Oslo

Man oh man...

Apart from the immediate concerns for the injured and dead, I dread some of the reverberations from the bomb attack in Oslo. Thankfully, it appears that my many friends in in the city are all okay. Some personal relief amidst the broader social tragedy.

It's obviously very early days and no precise suspect(s) at the moment -- even though the signs over the last year point towards some Islamic extremist group. I hope that these actions by the few don't lead to heightened xenophobia and fewer civil liberties for the many. However, I fear the big loser over the coming months (and possibly years) will be social integration and immigration reform.

UPDATE: Wow. I wrote this before knowing about the senseless massacre on Utøya island. The  tragedy has now been magnified in infamous scale and the main presupposition turned on its heads. It now appears that a lone (ethnic) Norwegian madman was acting on an unfathomable and incendiary hatred. The bomb blast in Oslo now seems to me to have been a terrible diversion of sorts; it does seem to have been timed to minimise the loss of human life... Before the targeted bloodbath that followed.

Hard to know what to say in times like these, but my thoughts go out to the country and especially all those that have lost loved ones.