"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
The Oslo Attacks
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The massacre at Oslo has awakened all peace loving people. Never before has society become aware of the triple threat that is challenging its sanity. Mad bombers, mad shooters, and mad rapists have been showing their ugly heads. Unfortunately the police are not mind readers and these sickos cannot be detected and stopped beforehand. But thanks to the long hands of justice this insane trio will be caught and punished.
Many want fame and fortune but fortune is difficult to come by. The sociopath at Oslo had no other motive except to become famous and he was successful. His political views were strong but his desire to obtain fame was stronger.
Evidence will show that the Oslo shooter was politically confused. He was suffering from a childhood trauma due to being sexually abused by an elderly housekeeper. His motive for the shooting had nothing to do with politics but only by a desire to become famous.
Full court press by "Morris the Wise" on this guy who is the Norwegian Martin Bryant (although Bryant was a bit of a goofball, and there's no evidence of that in Breivik's history). Same thing is happening over at Zerohedge, with recent registrants pouring reams of 'look at the lone nut' material into Oslo-related threads.
As I said elsewhere, for a solo shooter to kill 80 people using light infantry weapons is as near to impossible as makes no odds.
As the survivor testimony makes clear, people on the island clearly had cellphone signal - they sent messages and Twitter updates... so they are likely to have called police, too. So whoever did all that killing would have know they had a limited time budget.
A man who has never killed, becomes a better life-taker than a professional JSOC/SEALTeam6 sociopath? Sorry, no sale.
This has the hallmarks of a team effort - to get that kill count you would need five well-trained experienced killers, and twenty minutes or more (people run like fuck when crowds get fired upon, and moving targets are VERY hard to hit with assault weapons - even if it's not your first kill).
Geoffrey,
What I've seen written so far about the Oslo killings mostly suggests that Breivik acted alone, so your conjecture about it being a team effort provides some good food for thought. It will be interesting to see how this story develops.
On a different subject: I responded to a post you wrote a few weeks ago about OpEgypt in which you mentioned "Liberty Pools". In case you didn't see my response, I'm curious as to whether you have any opinions about what impact Bitcoin and Tor might have regarding ""Liberty Pools".
- Greg
Hi Greg,
BitCoin and Tor have a HUGE impact on the viability of "Liberty Pools", in the same way that they have helped 'Silk Road' undermine drug prohibition. It's still early days, but it's clear to me that legislation cannot make demand disappear - it can only raise prices and risk premia - and as a result, there will be a proliferation of pseudonymous payment processes as the market develops.
They (the pools) existed before BitCoin and TOR, but payment mechanisms were necessarily convoluted, involved multiple middle-men who facilitated transfers, and were prone to fraud and infiltration by 'law' enforcement... but they did function satisfactorily for those who did the appropriate level of due diligence.
In fact Jim Bell's original tract - entitled "Assassination Politics" - required (and forecast) the existence of pseudonymous untraceable payment mechanisms. (And people should be aware, pseudonymity and traceability are two VERY different things. Likewise, TOR does a very good job of obfuscating the origin of data - but if the data is unencrypted, exit node sniffing can extract it).
In reality, AP/LP is simply a system of private bounty: and I notice today that George Monbiot has backed a pool for the citizens' arrest of Tony Blair: there is $10k ion the kitty, sourced from donations which were optionally-pseudonymous.
Although I support the idea of LP/AP, it does require careful handling given the absence of the requirement for an evidentiary basis for establishing pool. (Some pool managers differentiate between OrgA pools - which have evidentiary bases - and OrgB pools, which are simply 'hit' pools and often have only one bettor).
The reason I say that caution is required: prices for 'adverse life events' (ALEs) are plummeting. Back in the 1980s, that sort of thing was really costly unless you were inside the 'wrong' social milieu: anything from $15k upwards, and no less than $2k for a severe beating (e.g., broken nose/ribs/knees/hands).
These days those costs have fallen by 2/3rds (put simply: there are a lot of violent people out there who enjoy the opportunity to pursue violence as a paid career).
As the risk premium embedded in these markets is driven to zero, the price of any ALE will fall to the marginal cost of its provision - which is equal to the amount of cash required to fund travel and so forth, plus a small premium to overcome the perpetrator's squeamishness. That is a VERY low number: the final payment to the actual perp in most non-lethal ALEs is of the order of $300 - and that has been the case for two decades... the rest of the money goes in risk premia and margins to middle-men.
To use a different example: I am not one of the Chicken Littles who think that legalisation of drugs will cause an explosion of demand (the demand curve will change, of thatI am certain - but so will the supply curve)... but even if it did, it would be people doing things to themselves. However if there was an explosion in demand for ALEs in response to a fall in the price, the system will be used to enable cheaper AGGRESSIVE violence (as opposed to defensive or retributive violence - both of which I support).
That said, the prime user of aggressive violence in our society is the State, and it already has the lowest cost base - it foists the costs on the victims of its violence.
Cheers
GT
Geoffrey,
Thanks for your interesting and informative reply. You make several points that I hadn't considered before.
- Greg