Maybe the reverberations here in Malta of last week’s murderous butchery of a British soldier right in front of his own barracks by a Kenyan man who went on to justify, as he saw it, what he had just done, with his murderous machete still with blood in his hand, on a mobile phone video, have been rather muted.

But that’s not the impact on the British home public who for the past week have heard of nothing except of the continuing investigations and arrests, the mountain of flower bouquets deposited on the site of the carnage, accusations leveled at the security forces for their perceived laxity in the treatment of terrorists, and, of course, the family’s sober and reserved bearing in the middle of the tragedy.

Thus has the Afghan tragedy been carried to the British homes.

There is tension in Britain now and it is palpable especially on the streets where people congregate.

The genie of the Far Right has been unbottled and within hours of the carnage a protest by anti-Islamists was held on the site. The police reported that there has been a huge increase of anti-Islamic attacks over the past days, such as the torching of an Islamic centre and the like.

One must also factor into account that the funeral of Drummer Lee Rigby has not been held so far and that it will be impossible to keep the funeral private. Nor have the two attackers who were shot by armed policemen appeared in Court.

The message relayed by one of the killers on that terrible video (which was not shown on British TV but was available all over the Internet) was chilling: no British soldier is safe, nor is his family as long as there are British soldiers in Afghanistan. The choice of the victim was completely random: he was selected not because he was himself, but because he was a soldier.

Britain is, maybe, an extreme example, but the situation has degenerated across, one can say, the entire Europe. Entry requirements have gone out of the door, people seem able to bring in their relatives and friends, their extended family, with the greatest of ease.

There is no attempt at finding out who are the hate-mongers who use the Friday prayers to incite against Britain. In the most conspicuous case, some British backbone in  exiling the most renowned hate-monger fell foul of the EU laws. No wonder the British want to get out of the EU.

Such controls as they remain on the frontiers (Britain is not part of Schengen, which removes borders completely) are summary and superficial. And even if they get back to the detailed questioning such as today exists only in Israel, the probability is that terrorists will still slip under the net.

The terrorist attacks of the past months across the world have all been the work of sleepers – the Boston marathon attack, for instance. People can be parked in the host country for years and years, until they surface as terrorists.

Then there are cases where people convert, if that’s the right word, to terrorism. In this case, the man on the video was a Christian until some years ago until he came under the influence of one of the hate imams, it seems.

It is impossible to forecast all or any terrorist attacks when the pattern is so random. It is impossible to put a country on a state of high alert in today’s world. It is impossible to install curbs especially on the Internet and the social media that are all-enveloping.

So is there nothing that can be done?

Here in Malta we delude ourselves that ours is a comfortable place to live where we all live in harmony and where there are no sleepers (that we know of). There are also no Maltese soldiers in Afghanistan. But who knows if we do not have people following hate-mongering imams on the internet and people passing through on their way or back from terrorist training?

In times like this our country must be firm with those it stands with (was there any official expression of sorrow or solidarity after the murder?) and it must be firm against the spread of terrorism. Being wishy-washy on terrorism just does not pay.