TEROR by FUNDAMENTALIST
Norwegian massacre is wrong, not far right
July 26, 2011
smh
The Norwegian man accused of killing at least 92 of his fellow citizens on Friday wrote that "once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike".
If there is any consolation in this massacre, it is that deranged people like Anders Behring Breivik can't think straight. He had enough mental clarity to organise logistics but so little connection with the larger reality of humanity that he failed to understand his butchery would have the opposite effect.
Much media reaction to the tragedy has conflated the incident with the rise of far-right parties in Europe. The coverage implies that Breivik's attack is an extension of the trend and a frightening portent.
This is exactly wrong. His use of violence to pursue a "crusade" to halt the "Islamicisation [sic] of Europe" has discredited his cause, not advanced it. This is the worst thing that has happened to the far right in western Europe in years.
Breivik wrote in his rantings, which, for some reason, most media are dignifying with the title "manifesto", that he admired Europe's standout Muslim-baiting politician, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands.
Wilders opposes Muslim immigrants and wants the Koran and face-covering banned. His party won 15 per cent of the vote in last year's election, making it the third-biggest in the Dutch parliament.
But Wilders knows that any association with the mad butcher of Oslo is poison. He issued a statement on Breivik on Saturday: "I despise everything he stands for and everything he did."
Breivik once belonged to the far-right political party in Norway, the Progress Party. The party did well in the parliamentary elections of 2009. It won 23 per cent of the vote and entrenched itself as Norway's main political party.
But it did this by moderating its positions, sidelining members whose criticism of immigrants was seen as racist. It shifted emphasis to opposing Norway's overbearing welfare state.
Breivik, apparently frustrated, left the party. But when news of his atrocity hit, Norway's media quickly went to the Progress Party's leader, Siv Jensen, for her thoughts.
Jensen instantly denounced him: "The horrible and cowardly attacks we've witnessed are contrary to the principles and values underpinning the Norwegian society."
A Populus opinion poll in Britain early this year suggested that 48 per cent of Britons would support an English nationalist political party if it were not "associated with violence and fascist imagery".
Violence and extremism discredit everything they touch. They do not attract but repel people from political causes.
Breivik's own study should have taught him this lesson. He apparently studied his Islamist counterparts, al-Qaeda. He reportedly wrote: "Just like Jihadi warriors are the plum tree of the Ummah [Muslim community], we will be the plum tree for Europe and for Christianity."
He failed to notice that al-Qaeda's strategy and its tactics have failed, and failed spectacularly.
Why do terrorists use terror? Because they cannot win by conventional means. Terror is the tool of the weak against the strong. Al-Qaeda attacked the US in the hope that it would have two effects.
One, to diminish its enemy by provoking the US into a misjudged response. This succeeded. Not when the US invaded Afghanistan, which was a rational and well-supported response, but when it pointlessly invaded Iraq at enormous cost in blood and treasure and US credibility.
Two, al-Qaeda hoped to strengthen itself by winning support among the world's 1 billion Muslims. This seemed to have some initial success but has failed dismally. Ultimately, the mass of common Muslims were repelled by the use of violence against innocent people.
When an Arab uprising eventually occurred it was the so-called Arab Spring, where the people were inspired by hopes for democracy and dignity in a civilised society, not by savagery and extremism. When the US eventually killed Osama bin Laden this year, his death caused barely a ripple among the world's mainstream Muslims. He was a false prophet, roundly rejected.
There has been a rising tide of anti-immigrant, pro-nationalist sentiment in Western Europe in recent years. It has four striking features.
First, it has been quite successful at the ballot box. In the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Hungary and Switzerland, far-right parties have won between 10 and 30 per cent of the vote in national elections in the past four years. In Sweden, the far-right party went from zero to 20 seats in parliament with 5.7 per cent at last year's election. In Austria, the xenophobic Freedom Party won a quarter of the vote at provincial elections in the capital, Vienna, last year, a portent for the 2013 election.
Second, it has mobilised in opposition to Islam and Islamic immigrants and Islamic emblems but this is part of a wider theme about identity. "The key topics are always the same," said Uwe Jun of the University of Trier in Germany. "National identity, migration and a rather sceptical attitude towards Islam."
Third, it is remarkable that Europe has not seen a great deal more of this. The European Union project of dissolving borders and allowing free movement of people is a radical experiment in post-national social engineering. This plus a terrible financial crisis surely creates the perfect laboratory conditions for a nationalist backlash.
Yet, third, it has involved very little violence, till now. Europol this year reported that there were no right-wing terrorist attacks in Europe last year. There were, however, 45 left-wing and anarchist attacks and 160 separatist attacks.
Europe has to work out its problems but not Breivik's way. He might have known that "once you decide to strike", you damage the cause you are supposedly advancing.
But then again, how do you explain common sense to the criminally deranged?
Peter Hartcher is The Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/norwegian-massacre-is-wrong-not-far-right-20110725-1hx03.html#ixzz1TS6DkNIY
Massacre marks end of Norway's golden era
Anthony Browne
July 25, 2011
smh
Norway is like a heart-achingly beautiful village the size of a country, with a quality of life, wealth and social equality few could dream of. But this idyll - repeatedly recognised by the United Nations as the best country on earth to live - has been utterly, incomprehensibly shattered.
The 4 million Norwegians are flag-wavingly proud of their country, and proud of doing good in the world. They are always the peace-brokers and peacekeepers, the givers of Nobel Prizes, the biggest donors of foreign aid per capita on the planet. Unlike most European countries, they are unencumbered by national or imperial guilt.
It is a country of incredible trust, where King Harald rides the Oslo tram alongside his subjects, and where crime is so low people often don't lock their doors. When, as a small child, I got lost in Oslo with my brother and sister, it didn't really matter - strangers are never a threat. There is no class system. It has such a generous welfare state, it is almost impossible to be poor.
