exvigilare

Thanks to those of you that have expressed concern over my family’s safety. They’ve not been affected by the blast in London today, but pray for the people who were. Something’s shitty when your 4 year old says, “Daddy, a bomb went off here.”

UPDATE: For my news updates, I’m following English bloggers Tim Worstall and Nose Monkey. Check their links for on-site reports.

UPDATE: Blogs report

Doubleleaf has onsite photos. BBC photos here.

This and this is what it looked like to climb through the tunnels after escaping your train.

UPDATE: more eyewitnesses.

UPDATE: How do the Brits react?

14:05 - I tell you what, if this is an “Islamic” terrorist attack, they’re doing a piss-poor job. The pubs are all packed out, people sipping their pints happily, all a tad pissed off, but basically fine with it. Nice one, Al Quaeda - you profess to be from a teetotal religion, and you’ve given the pub trade a massive mid-week boost. Result.

I do love the Brits.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting now 40 dead, 300 injured.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club speculates that there must have been 40 terrorists involved.

UPDATE: Nose Monkey’s home from work, having travelled through a bunch of the mess and has this update:

Liverpool St/Aldgate East/Moorgate was all the same incident.
- this is near Brick Lane, with a sizable Bangladeshi/Muslim community.

Edgeware Road
- the heart of a major Arab/Muslim community

King’s Cross/Russell Square and Woburn Place
- by the King’s Cross Estate, with a sizable Bangladeshi/Muslim community, plus the School of Oriental and African Studies, one of the world’s leading universities for the study of Islam (amongst others)

Was this intended to stir up anti-Muslim tension as much as anything? Otherwise the locations are rather bizarre - King’s Cross and Liverpool Street, as major rail termini, make sense if you intend to cause maximum damage/casualties. Edgeware Road is near Paddington, another major station, so that could make sense too. But nothing at Charing Cross, Victoria, Waterloo etc. Nothing at Heathrow or Gatwick either. Odd. Why go for half measures?

Either way, from the casualties so far we’ve got off lightly. Seems like fluke as much as anything.

The choice of locations seems very odd to me, too. Thank God there weren’t more people killed.

UPDATE: A letter to the terrorists, from the London News Review:

A letter to the terrorists, From London

What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

This is London. We’ve dealt with your sort before. You don’t try and pull this on us.

Do you have any idea how many times our city has been attacked? Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.

All you’ve done is end some of our lives, and ruin some more. How is that going to help you? You don’t get rewarded for this kind of crap.

And if, your MO indicates, you’re an al-Qaeda group, then you’re out of your tiny minds.

Because if this is a message to Tony Blair, we’ve got news for you. We don’t much like our government ourselves, or what they do in our name. But, listen very clearly. We’ll deal with that ourselves. We’re London, and we’ve got our own way of doing things, and it doesn’t involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that’s because we’re better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we’re going to go about our lives. We’re going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we’re going to work. And we’re going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.

Hear, hear! What Andrew said (you should read this for yourself)