Fool's Cap

Staring at The Sun; or How I Began to Start Worrying About Daphne Caruana Galizia

2010-05-02T15:04:00.002+01:00

The sun is great and all, but looking directly at it will make you go blind. One cannot help but think the same about Daphne Caruana Galizia.

When that volcano erupted earlier this year, Caruana Galizia graduated from the ranks of the outspoken to an unbridled temper with a laptop and a keen determination to wreak vengeance.

For those that are not her unquestioning adherents _ of whom she has many _ the spectacle has cast a car crash spell. But whatever voyeuristic appeal there once was has now begun to wear thin.

Reading Caruana Galizia’s blog, Running Commentary, once felt like trawling those YouTube clips of BMX bikers smashing into walls, but now it just leaves the unpleasant aftertaste that comes with watching al-Qaeda beheading videos.

But how exactly did Caruana Galizia evolve from an engaging and persuasive, if frequently disagreeable, poison pen letter writer into an unremitting practitioner of the self-righteous apoplectic fit? And why should any right-thinking Maltese person care?

The transformation was in part accidental; precipitated by media reports about her husband’s domestic abuse report to the police and the alleged whispering plot hatched by Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera and her friends. Her indignation and the torrents of abuse that followed, she explained between jigs of cholera-induced St. Vitas’ dance, was an adequate response to the brazen intrusion on her private family affairs.

Well, fine, it was an absurdly hypocritical position to adopt for someone that has made a cottage industry out of spreading salacious tittle-tattle and dubious insinuations, but what to do? She was scorned, and vanquishing her foes and salting their fields must have seemed like the only fair retort.

What seemed like a fleeting moment of pique, however, has now calcified into a permanent register of bilious ire. Caruana Galizia quickly took advantage of the popularity of her rage-shtick. Despite her affected air of insouciant contempt, she craves approval and infamy, or what passes for it on the Internet at any rate.

Running Commentary has accordingly morphed from a platform for a contrarian know-it-all into a round-the-clock acid reflex.

Deploying insults that she doesn’t always appear to fully understand, Caruana Galizia’s antagonists are now variously dismissed as slags, whores and chavs, among a panoply of other decidedly adolescent put-downs.

And it should go without saying that Caruana Galizia has still not located the exact whereabouts of her reverse gear. The bloody-minded tend to bear this unidirectional condition with pride, and Caruana Galizia must be in the running for some of award from the fraternity for her unremitting perseverance in battle.

That the ability to go backwards is not in of itself a bad thing, however, is a piece of wisdom quite unappreciated at Running Commentary. Even standing still is viewed with suspicion there, as the hundreds of verbose retorts to readers’ comments in bold black print attest.

Putting these quibbles to one side, however, there is no denying that Caruana Galizia is the closest thing Malta has to a proper columnist. Her newspaper articles are usually well-argued and mercifully light on disheartening attempts at wit and rambling insider-y references.

Her blog, meanwhile, is another matter. In addition to the qualitative shortcomings that inevitably come with this unmediated off-the-cuff format (see this blog, for starters), Running Commentary has facilitated the debasement of public discourse in Malta, not least by enabling the creation of the colossally foul and stupid Taste Your Own Medicine site.

But just because Caruana Galizia’s abuse is spelled correctly and more grammatical, it doesn’t necessarily make it any more worthy.

Malta is a special needs case when it comes to Internet debate, as the comments section under any widely-read Times of Malta article effectively demonstrates. This is why the country really needs its only effective columnist to cease indulging in petty verbal mud-wrestling, which only serves to engender a spiral of noxious mutual sniping.

It is easy to imagine how grating such an appeal would be to Caruana Galizia, were she to read it. She would bridle at the suggestion that her prominent role in Maltese public life puts her under some obligation to act as an arbiter for standards in debate.

But, simply put, she would be wrong.

If it isn’t too histrionic to suggest, I would argue that once we get stuck down this stygian Internet rabbit-hole of petty, scurrilous name-calling, the country is going to become a worse place.

The Zodiac Columnist

2009-12-05T10:47:00.006Z

Piecing together epistolary squabbles in The Times requires a rich blend of skill sets, ranging from investigative prowess, methodical cataloguing, and a healthy dose of psychological nous.
For the novice, there are the unending George Cross and internment debates, which will crop up with predicable regularity in the letter pages. The arguments and the people making them are invariably the same, and tracing back the well-rehearsed and badly executed duels is a simple exercise.
As a matter of course, the correspondent will open their missive with the tried and tested: “I refer to the letter by So-and-So (insert date)”. On any given day, up to half or more of the letters in The Times will begin with a variation on that theme – fitting with the paper’s evident calling to become a PO Box sorting house.
Beyond the routine task of fitting together the backward chronological order of the letters, it is also important to make out of the manifold grievances fuelling the anger felt by the respective jousting participants of any letter-writing contest. This can often date back several decades – to before a time when even the parents of most Times readers were born.
On occasion, however, the detective has nothing to work but the standalone text as a means by which to comprehend the inner workings of the epistle-composer’s mind. Like the letters of the Zodiac Killer, every epistle presents its own puzzle and no single link appears to make sense of the larger picture.
Such is the Internet scribbling of Anthony Licari, who teaches psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics (but no longer geolinguistics, it would seem). He is also married to a Russian woman 30 years his junior, one learns with interest, for it puts this choice Licari quote once featured on this blog into some perspective:

"Men of the West seem to be increasingly finding wives and partners in Eastern Europe. No formal scientific study that I know of has attempted to analyse this phenomenon. However, Western newspapers, often for reasons of sensationalism, like to print stories about East European women who have 'tricked' West European men."

So, already we have divined of our subject that he has aspirations to clinical insight, as well as being the erratic moth-bumping-into-light-bulb-minded goon that any regular reader of his column will recognise.
Quite literally, every single word Licari has ever committed to the page can be dismissed as inane gibberish on its own terms, but a recent exchange tantalisingly brings more fascinating strands to his “personality” – startling narcissism and almost childlike sensitivity to even the slightest criticism.
On Nov. 21, one Mario Dingli of Sliema ventured boldly to submit to the following pithy one-lined opinion:

“I am more than certain that columnist Tony Licari (who teaches psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics - very long words indeed) knows that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

Harmless stuff, one would imagine. But as members of the Maltese blog-writing community know all too well, Licari is not one to take even the most passing of barb lying down. In immediate response to the letter, he posted this reply in the comments section (as sure a sign of having too much time on one’s hands as any):

“I have had the pleasure of discussing Mr Dingli's letter with the gentleman himself. I am pleased to say that the conversation was very mature and cordial. We did mention the fact that great writers like Shakespeare, Molière and Voltaire did use sarcasm as part of their writing style without indulging in a low kind of wit. So a negative opinion about sarcasm may not be a general opinion. Mr Dingli and I also mentioned the fact that other columnists in The Times sometimes use sarcasm and that their writing may be pleasant indeed. We tried to understand why I was singled out. This is the only thing that remains unclear in my discussion with Mr Dingli. However this will also be ironed out soon as Mr Dingli has invited me for a drink. Finally I wish to apologise to the world for teaching psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Maybe these subjects harm students of linguistics?”

Leaving aside the factual merits of the retort and the fanciful comparison that Licari appears to be drawing between him and the great figures of Western literature, there is the matter of his worrying insistence on confronting his adversaries face to face over drinks and snacks. This author of this blog is not the only one to have been subjected to such advances amid sinister threats of legal action for having had the temerity to question Licari’s lucidity.
As an aside, it should be obvious to anyone that it is by no means the subject matters that Licari inexplicably feels compelled to advertise beneath his articles that are of concern, as much as the teacher himself.
The world hears no more of Dingli for some time – and some perhaps wonder if they ever will again. But lo, on Friday, he writes in again, this time without his now trademark impishness, but with the dispirited air of an apprehended dog-botherer. He opens mournfully:

“I refer to my letter of November 21.”

What follows is recited in the simpering, contrite tones familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of 1930s Stalinist show trials.

"May I say that I have had a very friendly discussion with Tony Licari regarding the letter. May I also state that when I wrote that "sarcasm is the lowest form of with" I never intended that Dr Licari was "low". If I was understood in this sense, I apologise.
May I also say that I am looking forward to meeting this gentleman when, I am sure, we can have a very good talk together. I am sure there are other columnists and writers who sometimes are sarcastic in their writings and, here again, I am sure that they are not "low".
Regarding the quote itself, I think (I am not sure) that it was Oscar Wilde who coined this phrase. However, I hold myself open to correction.”

Unwilling to let it go there, however, Licari responds with a victory lap of sorts in the comments section, while presumably addressing some apt sniping from Andrew Borg-Cardona further down. If this seems to not make any sense and unfairly taken out of context, only Licari is to blame as the text is presented in full and quite unadulterated:

“Indeed the analysis of writing attempts to find a rapport between the writer and his/her writing. This rapport is often, but not always, discovered in spite of the possibility that a writer does not always wish readers to establish any connection between the person and his/her expression. I wonder, for example, if one may say - and be believed: "My writing is politically obsessed but I am not." Psychoanalysis of writing is one subject that perhaps overemphasises this almost inevitable rapport - which may be subconscious. It is also interesting to observe in some critics a strong obsession to comment patronisingly [thus not sarcastically] on all matters under the sky - if not above it. There is obviously a reason for this phenomenon - perhaps even more than one. I was once amused by an expression used by a letter writer, "zatatism", which is an unkind word - if I suspect correctly the meaning behind it. Finally I tend to disagree with the opinion of some that there is also a rapport between a person's shape and his/her expression.”

And what exactly was the point of this excursion in the nether regions of this peculiar man’s feverish mind?
Well, none at all really. But, and this is said in the weary resignation of a man that knows his words will fall on fallow ground, would The Times please consider barring this fucking nutter from their pages?

Dali M for Murder

2009-12-04T07:23:00.004Z

Now, many people may dismiss David Casa as little more than crashing dunderhead of negligible importance and mental acuity, but his contribution to keeping our religious heritage at the forefront of our lives is surely second to none.
In this frenetic, modern world that we inhabit, what should be a daily habit of praying tribute to the baby Jesus, our Lord and saviour, and his saintly virgin mother often becomes the first casualty of venal, day-to-day endeavors.
But never fear, it’s Thursday and David Casa is here. This week, he devotes his routine bombastic claim of Maltese greatness to the earth-shattering news that the country has victoriously swept aside EU titans Cyprus and Bulgaria to claim its title as host of something called the European Asylum Support Office.
In characteristic fashion, he doesn’t deign to actually inform the reader of what this nebulous agency might actually do remotely anywhere near the top of the article, but he does indulge in an unseemly gale of verbal high-fives and Jerry Springer-style whooping. Read on and get the rosary beads out:

“Gaining the right to host the EASO comes after months of negotiation, excellent teamwork and coordination between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Maltese Representation to the European Union in Brussels. The lobbying and the huge effort that every official involved in this project made have given us thisprestigious seat. Hats off to those who made all this happen; these are people who, unlike us politicians, are rarely mentioned and are never in the limelight, but I think that their work and unconditional commitment should be lauded as they are the ones who make Malta stand out and they are the ones without whom we would never dream of being in the position we are now.”

Jesus Christ, Mary, Joseph and all the saints!
It is mystifying that so many people should have written indignant letters to the paper about how unsuspecting youths could have accidentally picked up the small circulation university magazine containing Alex Vella Gera’s sexually explicit story, but that nobody bats an eyelid at this rancid, stomach-turning display of self-love in the country’s most influential newspaper. There are specialist publications for what is going on in this article, and they can usually be found in Hamburg sex shops.
Once the reader has recovered from the bout of dry-heaving over the Corn Flakes, they are at liberty to read on and discover what exactly this EASO does anyway:

“Malta in the centre of the Mediterranean will indeed be the most excellent location to better understand the phenomena that have caused immigration to soar in these last few years. The setting up of this agency will enable us to share ideas and act more quickly and effectively.”

Christ on a bike!
This kind of vapid flimflam sounds like it belongs in a television advert for washing machines and does woefully little to enlighten anybody as to what this thing actually does. It is hard to know whether Casa acts out of a lack of political acumen or some implausible scruples in failing to spell out what this body is actually for, namely (to slightly amend his description): “The setting up of this agency will enable us to share [immigrants] and act more quickly and effectively.”
Anyway, let Simon Busuttil deal with all boring “explaining stuff to people.” Casa has more gushing to do:

“Events and achievements like these are significant for our country. They are steps in the right direction, towards achieving the goal of a Europe that is equal but diverse, a Europe where the standard of living is the same throughout, where the conditions of work offer our workforce peace of mind; a Europe that is greener and, thus, the air is cleaner than it is now and, at the same time, a Europe that does not lose its traditional roots even at national level; a Europe that will still keep the same values that our forefathers fought for, the traditions that each single town or village has and the dialect that even the citizens of the smallest hamlet speak. It took 500 years of war and bloodbaths to have the Union we have now.”

Holy Mary, mother of God!
It is purely an accident of fate that Casa was born when and where he was, because it is frightening to think what would have happened if he had fallen under the spell of American cult leader Jim Jones. The image of him stampeding towards a big jug of Kool-Aid springs to mind.
“A Europe that is equal but diverse?” Equal to what, exactly?
“A Europe that is greener and, thus, the air is cleaner than it is now?” Jesus H. Christ.
“It took 500 years of war and bloodbaths to have the Union we have now?” Please God, make it stop.
Bored with this thoroughly inconsequential political onanism, he then turned his sights to voluptuous proposition of John Dalli (or Dali, as he misspells it on first reference, failing even to get his sickening sycophancy right).

“I again congratulate him and give him my word I won't be too tough during his grilling session at the European Parliament!”

Again, Jesus Christ! Grilling? A spit roast seems more likely.

He's Behind You!

2008-11-26T08:36:00.004Z

MADC is making a slightly unfortunate offer in promoting its Christmas panto:

Just one more reason for the children to be afraid.

I, Saviour Balzan, Is Clever

2008-11-15T12:39:00.004Z

It is nice to think that an opinion set forth should be a decantered goblet of wisdom poured from a sage vessel of learned introspection, rather than the verbal equivalent of soiling your trousers when all you meant to do is break wind. In an ideal world, a thought expressed could be a distillation of education, wit and intelligence.
And yet, there comes a point while reading a recent Saviour Balzan column that brings to mind one of the best-known scenes from the biopic of Iris Murdoch, Iris. In the latter stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, Murdoch is comforted by life-long partner and husband, John Bayley, who tenderly recalls her vast body of written work, which she struggles any longer to comprehend. In a rare and dramatic moment of lucidity, her memories flood back and in sad, stilted measures, she proudly intones the words: “I … wrote … books.”
Now, she may have been completely gaga at that stage, but that scene demonstrates dramatically what even a mind withered by disease can achieve. Some will say that Murdoch was cheating in the first place, because not only did she bash out a few books in her time, but unlike Balzan she had probably read a few as well, without having to resort to the Internet for basic general knowledge.
All this being a roundabout way of saying that it never ceases to amaze how the pig ignorance of certain Maltese journalists forces them not only to filch material from the Internet in lieu being cultured, but also to think they stand any chance of getting away with it.
One might imagine that Balzan would have been too old to properly enjoy the cartoon Dogtanian in the mid-eighties, but it is evident that is where most of his knowledge of 17th century French royal intrigue comes from if his article on Richard Cachia Caruana is anything to go by. Well, Dogtanian and, of course, Wikipedia _ the refuge of every journalist in a hurry.
Just to back up a bit, Balzan attempts in his column to cast Cachia Caruana as the sinister behind-the-scenes operator _ a narrative so hackneyed and past its sell-by date that, oh my word, is that Smells Like Teen Spirit that I hear in the background? But witty to a T, he ploughs on with his distressingly idiotic attempt to draw a parallel between Cachia Caruana and Cardinal Richelieu.
Not that Balzan introduces the parallel that simply. Which is where his wicked and dimwitted scheme of plagiarism goes so terribly awry. For more, read ahead:

“People call him RCC. I prefer to simply call him “Cardinal Richard”, like Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu. Consecrated as a bishop in 1607, he later entered politics, becoming a secretary of State in 1616.”

