September 11

A bit weird today... it's the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and... well... nothing, really. No silence at work, no memorials (as far as I'm aware) in Sheffield - just a normal day, kind of.

Of course, for thousands, possibly more, of people, this can't ever be "a normal day" - and whatever you think of the politics surely you have to have sympathy for those who mourn for those they lost in general, and especially today.

I wonder if the general low-key approach, in the UK at least, it's because of a fear that seems to be coming across some people of glorifying terrorism. There's an interesting debate on the BBC website here about whether making such a fuss and showing the images over and over is glorifying the event and those who perpetrated it. Simon Jenkins wrote an article in The Guardian last week arguing much the same thing.

I guess it's important to remember what happened and there can be a horrible fascination about those pictures but... show it too often and you almost (almost) seem to be in awe of what they did.

Of course, the real way to not learn any lessons from 9/11 is to set up a massive assault on our human rights - but of course that would never happen, would it...