The events in New York on September 11 were truly shocking and all but a few can feel nothing but a shared horror and sympathy for the destruction and human pain.

However, I cannot be alone in feeling an increasing fear about the situation the world will be in by this time next week as the US Government, supported by Tony Blair, makes it clear it intends to wreak a crude and terrible revenge on innocent and already suffering human beings, unleashing unimaginable repercussions in the process.

Andy Richards (Letters, September 18) is right to have said the New York event had a lot to do with the imbalance of power and wealth in our world and it seems we are about to witness further evidence of this as the US uses its considerable reserves of both to "punish" the Afghan population, three million of whom already depend on the World Food Programme for their survival.

This is not the time for those people who feel disquiet and anger about inequality in our "globalised" world to let those feelings be swamped by sympathy over recent events or to be cowed by a crude "them and us" rhetoric.

-Maureen Mahoney, Edburton Avenue, Brighton