The similarities between the two figures are striking, now that Balzan mentions them. Not, however, as startlingly identical word-for-word as the biographical notes on Richelieu provided by Balzan and Wikipedia.
A tip here for the aspiring plagiarist (as opposed to the pathetic, failure of a plagiarist that is Balzan): Change the odd word here and there, or Google _will_ catch you.
Also, try not to show off with additional detail like the date of Richlieu’s consecration as bishop. When even your mother is surprised that you have learnt to tie your own your shoelaces, you should not expect us to believe that you know _ off the top of your Cro-Magnon head _ that:

“[Richelieu’s] chief foreign policy objective was to check the power of the Austro-Spanish Hapsburg dynasty. Although he was a cardinal, he did not hesitate to make alliances with Protestant rulers in attempting to achieve this goal. His tenure was marked, among others, by the Thirty Years War.”

Again, as an aside, the parallels with Cachia Caruana are eerie.
The problem with Balzan’s article though goes beyond the mere impudence of thinking that copy and pasting out of an offline encyclopedia could pass for erudition. The cack-handed stupidity of trying to shoehorn this historical analogy falls even on the merits of Balzan’s own poorly written article.
He insists on never actually referring to Richard Cachia Cachia by name _ preferring like some loner ham-radio enthusiast to refer to him cryptically as RCC _ which tends to undermine his attempt to describe the villain as a dark and secretive master of shade and deviousness.
His (stolen) crib notes on Richelieu also do little to preserve the wretched, still-born baby in a shoebox misery of his argument:

“Cardinal de Richelieu was often known by the title of the King’s “Chief Minister” or “First Minister”. As a result, he is sometimes considered to be the world’s first Prime Minister, in the modern sense of the term. He sought to consolidate the monarchy and crush domestic factions.”

Unless the mention of the monarchy is some unfortunate reference to queens, it is again hard to see the relevance of all this. Other than, that is, 2,000 words-plus don’t just write themselves and it will be a cold day in hell when Balzan actually has to write his whole column himself.
The said conceit behind this piss-poor hatchet job on Cachia Caruana truly begins to unravel before your eyes, when Balzan (again pilfering liberally from his fount of all knowledge) reminds us that:

“Richelieu is also known by the sobriquet l’Éminence rouge (“The Red Eminence”), from the red shade of a cardinal’s vestment. Well, RCC is undeniably l’Éminence grise.”

Well quite. And if he were not so lazy and easily distracted to read past the introduction of the Wikipedia article, he might have learnt that the term “éminence grise” was actually applied historically to quite another person altogether.
The clue is in the term really. François Leclerc du Tremblay _ Cardinal Richelieu’s right-hand man _ was a Capuchin friar who wore grey robes, as Wikipedia helpfully notes.
Is that, therefore, what Malta is doomed to? Opinion by plagiarism, penned by individuals whose very existence serves purely to act as a flesh-and-blood adjunct to electronic knowledge.
Next time you see that ruddy-faced goon staring out at you open-mouthed from his column portrait, just remember that:

“Richelieu is also a leading character in the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, as well as the film based on the same, in which he was portrayed as a main antagonist, and a powerful ruler... even more powerful than the King himself, though events like the ‘Day of the Dupes’ show that in fact he very much depended on the King to keep this power.”

Well, that settles that then.

Saving the World, One Article at a Time

2008-11-07T19:24:00.004Z

Imagine the scene five centuries from today as wild-eyed mutant people sail the high seas Waterworld-style in search of juicy kelp and human flesh upon which to feast. On one of his many deep-sea expeditions, a gilled subaqueous scavenger chances upon the remains of Malta International Airport, where a handful of the fabled winged machines lie stranded in their watery grave. So much for the inflatable slide, a modern-day reader might be tempted to observe.
Through a little window he sees seated rows of putrefying bodies, little knowing that most of the ones toward the front of the plane already looked like that when they were alive. Drawing on his mutant strength, the door comes away with ease. The pickings are rich – casserole upon casserole chicken and beef, not to speak of a panoply of water crackers and processed spreadable cheese. Sure, dolphin and seal meat is delicious, he thinks to himself, but there is nothing like chicken to really spice things up.
But suppressing the excitement of finding so many dry buns and plastic packets of unsalted Danish butter, he reminds himself that what he is looking for is much more important.
“How did this happen? Who has the solutions? What could we have done to avoid this? This is what we seek,” he intones to himself, somewhat redundantly.
After all the years of searching, however, his day had come. For on this plane, of all places, was a surviving copy of The Times of Malta dated Nov. 7, 2008, tucked hermetically inside a pouch and held in place by the decomposed knees of a dead Foster Clark’s powdered drinks sales rep in row seven.
On the surface, a wise old man carefully leafs through the sun-dried parchment and nods sadly as the secret of what went wrong is finally revealed.
It turns out that the onerous task of saving the planet was entrusted into the hands of gibberish-spouting buffoons.
If it isn’t clear by now, it should be explained that we are dealing here with a masterwork of non-speak penned by none other than former Malta football team manager Pippo Psaila:

“True to its electoral promise of placing the environment at the top of the national agenda and its work plan for the next five years, the government, through the budget for next year, has, for the first time ever, put in place a holistic macro plan for the environment.”

Using up a year’s supply of punctuation, Psaila’s opens his manifesto for a brave new world doomed to drown in water and drivel with the kind of self-aggrandising style that befits his ilk. What managerial guide was he trying to read while holding upside down when he learnt phrases like “holistic macro plan”.
Woe to us that are subjected to this tale told by an idiot, full of claptrap and nonsense, signifying nothing.
To give him credit, Psaila is not shy of aiming high. The budget of 2008 aims to address no less than “global warming and climate change,” he argues, and shame on anyone who thought it was just a quick-fix sting on hapless shoppers and galoots driving cars that would be better suited to driving up and down Route 66.
Just in case the reader had forgotten just how holistic this budget is, Psaila is on hand to drive (environmentally) home the point:

“This is the first time ever, as far as I can recall, that such a holistic exercise has been launched…”

Read the article itself if you feel you have to, but rest assured that the most environmental thing to do with the hard copy would be to use it to line the birdcage or wipe your bottom with it, as people in Malta were forced to do in the 1980s. If you feel compelled to print the article out and use it as loo paper though, it is unlikely anyone would begrudge the compulsion.
The Russians used to do with their copies of Pravda, after all _ often out of choice. And the tone of that publication is what springs to mind when Psaila offer his laundry list on how the Party will save its people.
To précis one main points, the government will subsidise businesses to become more eco-friendly. But why summarize when Psaila himself puts it so succinctly in this elegant, flowing 91-word sentence:

“While advocating growth and economic regeneration, the budget provides key economic players with the right synergies to operate in an environmentally-friendly context where initiatives, such as the energy performance certification prior to the issuance of a development permit, the allocation of €33 million to promote the generation of energy from clean and renewable sources and the provision of €10 million for business and industry to invest in cleaner and sustainable technologies, combined with support for the compilation of energy audits for businesses, are all part of a very clear strategic direction.”

Moving on to transport, he rambles on pretentiously about how heavy emitters of “particulate matter” will have to cough up (along with along with anyone driving behind them) for their excesses. Again, he is too diplomatic to say that what he means is the Bob Marley-loving Ford Escort fanatics and assorted other working-class miscreants that will insist on driving only the cars they can afford to own.
And finally, Joe Citizen (his term) himself gets a look in:

“The possibility of exchanging high-consuming/cost domestic lamps for energy-saving ones through a voucher system is not only a far-reaching initiative but one that makes a difference in household expenditure and will go a long way to mitigate the announced increase in the utility tariffs.”

Although Psaila cannot compose a proper English sentence to save his life, he is cunning enough to shove the question of utility tariffs right to the end. Even then, it is casually dropped in almost as though it were a manifestation of natural will, as opposed to a policy endorsed by his visionary political associates.
The offer of providing Joe Citizen with a shiny, free light-bulb, a la The Sun, brings to mind that old gag. How many Belarusians does it take to change a light-bulb. “Vot is light-bulb, please?”
Is this shallow gimmickry and crass way to buy off the electorate with shiny trinkets, as though they were Native Americans trading their beloved land for pox-ridden blankets and coloured beads? Not according to Psaila:

“This budget has truly set the stage for what has to be Malta's future in energy generation and conservation where, through the initiatives announced, not only has the government come up with the first ever national strategic direction of some substance but has put in place those synergies to promote and foster a real culture change in terms of consumption and the source and application of our energy mix.”

The old man is indeed wise, but he has no absolutely no idea what exactly synergies are. Staring at the newspaper, he sighs ruefully and after a short while he sits back and smiles to himself contenting himself with the slim consolation that as bad as things might be, there is no longer anyone alive on the planet who will tell him that “it really is the case of putting one's money where one's mouth is and avoiding the usual rhetoric linked to topics such as the environment.”

The Downward Learning Curve

2008-08-20T22:53:00.005+01:00

“Hey teacher,” sang a cherubic choir in overwrought prog rockers Pink Floyd’s seminal hit, Another Brick in the Wall, “leave us kids alone”.
Few students through the decades have failed to engage with the sentiment at the heart of that song, namely that schools are little more than chambers of repression where learning happens by accident. But no classroom is complete without its clutch of nerds and teacher’s pets, which is where poor Christopher Bezzina steps into the breech.
To give him credit where it’s due, he opens his column The Capacity to Create Better Schools with an assured, telegraphic intro that is Dickens without the verboseness, Melville without the tortured introspection:

“We are living in exciting times.”

So far, so good. There is certainly no problem with setting the bar high, but let’s remember that this is The Times we are dealing with here. When it comes to bars, the Olympic gold here is in the limbo dance not the high jump.
Fittingly, Bezzina torpedoes all his early promise with possibly the most unwieldy, and definitely the least interesting, sentence ever committed to paper:

“They are exciting times for those who want to be directly involved and engaged in the educational reforms promised by the Education Reform encompassed in the amendments to the Education Act (2006), in the Reform Agreement entered into between the government and the Malta Union of Teachers in July 2007 and the various policy documents that have come out through the ministry responsible for education over the past few years.”

Bezzina is supposedly in the business of assuring quality in the education sector, which holds out no great promise for whatever tedious government initiative about which he is writing about so uninspiringly. Then again, he is a technocrat and a satisfactorily grey one at one, so no more should and could be expected of him other than the parroting of hideously vacuous government policies. The educationalists churned out of the University of Malta need to be employed somehow, after all, and what better way than getting them to overhaul the teaching sector like monkeys typing out the complete works of Shakespeare.
Could anyone be blamed for finding this paragraph, for example, as inspirational as watching a dog being run over:

“Both the Education Act and the subsequent Collective Reform Agreement (2007) recognise the need to create a context for professional learning to take place within schools and their networks and outside, and to have professional staff that work within the networks and support the networks from outside to improve and enhance the learning capabilities of everyone - adults and students alike.”

Bezzina is apparently never happy with a sentence unless it is far too long, contains at least one date and repeats the key word no less than three times. Networks anybody?
But if Bezzina is the willing executioner of this largely uninformative puff piece on how the government is saving Malta’s children from certain unproductive cretinism, who is the enabler?
An abettor of inadequacy or excess can take several shapes, from the small-time pimp to the street corner crack dealer. A most disturbing manifestation of this abusive role was shown in a Channel Four documentary in Britain some years ago about the weird and perverse men that feed their gargantuan wives to states of such criminal obesity that they can barely walk. The women become so fat, their layers of overlapping skin putrefy and turn black, unseen but detected by the sensitive nose.
It is a disgusting and cruel form of indulgence that has found its home contentedly on The Times’ editorial board, where quality assurance might as well be a tin of chocolates. Nothing is too dull, badly written, rambling and uninspiring for the weasels that get paid for copying and pasting straight from their inboxes into the publishing software.
Bezzina is little more than a pride gourd to inflate, who will provide the reams of inconsequential copy to fill all the newspaper space The Times’ utterly lunatic advertisers will not buy.
So, to get back to the article… It drones on about improvement, learning, experience, network, unifying ethos etc. And then ends with the obligatory platitude about the future, God help us:

“It is indeed an exciting time to be in education. Together we can make a difference for the youth and young adults of tomorrow.”

Indeed, indeed.
Indeed.

[Sic] Comments

2008-08-17T19:49:00.002+01:00

In his reprehensible treatise The Revolt Against Civilization (1922), American historian and racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard laments what he perceives as the burgeoning menace of the untermensch and the burden it heaves onto the back of the ruling classes. Dwelling on the outcome of the then-recent Bolshevik revolution, he sniffily decries the notion of "natural equality" as understood by political radicals, in Russia and beyond.
Thankfully, these disturbing concepts of human stratification are little more than an ugly relic of scientific racism. Then again, too see what bedlam was unleashed when the Times of Malta website handed over the keys of the asylum to the inmates, one wonders whether Stoddard may have been onto something when he called the for the gates of civilization to be guarded.
As any faithful reader of The Times' online edition will know, the newspaper some months ago started enabling its readers to leave comments on any article, opinion and news as it may be. Sceptics, the underwritten included, scoffed at the clumsy and inept execution of the initiative.
Submitting a comment requires volunteering a quantity of information that would have satisfied even a devoted Stasi operative. In fairness, the criteria are a few degrees less stringent that those required to get a letter published in the actual newspaper. It would be no surprise to learn that The Times might once required attachment to letters to the editor to include a set of fingerprints, a mimeographed copy of a birth certificate and a signed statement from the local parish priest.
In these enlightened times, all the website asks for is a name, surname, e-mail address, town of residence and a telephone number. And to judge by the tone and volume of the comments on the site, just about anybody can qualify for connection to the telephone grid these days.
On a visit many years ago to Cairo zoo, I saw the dreadful sight of a flange of baboons pouncing on an unfortunate cat foolish enough to wander into the primates’ giant enclosure. The cat’s death was mercifully swift, but what followed was a terrifying and discordant cacophony of shrieks, grunting and dust-throwing as rivalling congresses argued over ownership of the limp corpse.
Exchanges of views on The Times website never fails to bring this tragicomic image to mind. Gratefully, the comment strands never stray far from utter absurdity and ploughing through them is a joy that vindicates the drudgery of day-to-day existence.
Picking an article at random, Sunday’s issue features the heartening news that Labour Party deputy Karl Chircop’s condition has improved slightly. Quick as a shot, the insanely pious F. Camilleri logged on to seize victory in what has apparently been a stimulating debate elsewhere on the healing powers of prayer. Not content with his unseemly celebratory dance, he follows up his own comment some 18 minutes later with this:

“This is GREAT news.
Thanks be to the Lord and Our Virgin Mary of LOURDES.”

People who capitalize their computer-based correspondence do so because they want us to imagine them shouting the words in question. So reread that snippet and try to visualize F. Camilleri shouting, the veins in his temple throbbing, in a dark room on a Sunday and imagine the monitor flecked with tiny projectiles of foamy saliva on that final sibilant.
Camilleri’s comments invariably kick off the familiar sight of an incrementally more and more indecorous crossfire of what could generously be termed as opinions. Indeed, the bulk of what The Times’ readers commit to the website has all the intellectual tone of what results from a fat man sitting on a whoopee cushion.
A story about the Mediterraneo Marine Park denying cruelty to dolphins, elicits these remarks among others. From Eric Gahn:

I wonder what [Mediterraneo director Pedro] Maghalaes would say if HE were kept in a small cage with a controlled supply of purifed air and made to jump for balls and through hoops so he could earn his keep in the small cage.

And Franco Farrugia:

Well said, Mr Cuschieri. What if dolphins could talk! (sic)
And indeed, patrons are more guilty than the keepers themselves!!!

