The Tottenham Riots

Wot?

Brits on a rampage, are they? Who would have thought, eh?

One of my browser home pages is a news site based in Britain, so imagine my surprise (though not really) to find out this morning that Tottenham London erupted in flames and riot overnight as the residents protested the police shooting on Thursday of one Mark Duggan, who inconveniently passed away, poor devil.

Of course it might be because of this:

15.36 Many are linking last night's events with the late cancellation of Hackney Carnival today. There are also rumours flying around Twitter of riots planned for Enfield and Edmonton.

Hackney One Carnival and Parks for Life event have been cancelled today - very sorry for any inconvenience caused.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyHackney Living
hackneyliving

Terms like "ignorant," "illiterate," and "subhuman" are being tossed around like candy in the comments and the twitterverse to describe the rioters, for no educated, white, Native Brit would ever ever ever commit such bestial acts as torching cars and looting shops. How rude.



How rude of these Brownies, these "foreigners who come here" to get so uppity. (aside: I actually heard an East Indian born and raised in Fiji, who came to America when he was 14, refer to later immigrants to the United States disparagingly as these "foreigners who come here." Much mirth and merriment ensued.)

What gives them the right? Deport them all!

A typical comment:

Alfonso

This has nothing to do with the shooting of a scumbag drug dealer, these sub human imbeciles just use any exuse[sic] to riot,the looters should have been shot on sight,anybody arrested that was not born and bred in Britain should now be on their way back out of the country,and those born here should now be starting 25 year prison sentances[sic].this countries[sic] stupid tolerance policies will be our downfall that is if this **** hole of a country could sink any lower thanks to the moronic society that this generation has bred,i dread to think what kind of dregs of society they will breed.

There is nothing at all to distinguish this sort of verbal assault on "sub humans" from the fancier and much more lengthy OUTRAGE!!!!™ of one Anders Behring Breivik ("Andrew Berwick" to his English colleagues) who took matters into hand in Norway a couple of weeks ago blowing up the government quarter in Oslo and massacring some dozens of mostly young Labor Party activists on Utøya. Remember?

There is no difference in rhetoric.

The issue? Well, of course, it's the same issue here: White folks (ie: Europeans of Pure Blood) are being overwhelmed by the rising tide of "sub humans" of darker hue. Immigrants who come here, where ever it is. They are drowning Europeans, Euro-Americans, exterminating them, wiping out their high culture, stealing their essence, their precious bodily fluids, their arts and sciences, destroying all in a crackling bonfire of ignorance and indifference.

The brune folk are ruining everything!

Well, them and the low-class Native Brits (ie: White Folk) who hang out with the Sub Humans.

It's pure and unapologetic racism, something most Americans have set to the side for quite some time, but it is something that is never actually gone from the scene. It's always there just below the surface, like a pustule waiting for the right moment to burst open.

As it has in Britain, but also all over Europe, given a kind of "permission" you might say, by the bombing and massacre in Norway -- which is an ongoing subject of debate. So many commentators, here and abroad, have found themselves defending Breivik/Berwick, some even suggesting he did what he had to to bring attention to the flood of immigrants (many of them, EEK, Muslim) overwhelming the stolid, peaceful, rational White Folks who just want to be left alone and in peace.

Don'tchaknow.

Not to make light of it, but Catherine Tate as the Aga-Saga Woman made a wrong turn into Tottenham one day, and this is what transpired:

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracists are out in force on the Berwick/Breivik matter, and some of their hooey is going to be getting attention. I suspect Justin Raimondo may turn into Breivik's chief conspiracist. Obviously, he's relying on the Mainstream Media to provide him with tidbits he can then weave into "questions" which in turn become the basis for conspiratorial fantasies.

Much of what he claims has not been investigated has been, for example, and many of the things he claims are not known are known, at least through the published materials available. But by raising "questions" -- that are in many cases already answered -- he sets up a classic goose chase scenario which many people seem to love pursuing.