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In short, it is difficult to think of a place less likely to suffer the worst mass shooting in history. If the killer had been a foreigner - an utlending - they might have found it more explicable. But a blond Norwegian farmer?
I am heading to a family reunion in Norway, which includes a cousin who felt the blast of the bomb in her suburban Oslo home. I know the country will be very different from the one I have known all my life - and the one where my father met my Norwegian mother half a century ago.
Norwegians are not normally given to anguished introspection about their nation. The annual UN report singing its praises is greeted with a shrug, because they are all conscious they have been living in an astonishing, eye-watering golden age.
For most of its history, Norway was under the control of Sweden or Denmark, with Norwegians very much second-class citizens. Even after independence - celebrated with fervour every year - the country was still poor and isolated, with little but fish to live off. Things weren't helped by the Nazi occupation, during which my grandfather was imprisoned for working for the resistance.
So, until the 1960s, Norway was a poor, backward country. Then it struck oil and never looked back. The government's main budget problem is what to do with its huge surpluses - apart from add to the vast sovereign wealth fund built up for its citizens. Billions of krone are spent on building road tunnels through granite rock to remote communities. The electricity is all hydroelectric, but the power stations are buried tastefully inside the mountains. It is the most beautiful country in Europe, although it gets few tourists because its petro-currency makes it so expensive.
Yet as the attacks show, the country has a dark side. Norwegians have, until very recently, had little contact with the outside world - they couldn't afford to travel and no one went to visit.
In recent years, however, Norway started receiving immigration from around the world and Islam has become the second biggest religion. Given Norway's homogenous insularity, the impact of such different cultures has been even bigger than it was in Britain in the 1960s. Casual racism is rife. Only in Norway have I heard someone order a taxi and request that the driver be white. News reports can display an unwitting racism that is shocking to foreign ears. There is widespread unease about the way the country is changing, which even mainstream politicians play on, with inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric.
Many Norwegians don't want their idyll spoiled, by either joining the EU, or by turning multicultural - and it is this nativist side of the country that has now turned horrifyingly murderous. Clearly, Norway must confront its racist demons, in the same way other western nations have. But the shock of the attack could also crystallise fears of many Norwegians that they don't like where their country is going and actually spur anti-immigration sentiment. Either way, Norway's innocence has come to a tragic and horrifying end.
Anthony Browne works for the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. This article first appeared in the London Telegraph.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/massacre-marks-end-of-norways-golden-era-20110724-1hv8g.html#ixzz1TS4SV0yE
Selasa, 26/07/2011 11:03 WIB
Opini
Breivik, Petani yang Dikecewakan Partai Buruh
Ardi Winangun
Jakarta - Disebut-sebut Norwegia adalah sebuah negeri damai di kawasan Skandinavia, namun secara tiba-tiba dari negeri yang menganut sistem pemerintahan monarki konstitusional itu, masyarakat dunia dikejutkan oleh aksi terorisme. Lebih mengejutkan lagi, aksi terorisme yang menewaskan 92 orang, baik yang dilakukan dengan cara penembakan di Pulau Otoeya maupun peledakan bom di kantor pemerintahan di Oslo, dilakukan oleh fundamentalis Kristen. Media menyebutnya dengan sebutan seorang fundamentalis kanan.
Pelaku yang namanya diidentifikasi Anders Behring Breivik mempunyai pekerjaan sebagai petani organik yang mengaku dirinya seorang Kristen konservatif. Dirinya mempunyai sebuah keyakinan yang kuat yang menyatakan, satu orang dengan keyakinan setara dengan kekuatan pasukan 100 ribu orang dengan satu misi. Tidak hanya itu, Breivik terungkap telah bergabung dengan satu partai yang anti terhadap kaum imigran, multikulturalisme, dan Islam.
Dengan tertangkapnya Breivik maka hilanglah spekulasi yang sebelumnya menuduh apa yang terjadi di Oslo dilakukan oleh terorisme dari fundamentalis Islam. Dugaan itu sebelumnya menguat karena Norwegia pada saat yang sama sedang mengadili 2 terdakwa perencana teror yang dilakukan oleh anggota Al Qaeda. Selain itu pengadilan di negeri yang merdeka 17 mei 1814 itu juga tengah mengadili seorang ulama kelahiran Iraq yang hendak mengancam politisi Swedia itu. Ulama itu akan membunuh mereka jika sampai dideportasi.
Apa yang terjadi di Oslo dan Pulau Utoya itu tentu tidak dikehendaki masyarakat dunia pada umumnya dan masyarakat Eropa pada khususnya. Masyarakat Eropa dan Amerika Serikat, dengan kejadian ini tentu akan membelalakan matanya bahwa ternyata terorisme dilakukan tidak hanya oleh kelompok fundamentalis Islam, dari kelompok fundamentalis Kristen pun ternyata mempunyai kesempatan dan peluang yang sama bila mereka mau. Dan itu terbukti pada apa yang dilakukan oleh Breivik.
Intelijen kecolongan dari terorisme yang dilakukan Breivik sebab selama ini intelijen Norwegia lebih mengawasi sepak terjang ummat Muslim daripada kelompok-kelompok yang anti pemerintahan Perdana Menteri Jens Stoltenberg.
Negara-negara Eropa dan Amerika Serikat tidak menghendaki terorisme yang dilakukan Breivik, bukan hanya karena apa yang dilakukan adalah sebuah kejahatan kemanusiaan namun akan membiaskan atau mementahkan 'program' mereka untuk melawan terorisme dan memusuhi serta mengusir ummat Islam dari Eropa yang selama ini telah berjalan sesuai dengan skenario.
