Peace and Justice Post

by Alex Kane, Mondoweiss,  July 24, 2011

Details on the culprit behind yesterday’s massacre in Norway, which saw car bombings in Oslo and a mass shooting attack on the island of Utoya that caused the deaths of at least 91 people, have begun to emerge.  While it is still too early for a complete portrait of the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, there are enough details to begin to piece together what’s behind the attack.

Although initial media reports, spurred on by the tweets of former State Department adviser on violent extremism Will McCants, linked the attacks to Islamist extremists, it was in fact an anti-Muslim zealot who committed the murders.  An examination of Breivik’s views, and his support for far-right European political movements, makes it clear that only by interrogating the nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism can one understand the political beliefs behind the terrorist attack.

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By Vijay Prasad, Counterpunch, July 25, 2011

Sitting on an Amtrak train from New Haven to Washington, DC on Friday, I was enjoying my thriller, Kjell Ola Dahl’s The Man in the Window. Dahl’s police procedural novels are set in Oslo, Norway, where the remarkable detectives Frank Frølich and Gunnarstranda confront the heart of modern evil: Property is often the hub of the conflict, but so too is the ineluctable history of Nazism and the Second World War. Abrave history of pacifism, partly contained in the Norwegian Labour Party, kept the country out of World War I. Its ports and a direct route to Swedish iron ore made it irresistible to the Nazis, whose forces invaded a largely unprotected Norway in 1940.

To run the country, the Nazis turned to the leader of the Norwegian Nasjonal Samling, the local Nazi Party, Vidkun Quisling (from whom we get the noun for traitor). It was the Quisling era (replete with concentration camps) that planted the tree of Nazism in Norwegian soil. The remnants of Scandinavian Nazis regrouped after World War II, but they remained small and obscure.

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Peter Schwarz, wsws.org, July 25, 2011

The terrorist attacks in Oslo on Friday that killed at least 92 mostly young people have been compared with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which also had a right-wing background. The Oslo atrocity has also been compared with school shootings, such as at Columbine High School in Colorado and in Erfurt and Winnenden in Germany.

But the murders in Oslo have a new quality. Far-right extremist violence is now aimed at a political party because the perpetrator sees it—its actual policies notwithstanding—as embodying “cultural Marxism,” internationalism and generally left-wing views.

Anders Behring Breivik, who was arrested at the scene by the police, sought out the offices of Social Democratic Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg as the target for his bomb attack. Then, on Utoya island, where the Norwegian Labour Party had held its youth camps for decades, he carried out a cold-blooded massacre of the camp’s participants. It was a politically motivated terrorist attack by a fascist against a social democratic party.

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Imperial collaborators are referred to by the occupied people and the colonial resistance as “puppets” or “traitors”; by western journalists and critics as “clients”; by the imperial scribes and officials as “loyal allies” as long as they remain obedient to their sponsors and paymaster.

Puppet rulers have a long and ignoble history during the 20th century. Subsequent to US invasions in Central America and the Caribbean a whole string of bloody puppet dictators were put in power to implement policies favorable to US corporations and banks and to back US regional dominance. Duvalier (father and son) in Haiti, Trujillo in the Dominion Republic, Batista in Cuba, Somoza (father and son) in Nicaragua and a host of other tyrants served to safeguard imperial military and economic interests, while plundering the economies and ruling with an iron fist.

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By Timothy McGettigan, opednews.com, July 23, 2011

by Greg Felton, Dissident  Voice,  July 23rd, 2011

The upcoming United Nations vote to recognize Palestinian statehood should be a foregone conclusion, especially given the overwhelming support and sympathy for Palestine among the developing world. By the end of May, 112 nations had agreed to recognize statehood, and Palestinians expect to have 135 votes by September—more than the needed two thirds of the 192-member General Assembly. There are no moral, legal or logical reasons to oppose recognition, but morality, law and logic have little relevance where Palestine is concerned.

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Nour Ali in Damascus and Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian, July 22, 2011

Syrian anti-regime protesters carry a picture of President Assad that reads, “Leave. We don’t trust you. You will leave and we will stay because Syria is ours. Enough of injustice and killing,” during a rally in Damascus. Photograph: AP

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians turned out for anti-regime demonstrations across the country on Friday with at least 11 people reported killed by security forces and tensions mounting in the runup to the Ramadan holiday.

Casualty figures – collated by two Syrian human rights groups – were down on previous weeks but the numbers of demonstrators appeared to be some of the largest yet seen in the four-month uprising.

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Bombing, mass shooting kill at least 91 in Norway

By Mike Head, wsws.org, 23 July 2011

A bombing and mass shooting in Norway on Friday have left at least 87 people dead. Following a large explosion directed against government buildings in the capital, Oslo, a right-wing anti-Islamic extremist opened fire with automatic weapons on youth at a camp run by the ruling Labour Party on nearby Utoya Island.

At 3:30 p.m. Friday, powerful explosions rocked a government quarter in downtown Oslo that is home to the office of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, the finance ministry and the country’s biggest tabloid newspaper Verdens Gang (VG). Seven people died and 15 were wounded in the blasts.

Some two hours later, a massacre occurred at the youth camp, attended by about 600 people. The gunman, dressed as a police officer, fired repeatedly on a crowd of mostly 15- and 16-year-old campers, killing at least 80. More deaths are expected to be confirmed as police and rescue teams search the island and the surrounding lake for bodies and wounded survivors.

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