The Berwick log Raimondo links to strikes me as the work of a deluded, drug-addled paranoid obsessive-compulsive ("narcissist/sociopath," just to complete the metaphor). I've said that I don't think Berwick was insane, but reading his words in the logs -- just frantic about being able to prepare his explosives "in time" -- it's clear he is not in his right mind. Drugs -- primarily steroids -- are mentioned in the logs, but it appears he's taking others as well that affect his perceptions, increase his paranoia, and keep him obsessively "working" on his "project."

It reads very much like he's on methamphetamine. Which wouldn't be at all surprising given the extent and the detailed nature of the tasks he's set for himself.

But then, the underlying question is whether he set those tasks himself or they were set for him. And that's where it does get interesting. He refers to "investors" his work -- but what work, exactly -- is supposed to be paying off. He refers to maxing out his credit cards through cash advances to pay off landlord and his creditors in June but then being able to pay off all his credit cards in July. Where that money comes from (maybe 8,000 Euros or more) who knows?

He refers to gold as well. Is he speculating in gold or other futures? Is that how he makes money?

My own thought initially was that he was simply well off, had plenty of money from the get-go. But that doesn't seem to be the case, although there are indications from his tax records that though he had essentially no or very little declared income, he had plenty of money in the bank -- several hundred thousand krone much of the time.

Where did the money come from?

I'd say from his "investors" -- and they were investing in his "action" on July 22. Did they get their money's worth?

And who are they?

Check out Craig Murray, too.

The Cult of Violence

The Strawberry Statement - Give Peace a Chance... by Tushratta

Scene above is from "The Strawberry Statement" (1970), which I was in, not the first movie I was in, but the story and the process of making this picture made a significant impression on me. Actually, if I remember correctly, the movie was made in the fall of 1969, it was released in 1970, for those who are keeping track. It's loosely based on the Columbia Riots of 1968 -- that seminal year, the year that "Andrew Berwick"/Anders Breivik claims "Teh Marxist Revolution" won in Europe, and according to him, it's been downhill ever since.

Yes, well. He's wrong in that, but he wasn't there, so it's not like he could understand what went on or why or anything. 1968 is not just another time, it's another world completely as far as so many of the young are concerned.

The point, though, is that the Cult of Violence that seems so prominent now, as with our nation's many wars, commonplace police brutality, armed protest and implicit threats of violence, terror-terror-terrorist attacks, all kinds of video games, mainstream movies, television, on and on and on, this Cult of Violence was common then, too, perhaps worse in some ways than it is now. There was, for example, a war going on in Indochina that was, for all intents and purposes, a war of extermination of the Gooks, millions of whom died in the struggle, and many millions of whose descendents live with the consequences of what happened and how.

The attacks in Norway are just one more example of today's Cult of Violence, but it's one that may have more import down the road as so many of the Whitest Rightists are scrambling to defend the killer without openly condoning his actions. It's a tricky balancing act, and they haven't quite got the party propaganda line down, but one of the excuses they've made for him is that he killed other white people, not Muslims, so he wasn't actually an "anti-Muslim terrorist." Except that, of course, among the dead and wounded were a number of Muslim youth, but I guess they don't count because, well, they were at a Hitler Youth Rally and had obviously been "assimilated."

Militant white folk are a problem in the world. They have been for quite a long time when you think about it, and the Norse (Norwegians, Normans, "Vikings") were prominent trouble makers for many hundreds of years. All over Europe, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa. Let's not be coy here. To go a-Viking is to travel around to fuck other people up, take their stuff, and slaughter their ass. Not pretty. "Berserk."

I've had a few dealings with militant white folk in my time, worked for a while in a Danish community down the California coast, even managed to shake the hand of the Queen of Denmark when she came to call one sunny day ("Eh, those Scandinavian royals, they're so down to earth! Eh!"), learned to say "Uff Da!" among the militant Norwegians around here, had close Belgian and Dutch friends back in the day, and counted a Swedish actress among my closest friends when time was.

All of them, I think, had a very strong tendency to celebrate their Whiteness, and some, truth to tell, were quite militant -- the word might be "racist" -- in their defense of White Folk and their Kultur. Yes, yes, yes. Boring. Boring.

So far as I know, none of them ever used violence to protect their White Women and Kultur, but I have no doubt that some were quite prepared to do so... "if necessary."