Selama ini banyak politisi negeri-negeri Eropa seperti Belanda, Swiss, Denmark, Swedia, Perancis, Jerman, serta beberapa negara lainnya mengkampanyekan anti Muslim. Kampanye yang dilakukan adalah dengan cara melarang penggunaan simbol-simbol Islam dan mendirikan masjid. Selain itu melakukan pembatasan terhadap kaum imigran yang datang dari negara-negara Arab dan Afrika Utara. Mereka khawatir dengan massifnya kaum Muslim dengan membawa identitas asalnya akan membuat rusaknya identitas dan nasionalisme bangsa-bangsa Eropa. Untuk mencegah hal yang demikian, maka fitnah, pelecehan, dan tindak kekerasan dilakukan oleh negara-negara Eropa kepada kaum Muslim.
Selepas apa yang dilakukan oleh Breivik maka membuktikan bahwa apa yang selama ini dituduhkan oleh negara-negara Eropa kepada ummat Muslim tidak selamanya benar. Amerika Serikat sendiri kebingungan dalam mensikapi terorisme di Oslo dan Pulau Otoeya, sebab dilakukan oleh kelompok yang selama ini tidak masuk dalam catatan kelompok yang harus diperangi. Sehingga pastinya Amerika Serikat tidak akan mengirimkan pasukan ke Norwegia. Tidak seperti ketika Al Qaeda melakukan aksi 9/11, mereka langsung menginvasi Afghanistan.
Selepas apa yang dilakukan Breivik akan terjadi babak baru hubungan antara Islam, Kristen, dan Barat. Barat akan menjadi paham bahwa ajaran kekerasan tidak hanya ada dalam satu agama saja (Islam) namun pada semua agama, dan itu dilakukan bila ummatnya mengalami tekanan.
Breivik kecewa pada kebijakan Stoltenberg yang disebutnya terlalu ke kiri. Breivik yang selama ini tergabung di dalam partai kanan merasa tidak terakomodasi. Stoltenberg adalan ekonom Norwegia, ketua Partai Buruh Norwegia (Norwegian Labour Party) atau Det norske Arbeiderparti sejak tahun 2001. Dirinya juga ketua Workers' Youth Leagaue periode 1985-1989 dan Oslo Chapter untuk Partai Buruh 1990-1992. Partai Buruh Norwegia adalah partai politik demokratik sosial yang didirikan pada tahun 1887. Partai Buruh merupakan partai politik terbesar di Norwegia sejak tahun 1927 dan sering memperoleh lebih dari separuh total kursi di parlemen.
Sebagai seorang petani, bisa jadi Breivik selama ini sering dikecewakan oleh kebijakan Stoltenberg. Sehingga pupuk dan bahan kimia yang dibelinya dalam jumlah besar, yang sedianya untuk perusahaan pertanian yang ia dirikan, Breivik Geofarm, ia gunakan untuk merakit bom. Selanjutnya kekecewaan Breivik itu dengan menggunakan keyakinan yang dianut dilampiaskan dengan meledakan kantor pemerintahan dan menembaki kader-kader Partai Buruh.
Apa yang dilakukan Breivik harus menjadikan masukan bagi Stoltenberg. Ia harus mampu mengakomodasi dan memperhatikan semua kelompok, etnis, dan agama agar kekecewaan dari masyarakat tidak diwujudkan dalam bentuk aksi teror.
Namun biasanya bila ada aksi teror, pemerintah biasanya langsung reaktif dengan bertindak keras. Bila negara-negara Eropa selama selama ini melarang simbol-simbol fundamentalis Islam, bisa jadi pasca terorisme di Norwegia yang dilakukan oleh Breivik itu akan membuat simbol-simbol dan gerakan fundamentalis Kristen akan juga diawasi dan dilarang oleh pemerintah.
*) Ardi Winangun pernah bekerja di Civil-Militery Relations Studies (Vilters). Penulis tinggal di Matraman, Jakarta Timur. Nomor kontak: 08159052503. Email: ardi_winangun@yahoo.com
(vit/vit)
Norway mourns victims of anti-Islam "Crusader"
ReutersBy Victoria Klesty and Gwladys Fouche | Reuters – 6 hrs ago
SUNDVOLLEN, Norway (Reuters) - Norway mourned on Sunday 93 people killed in a shooting spree and car bombing by a Norwegian who saw his attacks as "atrocious, but necessary" to defeat liberal immigration policies and the spread of Islam.
In his first comment via a lawyer since his arrest, Anders Behring Breivik, 32, said he wanted to explain himself at a court hearing on Monday about extending his custody.
In a rambling manifesto before the attacks, Breivik said he was part of a crusade to fight a tide of Islam.
"He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary," Geir Lippestad said.
The lawyer said Breivik had admitted to Friday's shootings at a Labour party youth camp and the bombing that killed seven people in Oslo's government district a few hours earlier.
However, "he feels that what he has done does not deserve punishment," Lippestad told NRK public television.
"What he has said is that he wants a change in society and in his understanding, in his head, there must be a revolution."
Oslo's acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim confirmed to reporters that Breivik would be able to speak to the court. It was not clear whether the hearing would be closed or in public.
"He has admitted to the facts of both the bombing and the shooting, although he's not admitting criminal guilt," Sponheim said, adding that Breivik had said he acted alone.
Police were checking this because some witness statements from the island spoke of more than one gunman, Sponheim said.
Norway mourns victims of twin attacksNorway mourns the 93 victims of the deadly twin attacks which rocked the country on Friday, as hundreds gather outside Oslo cathedral to show their solidarity.
NATIONAL TRAGEDY
The violence, Norway's worst since World War Two, has profoundly shocked the usually peaceful nation of 4.8 million.
King Harald and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were among mourners at a service in Oslo cathedral, where the premier spoke emotionally about the victims, some of whom he knew.
"This represents a national tragedy," he declared.
Tearful people placed flowers and candles outside the cathedral. Soldiers with guns and wearing bullet-proof vests blocked streets leading to the government district.
Police said Breivik surrendered when they arrived on the small island of Utoeya in a lake northwest of Oslo after he had shot dead at least 85 people, mostly young people attending a summer camp of the youth wing of Norway's ruling Labour Party.
