The most positive news this week was bitter-sweet, involving as it did decent behaviour in the face of death. The funeral of Abdulrahman Abdalla Gedi, the 21-year-old Somali fisherman who drowned when the Simshar went down, was treated no differently to that of Carmelo Bugeja and Noel Carabott, who died with him.

I am glad that the Prime Minister decided to lead by example in this hideously racist country, and ensure that in his absence from Malta, he was represented at the burial service, held at the Corradino mosque, by his deputy. The only irony is that his deputy is Tonio Borg, possibly the most conservative and right-wing member of the government. I wonder how he felt, having to stand through the burial service of a black African in a mosque. At least he had the rather more opened-minded George Pullicino there for moral support, in his role as fisheries minister.

And I’m glad to see that several fishermen went along too, just as they did to the funerals of the other two. It’s the realisation that The Others are human that breaks down the barriers in the end. The imam, Mohammed El-Sadi, spoke at the burial service about the issue of irregular immigration and reminded us that hard-heartedness is not an option in the face of so much suffering. Ah, but apparently it is.

A few days ago, rescue personnel went out to a half-submerged boat laden with people, and hauled a heavily pregnant woman out of the water. She died immediately. Beneath the on-line news report of this sorry story, there is a litany of the most terrible sentiments. I read them and asked myself: who are these horrible people? They are so secure in their ghastly beliefs that they feel no shame at all in putting their name to opinions that make me blush on their behalf when reading them.

Take this, for instance: “If someone plays with fire he knows that he risks being burned. Why should we worry about them when they know the risks that they are taking? This shows that they are irresponsible and do not even care for their own unborn children. So why should we?”

Or this, posted in response to somebody I know, who had written a brief comment chastising others for their spite and hatred: “How innocent can you be not to realize that the only reason pregnant woman are included in the trip is to generate comments like yours? Are you 10 years old? That one of the passengers ‘happens to be’ a pregnant woman is a coincidence as much as it is a coincidence that the boats always contain groups of 28.” You understand that this person is suggesting that heavily pregnant women are planted in the boats, and possibly also submerged to the point of drowning, to generate sympathy.

Here’s another one (I’ve left the errors of this and others intact): “If one want to commit suicide there is nothing to be done. Moreover has onyone questioned that these illegal immigrants should be prosecuted for not only risking their own lifes but also that of minors or the unborn? They are using these children and pregnant women for one scope that the public opinion will pity them and they will then roam our streets with their children and parasitising on our social system.”

And just look at this one: “There are also other possibilities like are female immigrants the get-out-jail-free card when rescue is needed, are female immigrants the first to be thrown overboard when the situation becomes dire on the boat? There are also other considerations like how are these women earning their boat ticket in Libya which in any case in a way is none of our business. It is also interesting how they manage to secure a place on the boat given that places must be in high demand and that when the law of the jungle rules male to-be-immigrants are more likely to force themselves onto a boat.”

I posted a comment of my own: “Behold a host of chest-beating Catholics. A bit of compassion will get you to heaven a lot faster than a lifetime of Sunday Masses. If you don’t believe me, ask your confessor. The AFM has just spent hundreds of thousands of euros searching for the body of one boy, yet the rescue of 28 living people is considered an abhorrent financial burden. Oh, but the boy was Maltese and the others are not, and God in his heaven distinguishes between humane acts to our fellow countrymen and humane acts to others – I don’t think.”

A man called Denis Catania replied: “Daphene Caruana Galizia: Keep that little angel out of this. First they didn’t spend no Hundreds of thousands and if we did, yes it’s no problem. little Theo’s father paid Maltese taxes. Shame on you for using him as an example. The issue is this woman died commiting a crime, when she took that unborn child in the high seas on a rinky ding boat. Haven’t we rescued enough of them. How many of these poor kids have you taken in? Or are you just mouth and no actions. Any parent who puts thier unborn child or minor in danger is a criminal (selfish criminal) the worst you can find. Matter of fact any time a minor is on a rinky ding boat, they should arrest all the adults as criminal and take there kids. By that, they waive there rights to any asylum. Whether they are white, Black, Blue or purple.”

I was very impressed, as you can imagine, not least by the saccharine sentimentalism (typical of racist right-wingers – Adolf Hitler was a fine example, with his puppies and kittens), which makes a Maltese child who dies at sea ‘a little angel’ with a heroic father, but an African child in similar circumstances a sub-human creature with criminally irresponsible parents who should be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned, if not publicly flogged.

I posted a response to this man’s idiocy, though for some reason (oh dear, I can’t imagine why) it didn’t appear. It was along these lines: that my interlocutor is clearly of below average intelligence and of so poor a level of education that he couldn’t string a coherent argument together, still less spell it. He appears to believe that our search-and-rescue services are not obliged to search for and rescue those who do not pay taxes in Malta. He also has a very inaccurate understanding of how much things cost, like sea-searches involving planes and large boats that go on for almost two weeks. It couldn’t have cost hundreds of thousands of euros, he claims, flying in the face of an AFM statement that said it did – as though we needed telling.

Well, some people do. They think that everything provided as a public service is free, except when it comes to rescuing boat people and keeping them corralled. Then, suddenly, the money is coming straight of their pockets and they begin referring to their status as taxpayers. The country becomes “our living-room” and the people in detention are “uninvited guests in our house”. The recent news that many hundreds of millions of Maltese liri were poured down the drain at the Malta Shipyards with no benefit accruing to the country, still less the taxpayer in his living room, was greeted with complacent silence. Nobody came out screaming in the on-line comments sections that this was their money, and that the country couldn’t take such a crippling burden. The same people who were silent in the face of the news that many hundreds of millions of Maltese liri – I feel the need to repeat that – were thrown away in a shockingly wasteful exercise of keeping a couple of thousand men in a job (it would have been cheaper to pay them to stay at home), haven’t stopped thumping their keyboards to let as many people as possible know that Malta can’t take the crippling financial burden of keeping a few hundred boat-people in detention. I wouldn’t employ these people as accountants if they were the last ones on earth.

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Will all my saner and more rational readers excuse me while I address the other ones? Get a grip on yourselves, people. Sit up and recognise where the real financial haemorrhage is, and where the real threats to our morals and so-called traditions are coming from – from within, from those Maltese who soul is corrupted and whose spirit is shrunken and mean. I hate hectoring people about good manners, especially when I am sometimes prone to being quite a savage myself, but here’s this Sunday’s lesson in basic etiquette. Don’t give vent to your racist and hostile-to-Africans opinions in a social setting, when you have no idea whether others who are present think as you do. You are forcing others who do not think the same way to leave the group, change the subject, or pretend not to hear you, failing which they will be forced into an argument they might not particularly wish to have. It is very difficult for some people to sit in silence listening to racist remarks and opinions that are hostile to others on the grounds that they are African. This causes them severe embarrassment.

I am astounded when apparently reasonable people make the wholly unreasonable assumption that all Maltese have the mentality of Georgia, USA rednecks in the 1950s. But of course, that’s not how they see themselves. They see themselves as more sophisticated than any African, and then open their mouths to prove the opposite.