Collecting my wits at the end of a day that had seen terror writ large all over the world with three contemporaneous, probably planned, terror attacks, I am filled with an acute sense of impotence.

I, we, are at the mercy of events that are far bigger than us.

Ever since 9/11, the free world has been at the mercy of terror which can hit anywhere at any time, attacking innocent victims who are not aware they are in any kind of war.

Time and again, think of Drummer Lee Rigby, the British soldier hacked to death on a calm afternoon in Britain last year. Think of the mostly British victims of Sousse today, lounging one minute on their sun beds and dead the next.

The clash of civilisations is here, despite some saying that it does not exist.

This does not mean that mistakes, grave mistakes, were not committed after 9/11 when America, like a wounded giant, struck blindly and acted foolishly when it celebrated the fall of Saddam and thought the war was over.

Three years ago, the free world had rejoiced that the Arab Spring was poised to bring down three obnoxious Arab dictators. Of the three countries, Egypt is now stable but ruled by an iron hand. Tunisia … well we can see the fragility of that neighbour in today’s attack that will kill off tourism, which the attack on the Bardo Museum it did not succeed in doing.

And Libya. Of the three, Libya is the worst affected. It is a failed state, an empty land with no boundaries to the south and sea in the north. It is being criss-crossed by caravans of migrants from other states who use clandestine channels to reach the sea and then try and cross over to that mirage called Europe.

Whether we are in the target area of Isis and Islamic terror is not yet known, but we are certainly in the target area of the epochal migratory pattern which has the potential to rewrite the history of Europe.

Over the past two days in Brussels, the leaders of the European states in the EU clashed and argued about sharing between them some 60,000 migrants who have already crossed over into Italy and Greece. What they will do if the migratory wave multiplies and keeps coming is anybody’s guess.

The EU leaders had other things to worry about. Greece above all, for the probability is that Greece may join the list of failed states in the coming week, and become the first First World country to default on its IMF loans.

Over the past months, the European leaders and ministers accumulated heaps of air miles with round-the-clock meetings on Greece and, after months of negotiations and meetings, all they could say that the past days, with all the meetings, had been for nothing, a going round in circles that has led nowhere.

The nearer the cliff edge came, the clearer one could see what can happen starting from tomorrow if Greece is not granted a reprieve and gets money to pay the IMF.

Think of Cyprus last year and multiply it a hundredfold. The banks will remain closed (which is why people have been taking out all their savings and hiding them in mattresses). It will be those without any money in the banks that will be hit worst. The poor, already starving and depending on soup kitchens run by the Orthodox Church and other aid societies, will get poorer.

The Tsipras government has been battling, perhaps rightly, against the imposition to cut further pensions and restrict social benefits. But if Greece defaults, pensions and social benefits will be cut even more.

And if Greece is kicked out of the eurozone and comes out with the Drachma, which is immediately devalued, the pain and the suffering will be even worse.

Nevertheless, even in Greece, there are small islands of hope, young innovators, start-ups that may work, people with ideas and ambitions. Others have given up and have migrated. Others moved in with their parents and share the small pittance one or two of them earn with part-time work.

And so far we have not mentioned the two equally serious conundrums that Europe is facing – the Russian annexation of Crimea and the crumbling of Ukraine and the British temptation to walk away from the EU, two very heavy issues each of which requires a volume on its own.

Small Malta is facing all this and more. So far, most Maltese seem to believe that joining the EU was the good thing to do as we would probably have been worse off had we remained on our own in such circumstances. But we feel now that even Europe, especially the eurozone, is feeling shaky and has huge issues to tackle before it can feel secure.

Trawling the social media today, it struck me that we think of the petty, small and insular matters without giving serious thought to the big things happening around us.

Yet even in our solipsistic, navel-gazing mood, there is little to celebrate. The continuous revelations of government appointments going to party boys (and boys is the right word) who are patently not qualified except for their party allegiance and perhaps their relationship with a key person in the Nomenklatura, gives the entire government structure the odour of corruption, the unmistakable smell of something rotten.

I will not say that the previous administration did not have its own blue-eyed boys, for it did, but to my mind they were of a superior grade (even here I am generalizing). And anyway, I thought the people had changed their government to improve matters rather than to let the other lot get their chance at the trough.

Beyond the names that have been bandied about, we all know others who have had this golden pick-up and we also know that only party loyalty got them there, not qualifications, not ability, not intelligence.

They are the biggest arguments to disbelieve anything that is said or will be said by the Labour leadership now and in the future. When their chance came, they were not only like those who went before them but infinitely worse.

Even then, the sense of impotence is the overwhelming sensation.

 

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