(no subject)

Thank you for checking in, Londoners and UKers. Sounds like you're all OK -- phew! (although there may be some that I've overlooked).

My thoughts are with you.

links

london_070705 is the place to go for information ONLY (no rumours, speculation, or expressions of sympathy please).

Canadians: if you have relatives visiting England and are concerned about them, Foreign Affairs has a hotline set up: (Have their full name, birthdate, and passport number ready) 1-800-387-3124. Other countries also have hotlines, see the community above.

brisingamen has been compiling lists of LJers who have checked in, and there are more at london_070705.

The CBC's coverage seems to be quite good, although I'm not having any trouble reaching the BBC's site, which is comprehensive and likely to be much more useful for people in the UK and needing information.

If you are in another part of the world and are willing to contact local friends and relatives of people who are in England, sign up here -- please check to see if anyone else in your area has already volunteered.

Time for me to get some lunch and do some work...

on the lighter side...

via bookslut and claris, Warren Ellis observes:

Oh, here we go; footage of Blair being lifted out of Gleneagles by a military chopper. See, if Paddy Ashdown had become Prime Minister, he'd be in camo gear, carrying a machine gun and clambering into an Apache, proclaiming that he was off to personally hunt down and kill Osama. I think the country really missed an opportunity there.

makinglight has some all-purpose tips for an apocalypse (and the comments are worth reading too: "Now what did Tom Cruise do that was a bad idea? I think I'll do the opposite.")

John Kovalic shares some thoughts: 'To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: "I've been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!" '

My preferred coping mechanism does seem to be black humour.

Happy to say that all my friends and their families seem to be OK. And not to diminish the tragedy in any way, but I'm glad it's no worse, not a disaster of 9/11 proportions. The world is so full of awful things. Every death by violence is a tragedy. This is different for me because of the media coverage, and the fact that I've been to London and know people there, but is it worse than a car bomb in Baghdad or Tel Aviv? Not to the people involved, I'm sure.

Sounds like London is coping very well, anyway.

I can't seem to summon up much in the way of anger or bloodlust -- maybe because I've been so focused on making sure the people I know are safe and well, and beyond them people I don't know, that "make the bastards pay" seems irrelevant. More than that, almost unreal; intellectually I know there were people who did this, and I hope they're caught and brought to justice, but I haven't any visceral feelings on the matter. Maybe that will change, I don't know. Anyway, it's not all about me, so I'll shut up on that front.

(no subject)

and in non-black humour -- it's sort of pearlescent grey, rather pretty -- from texaslawchick: A Letter to the Terrorists, from London.

(no subject)

Right, I'm off. I'd do Toronto Trek stuff but Hotmail's servers appear to have gone all 'splodey. Darn.

Be well, be calm, stay safe. *hugs*