As a moderately serious gamer, I have to admit I can relate to this a little. Actually, anyone who, say, uses a newer computer at home than the one available in the workplace might feel a pang of sympathy while the spinning wheel of death (or its OS equivalent) grinds pointlessly away while you’re trying to update a spreadsheet.

Anders Behring Breivik is sort of the Timothy McVeigh of Norway. In July 2011, in accordance with his right-extremist worldview, he detonated a bomb in a government building in Oslo, which killed eight people, and then went on a shooting spree on the island of Utøya, killing a further 69 people, most of them teenagers. In some ways his profile overlaps more with the Unabomber—Breivik is well-educated and distributed a lengthy manifesto justifying his actions—but that combination fails to capture the Hannibal Lecter-esque self-control and sangfroid that Breivik apparently exhibited. In August 2012 he was sentenced to “containment,” a form of punishment in Norway that can be extended if the authorities deem it necessary, with a “time frame” of 21 years in prison—the maximum sentence.

Apparently Breivik isn’t enjoying his containment very much. On Friday the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) received a letter from Breivik in which he announced his intention to go on a hunger strike until conditions in the prison improve. He claims that he is being treated “worse than an animal” in prison and demands that the “torture” he is undergoing come to an end.

It’s not clear that most people would agree with Breivik’s use of the word torture here, although he may have a point about the unjust treatment. According to Pierre-Henry Deshayes of AFP, 
 

The demands include better conditions for his daily walk and the right to communicate more freely with the outside world, which he argues are in line with European rights legislation.

He also demanded the replacement of a PlayStation 2 games console for a more recent PS3 “with access to more adult games that I get to choose myself” as well as a sofa or armchair instead of a “painful” chair.

“Other inmates have access to adult games while I only have the right to play less interesting kids games. One example is “Rayman Revolution”, a game aimed at three year olds,” wrote the 35-year-old convicted killer.

Held apart from other prisoners since 2011 for security reasons, Breivik wrote that he has behaved in an “exemplary fashion” in prison, arguing that he has the right to a wider “selection of activities” than other inmates to compensate for his strict isolation.

Breivik also wants his standard weekly allowance of 300 kroner ($49, 36 euros) to be doubled, particularly to cover his postal charges for written correspondence.

His mail is monitored and censored by prison authorities which, he complained, considerably restricts and slows down his contact with the outside world.

 
The concept of being permitted to use an inferior gaming system to more recent models on the market being likened to, say, waterboarding is completely silly, a product of the high-flown rhetoric common to political terrorists like Breivik. And yet his case prompts interesting questions about prisoners’ rights in the digital age. In the United States, many prisoners suffer in severely inhumane conditions, including widespread overuse of solitary confinement. Breivik’s complaint about his PS2 system suggests an obvious analogy with reading materials—should particularly heinous criminals be denied access to the same copy of To Kill a Mockingbird other inmates enjoy? It’s not really clear.
 

 
The enormity of Breivik’s crimes aren’t relevant to the purpose it serves to deny him petty privileges. Keeping him off the street is a non-issue, and Breivik is experiencing the very deprivations that make prison stints such a powerful disincentive, disincentives of which Breivik was presumably already aware when he committed his crimes. Of course, that logic can go only so far: nobody would suggest that the availability of merely double-ply toilet paper when triple-ply versions are also being manufactured would constitute anything for prisoners’ rights activists to get upset about. There’s a line in there somewhere, and the PS2 probably isn’t very near that line.
 

 
via Slate
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Muslim-hating wingnut Pamela Geller justifies mass murder in Norway

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Muslim-hating wingnut Pamela Geller justifies mass murder in Norway

Above Rep. Eric Cantor and Pamela Geller in a photo I’ll bet Cantor seriously wishes didn’t exist!

Anti-Islam blogger Pamela Getter is a marginal, hateful freak who would have stayed that way had not Fox News and MSNBC decided to give her credibility a boost during that whole stupid “Ground Zero Mosque” debate/nonsense. Remember that? Me neither.

This hateful harpie should be shunned from civil society, anyway, but shouldn’t her clumsy editing of her alleged communication with Anders Breivik make her a seriously untrustworthy, not to mention undesirable TV talking head?

Why aren’t the FBI all over this woman???

Even Roger Ailes must be giving Geller second thoughts after this latest matter. I really hope that the Norwegian government calls her in as a witness in Brevik’s trial. It would be her just desserts, truly.

Geller’s latest toxic idiocy is an actual JUSTIFICATION of the mass murder in Norway. If this shit doesn’t disqualify her as a credible TV pundit—or even as one of Andrew Breitbart’s top bloggers at his Big Government site—I don’t know what would, because this will be pretty hard to top, even for an shithead of Geller’s caliber. Via Think Progress:

Popular hate blogger Pam Geller has received scrutiny in recent days as the public became aware that the right-wing terrorist in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, had praised her blog and thoroughly cited her writing in his political manifesto. After a number of blogs made the connection, as well as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and other major outlets, Geller became incensed and began lashing out at her critics.

In a post defending herself yesterday, Geller — who has called Obama “President Jihad” and claimed that Arab language classes are a plot to subvert the United States — reached a new low. Geller justifies Breivik’s attack on the Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp because she says the camp is part of an anti-Israel “indoctrination training center.” She says the victims would have grown up to become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”

To get her point across, Geller posts a picture of the youth camp children Breivik targeted. The picture was taken on the Utøya island camp about 24 hours before Breivik killed over 30 children, so it is likely Geller is mocking many of the victims. Under the picture, Geller writes: “Note the faces which are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”

Could Geller’s outburst of smears be a distraction against mounting evidence that she might have communicated with Breivik in the past? A post from Geller in 2007 reprints a reader-submitted letter in which an anonymous Norwegian complains of Muslim immigration and boasts that he is “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment.” In the comment section, Geller claims that she provided anonymity to the reader to protect him from being prosecuted. Although Geller recently deleted the ammunition line from her post, a cached version is available. As Glenn Greenwald notes, “If this were an attack by a Muslim group, and a Muslim had something like this on his/her website, the FBI and multiple other groups would be swarming.”

Yep. So where are they?

She’s such a mean person that she thought it was okay to post that?!? She thought about this, she typed it our and she published it. Incredible. What is wrong with this woman’s mind? Below, a screenshot of Geller’s blog post, with her original repulsive caption, which she edited.
 

 
Kudos to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for his stellar reporting on Geller’s embarrassing folly.

Now having said that I never want to see her on television ever again, I will admit to getting a good laugh from seeing her put on the defensive and lose her cool on Russia Today recently. RT’s Lauren Lyster really, really let her have it. I laughed out loud several times. Humiliating and hilarious. THIS is the way this woman SHOULD be treated, with utter contempt. If you love to hate Geller, this is a bit of a laff-fest.