our northern european friends

How are you guys doing? Any of you in Oslo? What’s happening over there? Thoughts?

It’s eight to nine hours away, so I’m fine. [strike]At the moment it’s looking like Jihadists wanting to get back at us for being involved in Afghanistan and printing caricatures of Muhammad. Supposedly the gunman is of Nordic appearance.[/strike]

Gunman was Norwegian. He might also be behind the bombs. Also, he’s arrested. So, yes, that was an unexpected twist. Now it’s looking more and more like local rightist extremists and not international terrorism. Didn’t think we had any Timothy McVeighs in Norway.

I didn’t think you did either.

That’s nutters. Saw only glimpses of it on CNN at work. Good to see your neck of the woods is fine, Nul.

People don’t think their countries have domestic terrorists until they actually do. When Oklahoma City happened, we initially suspected Muslims. I’m sure the same would’ve been with the Olympic Park bombing if it weren’t for Richard Jewell finding the package and subsequently being accused.

Man, nearly 80 dead from the shooting alone. He was much more efficient than anyone else has been up to now. I really wonder what the hell happened.

Well, rest assured that no other country has more serial killers and mass shootings than the US does.

Our media give you that impression, but keep in mind that even Columbine had only 12 deaths and Fort Hood only 13.

The scope of this shooting–more than 80 dead!–is unbelievable. I guess an island full of kids struck him as a soft target. What a perverse mind.

In general, I mean, not death toll per incident. Unless you count the Jonestown massacre, but that was really more of a mass suicide.

It was surprising to me that a single man killed so many people. Not a lot of information out there yet.

That’s partially due to our population. I believe most theories behind serial killers and the like is due to the disconnect between the individual and the community that industrialization brings along. As the most populous industrialized nation, we would of course have the highest absolute population of such killings. If the theories were to be believed.

However, I think Xwing also meant that our media, due to its sensationalist nature, would also report on such mass killings at home much more often. Again, just due to our more populous nation, we would of course then have more killings than England or Sweden or whatever. However, third world countries, due to not being in our crosshairs of caring about them and more corrupt/inept police forces, are less likely to have serial killers and whatnot reported to the Western World. And even if they don’t have serial killers under our understanding of the term, I would still prefer our rare bouts of serial killing and mass shootings, because they actually are rare, to the widespread violence and lawlessness found in places like Brazil, Sudan, or even Mexico.

I disagree with the proposed theory. By that rationale, the people of China, India and Japan should be regularly bathing in blood. There are plenty of other highly developed cities in non-first world countries. You can find them anywhere, from Australia (though that’s first world/industrialized), the middle east (like the UAE). And I would also add Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq to the shit list.

I’m glad to hear that you’re okay, Nul. This is beyond unbelievable, and it’s also frightening that nobody had any clue at all. He could probably go through with it simply because he apparently worked completely alone, so there were no plans exchanged to discover or anything.

This is exactly what U.S. police say they’re most afraid of. The FBI and CIA have become great at infiltrating and taking down groups, but they freak out about homegrown terrorism involving 1-2 lone actors.

This is why most of Wall Street and midtown Manhattan are now monitored by video cameras. I can’t imagine that would go over well in Oslo.

The shooter’s facebook page says he likes war themed video games. Also, the max sentence he could get is 21 years.

From an article:

In World of Warcraft, it appears that Breivik played as two characters: A high-level human mage and a low-level “Forsaken” mage, both under the alias “Conservatism”. “This is just not happening,” a player who goes by the name Piltavla wrote. “This guy Anders been a great great friend of me, for three to four years now…”

You know, for once, I want to see someone notice the lesser details of the interests of people who commit these crimes…like maybe he played Farmville or listened to Ke$ha, or watched Jersey Shore. Actually, it’s pretty stupid to even consider what the person liked in the first place, since it’s pretty irrelevant to the story. He could’ve been a friggin’ stamp collector and it wouldn’t give us any clues into what was going on in the guy’s mind.

Edit: Okay, I somewhat retract my previous statement: http://kotaku.com/5824147/oslo-terrorist-anders-behring-breivik-used-modern-warfare-2-as-training+simulation-world-of-warcraft-as-cover

The killer is rather concerned about the Muslim “colonization” of Europe, and the killing spree was his way to advertise his 1000 page “manifesto”. He spent 9 years on this project, and he refers to what he did yesterday as his “marketing operation :wink:”.

I was gonna make a joke about the Jonestown Massacre, but then I realized the punchline was too long.

Not entirely true. We do have a maximum sentence of twenty-one years here, yes, but we also have something called ‘forvaring.’ If he’s sentenced to maximum + forvaring, one he’s served his twenty-one years, his sentence can be extended with five years at a time for as long as he’s still considered dangerous. Technically he can stay incarcerated for life.

My understanding was that he could only be sentenced to 21 years for the crime he was initially charged with, instigating terrorism or some such charge. Surely he would be charged with separate counts of homicide of some sort (each with their own individual sentence) for the various deaths. Or would the terrorism charge in Norway preclude the separate counts of murder?