

- 'Arn' is a Swedish knight movie
- Elessar and Gimli are from 'Lord of the Rings'
- 'MacGyver', just the greatest Richard Dean Anderson show ever!
- 'Highlander' could refer to either the movie or TV show
- Chewbacka (aka Chewbacca) is from 'Star Wars'

So, When/If he gets married will he make his wife take his name?

World For Press Freedom

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/united-states-ranked-36th_n_136788.html

World For Press Freedom
Danny Shea
October 22, 2008

The United States is ranked 36th in the world in terms of press freedom, up from 48th last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Reporters Sans Frontieres.

The US is tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan in the 36th spot. Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway are tied for first. Iran, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea are all featured among the ten lowest-ranked countries.

According to the survey, the index "measures the state of press freedom in the world. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom."

The ranking examines "every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). And it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations."

Self-censorship, financial pressure, the legal framework of the media, and the level of independence of the public media are also taken into account.

The report explains the United States' rise from 48th to 36th:

The release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base contributed to this improvement. Although the absence of a federal "shield law" means the confidentiality of sources is still threatened by federal courts, the number of journalists being subpoenaed or forced to reveal their sources has declined in recent months and none has been sent to prison. But the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, California, is still unpunished a year later. The way the investigation into his murder has become enmeshed in local conflicts of interest and the lack of federal judicial intervention also help to explain why the United States did not get a higher ranking. Account was also taken of the many arrests of journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions.