Oslo Bombing and Utøya Shootings

[minionofmidas]

Spiegel has the "multiple" part unconfirmed.

[minionofmidas]

"AFP says the gunman in the shooting on the island of Utoya [sic] has been arrested."

Was apparently pretending to be a policeman.

[minionofmidas]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14254705

Police suspect there is a connection between the explosions and the shooting.

Who *could* be behind this? Clearly it's not a "lone nut", could it be a "lone group"? I say no, too big. The scale is huge. It has to be organized. If Norway had some kind of huge opposition group that is pro-violence, then that's maybe, but there are none.

Islamist Terror seems the only answer, but why Norway?

Well, they are in Afghanistan. And they are Scandinavians, everybody knows there are no differences whatsoever between Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

The Utoya attack doesn't really make sense in an Al Qaeda context, though. Some socialist teenagers' organization's summer camp? Seriously?
Yeah, I know the prime minister was to attend. Though the way it was carried out it's quite unclear whether he was supposed to be the target.

Also, waddaya mean "bad guys"? Are there any witnesses regarding the planting of the bomb (wait... what's the current word? One huge bomb or several coordinated ones?)

[minionofmidas]

To instill terror and confusion?

Which would fit more with somebody not Al Qaeda or at all Islamist, of course. Not that that means much.

Of course it's just as possible the gunman was supposed to wait for the pm but lost his nerve or whatever. Maybe he was no more of a professional than Waz in Four Lions.

[minionofmidas]

And he owned an agricultural company called BREIVIK GEOFARM, so it was easy for him to get a lot of fertilizer for his bomb.

Ah, that explains a lot. Cause that bomb must have been huge, and I was wondering about where he got help from til now.

[minionofmidas]

Apparently a number of the kids jumped into the river to avoid the shooting only to drown in the water.

Ugh.

[minionofmidas]

Seriously, can we go 24 hours without capitalizing on those dead kids to do political hackery? And especially without any of "other hacks would have done the same if it would have been different."

They did even after it was confimed it was different. Including in this thread, you know.
Now that's beyond the acceptable. The other is... not perfect either... but nothing more than that.


In. Effing. Credible.
That's the attack itself I'm talking about. Still trying to wrap my brain around the Utoya shooting. How. the. hell? And why. the. hell?

[minionofmidas]

Oh, what the hell. I don't want to get into any disputes about that.

[minionofmidas]

R.I.P. to the victims and condolences to the families of those lost.

It is real early, but response time looks real poor.  Most nations and communities in the US have no plan for an active shooter.  Sadly, this is something that everyone must plan for.  

Right, I just thought of looking up what kind of island we're talking. Wikipedia doesn't have its size, but it's wholly owned by the Socialists' use organization, and it is one of the three islands here... and the lake is 52 square miles, so we're basically talking some rock here, just large enough for the camp and not much alternative to attempting to swim to shore (or suicidally rushing the guy - J.J. is right, enough people doing that at the same time would probably do the trick, but some people's got to start and these people are dead afterwards.)

So, yeah. I suppose there was no security whatsoever. Which has advantages, but has disadvantages too. Anyways, one stupid private cop would probably just have been the first victim; the thing to do would be to cut down response time - for the municipal police to have a boat moored right by the precinct, say.

[minionofmidas]

Over the course of 45 minutes, remember. Some smaller automatic weapon, enough ammo, plus some drowning deaths.

How many survivors, by the way, ie how many people on the island in total?

[minionofmidas]

2. It does appear as if many drowned or were shot in the water trying to escape. I heard a Norwegian girl on tv talking about how they were all hiding along the beach and he walked down it shooting all of them.

To visualize that:



Sorry if that's already too gory to post here. Feel free to moderate.

[minionofmidas]

Isn't that Schengen plus financial crisis rather than any government policy?

What do you mean by that ?

There were no border controls in Austria starting in 1997 I think, so Schengen wasn't the reason for the increase between 2000 and 2004.

The economic crisis didn't hit Austria until 2009, in fact we had good economic growth and low unemployment numbers between 2001 and 2009. Only in 2009, economic growth was negative.

And it wasn't the Eastern European Union expanion in 2004 either, because I looked it up and the most immigrants to Austria during that time were not Eastern Europeans, but Germans.

Whether it was most immigrants or not makes no difference. The question is of course how much of the increase was other people than Germans.

DId Austria have open borders to the entire world? Anyone from wnywhere who wanted in got in automatically? Or do you mean open borders with countries like Germany?

There is also the general increases in freedom of movement within the EU that has taken place over the last couple of decades.