An indignant howling-at-the-moon letter from faithful old fart John Guillaumier to complain that Paceville is no longer as it was in the days of his youth in the 1960s, “when a better class of tourists than nowadays led to the establishment of the first night-clubs and restaurants in Malta”. This kind of letter, along with the perennial favourite about how Maltese is apparently a pointless language and should be abandoned forthwith, is always guaranteed to generate the standard slew of replies.
Guillaumier’s better class of backers include Ray Axisa:

So True, what a dump Paceville has became (sic), well done with your comments.

And Joe Buttigieg:

A trip to the continent recently revealed how Malta has become the dirtiest and shabiest (sic) place in Europe.

On the other side of the argument is a disappointingly sensible set of people with unreasonably reasonable views.
The Times has in a rare effort tried to instil a climate of democratic expression on its site. What it has ended up with is a verbal version of Pong, where one opinion burped onto the site provokes, by some yet unformulated law of physics, an equally banal and ridiculous response.
But of you’re forced to choose between watching YouTube clips of chimpanzees falling out of trees and reading The Times comment pages, then you know what the right choice is.

Better Late Then Never

2008-01-12T12:26:00.000Z

It was a bit disappointing Alfred Sant's first column after coming out of hospital was not titled Proctologist.

Sunday! Bloody Sunday!

2008-01-08T22:07:00.000Z

Whoever says Sunday is the day of rest has clearly never been troubled by the weekly ordeal of ploughing through the newspapers. The chore is mercifully only a self-imposed feat of masochism for media junkies.
But spare a thought for Joe Vella Bonnici, a martyr to the cause of punditry when he is not performing his duties as chief executive officer of the Institute for the Promotion of Small Enterprises. There is almost nothing about the Sunday papers that doesn’t cause Vella Bonnici to break into a cold sweat. They’re too big, too colourful, have too many adverts, and cost too much. As if that weren’t enough, there are too many of the damned things.
With seven newspapers to process, there just aren’t enough hours in the day, he notes. Especially when, oddly enough, more people are “getting glued to their computers or television sets”.
Vella Bonnici is bewildered by the weak influence wielded by the invisible hand of market forces on the price he has to pay for his reading material:

“One would have expected that this intense competition would drive their prices down. Still, they keep going up.”

But after cynically and sarcastically casting doubt on the value of the papers, he concedes some ground to the impact of commodity prices on the cost of publishing the weeklies:

“There could be other considerations, such as the weight of paper used…”

But Vella Bonnici wavers between caustic misgivings and pietistic devotion in his views on the Sunday papers. Indeed, for all his criticisms, he describes the process of reading the weeklies as “worshipping on the sacred altar of journalism”, a frankly disturbing image with hints of the black mass about it.
But in a sharp switch in tone, Vella Bonnici reverts again to a position of cavilling denunciation:

“Sunday papers too have their share of sermons. They all speak on behalf of the truth. As Joe Jackson chanted way back in the 1970s, ‘Sunday papers don't get no lies... Sunday papers don't got no eyes’. Or do they?”

History does not relate whether Jackson was thinking of Roamer’s Column, Lino Spiteri or Adrian Muscat Inglott when he penned those lines, but other verses from the song suggest otherwise:

“If you want to know about the gay politician,
If you want to know how to drive your car,
If you want to know about the new sex position,
You can read it in the sunday papers, read it in the sunday papers.”

That stuff is usually in The Times on Thursdays.
It transpires, however, that there is a reason behind Vella Bonnici’s folly. And it is not just sour grapes that he has not been offered his own slot in any of the papers on Sunday.

“Why do I bother to read the Sunday papers? It is mostly in search of inspiration for my opinion pieces. It is not easy to find what I want, especially as I am never sure of what I am looking for.”

At this stage, it is tempting to take pity on Vella Bonnici, as one might on a drunk tramp trying to climb back onto the seat of a broken bicycle. But the jaw-droppingly irony-deficient assertion that follows his plea for enlightenment obviates any such sentimentality.

“It is then that I realise that, not only do we have too many Sunday papers, but also too many opinion writers.”

Unmolested by any sense of his own ridiculousness, Vella Bonnici pontificates in mangled English on the relative literary merits of columnists, before hypocritically calling for a cutback in media output in the name of the environment. But wait a minute:

“Naturally, I speak for myself.”

Well, that’s alright then.

What's Left of Good Sense?

2007-12-08T16:20:00.000Z

Without wishing to venture into any imprudent suggestions, is it out of place to note that Anthony Licari gets scarier as his thundering righteousness entrenches itself ever deeper? For the uninitiated, disquisition on this subject requires a cautious approach, lest one incur threats of police investigation as well as the mouth-foaming abuse that Licari reserves for his antagonists.
In this Saturday’s column, he limbers up for his weekly rant with a mild jog of resentment directed at his subjection to the “mental conditioning”, ahem, of society’s right-wing milieu. In more words than are strictly necessary, however, the tale of acculturative woe soon sees our plucky Licari-as-Oliver-Twist hero rip defiantly at the frontiers of intellectual constriction. “Please sir, can I have some more cultural evolution,” he seems to be saying.
Flash forward and it’s all flower power, free love, poetry readings, titled berets, rive gauche, existentialism, Sartre, Godard, but not, and please pay close attention, any mind-altering drugs or liquor that would only reduce the user to spouting incoherent, inconsequential and pointless claptrap. So don’t in any way misread this sentence, for example:

“As article followed article in the conservative press - which promised me that it had room for my thinking that the evolution of a country had to pass the test of elimination of poverty, hardship and, especially, arrogance - I became more and more convinced that the glass of water necessary to swallow the conservative pill now required a bucketful of a stronger liquid.”

Even wanting to feel sympathy for the calamitous predicament that so consumes Licari, it is far from clear what it is that he is trying to say. This deficit of clarity is in large part a consequence of what Licari thinks is a sequence of imagistic triumphs, but what is actually a man with a woefully inflated sense of his lyrical powers. A useful illustration:

“Around me there were people who spoke of "the others" as incapable of comprehending thinking and less bent on brushing their teeth. But at the same time, they slammed me with their bad breath and, when challenged to discuss without laughing and shouting, they idiotically accused me of trying to crack glorious tradition - a parody of Religio et Patria.”

As if you cared, what he is trying to say here, in his trademark pompous manner, is that some people did not agree with him about something. And as a sign of his contempt for those that go around randomly abusing people and high-handedly dispensing their rambling opinions without being asked to, he goes and makes some friends who do agree with him.

“I understood that their conviction of thinking was indistinguishable from rigid self-righteous mould. So I bid farewell to the stinking fold.”

That is perhaps just as well, as his lamentably personal approach to settling differences of outlook would only result in countless awkward cocktail parties and ensue in costly dry-cleaning bills. For Licari, his erstwhile reactionary companions are now hateful, psychologically diseased “racists” dwelling in a “dank dungeon” in a “sediment of their varicosed (sic) mental convolutions.”
The words chip and shoulder spring to mind.
Upon reading further, however, one is struck by the sneaking suspicion that the true purpose of this ill-composed diatribe may in truth be more mundane than Licari is letting on. Possibly out of boredom with the love tribute to his own earth-shattering insight, Licari’s outpourings of mental vacuity begin to take on a distinctly partisan hue.
Having cast off a couple of overt political references to Nationalist Party, the Christian Democrats that kick in “the teeth both Christianity and Democracy” (Ho ho, readers!), he gets his hands dirty with the business of political satire.

“The MLP is mistaken to think that many Labourites would have to emigrate following another PN electoral victory. Indeed, emigration is not cruel enough. It is more cruel to oblige people to live in a country where jobs and promotions are for the less competent conservatives. Ask those who went to see the Ombudsman and others who did not even bother to do so.”

And of course, for anyone that despises those that always see corruption in others, there is, er, this:

“… Labour is keeping to itself some more interesting stories about corruption and will divulge them just before the election date. I suspect that Labour is also searching energetically for more corruption stories and may discover a few more things in the coming weeks.”

On and on it goes, like a party balloon slowly having the air let out of it. All the energy and demented idealism of the column’s intro descends into a laundry list of whinges about whatever it is that has popped into Licari’s head on that particular week.
But to give him his due, for thigh-smacking chutzpah, he does leave the best till last:

“While not agreeing with its stiff military-sounding name and its lack of letters to the editor [Note: For him to write to, presumably], I agree with Maltarightnow's advice: ‘The best challenge in life is to believe in what you are.’ Friends of friends have tested this successfully.”

And could friends of friends be an immodest reference to himself, one wonders.

Blog Standard

2007-12-04T20:48:00.000Z

What better subject to prompt a return to observation of the singular curse of the Maltese commentator than the new-look Times of Malta web site and its cringe-worthily incompetent embrace of modernity in the form of its in-house blogs.
The shared blandness of the three slots on offer makes it unfair to single out any of the writers for scorn, but fairness has never been Fool Cap’s bag and the eight-month hiatus has done nothing to remedy that.
In the delusional stakes, the egomania displayed by self-appointed rock star Ira Losco is of a rare and almost heart-rending quality.
On Nov. 16, as news emerged that the casualty rate from the cyclone in Bangladesh rose above 1,100 victims, Losco regales what she imagines to be her adoring readers with a quite literally somnolent account of getting up in the morning.

“Contrary to the misconception of many, I do have to wake up as early as possible to fit in a ridiculous amount of work in a day and quite frankly 24 hours are definitely not enough anymore!”

Because Losco is writing a blog, however, she can be afforded the kind of juddering non sequitir that almost any editor worth their salt would iron out, and before too long she is verbally consoling those less fortunate than her. Unlike Jennifer Lopez, she truly has not left the block, and is eager to let people know that runaway success in Malta and a not entirely disastrous showing at the Eurovision song contest has not gone to her head. In prose as crippled as the children she must weekly visit in one of the local orphanages, her compassion shines through:

“Every story is heart wrenching and sometimes incredulous, it is a clear depiction of the struggle of certain members in our society today.”

Exactly one week later (a coincidence of timing that could prompt the irremediably cynical to suggest the blog thing is nothing more than a thinly disguised column), Losco changes tack altogether and adopts the sassy guise of the perennially football-flummoxed chick. But because she’s not a chick, right, she’s a woman, yeah, she comes with a Spectrum-installable attitude straight out of Woman’s Own circa 1989:

“It's a bit like trying to explain the toilet seat rule to a man, get my drift?”

Yeah, ‘cause the men keep pissing all over the toilet seat, yeah?
This mentally offensive inanity is all fine and well, but where does it leave the Times’ apparent new remit to engage with the reader. The hoary old columnists that normally contribute to the paper are at least invigoratingly lunatic in their ramblings, which is more than can be said for the insipid non-views of Losco’s piss-poor offerings. What editorial meeting resulted in this barely literate singer acquiring her own platform to air her vapid views and flog whatever supposed career she has going for herself?
In belated recognition of the format’s interactive faculty, the latest post is adorned with craven comments of praise that would have made even Kim Il Jong blush with embarrassment. And, if the first few weeks are anything to go by, it is unlikely that the content of any of the Times’ blogs will allow reader input to rise anywhere above this sheep-like monotony.
The Guardian, which has lead the way in creating a format that allows for genuinely enlightening and vigorous exchanges, named its interactive opinion page after a quote from a celebrated essay by its legendary former editor, C.P. Snow in which he noted that “comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
How very different from The Times, where comments are worthless and facts are scarce.

D.I.V.O.

2007-01-16T21:07:00.000Z

As tedious types go, there are two great strands. On one hand, you have your mage of inconsequentiality that can will reams of opinion in spite of an utter deficiency of actual beliefs. The other category is the cocktail party bore, whose gargantuan surfeit of views will cause instant mental gout in anybody so foolish as to listen. Austin Sammut, blow-hard that he is, tries to have his cake, eat it, and then shove the remains down his miserable readers' trousers.
Affecting chastely professorial ambivalence, he opens his recent opinion piece on the battered old nag of divorce by disavowing any claims to judgment. The introductory text is reproduced fully so that the reader can see, without having to consult the original article, how Sammut flip flops from meaningless one platitude to another, only to duck the actual task of offering his own utterly pointless perspective:

"The divorce debate has raised its head once again. As expected, this has happened over the years at regular intervals with the arising of every opportunity to peg onto it. It is a debate that will continue for a long time. It is a valid debate. It is not an easy one to decide upon. There are pros and cons and strong arguments on both sides. To make things more complicated (though not necessarily right or wrong) we have the Church ingredient. Quite frankly, I have my views, but no hard and fast position on the issue; but certainly it is an interesting one and worth discussing."

When millennia have passed and future archeologists somehow rescue this text from a sunken National Archive, they will remove their tin foil hats and scratch their heads in wonder at what god of indecision this devolved exemplar might have praised at the feet of.
Incidentally, it must be for just such time-distant chroniclers of the past that Sammut must feel it appropriate to patronize and insult the reader by spinning out no less than 250 words of contextualization of an issue that only an a determined cave dweller could have avoided — a point he makes himself in the very first sentence of the article.
Such tricks are the result of the low cunning that the self-absorbed megalomaniac, who thinks that the paper cannot do with any less than a thousand words of his wisdom, has to resort to. It is nothing more than a variation on the old schoolboy shortcut of doing lines faster by sellotaping three pencils to one another.
The waffle also performs the function of forcing the half-hearted reader (does The Times have any other kind?) to quite forget Sammut's erstwhile coyness about divorce once the usual half-witted arguments eventually get trundled out.
His most stimulating excursus in the midst of the pitchwater-dull exposition is a troglodytic attempt at an indictment of the levity with which the topic is handled in contemporary drama:

"We hear on television very often in some dramatic series: 'I want a divorce'! It's as simple as all that. 'I have a meeting with my lawyer tomorrow. Why don't you get yours to meet him so that they can sort things out?'"

Obviously, as the former chairman of the PBS, he speaks with some authority on the irresistible influence that broadcasting can have on the impressionable putty brains of Maltese viewers. To read Sammut's script for this terse scene, one can only lament the loss to the country's dramaturgical heritage that his competencies did not also stretch to screenwriting. This is, after all, just how people speak in real life and these are the genuine dilemmas that real people, one's without newspaper columns, have on a daily basis.
Sammut's version even has space for a saintly conscience in this scenario, albeit one that sounds more like the wife of Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons ("Why will nobody think of the children?") than Thomas Aquinas:

"But what about the institution of marriage, the social fabric, the family as the basis and core of our society, the good of the children?"

"But where does one draw the line?" Sammuts asks further down the page. Or, to read between the lines, "Is this waffle enough for this week?"
Sure enough, once Sammut becomes bored with his the voices in his head, he summarily signs off with an unenthusiastic call for a referendum on divorce, a Hail Mary and what almost sounds like an apology:

"Personally, I tend to be against divorce, but then who am I to impose my views on what might be a majority of the people?"

Only Criminals Don't Want to Be Nationalist

2007-01-10T20:22:00.000Z

People never ask, although they should, how this site (which will probably henceforth be updated at least once a week) chooses it subjects of scrutiny. What threshold of rank foolishness must one overstep to qualify for the treatment?
In truth, the answer is sometimes a matter of fairly dry statistical inquiry. Consider, for instance, the automaton-inspired writing of Malta's uninspiring answer to Herbert Norkus, the future onorevoli Mathieu Cilia.
As has now been decreed by the Nationalist mother ship, all communications with the civilian untermensch must open with declarations of the party's unfettered passion toil and, er, labour:

"The outgoing year has been a busy one indeed for the Nationalist Party youth section."

