37 Families

It has been a bad day. 37 dead in London. And Tony Blair rushes back to Downing St. from the G8 conference. I had so much faith in good ol' Tony to truly show our president the importance of increasing aid to Africa, cancelling some debts, and fighting global warming. Hopefully things will still go well in Gleneagles without him.

My flat in London was about a 10 minute walk from Kings Cross station, and my tube stop was only one away from Kings Cross (in the other direction from the blast). I took a double-decker bus to work everyday. All I keep thinking is that 37 families are without a loved one tonight.

How do we prevent this from happening again? Our public transportation systems are so vulerable. Just ask the Spaniards. But the answer is not raising the security alert color to orange or to send eveyone through metal detectors before getting on the metro. Instead, can't our country see that we can prevent this in another way: by working with the world instead of exploiting it for our own gain. If we could start listening to other and their needs and problems, instead of acting out of our own self-interest... maybe they wouldn't hate us so much. Maybe innocent commuters wouldn't have to die. Maybe our soldiers wouldn't have to die. The actions of the US and its partner nations are responsible for how dangerous this world is. We can do better than this; we are better than this.

Ok, getting down from the soap-box.