The dust hasn't yet settled in Manhattan, and through the rest of the world the aftershocks and tremors still cause unease.

I heard about the attack on the World Trade Center whilst at work yesterday, and although I have seen footage and news reports for many hours both yesterday and today, the sheer scale of this hideous crime has not yet sunk in.

I shed more than a few tears today, watching footage that seemed to take you right onto the streets of New York's financial centre. And yet I wonder if this is just the start of something more terrible still.

Now that the rescue operation is underway (fruitlessly it seems) I can't help thinking about civilians all over the world who have been caught up in ideological battles.

Should we (as Tony Blair states that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the US against a common enemy - whoever it turns out to be) retaliate?

I can't help thinking that this would compound the horror we have already seen. Scenes like that witnessed by a global television audience yesterday have been played out countless times - particularly in the Middle East.

Is it right that anyone else should be killed to avenge the terrible deaths of these people?

Will it make us feel any safer when we hear that a daycare centre or an office in another country has been hit in collateral damage?

The path to peace must not be trodden over the dead bodies of anyone.

I cannot believe that another attack can be right - however justified it may seem to a nation reeling with shock and anger.

We will never achieve peace by shedding blood.

Should we rule by fear? Is that democracy?

Should we answer terror with yet more terror?

My answer would be NO.

Let the USA match the courage of those who saved others lives and lost their own yesterday, and the courage of those who escaped unhurt in body but horribly injured in their percept
ion of the world.

By all means persue the perpetrators of these outrages - and don't ever feel the regret we feel that Nazi war criminals got away with their terrible crimes because too much time had passed, and governments gave them shelter.

Punish them judicially.

But bombing?

Retaliation?

Give peace a chance and show the children of the world what adults must do - forgive, and learn from this dreadful day that violence can never be the answer.

Retaliation will only lead to more acts of terror, and a new generation growing up safe in the conviction that hate is ok as long as you believe you have right on your side.

The older I get the more the issue of crime and punishment becomes a grey area.

When I was younger I was heavily into politics, but I never felt that killing was right.

Then I was attacked by someone. For a long time I tried to make sense of the whole mess my head was in - but never really hated the person who did it. It wouldn't have made me feel any better - and focussing all my energy on hating someone would leave me no time to get on with my life and put the pieces back together.

Hatred is a deeply destructive emotion.

We can see in our own cities and towns what hatred does - Stephen Lawrence, the Holy Cross primary school, the BNP gaining votes in the North West.

Hatred is divisive.

Hatred does not heal wounds - and one day your wounds will have to heal if you want to move on.

It was hatred of the USA that made those terrorists hijack planes yesterday, and made their ears deaf to the screams of the people whose lives they used for political gain.

Can we hold our heads up if we are deaf to the screams of the "innocent" people who will get caught up in the firestorm looming on the horizon?

Innocent people - now that is a phrase that judges and divides - like some people are innocent and so
me are guilty - so they deserve what they get. Who are we to judge? And doesn't this mean that some peoples lives are worth more than others?

The minute you start devaluing some peoples lives, you start along a much travelled road that has led to bullying, rape, racist attacks, genocide, and acts of terror like the one we saw yesterday.

Muslims all over America must be fearful for their safety - one shopkeeper in Manhattan was punched in the face yesterday - and protested that he had been helping people and that his kids were Americans. The man who punched him just saw a stereotype, and a target for his anger - not a human being.

See people as stereotypes - the Mad Mullahs and the Great Satan, and all those people who don't live like us and look like us - and you don't see that they too have children, they have hopes and fears, and they wish for a better future too.

Stereotypes strip people of their rights and make it easy to forget that they too feel pain and love. They wake up in the night worrying about the future too.

If anything can be salvaged from the wreckage of the twin towers today and every day afterwards, let it be a tolerance and forgiveness.

For every child who lost a parent today, let's hope they learn forgiveness and understanding instead of hatred, or the terror will never end.

American bombs have wreaked the same kind of devastation in cities inthe Middle East - and who can forget the desolation of Hiroshima?

Hatred filled the camps in Germany and Poland with people like you and me.

Expediency leads to desperate measures and shameful acts of terror. Playing one power off against another to protect commercial and national interests is just as bad as a hijacked airliner being used as a bomb when it means that children are dying and the sick get no medicine.

Hatred writes history in blood and tears - let our new century be the one where wars
became a thing of the past, where humanity realises that love and peace are what matters, and don't let any more children grow up hating the regime that killed their parents.

Breaking the cycle of violence is never easy, but this must happen if we are ever to live in a world without the threat of terrorism - whether fundamentalist, sectarian, racist or state sponsored.