About 650 people were on the island when Breivik, wearing a police uniform, opened fire. Police said it took them an hour from when they were first alerted to stop the massacre, the worst by a single gunman in modern times.
An inadequate boat and a decision to await a special armed unit from Oslo, 45 km (28 miles) away, delayed the response.
"When so many people and equipment were put into it, the boat started to take on water, so that the motor stopped," said Erik Berga, police operations chief in Buskerud County.
A person wounded in the shooting died in hospital, raising the death toll to 93, Norway's NRK television said. Police say some people remain missing. Ninety-seven people were wounded.
Otto Loevik had to decide who to pick up on his boat and who to leave behind as he came under fire trying to rescue fleeing teenagers. "He remembers the faces of the youths he left behind," Loevik's wife, Wenche, told Reuters.
"He told me: 'I had to chose who to pick up on the boat and who to leave behind. Who do you choose?'," she said. Her husband, who declined to be interviewed, rescued some 40 to 50 terrified youths.
Norwegian police said a British police officer was providing technical expertise in the investigation but that they had not requested any separate inquiries in foreign countries.
ANTI-JIHAD MANIFESTO
Breivik posted a 1,500-page manifesto, written in English, on Friday, describing his violent philosophy and how he planned his onslaught and made explosives.
The killings would draw attention to the manifesto entitled "2083-A European Declaration of Independence," Breivik wrote.
"Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike," he added.
The manifesto posted by Breivik, a self-styled founder member of a modern Knights Templar organization, hints at a wider conspiracy of self-appointed crusaders and shows a mind influenced by the fantasy imagery of online gaming.
"The order is to serve as an armed Indigenous Rights Organization and as a Crusader Movement (anti-Jihad movement)," he writes in the document, chunks of which are cut and pasted from other far-right, anti-Islam documents on the Internet.
Breivik says he is not against immigrants who integrate and reserves a lot of his fury for a liberal European political establishment he views as promoting Europe's destruction.
He hints at a wider conspiracy in the document, saying that the Knights Templar, a medieval order of crusading warrior monks, had been reconstituted in London in 2002.
Breivik attacks the "Islamic colonisation and Islamisation of Western Europe" and the "rise of cultural Marxism/multi-culturalism."
A video posted on YouTube called "Knights Templar 2083" showed pictures of Breivik, including one of him in a scuba diving outfit pointing an automatic weapon.
Parliament, in recess until October, is to be recalled for a memorial service. Party leaders will discuss how the attacks would affect campaigning for local elections in September.
"We will have an election, we will have a political debate," said Stoltenberg, premier and Labour Party leader.
"But I believe everyone understands that we have to discuss the form of the debate ... to avoid a conflict between the political debate and the need to show dignity and compassion."
Erna Solberg, head of the main opposition Conservative Party, said: "We have to agree the rules of the game."
IMMIGRATION
Norway has long been open to immigration, which has been criticised by the populist Progress Party, to which Breivik once belonged. Labour, whose youth camp he attacked, backs multi-culturalism to accommodate different ethnic communities.
"Norway will keep going. But there will be a Norway before and after the dramatic attacks on Friday," Stoltenberg said.
"But I am quite sure that you will also recognize Norway afterwards -- it will be an open Norway, a democratic Norway and a Norway where we take care of each other."
The attacks have prompted soul-searching in Norway.
At Oslo cathedral, Britt Aanes, a priest aged 42 said the fact that Breivik was Norwegian had affected people deeply.
"In one way, I think it was good that it was not a Muslim terrorist group behind this," she said. It pointed up the complexity of immigration and inter-religious issues for Norwegians, "a small and privileged people," she said.
"We must open our eyes and not simply think that we can keep all this wealth to ourselves."
Some analysts questioned whether Norway, focused on al Qaeda-type militancy, had overlooked domestic threats.
"While the main terrorist threat to democratic societies around the world still comes from Islamist extremists, the horrific events in Norway are a reminder that white far-right extremism is also a major and possibly growing threat," said James Brandon, research head at London's Quilliam think-tank.
Home-grown anti-government figures have struck elsewhere, notably in the United States, where Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Grief was still raw for survivors and relatives clustered at a hotel in Sundvollen near Utoeya island. They huddled together, many with bloodshot eyes, at terrace tables.
(Additional reporting by Walter Gibbs, Anna Ringstrom, Henrik Stoelen, Terje Solsvik, Patrick Lannin, Johan Ahlander, Wojciech Moskwa, John Acher and Ole Petter Skonnord in Oslo, William Maclean in London; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Sabtu, 23/07/2011 15:45 WIB
Rita Uli Hutapea - detikNews
Oslo - Seorang pria Norwegia telah ditahan sebagai tersangka utama dua serangan teror di Norwegia. Kepolisian Norwegia menyebut pria tersebut sebagai seorang Kristen fundamentalis.
Pejabat kepolisian Roger Andersen seperti dilansir kantor berita AFP, Sabtu (23/7/2011) mengatakan, berdasarkan informasi yang diposting tersangka di internet, dia "Kristen fundamentalis".
Kepolisian belum merilis identitas tersangka tersebut namun banyak media Norwegia mengidentifikasi pria berambut priang itu sebagai Anders Behring Breivik.
Komisioner kepolisian Sveinung Sponheim mengkonfirmasi bahwa pria berumur 32 tahun itu telah memposting pernyataan-pernyataan anti-Islam di internet.
Menurut stasiun televisi TV2, tersangka terkait dengan ekstremis sayap kanan dan memiliki dua senjata yang terdaftar atas namanya.
Media Norwegia lainnya memberitakan, di laman Facebook-nya Breivik menyebut dirinya sebagai "konservatif, Kristen" dan hobi berburu dan permainan komputer seperti World of Warcraft dan Modern Warfare 2.
