Live coverage from BBC in London: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/li...eo/now3_bb.ram

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"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation." - Nelson Mandela

If this was an election year, he would have done it yesterday.

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Philly Chit Chat
www.PhillyChitChat.com/

You all probably know more than me, i just made it out of the fray and got home and it's 7pm here. it was a very unique day to say the least. the entire tube was shut down early from the first bomb attacks, which is an indescribable event. the bus system went down next with an attack on what i heard was more of the #30 bus that was shredded in Russell Square, which is quite near to where i was..

someone i know was riding his bike through Russell Square just after the explosion happened and basically described the scene as lots of bodies everywhere and the top of the bus was completely blown off.

anyways, in a city of 7 million people to remove about 90percent of public transportation is an incredible thing to happen. london is divided by the thames and without the tube or busses to easily cross the river, there was a mass exodus of people over the few bridges that there are...

i decided tot ake a walk around 2pm this afternoon to check out the scene and it was surreal as central london felt like a ghost town. normally this time of year you have thousands of people flooding the streets, but not today. leicester square was very very empty. almost every store that i saw was closed, including 24 hour places like Tescoes Super Market. as a mild source of pride for me, McDonalds and Burger King were in fact open for business and i enjoyed the latter for lunch. the Metropolitan Police, much like NYPD, is essentially a small army, and did a great job of coming out of nowhere and were patrolling every corner of the city in a very short amount of time--they were everywhere..

they have been encouraging everyone to get home and stay out of the streets, and teh city pretty much was shutting down at 4pm GMT. i tried to avoid the rush everywhere and enjoyed a beer at Embankment and kinda just watched everything. it was pretty much a surreal day. i hope everyone who knows someone over here has been able to contact that person, and if anyone needs me to call someone for you let me know. im not sure how much youze guys care, but if you have any questions or anything let me know and i will try to find out for you.

Londoner - It sounds very much like NYC after the 9/11 tragedy. What a terrible, terrible thing this is. :cry:

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- We must be the change we wish to see in the world -
Mahatma Gandhi

Thanks, Londoner. Glad you're okay. London is a great city, so it's a sad thing to see.

By the way, inevitably these attacks, like 9/11, will be referred to as a "tragedy." I'd just like to suggest my own personal view, which is that an event like this is not a tragedy - it's an atrocity. Tragedies are when planes drop out of the sky because of bad weather or tsunamis hit crowded coastlines. Nothing "tragic" about this - it was entirely man-made and deliberate.

DAMN you Osama damn you to HELL. May you and anyone sympathic to your terrorist plots be dragged out into the streets and shot. May you burn in hell for all eternalty! ! !

Not to be insensitive or morbid, but with London's public camera system you would think they have footage of the bus explosion?

-UC

I have been to London only a couple times, but I am amazed at how well the Underground works, despite all the problems that Londoners complain about but most Americans wouldn't notice.

On our last visit, we stayed at a hotel near the Gloucester Road station. One morning, as we prepared to enter the Underground at the station, we found the road blocked a police diverting people due to a potential bomb threat. The crowd turned and marched to South Kensington without complaint.

The people of London earned my respect as a hardy, tough bunch. They are in my prayers. The filter won't let me post my real feelings about the cowards behind these attacks.

I would think that it was a suicide bomber (like in Israel)..

...they will have a picture..of a soon to be dead man...

...truely a shame...

..and to hurt those who had nothing to do with foreign policy...

Uh, so you think it's bad not because they slaughtered a bunch of people but because they didn't slaughter people whose politics you don't like?