What humane mission can these selfless militias of national pride possibly be undertaking? Why, reaching out "to the younger generation who are often labelled as being reluctant towards politics", naturally. Not reluctant to embrace the deathly throes of Cilia's crushingly beige ideology?! What responsible and strapping youngster would not embrace the possibility of latching themselves into the suicide belt of tedious mediocrity by their venerable early twenties?
Because even Cilia cannot be so obtuse as not to realise that convincing the impressionable is not as easy as it looks, he is compelled to raid the thesaurus for variations on a theme that he hopes will distract reader from the inherently staid quality of his organisation. He thus refers to "new jobs" (twice), "the young" (twice). "younger generation" (twice), "enthusiasm" (three times), "change" (twice).
But because Cilia is as obtuse as he looks, he couches his weirdly patronising allusions to the young in the setting of adult approval. The "younger generation", for all their enthusiasm, are still there to be judged by him and his middle-aged peers. At one point, he recounts how debates have been "well attended by politicians and experts in the various spheres who listened to the valid suggestions of the young audience". One can only imagine that the events were indeed attended by the self-important idiot classes that populate Malta's corridors of influence, who would occasionally condescend and evaluate the validity of the young people's views.
Because what Cilia omits to mention is that politics and politicians (both mentioned twice) switch off swathes of the Maltese "younger generations" because they do not offer engagement and dialogue (not mentioned once) but grudging acceptance into a moronic cabal of mutual gratification.
And where do statistics come into this? What words other than the mini-me management speak would a more effective propagandist utilize to appeal to the young (granted that nobody but a halfwit would use The Times to perform the deed). Engagement? Cilia does not mention it once. Dialogue. Nope. Talk. Nah. Conversation. Not. Honesty. Nyet. And the list goes on.
When he talks about work, he refers to his own party. When he talks about jobs, he does it to boast about the factory line employment that passes for economic progress these days.
How about his single use of "elections", which he uses to crow about his party winning, but his failure to acknowledge "democracy". And how about "solidarity" and "justice", popular slogan words when his party actually meant something to people other than its supporters? Zero.
If he trips himself up through the involuntary sins of omission of a prematurely middle-aged political hack, it is his grotesque aping of his adult models that really show him up for the fraud that he is. This is where the piece must end, because anyone who cannot see the perverse irony of a man supposedly tasked with galvanizing the young writing the follow sentence is already a lost cause:

"… pensions reform, which is an urgent matter if we, the pensioners of tomorrow, want a secure future."

Time Waits For No MEP

2007-01-09T21:35:00.000Z

You read David Casa and wonder why Shakespeare ever bothered. For every word that the Bard has either invented or replenished with new meaning, another one has been stripped of all significance by Malta's champion wallpaper impersonator.
For several sentences into his appropriately titled article "Turning the Page", appearing in Tuesday's edition of The Indpendent, he manages to drone pointless about the symbolic value of the new year:

"A new year is like a new chapter in a story. It is a continuation of the previous one that brings new changes and new challenges. This New Year, Malta will start reaping the fruit of our hard work. A year that brings with it alterations, both on a local and international scene. Changes we should learn from so that we will be prepared for future challenges."

Next time this man comes professing his beliefs in a bid to be given another go on the gravy merry-go-round (which goes nowhere, unlike its locomotive variant), dust off the remarks above. There you will find the words of a man with a mind admirably uncluttered by original thought. Or any thought at all, for that matter.
Redundant as it may feel, force yourself to parse the extract for its almost superb elusion of substance and rank tautology.
A "new year", Casa says, is like "a new chapter". A "new chapter", he adds helpfully, in "a story". Like an aboriginal tribesman taught how to read a watch, Casa is astounded by the notion of sequentiality and novelty. Though, of course, this is deeply insulting to even the most primitive caveman, who indeed understands perfectly well the mechanics, if not the metaphysical implications, of chronological progression. For millennia, human beings have measured out the seasons and even hewn stories from natural processes that underlie our earthbound existence.
If anything, scientific and cultural modernity has brought us to an intellectual impasse in this regard. We are taught in our schools that time is an arbitrary and abstract principle, a conceptualization of an inexistent fact. Even in story-telling, it is now foolhardy to assume that "new chapters" signify novelty, moving forward. Even as far back as Lawrence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" that crude simplification of the narrative flow was questioned. Some of Andy Warhol's infamous experimental films, Empire and Sleep, further tested the presumption that lies at the heart of this cultural postulation.
Indeed, when Casa implies that the "new year" is a " continuation of the previous one", you have to wonder where he stands on all the ideas floated in the preceding paragraphs. How, bearing in mind how far our collective contemplation of chronology has come, could anyone seek to argue that one year is a continuation of another year? This very though turns the brain inside — Casa's intention perhaps.
While this is all a remote possibility, what seems more likely is that Casa's are more political than philosophical. Maltese politicians labour under the puzzling conviction that the people are braying for their pearls of wisdom, read by the masses much like a Palestinian dispossessed might huddle over his thumbed copy of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion.
To whom does the possessive pronoun refer, for instance, in the sentence "Malta will start reaping the fruit of our hard work". Would it be cynical to suggest, maybe, that this stuffed suit Eurocrat party hack could be so presumptuous as to believe himself and his smug party burdened by messianic toil, like latter-day Stalins working by his night-lamp.
Having established the concept of chronological progression, for example, he alludes to Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, which he again implies (ungrammatically) might have benefited from his efforts:

"Being a member of the EU-Bulgaria joint Parliamentary Committee, I am very pleased of (sic) the success achieved by this country."

As though only the halfwits dumped onto these pointless committees can take pleasure in the accession of this "new" EU member. The corollary to this self-centered sentiment is presumably "Not being a member of the EU-Romania joint Parliamentary Committee, I am not very pleased of the success achieved by this country".
The game, based on Casa's ego could keep a particularly stupid child happy for hours. What about "having been born in 1968, I am very pleased of the independence of Swaziland"? But, "not having been born in 1969, I am not very pleased with the moon landing". Ab initio ad nauseam.
A whole article of meaningless and self-gratifying drivel, he rounds up with yet more claims of epic labour:

"Another 12 months of hard work are waiting for us. 12 months of challenges to improve our country and marketing our abilities to attract investment that will solidify our economy."

But David, with all this heroic Stakhanovite sweat you shed for Malta (and Bulgaria), how will you find time for these articles and your new website, www.davidcasa.eu?

Sixteen Degreens of Credibility

2006-11-10T13:24:00.000Z

The dial on the Geiger counter of stupidity at The Times has finally spun off its spindle. There is no point trying to be all fancy about it, or approaching the painful truth in narrowing circles of inferences. What analogies can fully encompass the foolishness of the president of the General Workers Union.
As always, some balance must be struck in assessing the full scale of Salv Sammut’s assault on accepted norms of sense and coherence. Any newspaper editor worthy of that name should understand that their job is to edit. Usually this means re-writing and re-arranging, but just as often it means cutting. Understandably, the meek editors at The Times might be unprepared to incur the wrath of the leader of Malta’s most credible trade union. But they would have to do no more than direct to slightly more credible publications.
Taking a cursory look round the opinion pages of the days international press, there is some indication of how these things ought to be done. The influential Burt Reynolds-impersonator Thomas Friedman’s column about China in today’s New York Times comes in at a fairly substantial 800 or so words and succeeds in sticking to its subject from beginning to end.
Picking an article at random from Times of London, we find a modest 730-word diary piece by erstwhile-anarcho-Trotskyist-but-latterly-contrarian-libertarian Mick Hume. Even the pompous Sergio Romano only manages a positively Ethiopian 550 words in the Corriere della Sera. And so and so forth. Across all nations and media cultures, it is an accepted wisdom that opinion columns begin to suffer past the 700-800-word mark. And The Times of Malta is all the proof you need of that. By the time I.M.Beck is preparing to wind up and head for the restaurant-of-the-week home straight, the sneaking temptation to go run the car engine and pull out the rubber hose starts becoming very real. And he’s one of the vaguely amusing ones. Sort of.
Sammut’s effort, coming in it a wheezing 1,057 words, does not pay heed to these conventions of brevity, and his editors do nothing to help him out of the hole he digs himself into. It is a standard litany of pompous cretinism about credibility, a word that he uses no less than 16 times, so there is only a cruel kind of enjoyment to be had in savouring its details. The contrived attempt at erudition of the opening paragraph is only one instance of this cringe-worthiness. There he relates, with undisguised admiration, details from the decidedly un-syndicalist life of the Cynic Diogenes:

“It was in his nature to live in an empty tub and walk through the streets of
Athens with a lantern in his hands in broad daylight.”

That Sammut aspires to the values of a man that lives in a tub, an empty one at that, is probably quite revealing about his own credibility.
The article turns out pretty quickly to be Sammut’s riposte to a television program that he saw which he didn’t enjoy very much. Which is all fine, of course. Malta is quite used to having this bickering played out publicly like some kind of junkyard dog-fighting contest.
But at the point Sammut should probably have been thinking of making his concluding remarks, something odd happens. As he writing the frankly disturbing words below, his eyes wander off and, it is likely, his legs too follow suit towards the television set:

“Credibility is a universal problem. It could be talked about and scrutinised in
every sphere of life. But it most distinguishes itself in politics. This is the
arena where it is most violently raped.”

When he returns to his seat, he begins with:

“As I write, the news that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been found
guilty and will be punished for his crimes has just been broken.”

Just like that! And so what started out a slightly idiotic stream of consciousness item of recrimination becomes a thoroughly bizarre foray into international affairs, a subject that I was unaware came within the GWU’s remit.
Which brings us back to our original point. What exactly was the editor of The Times doing while he was meant to be pruning this article, or even better throwing it straight into the wastepaper basket. Hiding in a cabinet and waiting for Salv Sammut to leave the office is my guess.

Wholly Fool

2006-11-04T18:10:00.000Z

Can a man be good without knowing it, or to phrase this quandary in Christian terms, can a man be good apart from revelation and the grace of Christ? The question has troubled the minds of some of the greatest moral philosophers and theologians throughout history. Thomas Aquinas would argue that for the man that could conduct himself in a model fashion within the civic context, goodness is indeed possible. But what is this worth in the absence of Christ?
Here, let us dwell upon the redeeming quality of logic and reason in the timeless dialogue with this enigma. Aristotelianism brings us frustratingly close to the essence of being, in its moral fullness and its complex examinations of goodness and its opposite; evil. And then, of course, there is Desmond Zammit Marmarà.
In the cosmic order of things, what is the moral value of a man whose essence, utterly divorced from the very slightest notion of either logic or reason, nonetheless lightens the darkest corners of the most melancholy soul? On what side of the Lord does the Punchinello archetype sit in all these grand celestial designs? The buffoon is after all a lord, if only of the absurd. A fool is sovereign over his own moral and emotional destiny, but is this autonomy a reward of subterfuge and low cunning?
Naturally, this is all the domain of mystery. To preserve the commedia dell’arte analogies, is Zammit Marmarà the comic and sometimes wily harlequin servant of countless opera, or the clumsy Petrushka of Russian folklore. An additional nuance to this query is lent by the latter figure. The original Petrushka comedies began to be sanitised in the early 20th century, at which point they were increasingly interpreted as a ill-coordinated marionette of childish appeal. Before then, in conformity with the often gruesome traits of Russian folklore, Petrushka was a murderous fool and no benign bedtime figure.
Perhaps, though, we are casting the net too far and back. For anyone who sniggered at the primitive spectacle a weeks back of a North Korean newsreader announcing her country’s entry into the ranks of nuclear powers, the tone and content of Zammit Marmarà’s latest column will seem strikingly familiar:

“I often meet people, whose involvement in politics is minimal, who ask me: ‘When one separates the facts from the fiction created by the Nationalist media about the Labour leader, who is the real Alfred Sant?’ Since Dr Sant will, hopefully, be Malta's next Prime Minister, this question deserves an immediate answer.

First of all, Dr Sant is a great leader. He brings out the best of the people who work for him, tolerates no incompetence but always adds a humane touch to all his actions…”

On this occasion, it is quite impossible to selective pluck quotable extracts as there as little in this article which cannot be savoured for full comic effect. All the text invariably evokes the kind of decadent laughter one might have imagined only existed in the performance halls graced by the Catholic Institute’s travelling troupe.
I have rarely seen an audience as gripped by hysterical laughter as the one I saw in Birzebbuga primary school reacting to some forgettable gag about pastizzi. For the more blue-eyed reader, it should be explained that this was an astoundingly gynaecological joke, which put lie to tired observations on the sexual immovability of the Catholic order, it must be said.
Anyhow, lest one should harbour illusions as to the virtuousness of the amusement to be derived from dipping into Zammit Marmarà’s breathtakingly craven musings, this is the level of wit we are operating on.
Which brings us inexorably to the opening point. What does natural order reserve for the joy and mirth that such tripe brings to the ordinary working man? Before rushing on to metaphysical matters, however, should the Maltese public not at least be urged to clamour for this man to awarded some sort of honorary republican order?

Roam Around the World

2006-10-22T22:33:00.000+01:00

Correspondence in the local Maltese press regularly treats the reader to heated polemics about the most adequate fashion in which to translate particularly problematic items of new vocabulary. This emphasis is unfortunate, insofar as it serves to needlessly exaggerate the inadequacies of the Maltese language. It is, in fact, a pity that more attention is not paid to those aspects of the national tongue that are so nuanced and exclusive as to present a point of pride. Perhaps the best representative of this select vocabulary is the word “miskin” as when used to describe a pathetic person.

To be exact, this particular meaning of the word is not solely limited to Maltese. Predictably, it contains same shades of significance in Arabic, from which language the word is derived. Less intuitively, the dialectal Sicilian usage of “meschino” (as distinct from the purely Italian word, meaning petty*) also carries the same effect. In all instances, however, the term conveys an understanding a pathos-laden condescension that the English “wretch” does not satisfactorily capture.

In wanting to illuminate the puzzled learner of Maltese though, one could do much worse than direct the enquirer to Roamer’s most recent column. In truth, almost any of this person’s columns would be useful in this respect, but wanting to establish a hierarchy of miskin-ness, it is as well to start from the top. Meanwhile, for connoisseurs of world cinema, the most useful analogue would be the itinerant, hopelessly benevolent and ultimately doomed priest hero of Luis Buñuel’s sadistic masterpiece Nazarin. Indeed, beneath all his Panglossian incoherence is a pitiable core of tragic simple-mindedness.

From his opening sally, Roamer pleads for compassionate mercy in the face of his own inanity:

"(a bit of a roam around if you will forgive the dreadful pun; plenty of other sources for Budget observations and comments)"

It is frankly inconceivable that this pun, which is barely a pun anyway, has only now come to its author’s attention. Indeed, it always seemed more likely that the very pen name was itself an improbably ironic inversion of the column’s indefatigably parochial worldview. As it is, the joke itself is piteous to a degree that only Maltese is able to properly express.

Sure enough, the article proper begins with a stunned awe that lends more than a hint to the startled attitude one might expect of a rabbit caught in headlights. For some unfortunate species, this experience can constitute a transient moment of sensory displacement; for Roamer and his ilk, it is a permanent state of being.

"Ever since God sent the earth spinning on its axis the only person who will be able to stop it spinning will be God. Meanwhile, we must watch in some amazement, at least, and with some degree of horror, or amusement at what is going on around us."

Sure enough, he soon comes to his insular senses after this initially galactic survey. In the course of roaming around the world’s hotspots, which are apparently ordered in importance in direct proportion to their distance from Roamer himself. About Iran, he notes worriedly:

"Nearer than is good for us, Iran continues on its course, a course it denies, to create a nuclear bomb."

Not too close for little skirmishes though:

"Proxy wars may be a better bet until such time as proxy outruns its meaning."

More reassuring for Malta is the ongoing crisis in East Asia, as Roamer explains in this bizarre sentence:

"Further than is bad for us, North Korea's declaration that it carried out a nuclear test, set a tiger among the Bambis in Asia and China the lion-hearted."

From the safety of his bomb-proofed bunker, Roamer does feel emboldened enough to launch the odd fusillade at the real villains of our time. Like his equally humourless British counterpart, Simon Heffer, Roamer presumes that referring to informal politicians in formal terms makes for a devastating putdown. And “Bill” Clinton is spared nothing in this verbal IED:

"William denies the charges [that he did little about the Al-Qaeda threat] even if he could only show, as signs of his determination to come to grips with Al-Qaeda, a few missile attacks lobbed into Afghanistan that served no purpose whatsoever except to give America's enemies heart - this after the destruction of American embassies in East Africa and an attack on an American warship. And we saw him earlier this month, his jaw set and resolute, his eyes glinting as he finger-wagged a reporter this dodgy dodger who dodged the draft and became the commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States."