(ita/ita)
July 26, 2011
smh
The Norwegian man accused of killing at least 92 of his fellow citizens on Friday wrote that "once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike".
If there is any consolation in this massacre, it is that deranged people like Anders Behring Breivik can't think straight. He had enough mental clarity to organise logistics but so little connection with the larger reality of humanity that he failed to understand his butchery would have the opposite effect.
Much media reaction to the tragedy has conflated the incident with the rise of far-right parties in Europe. The coverage implies that Breivik's attack is an extension of the trend and a frightening portent.
This is exactly wrong. His use of violence to pursue a "crusade" to halt the "Islamicisation [sic] of Europe" has discredited his cause, not advanced it. This is the worst thing that has happened to the far right in western Europe in years.
Breivik wrote in his rantings, which, for some reason, most media are dignifying with the title "manifesto", that he admired Europe's standout Muslim-baiting politician, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands.
Wilders opposes Muslim immigrants and wants the Koran and face-covering banned. His party won 15 per cent of the vote in last year's election, making it the third-biggest in the Dutch parliament.
But Wilders knows that any association with the mad butcher of Oslo is poison. He issued a statement on Breivik on Saturday: "I despise everything he stands for and everything he did."
Breivik once belonged to the far-right political party in Norway, the Progress Party. The party did well in the parliamentary elections of 2009. It won 23 per cent of the vote and entrenched itself as Norway's main political party.
But it did this by moderating its positions, sidelining members whose criticism of immigrants was seen as racist. It shifted emphasis to opposing Norway's overbearing welfare state.
Breivik, apparently frustrated, left the party. But when news of his atrocity hit, Norway's media quickly went to the Progress Party's leader, Siv Jensen, for her thoughts.
Jensen instantly denounced him: "The horrible and cowardly attacks we've witnessed are contrary to the principles and values underpinning the Norwegian society."
A Populus opinion poll in Britain early this year suggested that 48 per cent of Britons would support an English nationalist political party if it were not "associated with violence and fascist imagery".
Violence and extremism discredit everything they touch. They do not attract but repel people from political causes.
Breivik's own study should have taught him this lesson. He apparently studied his Islamist counterparts, al-Qaeda. He reportedly wrote: "Just like Jihadi warriors are the plum tree of the Ummah [Muslim community], we will be the plum tree for Europe and for Christianity."
He failed to notice that al-Qaeda's strategy and its tactics have failed, and failed spectacularly.
Why do terrorists use terror? Because they cannot win by conventional means. Terror is the tool of the weak against the strong. Al-Qaeda attacked the US in the hope that it would have two effects.
One, to diminish its enemy by provoking the US into a misjudged response. This succeeded. Not when the US invaded Afghanistan, which was a rational and well-supported response, but when it pointlessly invaded Iraq at enormous cost in blood and treasure and US credibility.
Two, al-Qaeda hoped to strengthen itself by winning support among the world's 1 billion Muslims. This seemed to have some initial success but has failed dismally. Ultimately, the mass of common Muslims were repelled by the use of violence against innocent people.
When an Arab uprising eventually occurred it was the so-called Arab Spring, where the people were inspired by hopes for democracy and dignity in a civilised society, not by savagery and extremism. When the US eventually killed Osama bin Laden this year, his death caused barely a ripple among the world's mainstream Muslims. He was a false prophet, roundly rejected.
There has been a rising tide of anti-immigrant, pro-nationalist sentiment in Western Europe in recent years. It has four striking features.
First, it has been quite successful at the ballot box. In the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Hungary and Switzerland, far-right parties have won between 10 and 30 per cent of the vote in national elections in the past four years. In Sweden, the far-right party went from zero to 20 seats in parliament with 5.7 per cent at last year's election. In Austria, the xenophobic Freedom Party won a quarter of the vote at provincial elections in the capital, Vienna, last year, a portent for the 2013 election.
Second, it has mobilised in opposition to Islam and Islamic immigrants and Islamic emblems but this is part of a wider theme about identity. "The key topics are always the same," said Uwe Jun of the University of Trier in Germany. "National identity, migration and a rather sceptical attitude towards Islam."
Third, it is remarkable that Europe has not seen a great deal more of this. The European Union project of dissolving borders and allowing free movement of people is a radical experiment in post-national social engineering. This plus a terrible financial crisis surely creates the perfect laboratory conditions for a nationalist backlash.
Yet, third, it has involved very little violence, till now. Europol this year reported that there were no right-wing terrorist attacks in Europe last year. There were, however, 45 left-wing and anarchist attacks and 160 separatist attacks.
Europe has to work out its problems but not Breivik's way. He might have known that "once you decide to strike", you damage the cause you are supposedly advancing.
But then again, how do you explain common sense to the criminally deranged?
Peter Hartcher is The Sydney Morning Herald's international editor.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/norwegian-massacre-is-wrong-not-far-right-20110725-1hx03.html#ixzz1TS6DkNIY
Massacre marks end of Norway's golden era
Anthony Browne
July 25, 2011
smh
Norway is like a heart-achingly beautiful village the size of a country, with a quality of life, wealth and social equality few could dream of. But this idyll - repeatedly recognised by the United Nations as the best country on earth to live - has been utterly, incomprehensibly shattered.
The 4 million Norwegians are flag-wavingly proud of their country, and proud of doing good in the world. They are always the peace-brokers and peacekeepers, the givers of Nobel Prizes, the biggest donors of foreign aid per capita on the planet. Unlike most European countries, they are unencumbered by national or imperial guilt.
It is a country of incredible trust, where King Harald rides the Oslo tram alongside his subjects, and where crime is so low people often don't lock their doors. When, as a small child, I got lost in Oslo with my brother and sister, it didn't really matter - strangers are never a threat. There is no class system. It has such a generous welfare state, it is almost impossible to be poor.