What does that mean? If the Brownies and the Svartzies got too full of themselves, you know, "uppity" as it were, one would have to do what one would have to do. That's just "common sense."

Which is often how members of the Cult of Violence -- whether they are militant White Folk or not -- see their mission. It's just "common sense." Right.

Ironically -- at least to me -- I've often been accused of being a promoter of violence because of my (qualified) admiration for certain Revolutionaries (such as Che himself, ahem) and my extensive use of Revolutionary imagery, cant and rhetoric throughout my written works.

Revolution is by its nature "violent" right? Bluntly, it depends on which end you're on. Many peoples have committed acts of peaceful revolution, in other words, only to be met with surpassing violence by Authority. That's what the clip above was dramatizing.

One of the things I've long pointed out, though, is that Revolutionary Fervor today is almost exclusively found among the Rightists -- who are typically, though not exclusively, the Whitest. And they are quite prone to violence of all kinds.

In many ways, the Muslim Terrorists With Whom We Are In Forever War, are reacting to the violence that have been imposed upon them by the European (White, hello?) Powers for hundreds of years. And yet, I wonder. Would they be reacting violently if it were not for their Muslim Rightist fundamentalism? It's hard to say, I don't know, but there is no doubt that Rightist ideology is one of the common threads throughout the Cult of Violence, no matter who the perpetrators are.

They all believe in essentially the same thing: their own superiority, their own fundamentalist beliefs (which they often confuse with "Principle"), and the disrespect of -- and most especially de-humanization of -- the Other, who, ultimately, is any and all opposition to Their Chosen Way.

Violence is systemic in this world view. The only way Rightists know to beat their opponents is through physical or psychological or emotional violence. Anyone who does not believe as they do is by definition their "opponent," but more importantly, the very existence of opposition is an existential threat to Rightists who, as "Berwick"/Breivik does, despise the very idea of "multi-culture," multi-beliefs, multi-ethnicities, multi-points of view. All has to be subsumed under one way, their way, or there is no way at all.

The official violence against Peace Activists in the movie clip is mirrored, for example, in the violence against Peace Activists at the 2008 political conventions, violence that is still being pursued, years afterwards, by US Attorneys (FITZ!!!) determined to stamp out the subversive leftist existential threats to the nation who publicly conspire to advocate for Peace. Any rational society would consider this to be insane, but in America, "leftist activism" is by definition a threat that must be suppressed. With violence if necessary.

Or you can look at the Israeli response to the Gaza Flotilla last year. (This year's response is a bit different, but the point is still to dehumanize the Other and deal with it violently "if necessary.")

The Cult of Violence and Rightist Revolution can be a good deal more subtle of course, as we've seen throughout the country in the extraordinary efforts of Republican governors and legislators to overthrow decades of common interest and practice and replace it with a repressive and restrictive New Order. Meanwhile in Washington, DC, another version of what's been going on in the States has been playing out with the deadlock over raising the debt limit (oh, and changing everything to more strictly follow the Rightist tenets of Suffering for the Masses, Liberation for the Masters.)

It's all of a piece.

Of course the Norway handling (Norwegian for "action") was spectacular and horrifying in the extreme. That was the point of it. There have been endless calls for Norway now to "change" its ways, for its government now to become more intrusive and oppressive, not so much toward the Rightist Revolutionaries that have apparently found a welcome home among the white militants there, but toward the Muslim Horde that is overwhelming "Peaceful Norway." Which is of course what Revolutionary Crusader/Rightist "Berwick/Breivik was advocating all along.

You see how this works?

The Cult of Violence is believed in so sincerely in part because it has been, and is still, so successful in shifting the beliefs of others its way. It does not take many Believers in the Cult to have a disastrous effect on far more Others. As we've seen, over and over again, a single individual, motivated, suffused with Belief, and (as in the case of "Berwick"/Breivik) hopped up on steroids and other drugs, is quite capable of shifting the parameters that Others rely on all on his own.

I wish it were a lesson...

The Cruelty Factor

???

There was a story out of Norway the other day that caught my eye. It was related by one of the survivors of the Utoya Massacre who witnessed a young boy confronting the killer with these paraphrased words:

You've just killed my father and now you want to kill me. I'm too young to die. Don't shoot.

