We’ve all been told about this war on terror. Right now though it feels like the terror is being waged on us. Whether you’re enjoying shopping in London, or cafe jamming in Rome, soaking up the glories of the beach in Egypt or just being an ordinary resident anywhere in Iraq or Israel, you can’t feel safe.

So is this what historians are going to write about in years to come? No wars in Europe as such, but a general feeling of unease, of uncertainty about our future, of what sort of a future we all, and particularly our children have, if any at all…

And how on earth can we fathom where and how evil will strike next? The Malta Independent last Wednesday was just full of such stories, a whole page of worrying news. One suspected bomber detained in Turkey.

A flight from Los Angeles to London was diverted because three Pakistani passengers were reported to be acting suspiciously and one story about the EU unveiling tighter rules on bank transfers to stop terrorist funding.

Then, of course, there was the story of evil to beat all evil.

Well documented, and what the Americans call multi-source information, claimed that Osama bin Laden himself was personally trying to buy multi-

millions worth of cocaine, spike it with poison and sell it in the US.

I don’t know about you but I’ve thought of bombs in undergrounds or use of chemical bombs anywhere as nasty possibilities, but this – thousands upon thousands being slowly poisoned to death.

I know cocaine is the drug of the rich, the bright and the famous as much as it can be of any person with a hole in their lives who turn to drugs, but really... poisoning them slowly to death as well as living with their cocaine habit is pretty evil and pretty unfathomable. I mean, (again..) who would have thought it?

Perhaps in this war on terror those that represent us, the totally innocent ordinary citizens should recruit some of those evil minds that are currently locked up in our prisons or semi prison, semi psychiatric hospitals to try and understand the minds of these people and what lengths they would go to for their cause?

This plot of Osama apparently only failed because the Columbian drug barons realised this could make them many millions quickly, but could then destroy their very lucrative market for cocaine in the US. Those who uncovered the plot wrote: “It is important that we recognise that when money goes from the pocket of an American to buy drugs, it may contribute to the financing of unspeakable crimes of violence around the world”.

I don’t suppose any of our kids who start drug taking ever think of this, but it should perhaps be part of our educational campaigns to stop our next generation of children at least being less addicted to all forms of abusive substances, from cigarettes to alcohol, soft drugs to hard drugs, that buying some drugs does mean buying into terrible crime and terror, and not just the pleasurable oblivion that all these forms of drugs can give you.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at the depths of evil, or really how people become blinded by their cause. As a nation we all have experienced the blindness that political allegiances can bring. Perhaps though we can excuse ourselves by saying this is really a very new democracy, with little experience of consensus politics, and that really we have come a very long way in a very short time.

Things are thankfully better now. The young are less passionate about politics. Labourites and Nationalists have forged many bonds, through marriage, through business and we are no longer the two Malta’s we once were.

Times are tough and times are tight. But we must pull together, get rid of what’s wrong but hold onto what is right. It’s something we all agree with when we talk to each other privately. It’s obviously a little harder to put into practice.

There was evil in Maltese politics too but it is ebbing away. We all need to work to ensure it stays away, and that the unfathomable never hits our shores…