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In short, it is difficult to think of a place less likely to suffer the worst mass shooting in history. If the killer had been a foreigner - an utlending - they might have found it more explicable. But a blond Norwegian farmer?
I am heading to a family reunion in Norway, which includes a cousin who felt the blast of the bomb in her suburban Oslo home. I know the country will be very different from the one I have known all my life - and the one where my father met my Norwegian mother half a century ago.
Norwegians are not normally given to anguished introspection about their nation. The annual UN report singing its praises is greeted with a shrug, because they are all conscious they have been living in an astonishing, eye-watering golden age.
For most of its history, Norway was under the control of Sweden or Denmark, with Norwegians very much second-class citizens. Even after independence - celebrated with fervour every year - the country was still poor and isolated, with little but fish to live off. Things weren't helped by the Nazi occupation, during which my grandfather was imprisoned for working for the resistance.
So, until the 1960s, Norway was a poor, backward country. Then it struck oil and never looked back. The government's main budget problem is what to do with its huge surpluses - apart from add to the vast sovereign wealth fund built up for its citizens. Billions of krone are spent on building road tunnels through granite rock to remote communities. The electricity is all hydroelectric, but the power stations are buried tastefully inside the mountains. It is the most beautiful country in Europe, although it gets few tourists because its petro-currency makes it so expensive.
Yet as the attacks show, the country has a dark side. Norwegians have, until very recently, had little contact with the outside world - they couldn't afford to travel and no one went to visit.
In recent years, however, Norway started receiving immigration from around the world and Islam has become the second biggest religion. Given Norway's homogenous insularity, the impact of such different cultures has been even bigger than it was in Britain in the 1960s. Casual racism is rife. Only in Norway have I heard someone order a taxi and request that the driver be white. News reports can display an unwitting racism that is shocking to foreign ears. There is widespread unease about the way the country is changing, which even mainstream politicians play on, with inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric.
Many Norwegians don't want their idyll spoiled, by either joining the EU, or by turning multicultural - and it is this nativist side of the country that has now turned horrifyingly murderous. Clearly, Norway must confront its racist demons, in the same way other western nations have. But the shock of the attack could also crystallise fears of many Norwegians that they don't like where their country is going and actually spur anti-immigration sentiment. Either way, Norway's innocence has come to a tragic and horrifying end.
Anthony Browne works for the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. This article first appeared in the London Telegraph.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/massacre-marks-end-of-norways-golden-era-20110724-1hv8g.html#ixzz1TS4SV0yE
Selasa, 26/07/2011 11:03 WIB
Opini
Breivik, Petani yang Dikecewakan Partai Buruh
Ardi Winangun
Jakarta - Disebut-sebut Norwegia adalah sebuah negeri damai di kawasan Skandinavia, namun secara tiba-tiba dari negeri yang menganut sistem pemerintahan monarki konstitusional itu, masyarakat dunia dikejutkan oleh aksi terorisme. Lebih mengejutkan lagi, aksi terorisme yang menewaskan 92 orang, baik yang dilakukan dengan cara penembakan di Pulau Otoeya maupun peledakan bom di kantor pemerintahan di Oslo, dilakukan oleh fundamentalis Kristen. Media menyebutnya dengan sebutan seorang fundamentalis kanan.
Pelaku yang namanya diidentifikasi Anders Behring Breivik mempunyai pekerjaan sebagai petani organik yang mengaku dirinya seorang Kristen konservatif. Dirinya mempunyai sebuah keyakinan yang kuat yang menyatakan, satu orang dengan keyakinan setara dengan kekuatan pasukan 100 ribu orang dengan satu misi. Tidak hanya itu, Breivik terungkap telah bergabung dengan satu partai yang anti terhadap kaum imigran, multikulturalisme, dan Islam.
Dengan tertangkapnya Breivik maka hilanglah spekulasi yang sebelumnya menuduh apa yang terjadi di Oslo dilakukan oleh terorisme dari fundamentalis Islam. Dugaan itu sebelumnya menguat karena Norwegia pada saat yang sama sedang mengadili 2 terdakwa perencana teror yang dilakukan oleh anggota Al Qaeda. Selain itu pengadilan di negeri yang merdeka 17 mei 1814 itu juga tengah mengadili seorang ulama kelahiran Iraq yang hendak mengancam politisi Swedia itu. Ulama itu akan membunuh mereka jika sampai dideportasi.
Apa yang terjadi di Oslo dan Pulau Utoya itu tentu tidak dikehendaki masyarakat dunia pada umumnya dan masyarakat Eropa pada khususnya. Masyarakat Eropa dan Amerika Serikat, dengan kejadian ini tentu akan membelalakan matanya bahwa ternyata terorisme dilakukan tidak hanya oleh kelompok fundamentalis Islam, dari kelompok fundamentalis Kristen pun ternyata mempunyai kesempatan dan peluang yang sama bila mereka mau. Dan itu terbukti pada apa yang dilakukan oleh Breivik.
Intelijen kecolongan dari terorisme yang dilakukan Breivik sebab selama ini intelijen Norwegia lebih mengawasi sepak terjang ummat Muslim daripada kelompok-kelompok yang anti pemerintahan Perdana Menteri Jens Stoltenberg.
Negara-negara Eropa dan Amerika Serikat tidak menghendaki terorisme yang dilakukan Breivik, bukan hanya karena apa yang dilakukan adalah sebuah kejahatan kemanusiaan namun akan membiaskan atau mementahkan 'program' mereka untuk melawan terorisme dan memusuhi serta mengusir ummat Islam dari Eropa yang selama ini telah berjalan sesuai dengan skenario.
