Talk:7 July 2005 London bombings/Archive 7

message: I've been adding details of the bus route, heavily based on an article in the London newspaper the Evening Standard ("A piercing scream... then their lives were shattered" - Keith Dovkants - 12/07/2005, p10 of 'West End Final' edition). The important bit is "Shortly after it [the number 30 bus] pulled onto its stand at Euston bus station at 09:35am, [the driver] was told to follow a 'safe alternative route' [...] to avoid King's Cross [...] The bus stand was crowded with people who had been turned off the Tube."
Chillingly, the article also reports that the bomber emitted an ear-splitting scream just before the bomb went off. Carcharoth 21:00, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bus route details 

message: "Police are examining about 2,500 CCTV footage and forensic evidence from the scenes of the attacks, looking for, among other things, DNA evidence."  This sentence badly needs rewording.  Does it mean 2,500 separate CCTV cameras?  2,500 minutes of CCTV footage? 2,500 hours?  Also, although grammatically and logically correct, lumping video surveillance and other forensic evidence together makes the example of DNA sound strange since you can't get DNA evidence from video. –DeweyQ 00:08, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's "footage from 2,500 CCTV cameras" - there are an awful lot of them around in the UK. -- Arwel 00:19, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Investigation section 

message: Since the template reappeared, and its VfD appears to be failing (plenty of keep votes), I moved ahead to trim it down so that it doesn't have a bunch of red-link articles. The template was just a slightly trimmed 9/11 template and doesn't necessarily reflect the needs of this particular story. I fully expect it will grow, but I hope it will grow to meet the needs of the article, so that additions only occur when an article is ready. Discussion of additions to the template should occur at Template_talk:Jul7Bom. --Dhartung | Talk 06:40, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template 

message: This is doing the rounds of various offices right now (15PM, 14th july):
"FYI
Hi all,
I have been strongly advised by one of my work colleagues who is informing everyone she knows that the police will be putting officers on tube stations
24/7 for the next week as they highly expect another attack within this time. She has a friend in the police force who has just been in meetings confirming this. I have been advised to avoid the tube at all costs for the time being. This news will filter through apparently through the media in the next few hours. Please take care on your journeys home. I don't want to worry you all (a bit late now), but I would follow this advice if you can.
Kind regards, (name witheld by Adidas)" 
So much for the 'spirit of the blitz!'
Adidas 14:00, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: updating my own post here, turns out, this is not a chain letter - it was a forward from one company to another going through only one employee. Anybody got information corroborating its contents? Adidas 16:15, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: urban legends and chain letter

message: I was surprised to see that this article was the first hit when I googled for "London bombings" this morning.  --Lee Hunter 16:15, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP article top hit in Google 

message: The sections entitled bombers and accomplices should be changed to suspected.... as at the moment it has not been legaly confirmed that these people were responsible for the bombings. Even though the police may have stated that they believe them to be the bombers it is prejudicial to state it as fact until they are found guilty by law. Should they be found not to have been the bombers (as with so many other facts related to this event) wikipedia could be guilty of libel under British law.
DavidP 17:04, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: They are sub-headings of "suspects". Andy Mabbett 17:15, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, they weren't, but I've fixed that, now. Andy Mabbett 18:12, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

