We are all in some stage of shock following the terrorist attacks in the US. It is salutary to realise the greatest military power the world has seen cannot protect itself from a few suicide bombers.

Doubtless there will be retaliatory strikes that will kill innocent people but may fail to reach the guilty ones. The result may well be to increase, rather than stop, the rise of terrorism.

Terrorism is one of the consequences of some fundamental changes in our times: The unstoppable pace of change, the growing culture of possession, self-assertion and violence in our communal life, the legitimation of the act of killing in a good cause, the increasing polarisation between the very rich and the very poor, the determination of the US military to achieve what it calls "full spectrum dominance" of the world and more in the like vein.

Unconscious we may be but we are sowing the seeds of violence and will reap the whirlwind.

-Alan Staley, Nizells Avenue, Hove