Selama ini banyak politisi negeri-negeri Eropa seperti Belanda, Swiss, Denmark, Swedia, Perancis, Jerman, serta beberapa negara lainnya mengkampanyekan anti Muslim. Kampanye yang dilakukan adalah dengan cara melarang penggunaan simbol-simbol Islam dan mendirikan masjid. Selain itu melakukan pembatasan terhadap kaum imigran yang datang dari negara-negara Arab dan Afrika Utara. Mereka khawatir dengan massifnya kaum Muslim dengan membawa identitas asalnya akan membuat rusaknya identitas dan nasionalisme bangsa-bangsa Eropa. Untuk mencegah hal yang demikian, maka fitnah, pelecehan, dan tindak kekerasan dilakukan oleh negara-negara Eropa kepada kaum Muslim.
Selepas apa yang dilakukan oleh Breivik maka membuktikan bahwa apa yang selama ini dituduhkan oleh negara-negara Eropa kepada ummat Muslim tidak selamanya benar. Amerika Serikat sendiri kebingungan dalam mensikapi terorisme di Oslo dan Pulau Otoeya, sebab dilakukan oleh kelompok yang selama ini tidak masuk dalam catatan kelompok yang harus diperangi. Sehingga pastinya Amerika Serikat tidak akan mengirimkan pasukan ke Norwegia. Tidak seperti ketika Al Qaeda melakukan aksi 9/11, mereka langsung menginvasi Afghanistan.
Selepas apa yang dilakukan Breivik akan terjadi babak baru hubungan antara Islam, Kristen, dan Barat. Barat akan menjadi paham bahwa ajaran kekerasan tidak hanya ada dalam satu agama saja (Islam) namun pada semua agama, dan itu dilakukan bila ummatnya mengalami tekanan.
Breivik kecewa pada kebijakan Stoltenberg yang disebutnya terlalu ke kiri. Breivik yang selama ini tergabung di dalam partai kanan merasa tidak terakomodasi. Stoltenberg adalan ekonom Norwegia, ketua Partai Buruh Norwegia (Norwegian Labour Party) atau Det norske Arbeiderparti sejak tahun 2001. Dirinya juga ketua Workers' Youth Leagaue periode 1985-1989 dan Oslo Chapter untuk Partai Buruh 1990-1992. Partai Buruh Norwegia adalah partai politik demokratik sosial yang didirikan pada tahun 1887. Partai Buruh merupakan partai politik terbesar di Norwegia sejak tahun 1927 dan sering memperoleh lebih dari separuh total kursi di parlemen.
Sebagai seorang petani, bisa jadi Breivik selama ini sering dikecewakan oleh kebijakan Stoltenberg. Sehingga pupuk dan bahan kimia yang dibelinya dalam jumlah besar, yang sedianya untuk perusahaan pertanian yang ia dirikan, Breivik Geofarm, ia gunakan untuk merakit bom. Selanjutnya kekecewaan Breivik itu dengan menggunakan keyakinan yang dianut dilampiaskan dengan meledakan kantor pemerintahan dan menembaki kader-kader Partai Buruh.
Apa yang dilakukan Breivik harus menjadikan masukan bagi Stoltenberg. Ia harus mampu mengakomodasi dan memperhatikan semua kelompok, etnis, dan agama agar kekecewaan dari masyarakat tidak diwujudkan dalam bentuk aksi teror.
Namun biasanya bila ada aksi teror, pemerintah biasanya langsung reaktif dengan bertindak keras. Bila negara-negara Eropa selama selama ini melarang simbol-simbol fundamentalis Islam, bisa jadi pasca terorisme di Norwegia yang dilakukan oleh Breivik itu akan membuat simbol-simbol dan gerakan fundamentalis Kristen akan juga diawasi dan dilarang oleh pemerintah.
*) Ardi Winangun pernah bekerja di Civil-Militery Relations Studies (Vilters). Penulis tinggal di Matraman, Jakarta Timur. Nomor kontak: 08159052503. Email: ardi_winangun@yahoo.com
(vit/vit)
Norway mourns victims of anti-Islam "Crusader"
ReutersBy Victoria Klesty and Gwladys Fouche | Reuters – 6 hrs ago
SUNDVOLLEN, Norway (Reuters) - Norway mourned on Sunday 93 people killed in a shooting spree and car bombing by a Norwegian who saw his attacks as "atrocious, but necessary" to defeat liberal immigration policies and the spread of Islam.
In his first comment via a lawyer since his arrest, Anders Behring Breivik, 32, said he wanted to explain himself at a court hearing on Monday about extending his custody.
In a rambling manifesto before the attacks, Breivik said he was part of a crusade to fight a tide of Islam.
"He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary," Geir Lippestad said.
The lawyer said Breivik had admitted to Friday's shootings at a Labour party youth camp and the bombing that killed seven people in Oslo's government district a few hours earlier.
However, "he feels that what he has done does not deserve punishment," Lippestad told NRK public television.
"What he has said is that he wants a change in society and in his understanding, in his head, there must be a revolution."
Oslo's acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim confirmed to reporters that Breivik would be able to speak to the court. It was not clear whether the hearing would be closed or in public.
"He has admitted to the facts of both the bombing and the shooting, although he's not admitting criminal guilt," Sponheim said, adding that Breivik had said he acted alone.
Police were checking this because some witness statements from the island spoke of more than one gunman, Sponheim said.
Norway mourns victims of twin attacksNorway mourns the 93 victims of the deadly twin attacks which rocked the country on Friday, as hundreds gather outside Oslo cathedral to show their solidarity.
NATIONAL TRAGEDY
The violence, Norway's worst since World War Two, has profoundly shocked the usually peaceful nation of 4.8 million.
King Harald and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were among mourners at a service in Oslo cathedral, where the premier spoke emotionally about the victims, some of whom he knew.
"This represents a national tragedy," he declared.
Tearful people placed flowers and candles outside the cathedral. Soldiers with guns and wearing bullet-proof vests blocked streets leading to the government district.
Police said Breivik surrendered when they arrived on the small island of Utoeya in a lake northwest of Oslo after he had shot dead at least 85 people, mostly young people attending a summer camp of the youth wing of Norway's ruling Labour Party.