And with an unwieldy pedagogic lurch forward, he projects his roving beady eye to South America. One eye on his trusty Atlas Four and his fingers flicking through a 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, he courses his pioneering path forward and, largely, downwards:

"To the south of the United States lies Brazil and next to it, Venezuela. They are both in the news for a number of reasons. Brazil, which is 4,000 km by 4,300 km and a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty"

But there is nothing more comforting after almost 2,000 words of roaming (and rambling) around the globe than to return to the homely bosom of Christian issues, namely the decline of the institution of marriage and humanity’s general descent into a moral swamp of Godless iniquity. And after that, a quick anecdote about the time that actor Robert Morley gave an entire speech with his flies undone.

* To be exact, “meschino” did mean “miskin” in its archaic form, although this now remains a largely regional variation.

Di-ving into the Deep End

2006-10-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

Much has been made of Malta's recent historic victory over the mighty football titans of Hungary. To put this in some context, consider that Hungary drew 0-0 against Croatia during qualification round for the 2006 World Cup. These results would appear to demonstrate that Malta is, statistically speaking, a superior footballing to even England, which was disastrously, defeated 2-0 by Croatia last weekend. All thanks, it might be added, to the efforts of Marsaxlokk striker Andre' Schembri.
However, as I noted in the comments section of the Lanzarote blog, the achievements of the Maltese national team are as of nothing when compared with the historical ascendancy of Marsaxlokk F.C. The most recent development is that Marsaxlokk have gone top, having defeated the only team that can really compete against them... Marsaxlokk.
Now, I have never subscribed to the fashion of deriding di-ve, which I find somewhat akin to firing Katyushas on a Sisters of Mercy orphanage, but this latest blunder is truly a masterstroke of editorial incompetence:

"Marsaxlokk rose to the top of the table when they beat Marsaxlokk in a kenly contested encounter yesterday."

It is frankly surprising that in addition to the existing squiggly red and green lines that Andrew Borg Cardona relies on so completely to make his I.M.Beck columns sound literate, there isn't also a third variant which signifies "you are complete frigging moron". For the sake of di-ve’s editorial team, one can only hope that the word processing program in the much-awaited Microsoft Vista operating system has been accordingly upgraded.

Sewer and Be Damned

2006-10-14T22:47:00.000+01:00

How Anthony Licari fumed indignantly when it was suggested on this site that his writing had all the coherence of that which might be expected of a person under the influence of hallucinogenic substances. Not that it was written by an actual drug user (a useful legalistic distinction, it seems to me); just about as grounded in reason. Indeed, for all the indubitable harm that droppers of acid cause Maltese society, they could rarely be accused of the kind of teeth-grinding tedium and stultifying senselessness that this country’s columnists have inflicted upon their readers.

Back in the day, Licari harrumphed, as is his prerogative, about nameless trolls foaming at the mouth, referring ever so obliquely to Fausto Majjistral and myself. On that occasion, his peculiar brand of writing was so suffused with feverish purpleness and meaningless non sequitirs that it is unlikely that anybody but the people in question had the faintest clue what he was on about. His clumsy attempt at caustic invective thus fell catastrophically flat on that occasion, though I would be lying if I did not say that his words did leave an impression on me. After all, he may have had a point.
Is it my place to question the pronouncements of a person who has studied at three universities, a fact he takes much pride in? Unlike Licari, I am not a lecturer in psycholinguistics (or sociolinguistics and geolinguistics, for that matter), and can therefore not presume to question the state of mind of a person capable of giving form to this sentence:

"Meanwhile, the sick brandy continues to make us smart and reel. For, after all, it was said that I am the coach and I like to react to serious advice with loud, metallic, hysterical laughter while playing the lyre. This continuous laughter by conservativo maximo is getting on the nerves of the Nats."

For those unwilling to read the original article, let me explain. Incidentally, you would not be blamed for the omission, for the piece is most, how shall we say, literarily challenging (ahem). In launching his ruthless excoriation of the Malta Tourism Authority’s recent activities, he begins with a bold and fittingly linguistic sleight of hand. As even the most dull-witted reader will apprehend, the word brand, as in “Brand Malta”, is quite similar to the word brandy. Well, quite similar.
Ok, this next bit is a tricky. Once you have established that the two apparently unrelated words are phonetically (is this right, Anthony?) consonant, you then use one to refer to the other. Thus achieving wit. So, but sick brandy (hic), he means a medicinal cure that makes you reel and, well, er, you get it
Admittedly, that one was hard. Let us try a real easy one next. When you want to make people laugh uncontrollably at your mastery of the humorous idiom, merely use a word to mean the opposite of what you intend. Cynics will object that this device, known as sarcasm, is “the lowest form of wit”. But as any schoolchild can tell you, “wit is the highest form of humour,” and sarcasm gets no wittier than when it is deployed by Malta’s most accomplished geolinguistician:

"Few people would not admit nowadays that tourism is enjoying a lovely nosedive as a result of incompetence, inefficiency and downright pig-headedness."

But Licari is not just about wicked wordplay and verbal mastery. He isn’t pulling his punches when it comes to weighty social and academic issues that dominate the day. Indeed, he is thirsty for scientific rigour and will resolutely refuse to give in to ham-fisted approximation and obtuse generalisations:

"Men of the West seem to be increasingly finding wives and partners in Eastern Europe. No formal scientific study that I know of has attempted to analyse this phenomenon. However, Western newspapers, often for reasons of sensationalism, like to print stories about East European women who have 'tricked' West European men."

He later concludes that these people are little more than “veritable village idiots”, so not a lot mileage there it turns out.
On and on it goes in this eclectic (erratic and incoherent, for the Philistines) vein. Yet, the last paragraph did force a theatrical double-take out of me. And please recall that this is written by a person who took such umbrage at my decidedly restrained characterisation of his excruciating articles:

"Cartoonists are an important element in journalism - even if few of them have actually followed a course in journalism and I don't understand how they are called "journalists". Even less journalistic are cartoonists who have an obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions and with whatever belongs to all things biological and putrid. If you know anyone in this pathetic psychological situation, please be a good Christian and suggest to him/her to visit a psychologist who can identify the origins of such morbidity before moving on to its possible cure."

Coyly, with a cheeky little finger poised over his mouth Austin Powers-style, he is effectively implying that Maurice Tanti Burlò is clinically insane and possibly suffers from faecal fixation. I feel entitled to say this as he does after all invite his reader to nominate candidates with “obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions”.

I’m not certain that Tanti Burlò is actually obsessed with toilet functions (there seem little grounds for such a sensational charge), but if Licari has such a valiant belief in his convictions, as he has indeed previously claimed, perhaps he ought to be that kind Christian and issue his benevolent invitation to Tanti Burlò in his next column. As a psycholinguist, heaven knows that he is considerably more qualified than me to perform the deed. He wouldn't want to appear hypocritical now, would he?

Would You Like Food With Your Salt?

2006-10-13T22:53:00.000+01:00

As the Book of Proverbs tells us, “he that has knowledge spares his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted wise: and he that shuts his lips is esteemed a man of understanding”.
As this quote evidences, even the teachings of the Holy Scriptures show us that baby Jesus would appreciate it if, from time to time, such people as would be normally predisposed to brimming over with pointless waffle would only restrain themselves from stating the obvious. Yet for all their Solomonic wisdom, what the assembled busybodies behind the Book of Proverbs potboiler could not have apprehended back in Bible days is that newspapers simply do not write themselves. No indeed, people like Frank Salt write them.
When Salt first began writing his pieces for The Times, people might have been forgiven for wondering how his real estate background could possibly give him the grounds to set forth on whatever tickled his fancy. My own dealings with estate agents have gratefully been circumscribed to their periodical extortion of my earnings and the odd call on my part to complain about a mouldy fridge. If, however, Matthew the estate agent had ever presumed to come round to my flat to share his views on the importance of a prudent fiscal policy for a country's stability, well I'm not sure what I might have done.
If, moreover, he had shouted advice on how to save water through the letterbox while I cowered behind the sofa pretending to be out, things could have taken an ugly turn. After all, just like lawyers, estate agents are at best licensed thieves. You would no more ask an estate agent for energy-saving tips, than you would ask a cat burglar for advice on what locks to install. Sure enough, Matthew (that weedy little creep) never transgressed in the ways described above. But not so Frank Salt.
Having gorged himself to satiety on the easy riches that a profession that even a trained seal could master without much difficulty, Salt has imperiously announced that he has no aspiration to see his fellow countrymen join him in his state of Cheshire cat smugness.

"I know it might sound strange, but one of my worst nightmares is that Malta strikes a lot of oil in our territorial waters, become a very rich country, and then the population will not have to work or want to work, so they sit down and do nothing."

Do nothing but write barely literate columns for the Times that is.
But before the Maltese reader is tempted to cast themselves into deeper penury by furiously flinging their PC out of the closest opening of their windowless hovel, please consider that ceci n'est pas une article, as Magritte himself might have quipped.
Sure enough, a quick scan down the page reveals the horrible truth that Frank Salt is "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate". When the clods at the MTA are not doing a group impersonation of Inspector Clouseau, it transpires they might be taking the advice of this erstwhile camarade de bataille in their bid to civilise the semi-feral Maltese nation.
As is often the case with self-appointed sages, Salt deals with onerous burden of concocting actual solutions with a dizzying hail of rhetorical inquisitiveness:

“Now what will happen when the low-cost airlines start coming to Malta and become very successful? Make no mistake about it, in the future they will be very successful indeed, and so too will Air Malta. What will happen then? Will some of these new tourists be accommodated in the same substandard hotels? Will some of our hotels stay in the same dilapidated condition they are in now? Will these hotel owners say thanks for the tourists and do nothing to rejuvenate and renovate their premises?”

This passage reeks of Salt’s terror at how Malta’s barbaric lumpenproletariat will foul up this golden opportunity. And, as we all know, estate agents are such a delicate breed.
As usual with these wretched columns, the substance is Procol Harum pale and found ferreted away in some apologetic mouse of a paragraph:

“The Malta Tourism Authority has established rules, regulations and standards, and these must all be enforced properly so that when we receive the large increase of tourists that will definitely be coming to Malta and Gozo, they will all be accommodated at a standard they deserve.”

In short, the MTA should do its job, instead of rushing around and overacting like some pantomime dame. But since Salt himself is the "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate", you have to wonder how many of those halcyon days were spent in the shameful indulgence of getting “away with not doing anything”.

Praise Be to Sant

2006-10-13T00:10:00.000+01:00

After a few month's break from blogging (about The Times anyway), the time seems ripe to return to the activity. For a start, one can only hope that the private investigators that Anthony Licari was implying he wanted to put on my tail will finally have lost the scent. This particular bloggist has been half way across the planet to ensure that would happen. And so much more has happened in the meantime.
The Fool's Cap has assiduously slipped off the blogrolls of even the most faithful admirers and hateful antagonists. Racial intolerance very much remains a feature of Maltese life, although an unprecedented proliferation of shiny magazines has happily taken people's minds off such depressing matters. Planes continue to crash into New York buildings, but they are now much smaller and piloted by baseball players. The Education Channel still exists, but it unaccountably becomes older with every day that passes. Apparently, the bank in Albert Town was closed down years ago. I wish someone would tell me these things.
But The Times... The Times of Malta remains as ever the last refuge of every mental halfwit that metaphorically wanders into its empty vessels. Ever it was thus.

**********************************************

It has surely been observed here before that some things are simply beyond mockery. Yet, with every passing Wednesday the preoccupying prospect of that prat Alfred Sant presiding over the proud provinces of Malta as Prime Minister presses upon its proletariat with preoccupying proximity. To read this preceding sentence with anything resembling discernment would necessitate the inevitable conclusion that it was largely nonsense. Any sensible editor would be excused the act of transforming prose (oh God!) based upon such a patently childish ludic concept as that of insisting that all titles begin with the letters "PR" into an improvised game of wastepaper basketball.
For those disposed to believing the most outrageous conspiracy theories, it might be considered that The Times has long been operating on the principle of "give them enough rope". And if Alfred Sant has hanged himself four score and seven times already, let nobody accuse of him not being willing to rush headlong into more punishment.
Before anyone think that this blog’s hiatus has transformed its author into an acolyte of the lazy I.M.Beck habit of relentlessly laying into the same straw man of politics, it should be said that Alfred Sant was quite justified in objecting to a recent vignette depicting him as a purveyor of drainage, or something. The original cartoon, drawn by the spectacularly untalented and unfunny Maurice Tanti Burlò, was crude and stupid. It was also a supremely pathetic attempt at satire at the expense at a person not running country.
But, on the other hand, if you will look for it, as Sant does on a tragic weekly basis, you will get it. Of course, any fool can titter at him for poring over his partly very well-thumbed dictionary for inspiration. Not any fool, however, could foresee that Sant would raid his record collection in his ever more desperate hunt for ideas. So it was that this week’s article, Procol Harum pale, came to be.
With a doleful attempt at distraction he tries to claim that it has not taken him literally a week without sleep to write this article:

“In the past few weeks, I worked closely with the Malta Labour Party's spokesmen on working conditions and on youth affairs, as they finalised draft position papers and plans on these subjects.”

If only, he must have been thinking to himself at the time, you could switch around the letters ‘d’ and ‘p’. But what the hell is a praft dosition? That won’t work. Little does he know that PRAFT stands for Predator/Red Alert Fishing Team (according to Internet acrnomym finders anyway), a theme that could finally compel him to discuss the disgracefully neglected area of Marsaxlokk-related issues. But what with Mintoff’s summer house in Delimara that would not do at all.
Well, much in the way that customers of long-defunct Marsaxlokk video rental outlet Green Dash would wear out the tape of Best of the Best by fast forwarding to the climactic fight scenes, seasoned Sant-watchers have learnt that the fun of his articles lies in scanning ahead to the tenuous substance of his column’s title.
And how much waffle we had to put up with this week. First, some rubbish about globalisation, labour markets and how he used to attend Socialist International meetings. After these reminiscences about his Leninist youth, he gets rather disappointingly to the point:

“When analysts talk about the ‘friction’ of labour markets, as they still do, they refer mainly to the social legislation which protects workers' rights and conditions, and to the role of unions. Such rights and conditions should no longer be printed in bold - they have to be made pale.”

What exactly that means is anybody’s guess. Although, much like Anthony Licari, I have studied at three universities, only one of these institutions has been infested with the revolutionarily disposed left-wingers that spout this sort of socialist mysticism. And those people I avoided like the plague. And on and on he goes about “friction” for several more paragraphs, doubtless disconcerting his “PR” regular.
Yet, if ever there was a case for letting Sant getting to the end of things, that is to be found in his columns. After stringing out a whole article on the back of the weakest imaginable analogy, he breaks the suspense with this wet fart of a conclusion:

“The pressure continues from people who prefer it like this: they come from the corporate world, naturally, but they find supporters from within the centre-right political spectrum. The perspectives they promote remind me of a hit song by a forgotten pop group of the late 1960s, Procul Harum, as they repeatedly call for a whiter shade of pale; for the paleness we have is, in their view, still not enough.”

Prathetic. Absolutely prathetic.

Drowning in Tolerance

2006-06-28T13:48:00.000+01:00

Just to digress from the formerly established pattern, I am making a break from comment on printed media to pass a brief comment on a recent Internet-based initiative undertaken by blog enthusiast Jacques René Zammit.

