London

[House of Mustard]

Hey Ent -- what are you hearing about the attacks?  Everything I've seen so far is very sketchy, and I doubt a lot of it -- how can a bus be blown apart and only two people die?

[Spriggan]

if only two people were on it?

He's at work right now so he probaly dosen't know that much and since everything on TV right now is comming from Brittish Press I doubt he'd know any more then us.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I want to state unequivicobly that no ninja monkeys have been spotted at the scene.

[House of Mustard]

Two people on it makes sense, of course, but it was rush hour -- plus it was two deaths, total for all the attacks, not just the bus.

[House of Mustard]

There you go... CNN now has it listed up to 40 deaths.

An al-Qaeda group has claimed responsibility.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

I just saw CNN say 33 deaths at this time.  And that is from all of the explosions, which they can't seem to tell how many there were.  First it's four, then eight, then six...

[JP Dogberry]

This is because the media is being manipulated by several government, coportations and secret societies, and the facts are being lied about.

If you didn't see it with your own eyes, you can't believe it.

That said, I'm sick of idiots killing people.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

Okay, at the press conference they said that there was four explosions damaging a bus and four or five trains, if I remember correctly, killing upwards to forty people.  All of the explosions were close to each other time-wise, and there was nobody still trapped.  They are still unsure how many are dead because there was an error made or something, but now they are sure it is at least forty, said CNN.

They also said at the press conference that the buses will be up and going to most of London regularily later today, most likely, but they are asking people to stagger their usage of public transfer so that they aren't trying to cram a lot of people on a few busses.  Tommorrow some of the trains should be coming back online, and the others will be down for an indetermined amount of time.

[Entsuropi]

Well. What a most british pair of days. We won the Olympics 2012, then there is a terrorist attack.

Try tuning into the BBC world service. They are running constant news on it.

The attacks were from 8:30 or so until about 11:30. There were 4 bombs. 3 were on trains, and mainly exploded in tunnels rather than stations (thankfully). Another one then exploded on a bus. The casualty list is about 37 dead, 700 wounded, with about 150 of those being seriously wounded or critical. More information here

My dad went through one of those stations an hour before the bomb went off, and I think he is currently up to his hips in emergency meetings - he's one of the governments most senior civil servant for the railways.

The G8 summit will continue as usual. Chirac looked deeply disturbed at the press conference. Perhaps london is just a little too close to home.

The Olympics 2012 is still ours, but the team that won it for London are quietly flying home from singapore. Talk about a bittersweet day for those guys. Still, if the bombs had gone off 2 days earlier, we would not have the Olympics. Another silver lining.

Tony blair gave 2 speeches, one at the G8 and one at Downing street. You can find the transcripts here.

They picked the wrong country. We've been bombed before, by the IRA. We took that on the chin. And we are a country of stoicism by default. The BBC bulletin mentioned that for londoners, 'things would never be the same'. I feel that things will never be the same for those responsible, as the short sharp shower of ALARM missiles they will soon be recieving will make them live in most interesting times.

[stacer]

Not just IRA bombings, too. It goes all the way back to the Blitz. Is your family all safe then, Ent?

[Entsuropi]

Yeah. No relatives in london. And I suspect dad's surrounded by a battalion of coppers in some government facility...

[House of Mustard]

And we are a country of stoicism by default.

I think it's very telling that, while they interrupted programming for a while, BBC's Radio 4 was running radio dramas again by the afternoon.  Considering how terrorism thrives on media coverage, that's very blatant nose-thumbing.  Kudos to the British.

[House of Mustard]

This is interesting reading -- an article from the Evening Standard a year ago.

"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/londonnews/articles/10329634?version=1

[Chimera]

Not to poke my head into an area that I am only slightly knowledgeable in, and to possibly excite some heated political arguments, but I can't help myself. (Curiosity killed the Chimera, I guess.)

Entropy and anyone else (but Ent specifically 'cause he's a Brit), how do you think this will affect the political sentiment toward war in the Middle East? When I was in London on Study Abroad last summer, we were told to not to draw attention to the fact that we were American because the public was decidedly anti-war and anti-Bush (and thus often anti-US). I had the feeling that this was still the case--that most people in the UK and Europe were against US involvement in the Middle East. Will these bombings change that, do you think?

[Entsuropi]

It won't, I think. There will be a lot of 'who do they think they are?' and 'hah, they think they can affect us?'. Both sides will claim it as part of their case, and it will cancel out I suspect.

Too soon to really tell though.