About 650 people were on the island when Breivik, wearing a police uniform, opened fire. Police said it took them an hour from when they were first alerted to stop the massacre, the worst by a single gunman in modern times.
An inadequate boat and a decision to await a special armed unit from Oslo, 45 km (28 miles) away, delayed the response.
"When so many people and equipment were put into it, the boat started to take on water, so that the motor stopped," said Erik Berga, police operations chief in Buskerud County.
A person wounded in the shooting died in hospital, raising the death toll to 93, Norway's NRK television said. Police say some people remain missing. Ninety-seven people were wounded.
Otto Loevik had to decide who to pick up on his boat and who to leave behind as he came under fire trying to rescue fleeing teenagers. "He remembers the faces of the youths he left behind," Loevik's wife, Wenche, told Reuters.
"He told me: 'I had to chose who to pick up on the boat and who to leave behind. Who do you choose?'," she said. Her husband, who declined to be interviewed, rescued some 40 to 50 terrified youths.
Norwegian police said a British police officer was providing technical expertise in the investigation but that they had not requested any separate inquiries in foreign countries.
ANTI-JIHAD MANIFESTO
Breivik posted a 1,500-page manifesto, written in English, on Friday, describing his violent philosophy and how he planned his onslaught and made explosives.
The killings would draw attention to the manifesto entitled "2083-A European Declaration of Independence," Breivik wrote.
"Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike," he added.
The manifesto posted by Breivik, a self-styled founder member of a modern Knights Templar organization, hints at a wider conspiracy of self-appointed crusaders and shows a mind influenced by the fantasy imagery of online gaming.
"The order is to serve as an armed Indigenous Rights Organization and as a Crusader Movement (anti-Jihad movement)," he writes in the document, chunks of which are cut and pasted from other far-right, anti-Islam documents on the Internet.
Breivik says he is not against immigrants who integrate and reserves a lot of his fury for a liberal European political establishment he views as promoting Europe's destruction.
He hints at a wider conspiracy in the document, saying that the Knights Templar, a medieval order of crusading warrior monks, had been reconstituted in London in 2002.
Breivik attacks the "Islamic colonisation and Islamisation of Western Europe" and the "rise of cultural Marxism/multi-culturalism."
A video posted on YouTube called "Knights Templar 2083" showed pictures of Breivik, including one of him in a scuba diving outfit pointing an automatic weapon.
Parliament, in recess until October, is to be recalled for a memorial service. Party leaders will discuss how the attacks would affect campaigning for local elections in September.
"We will have an election, we will have a political debate," said Stoltenberg, premier and Labour Party leader.
"But I believe everyone understands that we have to discuss the form of the debate ... to avoid a conflict between the political debate and the need to show dignity and compassion."
Erna Solberg, head of the main opposition Conservative Party, said: "We have to agree the rules of the game."
IMMIGRATION
Norway has long been open to immigration, which has been criticised by the populist Progress Party, to which Breivik once belonged. Labour, whose youth camp he attacked, backs multi-culturalism to accommodate different ethnic communities.
"Norway will keep going. But there will be a Norway before and after the dramatic attacks on Friday," Stoltenberg said.
"But I am quite sure that you will also recognize Norway afterwards -- it will be an open Norway, a democratic Norway and a Norway where we take care of each other."
The attacks have prompted soul-searching in Norway.
At Oslo cathedral, Britt Aanes, a priest aged 42 said the fact that Breivik was Norwegian had affected people deeply.
"In one way, I think it was good that it was not a Muslim terrorist group behind this," she said. It pointed up the complexity of immigration and inter-religious issues for Norwegians, "a small and privileged people," she said.
"We must open our eyes and not simply think that we can keep all this wealth to ourselves."
Some analysts questioned whether Norway, focused on al Qaeda-type militancy, had overlooked domestic threats.
"While the main terrorist threat to democratic societies around the world still comes from Islamist extremists, the horrific events in Norway are a reminder that white far-right extremism is also a major and possibly growing threat," said James Brandon, research head at London's Quilliam think-tank.
Home-grown anti-government figures have struck elsewhere, notably in the United States, where Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Grief was still raw for survivors and relatives clustered at a hotel in Sundvollen near Utoeya island. They huddled together, many with bloodshot eyes, at terrace tables.
(Additional reporting by Walter Gibbs, Anna Ringstrom, Henrik Stoelen, Terje Solsvik, Patrick Lannin, Johan Ahlander, Wojciech Moskwa, John Acher and Ole Petter Skonnord in Oslo, William Maclean in London; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Sabtu, 23/07/2011 15:45 WIB
Rita Uli Hutapea - detikNews
Oslo - Seorang pria Norwegia telah ditahan sebagai tersangka utama dua serangan teror di Norwegia. Kepolisian Norwegia menyebut pria tersebut sebagai seorang Kristen fundamentalis.
Pejabat kepolisian Roger Andersen seperti dilansir kantor berita AFP, Sabtu (23/7/2011) mengatakan, berdasarkan informasi yang diposting tersangka di internet, dia "Kristen fundamentalis".
Kepolisian belum merilis identitas tersangka tersebut namun banyak media Norwegia mengidentifikasi pria berambut priang itu sebagai Anders Behring Breivik.
Komisioner kepolisian Sveinung Sponheim mengkonfirmasi bahwa pria berumur 32 tahun itu telah memposting pernyataan-pernyataan anti-Islam di internet.
Menurut stasiun televisi TV2, tersangka terkait dengan ekstremis sayap kanan dan memiliki dua senjata yang terdaftar atas namanya.
Media Norwegia lainnya memberitakan, di laman Facebook-nya Breivik menyebut dirinya sebagai "konservatif, Kristen" dan hobi berburu dan permainan komputer seperti World of Warcraft dan Modern Warfare 2.
(ita/ita)
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