ISIS terrorist attack.

Some time within the last couple of days I think I heard on the radio that there had been a minutes silence in memory of the Finsbury Park terrorist attack, which was an event of which I have no recollection. The fact of the matter is I have very little recollection of any of the attacks on this country and I was wondering if I am alone in thinking like this.

As my recollection of terrorist attacks was so sketchy I thought I should do some research and was somewhat surprised when I searched initially for ISIS terrorist attacks and was not specific about which country, so the list was rather large to say the least. It was also at this point I realised how little attention I have paid to this lark.

Quoting from Wiki do dah, the terrorist group inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Daesh has "conducted or inspired" over 70 terrorist attacks in 20 countries, whether this includes Al Qaeda, I have no idea.

Probably the reason I have lost track of the number of attacks is because we have been under attack from terrorists since 1605 and the Gunpowder plot, most of my youth the IRA were bombing the living daylights out of us starting in 1939, although previous to this the Irish Republican Brotherhood started the bombing campaign in 1867, and going on right up until at least 2001, although I missed a considerable amount of these as I wasn't born until 1951.

When scrolling down the list of attacks I came across one for 19th June 2017 where Darren Osborne drove a van into worshippers outside the Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one of them. On 23rd June he was charged with terrorism-related murder and attempted murder and in February 2018 at Woolwich Crown Court he was found guilty on both counts and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

This was obviously the attack where a couple of days ago they held a minutes silence, so that's one of the attacks that I had completely forgotten about, but it wasn't forgotten because it was not an ISIS attack, it was just an event that my brain chose as not being of sufficient interest to retain, along with all the others I have completely forgotten.

One has to assume therefore that unless you were actually caught up in an attack or knew someone who was injured or killed, that the vast majority of people take very little notice of these events, once the initial shock of the moment has passed.

It would seem, as the IRA discovered after a campaign of bombing lasting 134 years, that the only way to resolve your differences is through negotiation, although how many years it will take for a foe who wishes to take everyone back to the dark ages to realise this is anyone's guess.