What is wrong with us? Some of us are so apathetic that nothing moves us and then some overreact to trivia. Important things are skimmed over and mountains are made out of molehills. Like the fuss over some police officers taking a police launch on a jaunt to entertain other police officers from abroad.

OK, official police boats should not be seen with bikini clad women, and yes the officers involved should have got a right ticking off. But the palaver was well out of proportion to the case. It would be better if the media concentrated their stories and carried out some investigation on the much more serious abuse of perks, not to mention corruption.

For example, how come the worrying operating practices of Fantasy Tours had skimmed under the radar of the media for so long; surely people who had previously been ripped off would have complained to the papers.

According to inewsmalta.com, Golden Travel Club, which forms part of Fantasy Tours, had not paid its Malta Tourism Authority operating licence for several years and despite many complaints from disgruntled clients, nothing had been done.

Unfortunately, we (the media) tend to make much after the horse has bolted. For example, if only there had been a whistleblower when Enemalta was taking us all for a ride and making us pay through the nose, while others made hay, we might have been alerted sooner.

The only thing that seems to move most of us here is the black people that arrive on our shores. And it is the “black” that people are scared of. Add to that the fear of Islam and you have the biggest babaw (bogeyman) you can scare your children with.

It is funny how even dark people don’t like ‘black’. Rereading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, I remembered that “Mumtaz, who had come out of her mother’s womb black as midnight...” was the lesser favourite of her mother, who worried that Mumtaz, unlike her siblings, would not find a husband because of her colour.

That rang a bell, I remember getting very dark in the summer right up to my teens, which caused my own mother concern. Darker Maltese people were known as l’iswed or is-sewda (the black one). That name-calling has rather lost out with regard to the darker Maltese person, since it has now been taken over by the real thing.

So who are these black people we are so scared of?

According to the stats on the Web, the UN says some 7,800 illegal migrants and asylum seekers landed in Italy in the first half of this year and 741 landed in Malta from March to July. Most come from sub-Saharan African countries, particularly Somalia and Eritrea.

So what is happening in those countries? The strategic Somali port city of Kismayu, once a stronghold for Islamist militants, has continued to descend into violence even though the militants have withdrawn, raising concerns that greater fragmentation, not peace, awaits parts of this stricken country. In Somalia, ousting one set of armed fighters often seems to mean that others will step in, reported the New York Times in July.

Today, a fragile peace prevails in Eritrea and it faces the gigantic tasks of rebuilding its infrastructure and of developing its economy after more than 30 years of fighting. Eritrea is unable to provide enough food; two thirds of the population receive food aid, BBC news.

Eritrea’s government has jailed about 10,000 dissidents without charge or trial over the years, Amnesty International reported in May, calling it one of the world’s most repressive states. Detainees include “anyone who refuses to comply with the repressive system”.

But back to Rushdie, even Muslims live in fear of Islamic fundamentalists or militants. Let us not forget that he had to live in hiding after his Satanic Verses was published in the UK in the late eighties when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. The Iranian government backed the fatwa against Rushdie until 1998, when the succeeding government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said it no longer supported the killing of Rushdie.

Then of course after 9/11, terrorism made everyone even more paranoid of anyone who was dark, sporting a beard, or a turban and young dark men on the London tube with a knapsack on their back. When one day on the London underground I watched such a young man anxiously, he surprised me by offering me his seat. I could not work out whether he had read my mind and was trying to put me at ease, or that I was beginning to show my age.

The fear of terrorism and its connection with Islam militants is the order of the day. Right now the US is on high alert. It has pulled all but emergency staff out of its consulate-general in Lahore, northeast Pakistan; in response to what it said were “specific threats”. This soon after the urgent evacuation of the US embassy in Yemen. The UK and France also removed their embassy personnel from Yemen. Plus, the US also issued a worldwide travel alert in the Middle East and parts of North Africa.

Then we switch on our TVs and on American channels we watch Homeland and 24 with its annoying ticking clock, and then BBC’s Spooks with one of the protagonists going “tick, tock, tick, tock”. No wonder we are all nervous.

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