The killer left the boy alone with the body of his dead father, moving on to kill others instead. The story was on the NRK website for about a day, but now it's gone. It's been replaced by the story of Trond Berntsen, the father who was killed in front of his 10 year old son. Turns out Berntsen was the sole policeman on the island when the shooting started. He of course was unarmed, and he was not in an official capacity but was apparently working on the side, as a private security guard during the youth camp on the island. He was one of the first people killed by the cruel monster who committed the murders. He was, as it happens, the step-brother of the current Crown Princess of Norway, Mette-Marit.

How small a world it is.

Mette-Marit's husband, Crown Prince Haakon Magnus, eldest only son of King Harald V, in a supreme twist of cruel irony, is the co-founder of a social initiative called Global Dignity with the following principles:

• Every human being has a right to lead a dignified life.
• A dignified life means an opportunity to fulfill one’s potential, which is based on having a human level of health care, education, income and security.
• Dignity means having the freedom to make decisions on one’s life and to be met with respect for this right.
• Dignity should be the basic guiding principle for all actions.
• Ultimately, our own dignity is interdependent with the dignity of others.

Hard to argue with something as benign and... amorphous... as that, right? "Dignity" is something I've been writing about for many years as the core value we need to emphasize as we struggle to come up with a viable alternative to our extinguished Republic.

But what we have been getting instead is ever greater levels of cruelty -- some of it driven by imperialist states like the United States of America and Israel, some of it the consequences of failed states like The Former Yugoslavia and Somalia, some of it due to the permission granted by our polarized societies to various individuals to be as cruel to others as they want to be.

Dignity and cruelty don't mix. And it is the failure to respect the dignity of others that leads directly to so much overt and subconscious cruelty, not solely by Our Rulers and their many courtiers by ourselves toward one another.

That's part of what happened in Norway. But I saw a story today out of the New York Times that said that the bombing in Oslo and the massacre on the island were "one of the worst mass killings in post-War Europe," I thought, "Jeeze, you've never heard of breakup of the Former Yugoslavia, eh? Srebrenica, anyone?" Mass killing was a way of life for a while there, and it happened long after the end of WWII. But who's counting?

It was the absolute cruelty of the killer and his denial of any dignity whatsoever to his victims -- as the price of their "Treason" according to him -- that is the striking, and when you get down to it, the consistent feature of nearly all the mass-murder events we've witnessed in our lifetimes (almost too many to count now.)

The denial of the dignity of its victims -- and the cruelty of its extermination campaign -- is the primary feature of the USA's Death From Above Drone Operations through many countries, and prior to that campaign, it was the primary feature of American/allied military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan was the utter, remorseless cruelty -- and complete denial of the dignity of the natives.

Many of us have long recognized this is wrong policy; some see it as evil. Yet our response has been almost completely ineffective, or so it seems. Changing course is necessary, but doing it...

That's always the sticking point, and until we can find a way, we will continue to see the triumph of The Cruelty Factor.

Punishment for "Treason" -- ie: Sending a Message to the Norwegian Government

The Punisher: "Andrew Berwick"; his weapon: fertilizer

Isn't the Internet grand, though?

I was able to watch the court ruling in Oslo as it happened this morning on the NRK website. Breivik's hearing itself was closed to the public, which I think may have been wise given the nature of what was reported by the ruling judge Breivik said was his reason for the bombing in Olso and the massacre on Utoya.

(There was a police news conference afterwards during which the numbers of dead were revised: 68 on the island and 8 in Olso.)

The judge reported (in rough paraphrase) that Breivik claimed he did what he did -- so much death and destruction -- as notice to the Government that their "treason" would not be tolerated any more.

"Treason."

They are guilty of "treason" for opening up the floodgates of Muslim immigration to Norway, among other things, and Breivik would not tolerate it any more. He needed to make a dramatic statement -- murder and destruction -- to get his point across.

You see.

This is just the sort of Rightist rhetoric-into-action many have been warning of for years, warnings that seem to fall on deaf ears, as Western governments obsess on the threat of external Muslim terrorism to the effective exclusion and dismissal of the threats from within their own body politic.