****************

Earlier this month, the lamppost movement published its manifesto. As the document explains in introduction, the lamppost serves to be a platform as well an umbrella, an odd sequence of images that conveys more a rainy train station on a Tuesday evening than a progressive organisation.
The blog calls for comments, which I have decided to offer here in some greater length than I would prefer to volunteer on the forum provided. As the overly rich combination of images and intentions of the manifesto alluded to earlier suggests, some of the core issues of discussion may be fundamentally linguistic in nature. Some time back, I encouraged Sharon at Lost in Thought to throw out a few provocative questions on her blog in an attempt to incite some discussion, and hence understanding, of the themes underlying the decidedly medieval fashion for door-burning and racially intolerant rhetoric taking hold in Malta. Ultimately, the discussion proved unfulfilling and was relatively unsubscribed to, which is a shame, because explanations should ideally be sought to social problems before setting forth into nominally noble and grandiloquent affirmations of love and respect for one's fellow man. Consequently, amidst the austere legalistic framework of the manifesto, which looks like it owes more than something to formative mini-European assemblies, the author(s) speak of how they are:

"Alarmed by the current rise in acts of intolerance, violence, terrorism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, racism, exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination directed against national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, refugees, migrant workers, immigrants and vulnerable groups within societies, as well as acts of violence and intimidation committed against individuals exercising their freedom of opinion and expression – all of which threaten the consolidation of peace and democracy, both nationally and internationally, and are obstacles to development."

The very notion of tolerance is then used as the defining issue for the first article of the manifesto. However, as Zadie Smith recently noted in an interview of Radio Tre (available here, listen from 5:09 for the relevant remarks), tolerance is a concept that cuts in both directions. As Smith correctly observes, tolerance is the sensation one feels when someone on the train plays their stereo too loud. It's irritating, but you can put up with it.
As a concept, tolerance has several centuries of vintage to it and is not the enlightenment novelty that we might immediately assume it is. Mindful of the fact that this is beginning to sound like a column in the Sunday Times, it should be recalled that as early as the 13th century, Pope Innocent IV observed that it was not desirable for natural law as understood by ecclesiastical authority to be imposed upon the non-believer. From this, there derived two basic propositions - first, that which is tolerated is synonymous with evil; second, the application of tolerance serves merely to pre-empt the prevailing of a worse evil.
These remain the basic principles that define, if not inspire, tolerance on a popular level. As I attempted, not very clearly, to argue in e-mails to Sharon Spiteri, tolerance understood as the act of "putting up with" represents a far more ominous and real threat than the likes of Malta's budding far-right.

The Maltese have, after all, with their centuries of Catholic piety become experts at the art of making the right noises about loving one's neighbour while stabbing them in the back and gossiping about them at every available opportunity. This means that the effort to browbeat people into saying the right things about the minorities may be the easiest part of the challenge that the lamppost initiative is taking upon itself.

To get real about this, though, it is unlikely that Malta could ever feasibly support what could truly be identified as an actual minority. In this sense, the commendable effort of the lamppost movement/platform/umbrella should perhaps address the not only the roots of racial disharmony but also the benefits for a mature society that has evolved enough to see past the primitive conception of race relations as they currently stand. After all, the embrace of diversity is not an aspirational value in itself, but a means to a culturally sophisticated society. Arguably, Malta’s relative failure to produce a genuinely exportable and compelling cultural product to reflect its modern self is a product of the insularity that has provided fuel to the “current rise in acts of intolerance” cited by the lamppost manifesto. Before descending into serious rambling, I will leave this observation here for now. However, I would like to state that although I certainly sympathise with the goals envisaged by this project, there is some reason to feel that its constituent principles have erroneously superseded the process of understanding that such an exercise entails. I have no sense that this has really taken place.

God Save the Queen

2006-06-27T15:22:00.000+01:00

It is hard to tell when Kenneth Zammit Tabona writes about the Queen whether he is referring to himself or to the sovereign ruler of the United Kingdom, or Queen Bess as he chummily refers to her. As testament to his fairy-footed effeteness, the opening paragraph of his latest column is nothing but a sequence of prosaic affectations worthy of I.M. Beck at his very worst:

"To most of these 'gels' with more money than sense, the intricacies of equine bloodlines and speeds per furlong are a cabbalistic mystery; not so to Her Majesty, who, while her troops suffer needlessly in war-torn Iraq, is content to leave King Tony in charge doing the real work and getting all the flak for it too. The Queen may know all there is worth knowing about quadrupeds but where survival is concerned she is certainly no fool; she also has no hang-ups and insecurities as far as original millinery is concerned!"

What all this literary mincing all means is quite beyond me, though I am fairly confident Zammit Tabona is attempting, with embarrassing amateurishness, to satirise the mores of the British upper class while simultaneously working in some acerbic political commentary. While I have absolutely no interest in dwelling upon the merits of the Queen's constitutional authority, I am worried that the moment has come when any oaf can exercise himself in feeble caricatures of figures of authority. Not that these people are not deserving subjects of criticism or mockery, but the twittery of such commentators as Zammit Tabona cannot but serve to undermine the validity of such endeavours.
His giddy opener, however, soon reveals itself as nothing but a prelude to a broadside against the peccadilloes of "the hapless Victor Emmanuel wannabe IV of Italy". I confess that my free time is fairly limited these days, but should KZT wish, I could quickly glance over his preposterous articles before he files, if only to sort out the woeful mish-mash of demotic styles and hone the P.G.Wodehouse-lite tone every other Maltese columnist believes they are affecting:

"Elizabeth II, despite her disastrously deficient progeny, is, despite the Mrs Bucket hats, a success story quite unlike the hapless Victor Emmanuel wannabe IV of Italy, now languishing in an Italian gaol on charges of prostitution and corruption. Having lived most of his life in exile, this descendant of kings, emperors and dukes, cast to the winds the overriding maxim that royalty has to live automated lives as chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche."

As if the vaguely schizophrenic quality of most Times' columnists were not bad enough, almost all of them are forced by the childish layout of the newspaper to indulge in a string of non sequitirs loosely linked together by transparent, and ultimately failed, devices like the following:

"The Casa Savoia has lost the plot for good.
Therefore to move to a slightly different location, Brussels, we have had some equally contrasting voting by our own home-grown MEPs."

The "therefore" festers there like week-old roadkill, but it does the job. As much as it may look like it, Zammit Tabona’s 1,305 words of drivel will not just write themselves. Sadly, for the
long-suffering readers of The Times, they won’t read themselves either; so, on and on, you must plough on through an alternation between faux profundity and domestic troubles so trivial they sound like the transcript from a fishwives’ conversation.
Suitably, his concluding paragraph is a chronicle of political and journalistic squabbles so clearly designed exclusively for Zammit Tabona’s own insular readership that he cannot deign himself to make any sense at all:

“In addition, Charles Polidano was reported to have had a violent altercation with a fellow columnist [Note: As violent as a handbag to the face can be] about whether he is or isn't a baron. I believe the case has been referred to the Committee of Privileges of the Maltese Nobility and is being considered. Despite all this David Casa attended the rally because he said he believed that the environment was the PN's top priority and had the audacity to mention the landfills affair that was stopped simply because a brave MP had the gall to stymie his own party. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando where are you?”

Horse Sense

2006-04-25T23:22:00.000+01:00

All the seats on the bus are free and he has to sit next to you. Why? That's right, I'm talking about Austin Sammut. Happy as you go, you're turning the pages of The Times towards the latest instalment of the Wizard of Id and a happy half hour on the wordwheel. Maybe even a quick look at which famous people were born and died on the day. Yi Sun-sin, the famous Korean admiral, born today? Wonders never cease!
And what's on Prime tonight? Ah, Keeping Up Appearances. That program will literally never cease to be rip-roaringly funny. Which is just as well, as people from Cape Town to Kowloon must have had to watch the damn thing more than a thousand times over the last ten years.
And so on and so forth.
But then that wretched Austin Sammut had to ruin it all. His column on Tuesday, mostly about scratched pavements, believe it or not, was partially redeemed by this snippet, which has something ever so slightly Beckettesque about it:

"I had one relief. There was no horse excrement around. A miracle indeed."

He had one relief, ladies and gentlemen. If you listen very carefully, you may just be able to make out the sound of a bead of sweat sliding down his clammy face. A miracle indeed!
And on and on and on he drones. Next, as you wish you could whisked away by death's munificent grace, he begins to bang on about rubbish, like some kind of pantomime mother-in-law:

"The latter council cannot even keep garbage away from our capital city's noble street corners (I wrote to them about this months ago and have been totally ignored) - but perhaps that's the wardens, and, again, more later. Explanations from all and sundry would be most welcome. I have seen excrement bags under the backsides of horses all over Europe, but why not here?"

Or to put in other way:

"I told about her about the state of that road. It shouldn't be allowed, I tell you. I told 'er about that road before, it wants cleaning. What are the neighbours going to think? Oooh me back. Been to the doctor. No good. Says it's psychosomething, bloody cheek. Mind you, I told 'er about the road, you should have seen it last Sunday, covered in rubbish it was. It's no skin off my nose, but what are the neighbours going to think? And them horses. Without the bags. It's a disgrace. Mess all over the shop. What are the neighbours going to think? I can't see what she ever saw in 'im."

The column is written from beginning to end in this bumbling, but ultimately hard to dislike, fashion. Who could be so stony-hearted as to fail to fall about laughing at Sammut's low comedy depiction of street wardens' antics? In my mind's eye, all the action he describes has been speeded up in the style of a Keystone Kops comedy, with Sammut playing an irrepressible Harold Lloyd-type character, one moment being pounced on by a street warden, the next he is running along the street holding a bucket under a horse's soiled bottom, and some day perhaps he'll be hanging off one of the clock faces of Mosta Cathedral.

Turning Over a New Leaf

2006-04-25T09:11:00.000+01:00

I imagine that I was not the only one affected by Blogger's lapse into crapness over the weekend, so I have taken the opportunity to toy with a new layout. A company of web designers has charged me a reasonable fee of Lm1,500 for a look that I find both fresh and sober. They have given me their solemn word that it is completely original work, and I for one do not intend to doubt them. Readers may rest assured, however, that the content will remain as stale and repetitive as ever.

You Must be Kidding

2006-04-23T22:42:00.001+01:00

It is said that parents should refrain from arguing before their children, lest this demonstration of domestic friction be interpreted as a compromise of authority. It was, therefore, distressing to see a squabble about child welfare, which has been as unseemly as it has been achingly dull, continued in Sunday’s issue of The Times. Dr Ruth Farrugia has elected herself as the referee of this arcane dispute between Frank Muscat and Bryan Magro, former chair of the Children's Board and policy co-ordinator in the Ministry of the Family and Social Solidarity respectively. Meanwhile, Frank Muscat also parries blows directed at him with another letter to the paper, which succeeds, and doubtless precedes, many others.
There is not much one can contribute on the specific subject of the controversy and it would only be a most foolhardy individual that would dare to trade blows with these world-class bores. And anyway, who could rival the death kiss stolidity of prose like that of Dr. Farrugia? But Farrugia is guilty not only of being a crushing bore, but also of subjecting the rest of the world to what evidently constituted the aridity of her day-to-day being.
It is quite possible there may still be some people who believe that the halls of power are populated by canny horse-traders, underhanded brokers and mercurial exponents of the elite. So how upsetting will it be for this people when they discover that the only persons in those hallowed halls are in the fact dreary drones whose very physical existence is only justified by the next deadline for the next monotonous ream of bureaucratic insignificance? Which is fine, of course. The world needs filers and clerks and data entry goons, for where would we be without them. But like Gogol’s Akaki Akakievich, they must surely realise that any attempt to rise from within the ranks of the meaningless scribe will certainly result in metaphysical annihilation.
But what do we have here? Instead allowing one pile of red-tape literature be subsumed by the next generation of similarly needless reports, Farrugia gives it an airing which it neither deserves nor needs. And she is not the only guilty of this. How often must lazy, ignorant ministers and MPs regurgitate the content of committee findings and parliamentary speeches under the pretence of being original or, Christ Almighty forbid, vaguely interesting? They take us for fool, and they are probably right to do so. They also take the editors of The Times for fools, which they are wrong to do. They are wrong as the editors of The Times are not mere fools, but half-witted dullard mildew of the very lowest order.
If one were so keen to read the written cretinism of the lumpen buffoons that vacate the chambers of the pompously named Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity, a visit to its website would fully suffice, one would have imagined. It is there that one can read such fatuous observations as this:

"Children are our most valuable natural resource. Moreover, research has amply demonstrated that the first few years of children’s lives are crucial in their development. This knowledge has inspired the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity to develop further this important building block of social policy."

That children are Malta’s most valuable natural resource is a sentiment of nauseating pointlessness. It is also false, of course. As Bishop Nikol Cauchi would be able to tell you, modern Maltese children are utterly stupid and unable to hold a pencil the right way up. They are also among the laziest, fattest and greediest in the world. It is hard to take any consolation from the fact that young people with these attributes will probably not possess the mental or physical faculties to commit crime. Though since future policeman will also probably be afflicted with similar gastric gigantism, we may well be looking forward to some amusing street chases in the years to come.
So, we have the dull and idiotically written websites, but we must still have this rubbish pushed under our noses by Farrugia and her boneheaded ilk? Is there any reason that cruelty to Times readers should be considered any less despicable than cruelty to children?

Fully Booked

2006-04-22T14:18:00.000+01:00

As though in some kind of spiritual communion with Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi, Noemi Zarb opens her article in Saturday’s paper the metonymic theme, ironically enough, of judging books by their cover:

"Show me the books you have at home and I'll tell you all about your personality!"

To her credit, the impudence of the boast is a couple of notches lower in arrogance than Cauchi’s dogmatic creed, which he barks at the reader without a by-your-leave.

"Tell me what you read, and I tell you what you are."

Yet, how rich is the irony of the amount of whimsical tripe that will be churned out by the bucket load for this godforsaken UNESCO day of the book that everybody seems so excited about. Zarb’s contribution is a vomit-inducing flight of fairy dust whimsy that doesn’t fail, as is customary in this sort of article, to patronise, insult and irritate almost anybody who has ever deemed to pick up a book and read it.
As is also habitual in this variety of giddy literary appreciation, no concession is made for level-headed reasoning. Keen to assume a virtually Apollonic status of wisdom, no book can ever be dismissed by Zarb:

“Each and every [book is] intoxicating in [its] own special way.”

There should be a more eloquent way of putting this but, what absolute rubbish. Unless she has found some method of distilling the pages of Paulo Coelho into a low-grade variant of moonshine, she would have to do better than her twee childhood reminiscences to support that grand claim. Of course, given that Zarb’s writing suggests that she might be exactly the sort cotton-brained sap that goes weak at the knees at the very sound of the name Coelho, or some other such pseudo-profound Latinate crud, it is not to be excluded that she actually believes her own premise.
Like her bishoply precursor, Zarb eventually comes around to the sermon portion of her lesson. J.K. Rowling will doubtless be delighted, therefore, to hear that Zarb thinks that all the illiterate children of Malta need to turn into charismatic bookworms like herself is to read more “gripping fantasy”, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel. Next thing you know, this skittish gomeril will probably be wanting to send boys to school in flowery bonnets:

“If you want children to keep on turning the page to see what happens next, then the pulse must start racing as admiration and loathing tingle the blood.”

This quaint image of children’s reading proclivities is so farcically Victorian that it tips two-footedly into fantasy itself.
So kids, hasn’t this been a great week for reading (and writing)? You’ve had the words of a Tweedledum look-alike, Nikol Cauchi, and now the candy-floss blithering of an escapee from a Don Bluth film. If that doesn’t stop you reading, nothing will.

Bishop to Book Five

2006-04-21T21:59:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the interruption in the regular service, but with the demands of academia being what they are, work has kept me away from the ribaldry that is reading The Times. Even for one such as myself, who has studied at three universities, the pressures of writing even half-decent academic copy does not come easy.

**********************

The authority of Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi is immediately evident from the austere, ultramontanist severity of his face. But quite how he thinks his gilt crucifixes and collection of porphyry cameos of the Virgin Mary give him the authority to lecture me on my reading habits is beyond me. Wringing his porky, episcopal fingers, he appears to wonder whether the book in its current form will even last to the end of his days. Amidst feverish visions of incarnadining hosts he has seen the future, and it resembles a nightmarish enactment of Fahrenheit 451, the flames of hell burning away at the wafer-thin leaves of civilisation that keep us from the edge of madness:

"Yet, in this electronic age, where computers and the internet have become so widely used, some people inevitably ask whether it is anachronistic to talk about books and other printed material."

