Life in the 21st century

I woke up this morning to the news about the London bombings. I'd never been to New York when 9/11 happened, but I've been to almost every place in London where the bombs exploded. We stayed right near King's Cross and went in and out of that tube station a dozen times. I also just realized that our hotel is in Russell Square (the site of the bus blast) -- it blew up across the street from where we spent our nights in the city.

London may be more resilient than we were; this isn't exactly the first bombing in the city. When my mom visited England 30 years ago, she left Piccadilly just before the IRA launched an attack there. London probably is better prepared to respond than most cities...still, it's frightening to think about being there myself in a few months, even though I know the odds of being involved in a similar attack are slim-to-none.

The saddest thing may be the fact that this occured on the dawn of the G-8 summit, which intended to address some of the primary factors driving global poverty. Now, the focus will be on the terror attacks instead of on climate change and economic aid; the terrorists have managed to disrupt dialogue which actually might have helped their people. I hope everyone recognizes the pointlessness of what happened today. At the same time, I also hope London doesn't respond with a knee-jerk reaction like the US did four years ago. There's no easy way to escape this cycle of violence -- which is why we need to think about the ramifications of our choices before we act.