Not only are the threats from the Rightists all but ignored, but the actions of Rightist terrorists within the body politic (the Poisoners, if you will) are almost welcomed by the Powers That Be.

And in the meantime, "eco-terrorists," "leftist radicals" (ha!), peace and social justice advocates are all spied upon relentlessly, rounded up, tried, imprisoned, and what have you.

Just as the economic policies of Our Rulers are backwards, so it appears are their anti-terror policies and actions.

Hm.

Odd, isn't it?

Injecting the Poison

Of course, not having cable teevee, I don't follow the cable teevee "news." It would be a waste of time in any case.

Instead, I've been following the Oslo Thing on the web, primarily by accessing the NRKtv website -- as well as some other Norwegian news sites and BBC -- and running it through the Google Translator. It's not that good for text, and of course it's no good at all for video, but it's good enough to at least get a picture of what's going on, who the players are, and how they see their role in what has turned into a hideous tragic drama.

Of course, prominent among the players is the culprit (sometimes his role is translated by the Google as "vermin," how droll). That is quite obviously by his design. I have not read the 1,500 page manifesto that was published online yesterday (they say most of it is in English), but I did see -- and eventually watch the video he posted Friday on YouTube just before he went on his killing spree. (I had to go to the after hours clinic yesterday for some diagnosis and medication, which I'll cover in another post).

Yes. Well. Supposedly, YouTube has taken down the original video posting from the culprit, but it lives on in several other posts by those who captured it before it was removed. Obviously, quite a lot of work went into it, though it does seem to end abruptly, as if its creator hadn't quite completed it. It's in English. Apparently much of his online life was conducted in English, pretty much the Lingua Franca of the West in any case. It consists largely of text and romantic illustrations of the Crusades and Crusaders (with the Muslim hordes depicted pretty much the way Jews were depicted in Europe up to and including the Period of Unpleasantness that encompassed WWII).

Parts of the text are not readable on the YouTube because they are too small, but one gets the gist, and it is quite a poisonous gist at that.

Which is not to say Dude is whack, although he may be.

Far more poisonous would his tract be if he were quite sane, which I suspect he is. A murderous "sanity" to be sure, but would one want to claim that pre-Nazi Europe (and essentially all the rest of the West) was whack because of the deep-seated fear of the Other, characterized by The Joooz, that was rampant in those days?

The case could be made, I suppose, but I think it would ultimately collapse of its own dead-weight. Being wrong doesn't mean you're crazy, in other words. It means you're wrong.

But if your error turns into mass murder, what then? Well, I would say that in most cases -- not all -- that makes the perpetrator both wrong and murderous. Not insane.

In most cases. There are exceptions.

The poisonous screed on the YouTube is delivered in four "chapters" I guess you could call them, the first denouncing "cultural Marxism" and the supposed overthrow of European culture (supremacy?) in the "1968 Marxist Revolution."

Interesting. 1968. That was a seminal year to be sure, and rebellion and revolt (but "revolution?") certainly wracked Europe that spring and summer, much as it did nearly everywhere else in the world, including Red China. There was a horrible massacre in Mexico City in 1968, something like 1,500 protesting university students shot down by troops brought in to "keep order." There was much tumult everywhere, most of it driven by the rising of the Young against the repression of the Old. It was a generational revolt in other words, of the Post War generation against their rigidly conformist parents. "Marxist" in that the rebels were largely informed by Marxist criticism of the capitalist system -- yes? So? The point being at the time that Marxist thought was widely suppressed in the West by government policy. The Cold War, don't you know. And so Marxism was something of esoteric or secret knowledge that young people were "discovering" during the era, knowledge that young people were finding very trenchant given the materialism and error of the day.

But it's hard to characterize the revolts and rebellions of 1968 as "revolutions" on the one hand, or ideologically "Marxist" on the other. Some of the rebellions (Czechoslovakia, anyone?) were decidedly anti-Marxist. What the rebellions universally were about, what they all shared in common, was a call for "liberation" from the errors and strictures of the past.

