It verges on the opportunistic to refer to the tragedy in Norway but I suppose trying to be thoughtful about it might echo the way the Norwegians themselves are starting to cope with the horror. From some of the comments heard, their main priority is to support the victims and strengthen democracy, though I'm pretty sure that there will be a growing thrust for revenge and retritubtion, perfectly understandably.

The perpetrator, from the information available, is a white Christian who looks like a poster boy for the SS, telling the world that he was standing up to the Marxist-Islamic alliance that is taking over Europe. It looks like he set off the explosion in Oslo to distract the police and then aimed his machine pistol into the heart of a rising generation of politicians.

As I write, the death toll is hovering just below 100 and no doubt the white supremacist web-sites and their comrades in arms are having gleeful paroxysms of pleasure.

We need to make no mistake about it: this Norwegian thug is nothing more than a harsh manifestation in very real terms of the revolting racist intolerance that assorted lunatic, and not so lunatic, morons around us here in Malta have been spewing for many years.

It's no good whistling in the dark, saying that it couldn't happen here. It happened in Norway, which is not much different from us.

What makes us so special, that we're immune from the effects of intolerance, bigotry and smug superiority complexes? We hardly tolerate people having a conscience and we go into a screeching rage even about - of all things - a bus being late, is it such a leap to imagine someone finally going postal after spending evening after evening crouched around a bonfire listening to supremacist claptrap?