Yeah, I agree, but unfortunately I'm just waiting for the first bunch of misguided (or white supremacist knobbers) fools to attack or kill some pure innocent Muslim.
 

So far the public (and political (with one notable and local-to-you exception)) has been calm, rational and understanding. After all, if we lose these qualities as a society, the terrorists win, don't they?
Have also been supremely impressed with the blue-light response; the planning and training has paid off to enable these guys to deliver a fantastic professional response in this emergency.
 

You know, what affects me the most is the age of these suicide bombers - it's not that I that I sympathise with them at all, it's just I remember being 18.

Sure I was a concious self-aware and responsible human being. I was also fucking naive and in retrospect a bit of spanner. It's like lovingly raising your child only for them to wind up falling for the village junkie.

I tried today to think about from the sb's point of view, what a buzz eh? to make the ultimate sacrifice, it reminded me of the one time I walked along Beachy Head and thought how beautiful it would be just to calmly walk off the edge. No attention seeking pill overdose - just the ultimate gesture of fuck the world. Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to be dead - trying to see the what logic if any there might be in it.

Poor ignorant and unforgivably selfish twats, pissed their lives away for nothing and stealing that which should never be taken from innocent others.
 

Absolutely; very impressed with the police - makes you remember that these guys aren't just there to nick you for speeding, but are actually putting themselves on the line to protect us from serious harm. I must admit it's changed my attitude when i see a policeman from "oh shit, what am I doing wrong" to "nice to see you boys/girls out here representing for the law-abiding majority, keep up the good work!".
 

My last was in answer to the one before. paul, for some reason your post wasn't showing up just now. But I get what you mean. I think many of us have been there when we were young and disaffected. When I was 16 if someone had given me a bomb, I'd could well have seen myself blowing myself up on a bad day, although I like to think that I wouldn't have been particuarly into taking anyone else down in the process. But the grand, futile gesture has a strange appeal when you're 16. I think Catcher in the Rye gets the teenage mentality just about right when it says that (roughly, I haven't looked it up) the mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.