...And Physically Superior too!

David Blair again, putting the boot in to confessed killer Breivik:

The voice gave little away, but the killer’s eyes, posture and physique spoke volumes. As the days wore on and he became unsettled by the prosecution’s questioning, white specks of dandruff flecked Breivik’s dark jacket, beads of sweat glistened on a face pockmarked by acne, and a motionless comb-over grew more slicked and gleaming.

So, not only is Breivik a killer, but he's spotty, greasy and got dandruff.  I bet he's a doody-head as well.

When they were telling us he was blonde and blue-eyed, the media never completed the picture of what an ugly git he was too.

Morally and Intellectually Superior

So Breivik's trial is receiving far more scrutiny than many other trials I'd like day-to-day live updates on (like the child sex-ring case in Rochdale). I find it particularly interesting how we're frequently reminded how right-wing Breivik is, and how he does these right-wing salutes, sits in a right-wing way taking sips of right-wing water with right-wing lips.

When not reminding us he's very right-wing, the reporters quoted in the Telegraph seem to be trying to outdo themselves in moral superiority.

To be honest, unless you've slaughtered large numbers of people, you really don't have to try so hard to make out you're "better" than Breivik. But, since no one seems able to legally kill him, I guess they'll have to make do with mocking him. Hell, he played World of Warcraft for a year, the sad Billy No-Mates. (I did rather like the report that the judge asked if it was a violent game - rather reminded me of an old Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch.)

Now, hearing he got his facts from Wikipedia and wished to commemorate the Gates of Vienna battle, the Telegraph's chief foreign correspondent David Blair soon put him in his place:

As someone who is old enough to have learned his history from lessons and books, as opposed to Wikipedia, I would suggest that the Battle of Lepanto of 1571 was a far more significant event. This clash at sea destroyed Turkish naval supremacy in the Mediterranean and began the long retreat of the Ottoman Empire.

Battle of Lepanto: 1,070,000 hits on Google. Gates of Vienna: 2,590,000 hits on Google. Significance? Not a lot - using Google to assess importance is about on a par with using Wikipedia for serious study. Then again, feeling you need to show you're intellectually superior to a mass-murdering World of Warcraft expert strikes me as equally vacuous.

Blair also reported how the prosection had cleverly got Breivik to say he should be executed:

And, as the piece de resistance, Breivik recommended his own execution. So it was that the defendant was drawn into hanging himself.

But Breivik said he wants to either be executed (by a court he does not recognise the authority of, and therefore perhaps would feel he is being put to death for his cause) or set free (by a court he would then perhaps feel had come round to his way of thinking). He doesn't want to be locked away (like a common criminal, even if he only gets 21 years). I've read little in the Telegraph to suggest he's tripping himself up in some way, the real meaning of a defendant "hanging" themselves. But what do I know? I've played Xenoblade Chronicles for 80 hours.

Projecting Further

So, presumably we must add, to those hate-mongers Robert Spencer, et al. who are held partly responsible for the monster Breivik:

• World of Warcraft - because Breivik played it a lot. I mean, a lot! And it's violent. In that you can kills things. Like almost every other computer game.
  
• Clint Mansell - because Breivik liked one of his tracks - it gave him courage, or something.
  

Don't hold your breath. Well, WoW might get a bit of heat, like computer games do every now and then. And Clint might be feeling a little hot under the collar, having his name written in the same sentence as the Norwegian mass murderer.

But as others are already pointing out, the focus will ultimately fall on those who agree with much of Breivik's view of the decline of the West and the danger of Islam, no matter how much they reject his belief that murder is the answer.

UPDATE: Two more sources of influence in the life of Breivik:

• Al Qaeda
• Wikipedia

I'm not sure which scares me more.

Could they be fooling themselves?

I came across this article in the Buenos Aires Herald today, detailing coverage of the Falklands War anniversary in British media. Apart from the fact they seem to focus on predominantly left wing media, and papers with low circulation figures (The Guardian, kept afloat by the BBC and school staff rooms, but not much else), I was struck by this sentence:

With special productions in their online and print editions, British media is giving its own account of the military conflict that confronted Argentina and the UK in 1982. (My emphasis)

Maybe that's a turn of phrase I'm just not used to, but is it really honest to say that Argentina and the UK were "confronted" by "military conflict", as if such an event was drawn randomly from the Bag of Fate? Has the Buenos Aries Herald forgotten that Argentina started the whole thing by invading the islands? (I understand there was never a formal declaration of war from either side.)

Another odd news story occurred yesterday, making me wonder if it was an April Fool's story. I'm still not entirely convinced. Apparently, following his suspicious landslide victory in the Bradford West election, George Galloway tweeted, "Shattered but happy after the Blackburn triumph."

This does appear to be expose Galloway as caring little for which location he was voted in, as long as he won and now has some power. But he tweeted shortly after, "Nice try. Password now changed," and suggested his account had been hacked.

Really? Wouldn't a hacker have tweeted something a little more...interesting? A little more controversial? It might well be true, and we either have the most uninspired hacker in the world, or the most shrewd. But Occam's Razor suggests to me Galloway is trying to cover up his idiocy. Or does he really believe what he wrote?