Wow My Head Hurts.

In Norway today (25/7/11) the police have revised the death toll from Friday's twin terrorist attacks down from 93 to 76 - 68 on Utoya island and 8 in the Oslo bomb blast. Although this mistake must have been horrific for the families of the victims and the missing it serves to underline just how much pressure the Norwegian authorities have been under these last few days. After all many of those killed were either serving members of Norway's government or their children.

In Britain the reasonably respected anti-fascist group Searchlight announced that they can find no significant links between the Norwegian gunman, Anders Breivik and Britain's English Defence League (EDL). I couldn't agree with them more because the EDL are normally so disorganised that they can barely organise a trip to the pub let alone an attack on this scale. The reason why Breivik made so much of his links to the EDL in his 1500 page manifesto and indeed why he published such a long manifesto in the first place was to put even more pressure on the police by forcing them to chase down false leads when they should of being looking for the people who were really giving Breivik his orders.

Also today Breivik made his first appearance in court in a session that was held behind closed doors. This has caused some controversy in Norway because it goes against everything their democracy stands for. I think it was right to make an exception in this exceptional case though because Breivik himself accepted the facts of the case and his arrest but still refused to plead guilty. That suggests that he sees himself as a soldier in some sort of holy war who shouldn't be tried under civilian law so I don't see why he should have a civilian trial imposed upon him. Besides even though today's hearing was held behind closed doors he still used it as an opportunity to grandstand and threaten that there were two more terror cells ready to carry on his work. I wouldn't worry about that too much though because once the reality of his situation starts to dawn on him I expect Breivik will be making lots more extremely wild and unfounded threats.