I was sitting typing at the PC, and got an email saying "World War 3 starting, live on TV now", so went through and switched the news on a few minutes before the second plane hit. Like most people, I wasn't thinking about the tower inhabitants at that point, just awestruck at the scale of it, and continued to feel that way for the next few hours, glued to the telly watching history happen live in front of my eyes.

As it went on, you got to see the best and worst of people, more the latter. All the NY residents trying to do something, some great news reporting, and some shocking media bullshit. I still remember as it happened they were widely predicting/reporting 30,000 - 50,000 dead, talking it up even as people were still jumping out of the windows, and way after it must have been clear that there weren't nearly that many people in the buildings.

And then, obviously, there was here. I was pretty hacked off at all the forum idiots going "The world will never be the same again, and we'll all be dead in a fortnight" and all the rest of it. I started a thread along the lines of "Yes, this is terrible, but get some perspective", and kicked off one of the all-time flame wars.

As usual, of course, I was right. The world is pretty much the exact same now as it was before, and Al-Qaida hasn't mounted a single other attack of any note. The Americans used the murder of less than 3,000 innocent civilians to justify the murder of another 20,000 innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan - neither nation having any proven link to the attack - as well as a major consolidation of their economic and military power in those regions.

A couple of days later, I was at my little cousin's 16th birthday party in a small working-class village in South Wales. I expected people there to be more upset, but as I sat on the kitchen floor the morning after the party, trying to keep the cat off the broadsheets, I was struck by the fact that no-one there appeared to really give a shit. More so even than me, they seemed to basically feel "Yeah, it was terrible, but welcome to the modern world, America. The rest of us have been watching our people get killed by terrorists for decades, so put it back in your pants."

There was a widespread sense in this little village of America's chickens having come home to roost, and some innocent people having paid the price for decades of aggressive imperialism and bullying on the part of various US governments. If you kick a dog long enough, eventually it's going to turn round and bite you, and it's nobody's fault but your own.

The other thing that struck me was the three-minute silence in the streets a day or two afterwards. I'd forgotten about it and gone into town for some shopping. It was only when I went into WH Smith and noticed it was dark and nobody was moving that I clicked. I was genuinely stunned, in the angry rather than the impressed sense.

As I walked down the main street, looking at all these idiots standing stock still and silent outside River Island, I just thought "Fuck you, you mawkish, maudlin cunts. You didn't give a fuck for the tens of thousands in Kosovo or Bosnia. I bet you didn't stand here like goons for the victims of Enniskillen, as if they'd have given a shit if you did. So why are you suddenly choking back tears for a bunch of American stockbrokers from even further away than Bosnia? Fucking hypocrites." I kept on walking, and fired all their dirty looks right back at them.

My heart breaks for all those poor bastards whose best hope was jumping out of an 80th-floor window, and the firemen who had to run into what everyone else was running out of. I loathe the Islamic fundamentalists killing innocent strangers in the name of their stupid god, same as I loathe the Christian fundamentalists in the White House and Downing St doing the exact same thing, only more so, and in our name and with our money.

I don't value the lives of Americans any higher than Kosovans, Afghans, Iraqis or anyone else, or vice versa and won't be bullied into sentimental displays of rank, stinking hypocrisy about it. Live up to the consequences of your actions. Care about everyone, or you have no right to care about anyone.