In other words, they were liberationist revolts not strictly ideological revolutions, and they were only partially successful and only in some areas. In others, they were suppressed with much bloodshed and brutality (such as in Mexico). And in still others, such as in China, the spirit and energy of the rebellion was channeled by the State into what was known as the Cultural Revolution -- which was basically an inversion of "liberation." And just as bloody and brutal as anything states in the west were unleashing on the rebels, though it was all inverted in China so that the "rebels" were acting on behalf of the State to brutalize and get rid of the left-over counter-revolutionaries and capitalist roaders who were accused under the principles of The Revolution. Such are the directions "liberation" can take.

But the notion that somehow "cultural Marxism" was triumphant in Europe in 1968 and thus European culture -- the very idea of European culture -- was somehow destroyed that year by the Revolution is... deeply, fundamentally wrong. Daft. In a word. No such thing happened. The point the culprit is trying to make but failing to (because I don't think he knows what happened) is that the current multi-culturalist approach to social organization that you see in Europe and elsewhere is... threatening... to a minority of Euro-Ethnic-Centric peoples (ie: Militant White Folk) who are always living in fear of the Hordes of mostly Brown Folks who would slaughter them in their beds -- if they could. This is like Doctrine to a minority of often violent White Folk who believe for some reason that everyone else in the world is Out to Get Them.

Perhaps it's genetic.

Or something else.

At any rate, those who peddle this view of the world and history are busy injecting poison into the social and political bloodstream. It isn't just the mass murderers, either.

The Murdochs are masters at injecting poison into the media bloodstream; there are movie-makers who do it in entertainment, bloggers whose whole online persona is wrapped up in injecting and spreading poison. I don't go to movies anymore because so many of them are full of horror and gratuitous violence and bloodshed, so much so that they have become almost the only cinematic means of achieving objectives. It's poisonous. So it is with various websites I no longer visit. So it is with various political and social "movements."

And so it is with the Norwegian mass murderer.

His whole point is to inject the poison of his beliefs and watch the reaction.

It is monstrous in the extreme.

"Lone Gunmen"

The main suspect in the Norwegian Killing Spree (at last count, some 91 dead, unknown number of injured) is blond. He's blue-eyed. In some of his professionally done head shots ::cough:: he's posing as if he were a movie star.

How can this be "terrorism?"

It's merely the act of Another Lone Gunman, who knows why they do these things? They just do. They snap. Bang-bang. Yer ded. It's something like the White Man's Overbite. It's quirky. It's probably genetic. But whatever it is, it's impossible to fully control.

In one of brief comments elsewhere on This Oslo Thing, I referred to the incident as the action of a "berserker," which may or may not be an accurate description of the Lone Gunman in this case.

What's interesting, besides the bloodlust and behavior of this person is his apparent Rightist affiliations - well, they really haven't been detailed. So we need to await further word on them - his Fundamentalist Christianity (again, not specified or detailed) - and his anti-immigrant ravings.

Ah, "purity of the blood." Yes. That has long been important in many white and right people's circles, certainly as much in this country as in any other land populated by Northern Europeans. The Other -- particularly if Brown or Black -- is simply "contamination." To be removed. Exterminated if need be.

Initially, of course, the story was that this incident -- actually "incidents," but who's counting? -- was the work of "Jihadis", a branch of which had claimed responsibility for the Oslo bombing (this was before the massacre on the island, however.)

Of course the Oklahoma City Bombing was at first attributed to mud-people, Muslims, "Jihadis", too. Muslims -- and mud-people of all kinds -- are apparently to forever be the first suspects whenever anything like this happens. It has long been a fixation of the media and the High and the Mighty, and yet we know that in a surprising number of cases, "people you would never suspect" (such as our blond and blue-eyed Norwegian boy up there) are the culprits.

And a fair exploration of what motivated McVeigh and his white brothers (and apparently some sisters) to do these things has never been done adequately. It's always a "mystery." Why would they do things like this? It just doesn't make any sense.

Yes, well. Perhaps it doesn't. Actually the motivations -- so far as we know them -- of white bombers and mass murderers tend to make a lot of "sense" in a certain very uncomfortable way for the societies within which they occur.

