The Day after and what else was happening on thursday..

Let the Olympics be a memorial

Polly Toynbee Friday July 8, 2005 The Guardian

"How barbaric, Tony Blair rightly said, that the terrorists should strike just as the G8 at least strives to do better on Africa and climate change. Yes indeed. But then barbarism is in the eye of the beholder and every act of war is justified in the warped minds of its perpetrators. Barbaric might also be 30,000 children a day dying in Africa while a mere 25,000 US cotton farmers keep their trade-denying subsidies. Or Bangladesh soon to be washed away in global-warming floods. Or arms sold to those who will force them upon child soldiers, or any number of worldwide atrocities."

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How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen? Ian McEwan

It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past. But once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult. We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?

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London After the Bombing
Maria Margaronis

It's not yet clear whether we'll hate Blair less or blame him more for putting us at greater risk by following Bush to Iraq. After the Live 8 concert last weekend and the Olympic bid's success, London was in a carnival mood. The bombs could not have been better timed to whiplash our emotions; their careful coordination seemed designed to maximize fear, not casualties. But so far there's no sign of demonstrations in the rain à la Madrid. Nor is this Britain's 9/11. It hasn't come out of the blue--there is no blue for it to come from anymore. It feels more like the other shoe dropping, which brings a kind of relief: Though this was terrible and there may be more to come, everyone knows it could have been much worse. After the lies that took us into war and their long-drawn-out exposure, it won't be easy for Blair to use the attacks to whip up another crusade--though they will probably speed the government's identity-card legislation. It's a cliché, but the British really are a pretty stoic lot. We've coped with bombs before, though the IRA generally issued warnings and set them off one at a time. With any luck we'll meet this with cool heads and sharp eyes--on people carrying suspicious bags, but also on our leaders.

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As up to 40 people lost their precious lives and over 1,000 were injured in the twisted blasts in London on 7/7...

Yesterday, another 1,000 lives were claimed in the humanitarian crisis in the D.R. Congo ( 3.5 million souls since 1998)....

Yesterday, somewhere in America, a different woman was raped every 90 seconds ....

Yesterday, every 2.43 seconds a child died of preventable starvation somewhere in the world....

Yesterday, AIDS had claimed"up to 22 million lives and infected over 60 million persons" since the 80's....

Yesterday, Civilian deaths in the Iraq war had reached 22,787 souls, at least....

Yesterday, one and a half acres of rainforest were lost every second...

Yesterday, the Arms trade continued to help make sure that every minute someone lost their life to armed violence...

Yesterday, 35-150 species of life became extinct....

Yesterday, someone somewhere every moment became a racist...an extremist.... a widow ....an orphan...homeless...sick...a victim... a statistic.

How are we making tomorrow a better day? Does anyone know?