Words that most people will have read on precious, flammable paper. But what vice-bound human folly could be at the source of such lascivious abandon of the written word, one is almost compelled to ask.

"The use of free time is one of the most pressing problems confronting people today. There are so many forms of amusement in which people can indulge, that many may doubt whether reading continues to be a popular pastime in the same way it was before."

Being a bishop, Cauchi will of course be profoundly alive to the dangers that an excess of free time will leave one open to. But can he really be writing in the Times of Malta when he ascribes the reason for this assumed decline in reading hours to the difficulties of free time? (Not the lack of it, mind. The ecclesiastical scamp!). But for all his years of dabbling in the dark arts of popery, he is quite unable to bumble into irony. Speaking of the reading habits of his compatriots:

"... it seems the majority are content to have a look at their favourite daily newspaper"

Well, I suppose if Jesus Christ was content to be nailed to cross for our sins, then that sentence could just about stand. Sure enough, the implied rebuke of that statement portends a sermon on the wholesomeness of literary indulgence, as long it is of the right type:

"Some books are capable of doing more harm than good while others should only be taken on by those who are knowledgeable about a particular subject. So selection is important."

If anyone had been so naïve to venture into this article with the belief that it would not be deadened by the heavy hand of monkish prescription, that line would pretty have much killed all residual hope. Patronisingly, he affects an avuncular concern for the reader’s ability to read Milton and Shakespeare.

“But for lighter every day purposes a number of shorter books and booklets are available on a range of subjects that are educational and escapist.”

Booklets? Everyday purposes? A range of subjects? Who exactly does this man think he is talking to? As if Malta doesn’t have enough bishops who always talk as though in conversation with the mentally subnormal, Cauchi contrives to effortlessly insult those very few who will have bothered to read his article all the way through. I really don’t think that “content” is the word he should have used back there.

If CMB Falls, Does He Make a Sound?

2006-04-06T20:59:00.000+01:00

Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici's columns are not an experience that anyone should be submitted to. This man is the literary equivalent of Ryvita, except not as good for you. His voice is dull, his face is dull, his very existence is dull. But by God, can there be anything on this earth more crushingly tedious than one of his articles. I would quite rather read the instruction manual for a bipolar junction transistor than plough through this dross, which anyone whose read this far might be contemplating reading:

"Private international law is a specialised segment within our legal system. It is triggered when Malta's courts of law are asked to consider lawsuits where issues before it affect some event, transaction or situation that is closely linked to a foreign judicial system and therefore necessitates recourse to foreign legal systems. This is better defined by our jurists as 'the rules voluntarily chosen by a given state for the decision of cases which have a foreign complexion'."

Well, then why did you write a definition, if you were going to give us a better anyway? God, why are you so bloodly bloodly boring?
Ok, so why read the article, the disinterested browser would ask themselves were they to visit this page. Why indeed, I reply. Even more pertinently, why was this dreary article ever written; doubtless by some unfortunate minion of the credited gentleman, I might add. I understand that there may well be certain individuals, whose drab temperament would probably see them better suited to taking residence under a mossy stone, that could find interest in prose so flat that it's practically inside out. But in a newspaper, I ask?
If only I could find solace in the attitude that today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper. For a start, Maltese people don't often eat fish and chips. And when they do it is not from a newspaper, but off a china plate and with a silver spoon. But can you imagine what writing this insipid could do to any food that touches it? It doesn't bear thinking about.
It's a good thing I'm writing this in the evening, so this wretch has only managed to ruin a handful of hours of my day.

Sharpwitted Shooters

2006-04-03T23:35:00.000+01:00

Like any good reader of the The Times, I like a titter from time to time. As a result, my heart rose while going through the letters in Monday's edition. There were not one, but two letters under the title "Camouflaged Humour". The first was a sensible letter from Roger M. Flett in Munxar:

"While I often reel at their side-splitting joke of adding "and Conservationists" to the name of the hunters' federation, I seem to have suffered a complete sense-of-humour failure over the federation secretary Lino Farrugia's "tongue in cheek" quip, that hunters might want to use gloves to pick up shot birds. I am sorry, Aldo Azzopardi (March 29), but try as I may, I just can't see anything funny in a shot bird - with or without gloves."

Pretty straightforward really; a letter to complain about someone complaining that a newspaper had unfairly represented a facetious remark. With one letter in, one would imagine that the editor would be satisfied, but of course that would mean foregoing the words George Debono, of Sliema:

"Surely The Times should have realised that the mere mention of picking up a blood-spattered dead bird, with or without gloves on, is a seriously funny matter which causes hilarious laughter in hunting circles - as pointed out Aldo E. Azzopardi!
Where indeed is The Times' sense of humour?"

Now, I fear that this correspondent's grasp of wit may be too subtle or too crude for me to fully understand what it is that he intends with his remarks. The answer may be divined by means of inductive intuition. The original joke about picking up dead birds with gloves is not one of the funniest I've heard. There was quite a good one I knew once about a swearing parrot, but I'm quite sure that it didn't die. Meanwhile, the prospect of a Maltese hunter contracting a possibly fatal disease is not particularly amusing, though I admit it is slightly heartwarming.
Of course, anyone who has taken even a cursory interest in the humour of Maltese hunters will be familiar with what passes for bon mots amidst their circles. The usual sort of thing about blowing birds to bits, and so on.
So, if we accept that nobody could rationally believe that the original quip was actually funny, subsequent reaction of Times journalists notwithstanding, it is far from clear what George Debono is trying to say. It is likely that in the mould of so many that have gone before him, he has deployed the withering power of sarcasm in his cause. However, what that says for his ability to pass judgement on humour is another matter. So, perhaps before he asks people to locate their senses of humour, he should in fact establish that he has one himself.

Love Is...

2006-03-29T20:32:00.000+01:00

Can you see Pope Benedict XVI as a sex therapist? Well, I couldn't either until reading Christine Sammut's fantastically bawdy piece of pastoral guidance on issues carnal in Wednesday's issue of The Times. It seems that these days, people just don't think they can get down with the kids unless they are prepared to talk about intra-sheet activity. But as George Bernard Shaw noted "Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!". But Sammut, on the other hand, certainly seems to know a thing or two about what one could coyly term as horizontal dancing, though the fact she seems to put Pope Benedict's latest hit encyclical on a par with the Kama Sutra is probably not a promising sign. From early into the article, one is assailed with the doubt about this person's authority on the subject:

"Our society, and mostly, the media, exalt one aspect of sexuality - the body and the physical aspect of sexuality - most commonly known as the Eros."

Most commonly known as Eros, you say. With the ambiguous and perversely prudish enlightenment characteristic of religious youth workers, Sammut proceeds to construct a frail and unconvincing position on the fulfilment, or lack thereof, that sex brings with it:

"Many young people have come to realise, only too often, that having a sexual relationship which is only fulfilled in its physical aspect brings them only to an 'ecstasy' which is short-lived and leaves them always searching for something more."

This sort of psychological reaction is not exclusive to sex of course. Indeed, as I read Pope Benedict's encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, I derived a transitory frisson of pleasure, but once the moment had passed I felt dirty, used and abused. After that I had to move on to harder stuff; some Thomas Aquinas, a draw on Saint Augustine, and a few lines of Cardinal Newman. In sexual matters, Sammut suggests that the youth look to heighten the intensity of their ecstasy by other means:

"Many are those who seek to embellish the experience through various means, some outright addictive or perverse. But the end result is always the same: emptiness and hurt which is gaping inside."

What Sammut means by means that outright perverse is probably not wise to speculate about. But it should be clear that while she is contrary to perversion resulting in hurt, it is not as though she is discouraging sharing the love in itself. Indeed, as she urges the young libertines of Malta:

"And so, our invitation to all young people is one: dare to open your gift!"

But it turns out that the gift is letting your other half discover you and connect with you spiritually. What utter drivel! Presumably, she must believe that this kind of clerical mumbo-jumbo can be sold to her horny-handed charges at the University, but what she is not aware of is that Maltese students are as hypocritical as they are dim. While they may eagerly go to seasonal masses and piously profess their Catholic identity, they equally conveniently forget about all that when it comes to the dirty business of spiritually unfulfilling, er, sexual relationships.
So, as grateful we doubtless are to Pope Benedict XVI (who Sammut promotes to Pope Benedict XVII in the byline) for endowing us with his sanctified views on Eros and agape, we will probably have to reconcile ourselves that its contents will be unheeded by the most of Christine Sammut's intended audience. So for the time being, it will be more Ann Summers and less Christine Sammut.

Don't Watch This Space

2006-03-28T22:00:00.000+01:00

One of the more popular genres of columns appearing in The Times opinion pages are the articles ostensibly based on the given writer's academic background. Though journalists in most countries have been to University, none are so eager to prove evidence of this than those writing in Malta's paper of record. The skill of individual practitioners of this type of writing, inasmuch as they have any skill, is to apply the specifics of their often pointless academic discipline to the context of Malta. Which is where Charles Xuereb's article on Tuesday comes in. He begins innocently enough, with what looks like a feature on the upcoming Maltese TV schedules:

"At this time of year television stations in Malta are busy preparing their autumn schedules. Some have already made their calls public while others, notably the public broadcaster, is about to issue its call for new or established programmes to fill in the schedules between October 2006 and June 2007."

Of course, the cynical may note that television stations in Malta are not so much preparing the schedules as wondering how much telebejgh they will have to broadcast to pad out the schedule and pay for their cardboard sets and cover the salaries of their dipsomaniac lighting technicians. Immediately, the eagle-eyed reader will suspect that Xuereb is attributing the ultra-competitive strategies of British, American or Italian broadcasters to frankly pathetic morons that produce television locally. It takes quite some stretch of the imagination to think that sharp-suited media analysts at Net are at this very moment carefully designing some killer line-up to knock whatever amateurish variety show for and by spastics at Super One on a Saturday afternoon off the top of the ratings board.
Xuereb then laboriously concludes that, indeed, scheduling is not an actual function of Maltese television. He attributes this to tight financial resources, overlooking the fact that the people charged with the task are, more often than not, little more than dribbling jabberjaws. Though apparently, in their Cro-Magnon brilliance they have arrived at an astounding fact:

"Over the past decade or so Maltese television seems to have accepted the norm that popularity is the way ahead."

After a few more paragraphs of only very faintly relevant abstractions about the Maltese television scene, Xuereb takes refuge in the cosy drabness of academese, complete with customary bibliographic references:

"Media researchers, among them Timothy Legatt, a UK communications consultant, when discussing quality give special meaning to choice, range, variety, balance and appreciation. Mr Legatt concludes that popularity does not necessarily indicate viewers' opinions as to programme quality (Legatt in Ishikawa, 1996). Viewers tend to employ a different scale of values in judging quality."

Hm, yes, how very true. I admit that it's been a few years since I've properly watched Maltese television, as even when I have been in the country, the broken Melita Cable box will not show TVM. As it is that I regularly return for Christmas, I do get to watch L-Istrina, which profoundly challenges my "scale of values in judging quality". It does this because there is no part of rational brain that can feasibly account for how awful the experience of watching that show is. As I imagine is the case with most people, my scale of values ranges from excellent to absolutely terrible, yet L-Istrina so comprehensively transcends any accepted degree of badness, that the viewing experience becomes an almost mystical detachment from standard cognitive norms. And yet, L-Istrina is hardly a great departure in terms of quality and content from the standards of Maltese broadcasting, which leaves Xuereb's bookish observations on their arse.
The very title (Quality on Television) and reccuring theme of the article (the word "quality" appears thirty times) is fundamentally alien to the realties of super-cheapo local television. But Xuereb describes a scenario that sounds like another country, if not another planet:

"Professional broadcasters and distinguished members of the public on the other hand have specific criteria for quality on television. Broadcasters feel that quality lies in their work: technical accomplishment and programme content. In the latter they are concerned with clarity of objective, innovativeness and relevance to viewers' current concerns. This complements the view from on high where, according to a set of distinguished persons, quality broadcasting should offer diversity of choices, opportunities at good viewing times to as many different tastes and interests as possible and assumes programming to seek constantly to renew, not to repeat formulae, to explore, to take risks, to push the boat out, to extend the frontiers and to take itself and the audience by surprise."

The vast majority of broadcasters (which became considerably vaster after the death of Charles Arrigo) may be professional in the sense of being paid, but they are hardly professional in the sense of competent. As for the distinguished people who comment on programming in the papers, in Malta this primarily consists of those who believe that watching the Biography Channel constitutes the height of intellectual sophistication.

Pulling it Off

2006-03-22T22:11:00.000Z

While most papers across the world are currently offering pull-out sections on the World Cup to entice readers, Il Foglio, owned by the Italian Prime Minister's wife, has adopted an unusual tack. The entirety of Wednesday's issue itself came as a supplement of a decidedly bizarre representation of Silvio Berlusconi, which constituted the day's cover for the newspaper. Indeed, as the paper's slavish adoration of the Prime Minister continues to ascend to white-hot intensity, Wednesday's cover presented a fusion of Berlusconi's face and Hans Holbein's painting of Erasmus of Rotterdam. The details of the fatuous parallel that the accompanying article charts is only available to Internet readers via pdf downloads, but anybody unwilling to invest in the time and effort that that involves need only know that it is typical Italian pseudo-intellectual journalese. The following extract from the opening paragraph should render the idea:

"E il Cavaliere zoppicava, eccome se zoppicava. Il ginocchio era immobile (come consequenza della deambulazione incerta), ma tutto il resto era mobilitato, perche il ginocchio, strumento della follia, assomma in se, in quanto strumento pratico della locomozione, tutte le venture del cammino della vita: genu (ginocchio, in ittita), genus, gens, gony (ginocchio, in greco), gignoskein (conoscere), gignesthai (divenire), Knie (ginocchio, in tedesco), kennen (conoscere)."

Which is all very nice, though the article might have added another part of the body, "coglione", which is what Berlusconi called a heckler after leaving a public meeting in Genoa on Wednesday. It is probably indicative of something that Berlusconi's prime ideological cheerleader must resort to this type of abstruse waggishness. The other main channel of Forza Italia propaganda, Il Giornale, will almost certainly maintain its relentless effort on the off chance that some hapless voter will take its title literally and buy the paper.
Though the pro-government papers would have been likely to adopt the aggressive line in any event, the fact that so much of the establishment media (namely, Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, and Sole 24 Ore) has openly favoured the opposition has sharpened the lines of division. Most notably, the editor of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, wrote an editorial before the electoral campaign even began expressing his decision to vote for the centre-left coalition. Sure enough, as the election day approaches, tempers are beginning to fray, as Luciano Violante's outré reflections on Berlusconi's alleged vicinity to the mafia have given rise to vigorous counterattacks.
Il Foglio, therefore, is performing the function of shoring up support, instead of courting it. As the certainty of a centre-left victory becomes ever more evident, the Berlusconi camp appears to investing most of its effort in strengthening Forza Italia's future stake in parliament. Several articles have appeared in the press suggesting the existence of hairline fractures within the the Casa della Liberta' coalition, so eyes are inevitably being pointed towards post-electoral scenarios. So, can we expect another pull-off supplement from Il Foglio? If so, I would suggest that Erasmus is a hint too recherché. What you really need as a role model is an Italian with a well documented knack for communication. So as not strain the Photoshop programme, he should also be balding. Meanwhile, for ideological continuity, he should hate communists and take a vigorous position against media dissidents. I wonder...

Man of Libya

2006-03-19T23:50:00.000Z

And on another rare venture into the notice-board territory of linking, I see that a young talent in faraway Libya has advertised my existence on his "blog". It is interesting to read about that country, although I hear that they spend the entire period of mass on their knees, unlike the weekly minute that Catholics devote to this practice. It is probably unsafe in this time of cartoon Mohammeds to suggest that this sort of behaviour might be a little foolish, but at least if we Westerners can say that sort of thing, we will do it standing up. Or sitting down perhaps.

