Death toll currently at around 80 kids! It looks like this event has a lot in common with the Oklahoma bombing. Just horrible.

We need to hear from Torsie (TorS) soon.

G

Horrible.... :(

I have colleauges in our company in Norway and the brother of one of them was supposed to be at the camp on the island, but thank God he was not afterall for some reason.

/Ulf

I have good news and bad news. First the bad news: My 24-year-old daughter was at the exact location where the bombs went off yesterday in Oslo, Norway. The good news: she was there 24 hours before they went off. She was going to stay another day, but has a race on Saturday way north of Oslo (she's running 10K and half marathon races throughout Europe this summer) and decided to leave a day early to see the fjords. I called the instant I saw the news because I thought she was still in the city. I got her right away and found her sick in bed in the Huset Vårt hotel in Hornindal, a city about 200 miles northwest of Oslo. I have never been so glad to find my daughter sick in bed in a foreign country in the middle of nowhere.

My heart goes out to everyone in Norway who lost a loved one, especially those who lost their children.

The good news: she was there 24 hours before they went off.
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Thank God for that John. I can't even imagine.

John

My family and I was away in a cabin outside all net and phone coverage learning the value of ignorant bliss. Only when we returned to civilization late this afternoon (Sunday) did we received the news. We know many of the camp kids' parents and we have not yet established if all of theirs are accounted for. Apparently some kids have drowned in an attempt to swim from the island. Horrible stuff. Gotta go and watch the news now at 21.00 (local). Thanks, Grazie for having me in mind.
Tor

The media reports that there 91 victims, that is such a typical thoughtless understatement in the horrible system we live in. What about fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends
The victims of this tragedy run into the thousand. It’s heart breaking to see this stuff unfold and to see how hard and brutal humans have become.

I agree with your sentiment, but to be fair: the horrible system in this case is the English language (its users). In Norway, reports states the number of deceased, not victims. When media reports traffic incidents etc the phrase "no one was physically harmed" is often used. There is a great awareness of the kind of damage big trauma can do to people and not just the ones who were at the spot.

BTW The names of the deceased has not been released yet. Some kids are still missing in the waters around the island, I think. Today the papers are full of of interviews with survivors. One should include them, too, in the list of victims.
Tor

People often talk of the beauty of Norway. But for me, the reason that I've long admired Norway is the beauty of heart of the Norwegian people. I've never been there, but it always has seemed to me to be a place where people try to love and respect every person.

It hurts personally because I think of myself as a Christian. I personally feel tarnished by this hateful deed.

Because of the hateful, closed-minded nature of such "Christians," I'm tending to prefer the term "Christ-ian" (in my case, one who practices meditation techniquies in an attempt to become Christ-like). To paraphrase one minister who wrote recently in a newspaper article, " 'Loving' is no longer the first notion that comes to mind when one hears the term 'Christian.' " This is a double tragedy - one for Norway, and another for the Prince of Peace.

Who's going to win? The twisted Torquemada consciousness of this world (isn't the inquisition ever going to end?), or the loving consciousness of Jesus, Sta. Teresa, and St. Francis? How could someone do this as part of their "marketing campaign" (his words) against Islam? As one great saint said, "they crucified the body of Jesus once, but they crucify his teachings daily."

Thank goodness Norway does not have a death penalty. Let us all pray that his twisted mind is reformed before his time comes. It can happen. I, too, once was a fundamentalist Protestant. In my case, I hated the Catholic Church. Now that I'm approaching the end of my days in this body, after decades of work, I'm still working hard on my own reform.

I'm reminded of a much earlier day in my own country, the U.S.A., back in the day long before the Muslim became the socially-accepted victim, even before the communist was the socially-acceptable victim, back to the days of WWII when the "Negro" was the socially-acceptable victim. As I walked across the playground in 1943, two little black boys walking past the school to their Saturday job in a grocery store suddenly were ambushed by a well-planned attack by 5 teenage white boys.

Then I understood why the Sunday School teacher in my church would NOT allow us to sing "Jesus loves the little children of this world, black and yellow, brown and white; they are precious in his sight."

And I remember how, 10 years later, my own noble and courageous Catholic manager in the Kroger grocery store where I worked hired a black man, only to suffer a severe reprisal by the district manager.

And how Governor George Wallace became the spokesperson for the bigots of his day against those blacks who followed the nonviolent methods of the saintly Mahatma Gandhi. But after George Wallace became a born-again Christian, he humbly apologized to blacks and appointed many to high positions in his state government. Bigots can grow out of their hate.

Love and forgiveness can accomplish miracles. Let us all pray for this man as we also pray for his victims.

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion.” - Einstein (from a letter to a distraught father who lost his son, dated February 12, 1950; The New Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2005 p206).

I love that quote. I'd never heard it before.

The number of people joining in torchlight and flower processions in the biggest cities and towns of Norway tonight was as great as when World War 2 ended in 1945. We Norwegians love our system, its democracy and openness, still I am awestruck by such a marvelous manifestation of that love.
Tor

My parents immigrated to the US in 1950 shortly after the war. I was born in Minnesota in 1951. All my relatives beyond my immediate family to this day live in Norway.

One of my younger cousins in her 20s was just down the street from the bomb blast in Oslo. She has written about her fears, her confusion in how this could happen, and immediately related to how we felt after our own Oklahoma City and 911 tragedies...Why???

I don't know if its worse if its 'one of our own' or someone with an Islamist agenda. When its one of your own, it suggests that any neighbor could be capable of such insanity - were we all not surprised when it was white boy McVeigh who killed more Americans on our soil than anyone else previous to that?

She mentions the struggle to find a way to understand what motivates someone like that, and how to deal with their collective 'lost innocense' and not have it completely change their open society, like it seems we have done in response to our tragedies.
I admire the level headedness of their Prime Minister in insisting that this will not turn their country inside out with suspicion and hatred of those who have immigrated and may look different.

I'm not a big fan of the death penalty, but if I understood correctly the maximum sentence this fellow could get would be about 21 yrs which would make it possible for him to be out in his mid-50s. I would find that totally unacceptable, that he should ever 'enjoy' another day on this planet in this lifetime after what he so intentionally did to so many people, whether or not he's "mentally ill" .

My cousin is struggling with those same concerns. How do you 'punish' someone for something like this?

In the meantime, she said all her friends and family have made a concerted effort to not look at any images of the perpetrator, to turn their heads away, to not give any more attention to someone who seems to crave just that.
When I'm watching the news I also wish they would not keep showing his face, I've seen it, just tell me whats new, and forget this pathetic man's ego, and let him rot alone in jail with only his mind to keep him company ... or not~

Our hearts are breaking with the folks in Norway, no one deserves this.....

Eileen Sundet

My understanding is that the guy had plastic surgery on his face, I assume in preparation for all the press he knew he was going to get.