Oslo-holma City

The shooting/bombing fatalities from the Norwegian rampage stand at 76 right now, and while people can be shocked they shouldn't be too surprised.

The 32-year-old suspect acknowledged carrying out the attacks in Oslo and at a youth camp on Utoya island, but said they were necessary to prevent the "colonization" of the country by Muslims, a judge said Monday.

The Norwegian Labour Party, not Muslims, were the intended target of Breivik's spree on Friday, Lippestad said, adding that he could not explain the suspect's reasoning.

Breivik accused the Labour Party of "treason" for promoting multiculturalism, Judge Kim Heger said after a closed hearing Monday.

Breivik appears to have written a 1,500-page manifesto that rants against Muslims and lays out meticulous plans to prepare for the attacks. In it, the author vilifies Stoltenberg and the Labour Party, accusing it of perpetuating "cultural Marxist/multiculturalist ideals" and indoctrinating youth with those ideals. The author accuses the Labour Party of embracing those ideals and allowing the "Islamification of Europe."

His lawyer says that he doesn't understand Breivik's motives, but they're spelled out in the same article. Alien cultures are being imposed on European countries and a lot of people are unhappy about it; if they wanted to live under Sharia they'd move somewhere that had it. Personally I think that this will not be that last time something like that happens, but I expect more of it in the USA.

Killing people who are no physical threat to you is automatically terrorism, even if I agree with your general grievance. Organizing politically to get a government which represents your views is more difficult, but that way you won't drive away people who might agree with you. Recent events in Holland have shown the lengths the leftist multicultis will go to to suppress ideas they don't like, but the truth will occasionally out as long as you keep things civilized. That is after all what we want in our civilization, not to stoop to the terrorists' level of killing people as your main argument.

Moving on; what next?

Canada's front-line fighting role in Afghanistan officially ended Tuesday when soldiers of the Royal 22e Regiment handed battlefield combat responsibilities over to the Americans.

Almost all Canadian troops are out of Kandahar's dangerous combat zones, except for a few soldiers who are attached to American platoons for a few more weeks.

Canada's war in Afghanistan is now effectively over after five years of fighting throughout farmland and dusty villages in one of the country's most dangerous areas. It cost Canada the lives of 157 soldiers, one diplomat and one journalist, not to mention the many soldiers left with life-altering injuries.

I'll have some more to say about this later, but I'm happy that we're away from this tar baby. I'm apprehensive about the future of the Canadian Army without the fire this lit under it, but I guess we'll see. Hopefully wherever we go next will be more important to our national interests (or at least capable of really helping some people in a permanent fashion) than our other current entanglement in Libya.