Many of the school shooters (remember when that was a fad?) tended to assert that they were "victims", generally of bullying. If we think about it, we realize that "bullying" by selected students has long been a means of managing schools, much as it is used similarly in prisons. It's an administrative tool. And in many cases, the school shooters were members of some despised out group, the kind of people almost ritually bullied in schools for generations. What's odd about their behavior is that they fought back with guns. That was, while it was happening, quite astonishing.

The school shooting phase has largely passed, and it may be in part because many administrators came to understand that managing schools through selected bullies wasn't working out all that well.

The McVeigh motive is largely ignored, but if I recall correctly, he and his cohorts were pretty up front about it: directly, the bombing in OKC was "revenge" or pay-back for Waco. That is not some "mysterious" motivation at all. What happened at Waco was simply appalling on every level. The whole thing was just a monstrous action from beginning to end, and it was utterly unnecessary. The Government came to understand that, eventually, but the rationale for committing this atrocity in the first place was an early example of just how twisted a Government gone out of control -- in an effort to enforce ever greater control -- can be.

To then "revenge" Waco by blowing up a Federal building in Oklahoma City together with all the people in it seems... odd... and yet, when you think about it, it's probably one of the simplest solutions to the question: "What do you do?" when you believe you have to do something to deal with the atrocities taking place around you.

And in McVeigh's case, there was more. He had apparently been ordered to do something -- which he apparently did -- while in the armed service in the Gulf War: he was a bulldozer driver in the Army, and he was ordered to drive his bulldozer over the trenches filled with Iraqi conscripts, some of whom were clearly alive. He did it, filling the trenches, and when he realized what he had done, he was filled with loathing and remorse, for himself and for the country he was serving. He had committed an atrocity himself, under orders, an atrocity that would be considered a war crime if the United States had not been Victorious in the Gulf War.

And so, when it came to "revenge" for Waco, in which dozens of innocents would be killed, as dozens of innocents died in the flames of the Branch Davidian Compound, and as who knows how many Iraqi conscript soldiers were buried alive in the trenchs out of Basra, the pattern of "acceptable" mass murder had already been set. McVeigh didn't claim to be innocent; he claimed to be justified.

And so we come to our man in Norway, and he is said to have posted something on his Twitter account, to wit:


Yes. Let me repeat that: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."

This is said to be a quote from John Stuart Mill, but I haven't found any source. Doesn't mean it isn't there. What I got from the statement, however, was that it was an expression of almost pure Libertarian/Objectivism, the utter and final triumph of the Individual as Master -- through "belief." Of course, an Objectivist/Libertarian would argue it is no such thing, because... "belief" is not rational. Yes. Of course.

That's the irony, isn't it?

I do not by any means propose to know the motives of any mass murderer; I merely note there is a consistency among those who use the tactic in that they are typically white and male and often strongly individualist -- and typically OUTRAGED!!!!™ by something the "collective" -- the We in as in "We the People" -- has done or permitted.

Belief, whether it is Christianist or Objectivist or something else, particularly in the Power of the Individual to shape or control general events, is (or at least appears to be) fundamental to their action.

The murder of so many innocents will forever be the legacy of that tragic Belief.

----------------

Note: I've been following the story mostly on http://nrk.no/. Run it through Google Translator and it's pretty comprehensible, though of course, unless you understand Norwegian, the videos may be a bit hard to follow. Their coverage has been darned good given how difficult the story is for the people of Norway. They have interviewed a couple of Muslim teenagers who were on the island when the shooting started. Even though I don't understand more than a tiny bit of Norwegian, these interviews are powerful refutation of the widespread European and American caricature of Muslims out to murder us all in our beds.

Meanwhile, it is almost impossible to imagine how heartbreaking, let alone terrifying, this all must be for the Norwegian people. It's way beyond shock. The stories at the NRK news site give some sense of what the Norwegian people are going through right now.

As awful as it is -- and my heart goes out to the People of Norway -- at some point, we and Our Rulers need to grasp the horrors that have been unleashed by The West on myriad Brown and Black Peoples around the world, horrors that are the day in and day out reality for so many of them. Death from Above -- or just plain Death -- is all too real to them, nearly every day. That is what "we" are too often seen to do in the world. It must stop.