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Saturday 23 July 2011

False Assumptions

When news of the terrible events in Norway started to trickle out, I like many others assumed that this was yet another in the long line of Islamic terrorist attacks, another '7/7 or 9/11'.

The Holiday Island Of Utoeya
The Holiday Island Of Utoeya

But we were all wrong, and the attack on the holiday island and government buildings were all carried out by a 32-year-old Norwegian man, Anders Behring Breivik, and the police have charged him over both attacks (he apparently has freely admitted carrying them out). His 'Twitter' account only had one quote "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."

He is apparently a body-building 'Anti Islamic, Nationalist', and has a particular gripe over what he thought was the pro 'Islamic' immigration stance of the 'Norwegian Labour Party', outside whose offices he planted the bomb. The Norwegian Labour Party also own the island of Utoeya, and its one of their youth rallies, at which the Socialist Prime Minister was due to speak, that he so bloodily attacked.  He faces a maximum of just twenty one years imprisonment for this mass murder in liberal Norway .... doesn't seem enough. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber who shares a similar profile, was executed for his crimes. 

So rather than '7/7 or 9/11', it turns out to be more like 'Oklahoma City' with eighty four or more people killed on the island of Utoeya, and at least seven in the Oslo bombing.

Apart from the tragedy of the story, its also a lesson in the psychology of jumping to conclusions before the facts emerge.

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