Norway? No way!

[Per]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... youth.html

So, the question that springs to mind is, is he just an ignorant asshole, a complete jerk, a brain dead moron, or some combination of two or more of the aforementioned alternatives?

[Cornuck]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html

So, the question that springs to mind is, is he just an ignorant asshole, a complete jerk, a brain dead moron, or some combination of two or more of the aforementioned alternatives?

d) All of the above.

It's a sad statement on society that he and his ilk have followings.

[rats19]

unfortunately i think the statement is more about ratings and publicity... more than the horror of the act and sick people really are sick...

[Topper]

So, the question that springs to mind is, is he just an ignorant asshole, a complete jerk, a brain dead moron, or some combination of two or more of the aforementioned alternatives?

He's the David Pratt of the political airways.

[Strangelove]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html

So, the question that springs to mind is, is he just an ignorant asshole, a complete jerk, a brain dead moron, or some combination of two or more of the aforementioned alternatives?

Some combination, but Beck wasn't the first to compare the youth camp to Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend).

Breivik in a 2009 blog comment:

"We cannot accept the fact that the Labour Party is subsidizing these violent 'Stoltenberg jugend', who are systematically terrorizing the politically conservative."

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-23/worl ... s=PM:WORLD

Stoltenberg is the PM of Norway, leader of the Labour Party.

Disturbing.

[ODB]

I can't hold back any longer... I have to go on record as saying I don't really give a shit about 90 dead Norwegians. Not when I look at the big picture and I see the lives of more than 11 million people across four countries are threatened by the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for 60 years!

Not a peep said... We're outraged by the death of 90 white folks!

They held a fucking candlelight vigil in Saskatoon tonight! Serious... no JOKE!

OMG cut Breivik arms and legs off...

I have an idea... Pull out your credit cards and do all you can to help save the lives of millions of people that are walking to their death as you read this!!!

[Eddy Punch Clock]

I can't hold back any longer... I have to go on record as saying I don't really give a shit about 90 dead Norwegians.

I agree.

Personally I would rather talk about Khabibulin going to jail.

[Uncle dans leg]

I can't hold back any longer... I have to go on record as saying I don't really give a shit about 90 dead Norwegians. Not when I look at the big picture and I see the lives of more than 11 million people across four countries are threatened by the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for 60 years!

Not a peep said... We're outraged by the death of 90 white folks!

They held a fucking candlelight vigil in Saskatoon tonight! Serious... no JOKE!

OMG cut Breivik arms and legs off...

I have an idea... Pull out your credit cards and do all you can to help save the lives of millions of people that are walking to their death as you read this!!!

Well this is, after all, the Norway thread... Maybe you can start a fundraiser in a new thread!

[Topper]

more than 11 million people across four countries are threatened by the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for 60 years

While drinking akevitt, I had the Witness's come to my door a few years ago during the Bob Geldoff sponsored Ethiopian Famine. They started their banter with a comment about how good it was that man was helping out its fellow mankind with the famine relief.

I stopped them dead when I said no it wasn't good at all. Obviously the population had reached a tipping point in that region and the land could no longer support them. Sending food was simply a band aid solution. Simply put, population reduction is the only answer.

The Jehovah's never came knocking on my door again.

[dbr]

Sending food was simply a band aid solution.

Nice one, Ebeneezer.

[sagebrush]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html

So, the question that springs to mind is, is he just an ignorant asshole, a complete jerk, a brain dead moron, or some combination of two or more of the aforementioned alternatives?

Considering the lack of compassion, and single minded application of logic required to carry out his acts, it would appear his brain was very alive, but consumed by hatred and desparation.

The unstable sometimes use polarized politics to justify personal desparation. Allowed to simmer long enough....

As for Glenn Beck - his mouth often appears to be bigger than his brain.

[Per]

I can't hold back any longer... I have to go on record as saying I don't really give a shit about 90 dead Norwegians. Not when I look at the big picture and I see the lives of more than 11 million people across four countries are threatened by the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for 60 years!

A very valid point, in deed. But being upset about one thing does not hinder you from being upset by the other as well.

When it comes to Norway, you must remember that this is 9/11 (the government building being blown up) and an escalated Columbine (some 70-90 teen age kids being slaughtered) all wrapped into one. It's the worst thing that has happened in Norway... well, strike that, in Scandinavia, since WWII. It's only logical that people get shocked, outraged, and saddened by this brutal attack on democracy and the slaughter of innocents. The blown up government building only killed seven people (so far, there are some in the hospital), but that was part luck, part that most people have vacation in July and part that the car bomb was parked above a garage, and a lot of the force went downward. Had it stood on solid ground, th eimpact could have been a lot worse......

