Car bomb explodes outside of PM's office in Oslo, Norway.

[Frong]

Nah, I meant that any given number of groups are going to take advantage of the various aspects of the incident for their own propaganda purposes, even if those groups' aims have little to nothing to do with each other. I also didn't quite word this properly. When I said pro-immigration, I was thinking more of the open borders movement, which is funded by radical leftists like George Soros who want to abolish national borders and establish some kind of new world order (his words, not mine). They could use the fact that Breivik turned his nationalist, anti-immigration views to violence as a basis, albeit an incredibly shallow one, for arguing that EVERYONE who opposes open borders is nuts like him. Warped logic like that is hardly beneath Soros and his media goons. Now, here's where this gets weird: the Muslim fundamentalists want to establish a worldwide caliphate, i.e. a global Islamic state. That's effectively the same thing as an open borders society, though the result in practice would be completely different from whatever it is the leftists envision. Think the two won't temporarily cooperate to take down their shared enemy, then mutually attempt to stab each other in the back later on? Fact is, they're already working on it.

As for the anti-religion zealots, that's a separate matter entirely. Breivik appears to have enough of a connection to Christianity for them to claim that all religion is bad, regardless of whether he really had any religious motivation or not (and regardless of the fact that he's insane). If nothing else, the anti-religion types are opportunistic.

Oh, and the reason why so many Muslim immigrants don't assimilate is because they don't want to and don't have to - they can just leech off the welfare state, which they do in Britain with great enthusiasm, all the while screaming about how awful Britain is and calling for its overthrow by the forces of Islam. My point was that the last thing Europe needs right now is anything else to encourage their bad behavior.

[Nakor]

The thing with crazies is, they'll be crazy. It's not like they'd be acting much differently if this hadn't happened. Most of the people who listen to them in the first place already agree with them, and I think Norway is already quite sick of some of the stupid coming out in the reaction to this. I wouldn't worry overmuch about crazies getting any more audience than they already had. I haven't really heard any anti-religion semantics coming from this. Mostly the only thing is "Uhh guys, you can stop reporting he was Muslim now. Like, any time. Srsly." (Although I'm honestly not sure we wouldn't be better without organized religion lol.)

Also, you and Tanis could tag team against our conservative government on the firearms point. Somehow they're convinced that making everyone register their gun will keep everyone safe... somehow. (Not even banning them... just registering them. Because criminals totally have their guns registered in their name, you know?) Expensive waste of money.

[Frong]

You might be surprised how many crazies there are in the US, though. They're hardly a majority, but there are enough of them to be worrisome. If you look up the big fat rally/protest/looneyfest that took place for weeks in Wisconsin earlier this year, you'll see what I mean. It started out as a union protest, but quickly got co-opted by the socialists, Communists and even radical Islamists, half of whom openly called for the violent overthrow of the US government. It was really obvious, too. All you had to do was read their signs. This wasn't just a few dozen wacknuts, either - there were thousands of them, some of whom came from halfway across the country just to take advantage of the free media exposure. While you're right that individual nutjobs aren't going to change regardless of what else goes on in the world, the last thing the world needs is more excuses for scattered pockets of them to organize. That's when you really get trouble.

You think your government is doing dumb things involving guns? Ours has got yours beaten by a mile with Operation Fast and Furious. It was supposed to be a sting designed to nail Mexican drug cartels for weapons smuggling by tracking the sales made by illegal gun sellers, but instead, over 2,000 guns ended up in the hands of the cartels, 1,400 of which are still unaccounted for. To make matters worse, we're not just talking about handguns here. That number includes things like AK-47s. The fiasco came to light when two of the guns were found as evidence in the killing of a US border guard last year, and now the things keep popping up at other crime scenes in Mexico, too. A series of hearings on the matter found that the ATF (firearms bureau) had not only deliberately ordered agents to let the cartels get their hands on the guns, but also intimidated any members of their own bureau who opposed the program. Honestly, I wish our gun control problems amounted to nothing more than stupid licensing requirements.

[Nakor]

So I just dug up a little positive glimmer in all this. This heroic couple who were visiting from Finland were on the opposite shore when the shooting began. As soon as it started they made for their boat, headed to the island, and started ferrying kids back across. All in all they got 40 kids safely off the island. Linked from Boingboing because the original article is in Finnish.

[Frong]

Yeah, I saw an article on Yahoo the other day about how this couple's actions have been largely ignored for no apparent reason. As bad as this massacre was, it could have been a lot worse if they hadn't been there to save all those kids (or if they weren't brave enough to help out). That's some A+++ good karma right there.