Explosions, shootings in Norway

Live coverage of the explosions and shootings going on in Norway. These appear to be jihadist attacks. It looks really, really bad.

Post updates if you have them. You can see how nationalist parties in Europe are gaining traction. Even if you disagree with their message (which I do) this is no way to treat your host nation. Even if the vast majority of Islamic immigrants to countries like Norway are peaceful, the fact that some would bomb newspaper buildings government buildings in retribution for publishing Mohammed cartoons is deeply troubling. Attacking a youth camp dressed as a police officer…this is simply a disgusting, despicable thing to do. How do people become monsters?

More live coverage from the BBC.

Update.

Don’t worry, the reason I haven’t updated the post with new updates isn’t that I’m an Evil Islamaphobic Racist (sorry all of you who were hoping against hope that this was the case!). No, I’ve actually been away from the internet for a bit, busy with other things (I know, sacrilege!).

In any case, the guy that shot all those poor kids in Norway looks to have been a blond Norwegian. This doesn’t rule out Islamic extremism – there are white Muslims (I know, it’s crazy but it’s also true!) so it still could have been an Islamic attack, white skin notwithstanding. Then again, it could have just been a crazy, evil violent hideous man killing indiscriminately for no reason. Either way, makes no difference. Many innocents have died, and that is a tragedy regardless of the killer.

Update II.

I apologize for rushing to conclusions. I was angry and upset, and this appeared to be the MO of Al-Qaeda. That it was a racist white loner is a relief on one level, and frightening in a whole new set of ways on another:

The massacre in Norway was the work of a man with extreme right wing views who hated Muslims, police said this morning.

Officers found a series of raving internet posts by 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, who was been charged with two accounts of terrorism after gunning down children on the island of Utoya and detonating a bomb in Oslo yesterday.

Media reports in Norway described Breivik as a ‘loner’, who lived with his mother in a wealthy suburb of west Oslo, was well-educated and enjoyed hunting.

The death toll is up to at least 91 people at this point, which is just horrific and terribly, terribly sad. I hope Breivik truly is a lone-gunman and not signs of a rise in European nationalist violence.

Update III.

Look, we really don’t know the full story and I’m done rushing to one conclusion after another. It does appear Breivik was a far-right extremist. He may or may not have been working others. I know a number of people are very angry with me for suspecting this was an act of Islamic terror. Frankly, I think it was a reasonable thing to think and I was upset because when radicals do something like this they put moderates at risk – if this had been an Islamic attack, the backlash in Norway would have been very real. This was the motivation for my initial post. I was trying to say, quite simply, that you can see how this sort of thing would add fuel to the fire, give nationalist parties more sway, etc. Since this wasn’t an Islamic attack, obviously none of that applies. I meant no offense by saying this initially.