Schengen has nothing whatsoever to do with the Common Labour Market. Schengen is about what borders look like. It has nothing to do with where people are allowed to live (legally). The right for EU citizens to work anywhere in the EU (with an optout for EU-15 countries in regards to the newest 12 ) is something else entirely.
As to non-EU citizens, of course they can't. They're third class humans (with some exceptions).
This is elementary stuff. If you don't know it you really oughtn't to think you can take part in discussions of immigration.

But obviously, direct government action has little or no effect on immigration rates, anywhere in the world. Changes in bureaucratic practice and obscure legal paragraphs do, as do economic conditions, wars, etc. Governments quite despair of regulating immigration, all over the world.

[minionofmidas]

At least in Sweden Schengen meant abolishing border controls. Which obviously is important to peoples' ability to move across borders.

I'm well aware that's not the same as the common labour market. I don't see where you got to assume that.

"Move" has two meanings. In the one it's the same as the common labour market and has nothing whatsoever to do with Schengen, in the other it doesn't affect the statistics you were arguing about. So I'm rather lost as to what the hell you're aiming at.

[minionofmidas]

The common line towed by the mainstream's right edge (BILD, "respectable" anti-islamists, CDU home experts, etc) is this, of course:
This was some nutter. A "blond devil" (BILD headline). Barely a terrorist act, almost more like running amok. Incredible tragedy, of course. Who cares what his motifs were. Can we please talk about the Islamist menace again, last week two Turkish youths were talking too loudly on the subway platform!

[minionofmidas]

At least in Sweden Schengen meant abolishing border controls. Which obviously is important to peoples' ability to move across borders.

I'm well aware that's not the same as the common labour market. I don't see where you got to assume that.

"Move" has two meanings. In the one it's the same as the common labour market and has nothing whatsoever to do with Schengen, in the other it doesn't affect the statistics you were arguing about. So I'm rather lost as to what the hell you're aiming at.

Oh, so that's what it was about. I will readily confess to my ignorance about the definition of an immigrant in Tender's stas. Is it only people with permanent residence permits or something like that?

Because I had the impression that a large part of the debate in that part of the world concerned temporary workers or illegal immigrants coming in from Eastern Europe and other places.

Documented people would be included even if temporary (at least I would suppose so; would need to check the fine print). Undocumented (the term illegal is problematic to me, too fuzzy on the edges) people are not of course included in statistics unless they be estimates; it's part of the definition of the term. I know it's different in Spain and America, but in Germany nobody with any intention of staying long term would try to sneak in illegally (and it is illegal to try, Schengen only makes it simpler to do anyhow. From another EU country.) There's no path to permanent, secure residency if you're doing that.

There are people working in the country illegally, of course. But they have plans to go home. Turkish college students arriving on a tourist visa (or do Turks not even need a visa? Would need to check the current situation actually.), working summer jobs illegally at some distant uncle's German fruit shop or Döner stall, cash on hand, that sort of thing. Roma used to do it a lot too, but the most recent wave of Roma immigration does not - they're intending to quit Bulgaria for good.

Immigration is complicated. There are myriad possible paths - asylum claims, family reunions, temporary workers. It's usually easier from some countries than others, half the male Kosovo is here during the summer - lost in the minutiae of regulations and partially protected by EU treaties that don't cover them literally but that don't work well without them; no government today will attempt to block them all. Certainly no right wing populist politician has the time for that. Except in Denmark, actually, but it probably matters that the Danish People's Party is not officially in government, and still the process is very very peacemeal and I've no idea if it actually affects gross immigration rates.

[minionofmidas]

"My main criticism was really that I'm wary whenever a simple correlation is asserted as a proof of some causality (or lack of causality as in this case.)"

Eh... it's certainly obvious that they either didn't know how to "curb immigration" or didn't even try. I do not recall any news item about them trying, unlike from Denmark, so maybe it's your task now to dig one up.

Or we just let it rest, since I think (not sure Tender would agree. Would need to reread the beginning of this little thread hijack ) that it's QED either way.

[minionofmidas]

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What?

[minionofmidas]

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What?

I was stressing that terror attacks, despite being condemned by those share a similar ideology to the perpetrators, don't really damage the ideology itself in the eyes of it's own supporters.

Which is about as wrong as it could possibly be in the case of the example you cited...

[minionofmidas]

Few if any neo nazis and "Holocaust Deniers" think it didn't happen full stop; usually they twiddle with details and make exaggerated claims about exaggeration of the event and its significance by mainstream history. And by World Jewry, of course, which presumably sacrificed a couple million worthless Ostjuden (surely they can't have been six million!? I want to know who counted.) to get its goal of a colony of its own, or something. (Who said, "there's no business like shoah business"?)

[minionofmidas]

Although I'm more amused by the NPD's attempts to board (late) the Antiislamic Racism train without throwing its Antisemitic baggage overboard.