As for Africa, there are two main reasons for the famine; climate change leading to the worst drought in sixty years, and political chaos halting the distribution of food and other help to those who need it.

The first thing needs to be addressed far more seriously than it has so far. We need to stop using fossile fuels. Period. I'm helping out as good as I can. We've switched to tele-heating, which means our house is at least in part being heated by excess heat from local industries that previously was just released into the atmosphere. I guess geothermal would be even better, but hey, it's a start. We also switche dto an ethanol driven car this spring. I have some serious problems with grain being converted to fuel as it raises food prices for the poor, but at least I'm moving away from the fossile stuff.

As for the politics in the Africa's horn area... well, after the Black Hawk Down incident, everyone just pulled out. Somalia is a mess, and the so-called "government" there has stated they will not allow any international aid agencies to enter the concerned areas, nor do they intend to ship food there. They are just happy that the rebels are all going to die...

It'd be great if the international community could do something about the politics there and somehow support the creation of democratically elected regimes all over the place, but it's not going to happen.

George W Bush has demonstrated how hard it is to force democracy on someone, and I doubt the US will enter a new war before they've managed to finish what they started in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I do not see any other country willing to embark on such a mission. The UN lacks the clout and muscles to do it. Under Dag Hammarskjöld they had som guts and teeth, but that's probably also what got him killed, even if it officially was an accident.

Anyway, go ahead and start an Africa/Famine thread. I'll be happy to post there too.

[Per]

16 year old Ivar Benjamin Østebø who survived the Utøya massacre has written an open letter to the culprit. Here's my translation from the Norwegian original:

Dear Anders Behring Breivik,

Many of my friends that I met at Utøya have been killed, and you are the culprit. You are the man who by coincidence did not kill me, I was lucky.

You may think that you have won. You may think that you have destroyed for the Labour Party and for the people around the world that stand for a multicultural society by killing my friends and fellow party members.
You should know that you have failed. You have not only united the world, you have lit a fire in our hearts and you should know that never before have we stood as united as we do now.

You speak of yourself as a hero, a knight. You are not a hero. But one thing is sure, you have created heroes. On that hot day of July at Utøya you created some of the greatest heroes the world has seen, and you united peope throughout the world. Black and white. Man and woman. Child and grownup. Red and blue. Christian and Muslim.

You have made your victims martyrs, immortals. And you have shown the world that if one man is capable of so much hate, imagine how much love we are capable of when we stand together. I have had people I thought hated me come up and hug me in the street, people that I have not been in touch with for years have written me 3-400 words about how much it means to them that I survived. What does this tell you? Did you manage to destroy anything? You have united us!

You have killed my friends, but you cannot kill our cause, our opinions, our right to express ourselves. Muslim women have been hugged by Norwegian women happening to stand next to them out of sympathy - and you wanted to rid Europe of Islam? Your work had the opposite effect. You have created a bond between us.

You deserve no thanks, but you deserve to hear how your plan worked out.
Many are angry, you are the most hated man in Norway.
I'm not angry. I do not fear you. You cannot touch us, we are bigger than you. 
We will not answer evil with evil, as you were hoping. 
We will fight evil with good. 
And we will win.

[Strangelove]

you united peope throughout the world. Black and white. Man and woman. Child and grownup. Red and blue. Christian and Muslim.

"Red and blue"?

Wotever, I'm sure the kid is feeling the love right now as a survivor and that's swell & all.

But someone's gotta tell him to wake up and smell the napalm at some point.

Hatred, wars, and violence will unfortunately continue until the end of time....

[Hoss]

Glenn Beck is a goddamn moron who fancies himself a historian.

His major influence is a dipshit Mormon historian named H. Cleon Skousen, who took a huge shit on US History when he wrote a crock of shit called "The 5000 Year Leap". Which essentially whitewashes US history (literally) while helping to retroactively legitimize the giant cult called Mormonism.

No less a psychotic reactionary than J. Edgar Hoover kept close tabs on Skousen for... and get this .... dangerous right wing tendencies.

Beck wishes he could've been one of Skousen's wives.

If the man had ever read any Shirer, or Richard Evans, or anyone with any authority and grasp over the coming to power of Hitler, you might be able to take him seriously when he rants about fascism. But he's just a born again, ex-booze and coke abuser who graduated from the same high school as me and is doing his best to spread his LDS pseudo-history to the borderline illiterate turds who are too busy buying flatscreens to ever open a fucking book.

FUCK GLENN BECK.