Horrible, horrible events. Impossible to completely prevent and Norway of all places - not expected. I feel so sad for those affected. Goes to show it doesn't matter the nationality - nutters are nutters and they can come from anywhere.
There are always going to be deeply troubled individuals lurking around in society and it's a sad fact that they can get their hands on guns and explosives fairly easily even today.
They have the guy in custody, which is unusual. Often they end up dead, so I hope they can get some understanding of how and why he did this. He is going to get a lot of hate flying his way for such senseless killing.
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This guy wanted to be caught. That was actually his end goal, commit a horrific act to make everyone focus their entire attention on him and then get caught and be given a platform to preach from. He wants the opportunity to tell everyone
exactly why this had to be done. He allready has to an extent, by publishing a 1500-page manifest on the net, which many are reading and comenting on at this point.
The man is a genious. Utterly insane, but brilliant. According to the manifest he's been planning this for
nine years, calculating everything. And apparently everything has happened exactly the way he wanted it to happen, right down to the way media is reporting it. The bomb that went off in Oslo, while powerful and doing a lot of damage itself, was only a diversion. While all authorities are focusing on the city and trying to deal with the chaos there, he travels to the island Utøya some way outside Oslo, to the politicial youth camp there held by the ruling party. With no authorities around at all for miles, he coldly and calmly does exactly as he has carefully planned. He arrives at Utøya dressed as policeman and starts calling people over to him, as if he has important information. And when a crowd has gathered he just starts shooting. People start running, but Utøya is a small island. There are over 500 people present at the gathering. There just aren't enough hiding places. He calmly walks around the island, never in any hurry, and shoots everyone he can find. Not shooting wildly around him as a crazy person, but calmly aims and shoots accurately according to survivors. He knows he has plenty of time because all authorities are in down town Oslo. And once they do get the message, it'll take them at least an hour to get a tactical team together and arrive at the scene from there. He's perfectly aware of this, and counting on it. In the end he gets to do what he did for over 90 minutes. And once the police do arrive, he surrenders immediately. There's no shootout, no chase, no mediating. Just and order for him to drop his weapons, and he does so immediately. He very much wanted to be taken alive. Considering his actions, this is not a guy who would get cold feet at the last moment.
Reports say he's being very cooperative while being questioned as well. Nothing's come out yet from that, but there is that manifest he's published and which people are becoming aware of. I haven't looked at it myself (yet, might do) but I've read comments from people who has. Two years in the writing, he details everything that he's done and was going to do in it. Down to the finest details like what car he should use. He's preaching a lot of right-wing extremist things in it as well, he warns against "islamisation", ie letting too many muslims into the country and letting them practise their faith and letting them have their own cultures within European borders. He blames the norwegian government for letting this happen here and that is probably why the ruling party was targeted in the attacks. But the attacks were themselves secondary to the main goal which is making people listen to him. He intends to use this attention to preach his ideas, using the coming trial as platform. He hopes to achieve radical changes in how society treats foreign ie non-christian cultures. His manifest outlines this as well. It even specifies how to hide what he's been preparing from family and friends, it specifies the kind of lawyer he needs that will support him and help him in getting his message out. He has planned
everything, and he has planned it well as so far everyting has gone exactly how he wanted it. It's absolutely unreal.
The manifest is available as a pdf
here. It's all in good english, and apparently some scary reading.
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Targeting young people as his main goal is the worst thing about it, and the numbers of people he managed to kill before anyone reached the island will be very hard for anyone to deal with for quite some time. This was extremely well planned and I don't think there was anything anyone could have done to know about or prevent this from happening. He was clearly working alone. Also to create such a large bomb purely to distract the country whilst he went to the island shows you he doesn't have any consideration for the lives of others.
His lawyer was just being interviewed on the news and he clearly stated that he thinks he is insane. He stated that he believes in his own mind that he is fighting a war. When the lawyer was "how is he acting and communicating in prison" he said he is unable to say as he has never met anyone like this before.
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