Where to from here?

If the police and intelligence services have got it right, the London bombers were British. Born and bred. Second (third?) generation Pakistani. And the people who knew them said they were friendly, nice guys. One of them had even worked in a primary school, until late last year, and was loved by the kids there. The school issued a statement saying that he'd made a valuable contribution to school life. How the hell do you explain this? How can intelligent people who don't even belong to the underclass - one of them came from a relatively well-to-do family, living in a large house and driving a Mercedes - how can these young men drive all the way from Leeds to Luton, get on a train to central London, walk along a metro platform laughing with each other and then get on trains and buses and blow themselves and everyone else to pieces? How can they do all that and their families don't know what's going on in their heads? We're told that police first realised who the culprits were when one of their mothers raised the alarm that her son was missing. Poor woman, her life will be hell from now on.

And how do we go forward from here? How do we stop our country/countries being torn apart by suspicion and mistrust? How do you go on trusting people when even those who appear to be decent do such awful deeds?

I have no answers. And neither do our governments by the look of things. You can't solve this problem by going in and turning someone else's country into a parking lot, as some intelligent fools have suggested. What happens in Israel, Palestine and Iraq today is happening in my country/your country tomorrow.

This is one little planet and we're all in it together, like it or not.

P.S. What makes it just that little bit extra shocking for me is that I know Beeston, the area in Leeds where the four alleged bombers came from. I spent many weekends there in my early twenties, vising a boyfriend and a friend from school. It's a studenty area, a bit run down, but OK.