text: You've got to be kidding. Among other things text such as Media reports suggest the following people are suspected of participating in the attacks is used; and they're all over the national newspapers. I know British libel laws are more plaintiff-friendly than in the US, but there's only so many times we can use words like "suspected" and "alleged". --Dhartung | Talk 17:29, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Sounds reasonable to me. I've changed the subheads to 'alleged bombers' and 'alleged suspects' --Lee Hunter 18:10, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Um, you've sparked an edit war. It cannot be libelous to label someone a suspect. A suspect is someone the police have named. The Richard Jewell problem came about because he was not a named suspect when the AJC and NBC came out with their news stories. In this case, the police are making arrests and executing search warrants based on these identities. That's encyclopedic enough for me. --Dhartung | Talk 18:44, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is not naming them as suspects. The problem is that we're assuming that the reader is going to make the connection between the heading Suspects and the latter subheading of Suicide Bomber. This might be obvious to some WP editors (it's not to me) but I suspect would not be at all clear to a casual reader since the only indication of structure is a slight difference in font size. If you have a bold heading that says "Suicide bomber" and a list of names underneath, you are strongly indicating that this is a fact. --Lee Hunter 19:28, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just so you know, I would be far more concerned if the suspects were presumed alive. Dead, I'm not sure it matters that much. I found this about posthumous libel  (Gladstone), and it appears that the bar is higher at "malicious intent". --Dhartung | Talk 02:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Lee is of course very concerned with preserving the good names of the suicide bombers (of blessed memory). Let's call a spade a spade, These people were Muslim (not presbyterian, or quaker, or methodist, or even unitarian universalist) suicide bombers (not militants) engaged in Jihad against the Infidels. Klonimus 04:08, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Um, yeah, whatever. Why don't you go haunt Little Green Footballs, or something? They like your kind there. --Dhartung | Talk 04:15, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's well known that unplesant facts make people uncomfortable. Telegraph:BBC edits out the word terrorist Klonimus 07:35, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh, stop this childish trolling. Go someplace where it's appreciated. We're trying to create a factual article here. If you're not going to contribute to that goal, you're just noise. --Dhartung | Talk 19:34, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Klonimus, I don't quite understand your comment. Religion is irrelevant to the question of whether this early police interpretation should be accepted as fact. It's not like the British police have never jumped to conclusions about a bombing (see Birmingham Six) --Lee Hunter 13:40, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sub-headings

message: A police press conference on 12 July provided further details on the progess of the investigation. Investigators are focusing on a group of four men, three of whom were from Leeds, West Yorkshire, and are reported as being Cleanskins. All four arrived in London on the morning of 7 July and were recorded on CCTV at Kings Cross station (the London terminus serving Yorkshire) at about 08.30. Property associated with three of the men was found near the site of the three Tube explosions, while property associated with the fourth man was found near the bombed bus. All four are believed to have died in the bombings, with the three Tube explosions thought to have been possible suicide bombings. Police raided six properties in the Leeds area on 12 July: two houses in Beeston, two houses in Thornhill, one house in Holbeck and one house in Alexandra Grove, Burley. One man was arrested. A vehicle thought to be associated with the bombings was found at Luton railway station and subjected to a controlled explosion , , .  --   quote italicized by Jtkiefer 
I think this section could probably use a rewrite since even though it's sourced I think that we should inherently distrust a paragraph that uses the phrase "thought to be" as many times as this does. Jtkiefer 06:26, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
:I gave it a scalpel. I think it should sound better now. --Dhartung | Talk 08:37, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  suspects section 

message: There is talk the bus bomb was originally intended to detonate on an Underground train - on the Northern line. But the Northern line was not operational from Kings Cross that morning. Auswide
The Northern line was operating that morning but there were severe delays. Paul Tracy|\talk 12:46, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, you're asking the same questions the police are. It seems like they intended to create a 4-way "burning cross" (by some interpretations) on the map of London. We don't yet know that they intended any such thing. The speculation arises because it seems very strange that they used a simultaneous attack on one form of transport followed by a non-simultaneous explosion. It's one of many strange things about this case. The use of suicide bombers, for example, by itself is superfluous. --Dhartung | Talk 19:37, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bus bomb originally intended for Northern Line? 

message: This article says:
:suicide bombings, a terrorist tactic normally used against heavily-secured targets or in high-security environments
whilst our article on suicide bombing says:
:Suicide bombing usually (but not always) targets poorly-guarded, non-military facilities and personnel.
Even allowing for the 'normally' and 'not always', they can't both be right. --Heron 19:43, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Suicide bombing is a tool used by terrorists to attack anything they like or dislike. In Israel, India andthe rest of western world, suicide bombings have been used to attack soft targets (with the notable exception of the pentagon), in Iraq/Afghanistan, they have been used to attack military targets. Klonimus 20:17, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I removed the speculative parts of that paragraph. It's not up for Wikipedia to say what tactics terrorists "normally" use. If there's a pertinent quote, we could include that. --Dhartung | Talk 20:30, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction on targeting of suicide bombing