Immigrant Readers Needed

2006-03-19T23:19:00.000Z

And in a note of petulance, I must add that it is hugely ungratifying that while that fool Anthony Manduca, who does not even have O-Levels (I imagine), can gain the attention of 350,000 readers just by writing his cruddy pieces about Italian politics in The Times, I must settle for 16 daily readers as of mignight on Sunday. And half of those are confused Indians pressing the "Next Blog" button.
It all makes me think this whole blogging thing might just be for the vain or the obsessed. To think that an oblique reference to me in an Anthony Licari (God bless him) column constituted the last spike of visits to my site. Where are all these Maltese poseurs and pseudo-intellectuals when you need them to ramp up the value of your google ads? I can only suppose they are prancing around bare Valletta flats pretending to be gay, the wretched cretins that they are. Meanwhile, the Fgura Morlocks, close cousins of the Zabbar lumpen and the Bormla scruffs, are slowly taking over the intellectual space of Malta. When I say intellectual space, I do of course mean the ability to install chip motherboards and such; but you will not be affecting that pained smile when these nerds have hacked into the presidential mainframe. By the mercy of the Virgin Mary, these goons are not yet aware of the fact that they have the future of Malta within their sun-starved, aenemic grasp, but it is only a matter of time. And here I am with a mainly Indian readership.

Striking When the Fire Is Hot

2006-03-19T21:33:00.000Z

Although most people know Italy as the home of pizzas, pasta, and brigandism, it is a little known fact that it also hosts an extensive range of newspapers. It was in this knowledge, at least, that I ventured into a local petrol station in the hope of buying some of the choice selection. However, as a gnarly-knuckled local informed me, the newspaper journalists of Italy went on strike on Saturday, for reasons that some cynics have attributed to their convenient unwillingness to work over the weekend. Indeed, it is suspicious that when they do strike, it tends to be on weekends, when they manifest their discontent over the particular issue at hand by going on picnics, instead of picketing their own offices on cold, windy Tuesday mornings.
Anyway, it is certainly true that Italian hacks are among the laziest in the world and are rarely enthusiastic about the idea of leaving the confines of their own office space. Yet, in bold blacklegging mode, a newspaper nominally owned by Silvio Berlusconi's brother, Il Giornale, went to the presses, leaving the news-hungry with no choice but to invest in its contents. Now, the name, "The Newspaper", is perhaps overly truistic for some tastes, but it only takes a plunge into its murky depths to realise that there is indeed little newspaperly about it.
But before entering into the merits of one select article from Sunday's edition, some background should be given.
Il Giornale first appeared in 1974 with Indro Montanelli as its editor. Montanelli was, by all accounts, accorded absolute editorial freedom until 1994, the year that Berlusconi threw his hat into the political ring. Once Montanelli had refused to endorse Berlusconi's Citizen Kane-style ascent to political power, it was curtains for him.
Interestingly, another controversial figure took charge at the paper in the period of the lunatic Northern League's unhappy spurt of popularity. Vittorio Feltri, erstwhile editor of L'Indipendente, was and is a journalist whose sensibilities were tuned to the Fox News style of reporting a full decade before that station came to prominence. Under his tenure, the newspaper was perversely turned into a print soapbox for the shrill brand of dementia embodied in promised secessionist, Umberto Bossi. Though Feltri has since moved on to a vastly more offensive publication (Libero, which like In-Nazzjon is sadly unavailable on the Internet), he left his mark on Il Giornale. In fitting with its fundamentally fascist matrix, Il Giornale, whose title even suggests an air of government-approved bulletin over the objective subjectivism of other "red" rags, is little more than agitprop of the most vulgar quality. Anyone interested in knowing what this looks like when written in English should invest (sic) in a biography of Mussolini by Nicholas Farrell, an occasional contributor to Libero and unashamed fascist apologist.
For those interested in what it looks like in Italian should visit Il Giornale itself, whose blacklegging issue featured a standard exemplar of the type of bottomless hypocrisy that informs Italian politics of all hues (though mostly right-wing, at this given moment). It is hard to provide a coherent précis for the soap opera that is Italian politics, but ... some days ago, a violent anti-capitalist protest took place in Milan in which several businesses were vandalised. Predictably, this incident has taken on political qualities, with the right's plangent insistence that the parliamentary left was somehow instrumental in these happenings, as well as the isolated incidents of baby-eating of war-time Ukraine, which the historically minded will recall had then been snatched from the COMMUNIST Russians by the benevolent, and so on so forth.
As veteran observers of the Maltese political scene will also remember, nothing melts as many hearts as grand Walesa-style professions of solidarity(TM). As a result, while one lot is solidarising (this word, that I thought I had fashioned from Romance equivalents, gets 182 google results) with the oppressed Iraqis, some other people are busy doing the same for oppressed Milanese merchants. As a result of the one-upmanship that this sort of political contest involves, Il Giornale's febrile propaganda crew have heaved out this trite bit of electioneering, which rings with sweet irony as Berlusconi recovers from the politically expedient "back pains" exacerbated by his raucous speech at this weekend's Confindustria, Chamber of Commerce to you and me, meeting:

"Quel corteo era sacrosanto, come lo erano le ragioni che lo hanno ispirato. La prima è nel fatto che i commercianti, i quali aprono le vetrine sulla strada, sono i più esposti alla violenza, dalla quale vanno protetti. E hanno imparato che esistono gruppi di teppisti politici i quali hanno come fine quello di turbare la vita delle città: perché questo è il segno della loro esistenza, e di un potere sul territorio da affermare ogni tanto e con ogni mezzo."

Yes indeed readers, Mamma Mia, as the Italians love to say. It looks like democracy is not only under attack from Muslamic Nazimentalists and Blafrican refugistas, but also from the vanguardist wing of the anarchic crypto-democratic-Maoist-Bakuninite phalange led by Romano Prodi, a man whose inspires pity, rather than just inspiring.
On a personal note, I should add that the stroke-like feelings induced by the provocative qualities of Italian journalism are marginally inferior to caused by Maltese newspapers. So it looks like this is still going to be a restful holiday

Desperately Seeking Marmara'

2006-03-18T22:45:00.000Z

Even here in Italy there is Internet, which means that the citizens of the so-called Belpaese will not have been deprived this sensationally foolish article by Desmond Zammit Marmara'. Because, as is always the case with columns this exasperatingly ridiculous, it is impossible criticise the article rationally and coherently, I have chosen to merely substitute Marmara’s references to teenagers with his own name. The result makes for much more enlightening reading. Though for legal reasons, I should probably add that it makes for enlightening reading that has no absolutely no basis in fact. Probably.

"Criticism of the lifestyle of Desmond Zammit Marmara' has become very common here in Malta. This is rather worrying because most contributions on the issue that appear in the local media usually target the symptoms and not the causes of the problems associated with Desmond Zammit Marmara'.
Desmond Zammit Marmara' is criticized for his iconoclasm, for his violent rejection of authority, for his amoral sexual life, for the way he succumbs to vices such as drink and, even worse, drugs.
Yet, do we stop to reflect on what is causing Desmond Zammit Marmara' to act as he does? Do we stop to reflect on whether Desmond Zammit Marmara' is the victim of the society he has grown up in?
One has to keep in mind that Desmond Zammit Marmara' lives in a globalized world where he is exposed to values and lifestyles which often come into conflict with the traditional values and lifestyles of a formerly insular society such as Malta's.
Through the Internet, films, magazines, foreign travel, or contact with tourists, Desmond Zammit Marmara' is continually bombarded with the message that there are no absolute values and that he should live as he desires without any reference to moral yardsticks as these are in themselves relative and no longer relevant in the times we are living in. A message which is, of course, incorrect, but that is the reality that Desmond Zammit Marmara' lives in!
Take sexual lifestyle as an example. Why are some people scandalized by the sexual lifestyle of Desmond Zammit Marmara'? Have we stopped to think about the way Desmond Zammit Marmara' is bombarded with the message that unfettered sexual activity is perfectly normal and one of the joys of being Desmond Zammit Marmara'? Today, not only films convey this message, we even have magazines distributed with respectable local newspapers read by the whole family which contain advertisements with pictures sometimes bordering on soft porn!
Which is why it is our duty as more mature adults to do something concrete to help Desmond Zammit Marmara' to live a better quality of life. Condemning his lifestyle without doing anything positive to help him is worse than doing nothing!
We need to use the resources available through the media to present alternative, more wholesome lifestyles to Desmond Zammit Marmara'. This can also be done through further developing the personal and social development aspect of education.
Of course, this should not be done in a patronizing manner to show that we, the more mature adults, know better than Desmond Zammit Marmara'. Rather, it should be done in a spirit of solidarity with Desmond Zammit Marmara' because it is our responsibility to provide him with a better future, with models of wholesome lifestyles and not ones which lead to a dead end."

Mamma Mia!

2006-03-18T22:10:00.000Z

This week, Fool’s Cap is in Italy, which is currently in the throes of an extended electoral campaign. As many people will know, Italy too has newspapers, some of which are not at all bad. Though not according to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, owner of the losing finalist in last year’s Champions League, who believes all newspapers, other than the ones he owns himself, to be in collusion with the forces of an international communist plot.
And as in Malta, there is no shortage of sages expounding their opinions on all shades of human endeavour in the papers. Indeed, possession of an opinion and a readiness to wield it seems to provide a livelihood for many Italians who might otherwise resort to a life of organised crime and bag-snatching, as so many of their compatriots have done. And because the country’s media is such a messy gruel of light entertainment, quizzes, improvised strip shows, sensationalism, carpet-bagging salesmanship and low journalism, there is no want of formats for these individuals to nestle themselves within.
Consider the case of one Giampiero Mughini, who most Maltese people will know as the Juventus-supporting boor that regularly crops up on some Sunday football programme or other. With the sense of shamelessness that only the supporter of such an unreconstructedly plutocratic sporting outfit could muster, he routinely bills himself as a polemicist, which is apparently considered in Italy to be a legitimate professional class.
Indeed, while my dictionary informs me that the English word ‘opinionist’ is to considered archaic, the Italian variant is bandied around with careless abandon, as though the practitioners of that dark art were somehow noble descendants of Cato himself. One should be mindful to distinguish the opinionista (a word that sounds uncannily like some Fleet Street neologism) from the columnist, who will in normal countries be relied on to provide a specific tone and style alongside the rash of standard, ill-informed views. In Italy, however, the essence rather than the form of the opinion is paramount, provided it comes from the mouth of a certified opinion-holder.
When the Saturday edition of Il Foglio, a paper owned by none other than Silvio Berlusconi’s wife, indulged in some gentle joshing of its beloved Prime Minister, it was done in a coordinated communion of erstwhile and current Mediaset trough-feeders, from the grotesque Guiliano Ferrara, once of Radio Londra and other similar programs, to Carlo Rossella, formerly head of TG5 and Berlusconi’s once-favoured nominee for the chairmanship of RAI, and Giampiero Mughini, who pockets weekly cheques in the football season for irritating the viewing public. The exercise of soft-pedal satire, at which the Italians are so adept, was designed effectively to convey the impression of an affable aptitude for self-mockery, which Berlusconi indulges in so frequently. Mercifully, most Italians recognise this oleaginous sycophancy for what it is, and will hopefully act accordingly on the given day.
But the opinionist does not need to be instrumentalised (another charmingly non-English Italianism) to become contemptible. In a way, the readers and correspondents of Italian newspapers are complicit in the Brahminisation of the columnist. In the Italian version of The Times, Il Corriere della Sera, a letters page editor sits in attendance awaiting the calls of counsel of his salivating readership. Though the requests of illumination from up on high, in this paper’s case from the patrician Sergio Romano, normally relate to current affairs, this need not necessarily the case. His long-standing predecessor Indro Montanelli, who left the post for reasons of death, was quite able to field questions about historical matters ranging as far back as the Napoleonic Wars, as he was in fact 250 years old and had been reporting conflict since the Battle of Austerlitz. Romano’s style, on the other hand, comes across as more schoolmasterly, and it is with its accordingly avuncular superciliousness that one Saturday, he answered a request for information about Cardinal Richlieu that sounded as though it had been written by a student preparing a school project. The letter:

“Mi piacerebbe leggere un suo «ritratto» di Armand-Jean Du Plessis, meglio noto come il cardinale Richelieu.
La sua azione politica, oltre alla sua leggendaria capacità, è fonte per me di grande ammirazione.

Lorenzo Trabalza”

Si, Romano! Tell-a-me everything! Romano tell you, you no worry…

Caro Trabalza,
debbo supporre che lei non sia stato, negli anni della sua adolescenza, un accanito lettore di Alexandre Dumas. Per i ragazzi che sono cresciuti divorando «I tre moschettieri» e «Vent’anni dopo», Richelieu è un prelato intrigante e maligno, continuamente intento a fabbricare trame e complotti contro le nobili figure del re e della regina… [and on and on, he continues in this vein]”

Which all probably proves a version of the adage; readers get the newspapers they deserve.

The Locals are Revolting

2006-03-13T18:47:00.000Z

Is the world coming to and end? It was with no small measure of astonishment that I found the coverage of the local elections in The Times to be informative and detailed in the right measure. Astoundingly, even the editorial was timely as well as sensible. The cartoon, however, was of the "say what you see" standard, though even the most unyielding optimist would be foolish to expect anything in that quarter. The Times wonders what the sources of disaffection might be:

"Is it a sign of no confidence in the local council system per se? Or is distrust the result of the manner in which the political parties dominate council and councillors? Could it be that electors are using local elections to demonstrate discontent at the way the country in general is being run, in which case local councils are having to shoulder shortcomings over which they have no control whatsoever?"

For a change The Times is asking the right questions. First, it was only obvious that the appeal of local elections was not necessarily the most sensitive barometer of the political mood. When the voters of Marsaxlokk elected an (allegedly) illiterate fisherman as their mayor, what did that say about the position of those villagers on the political spectrum? Perhaps that they are socially conservative, fiscally prudent, like fish, and what you thought was a collection of encyclopaedias is actually a plastic cover for the DVD collection. What's more, most of those DVDs are Jean-Claude Van Damme films, not forgetting the worn-out VHS copy of Best of the Best.
Distrust may also be an overvalued element. As the Maltese like telling visting foreigners, the island is so small that most people know eachother. Thanks be to God, this is untrue. But in many localities, that description is not far off the mark, which makes the issue of trust not wholly relevant. One tends develop certain attitudes towards potential canditates, say someone known locally as Censu is-sikkina, on the basis of intimate knowledge of personalities rather than conviction in that individual's competence.
It could be that people have used the local elections to "demonstrate discontent at the way the country in general is being run". The main trend coming out of these and previous elections, however, has been the decline in voter turnout. As the day's leading story relates "turnout was 66 per cent, down from 88 per cent in 2003, and 71 per cent in 2000". Cursory analysis suggests that the voter have not much used the election as not used the election, if that's clear.
What is less satisfying about this editorial piece is the mystifying lack of answers:

"The messages are clear. If the political parties wish to ignore them, as they are prone to do, it will only be at their peril. A close analysis of the results ought to show that promises of rose gardens are as ineffective as preaching gloom and doom.
The electorate has evidently decided to put their interests first, be it on local or national issues."

To paraphrase, the results show that promising too much is bad, as is saying things are not going well. And that's clear. You can ignore that, but don't tell me I didn't warn you. Oh, and the electorate has put their interests first. We don't why, but they have. Alright?!
Now, can I be bothered to delete that first paragraph? Nah!

Stop Overty

2006-03-12T19:27:00.000Z

For reasons largely connected with boredom I wandered onto this sanctimonious website, which grandly claims to be "putting pressure on the world's political leaders to keep their promises to help the poor". That's not before it dared to accuse me of not caring about world poverty.
But I didn't even have to read to be verbally assaulted in this fashion. Some surly oik's decidedly well-to-do voice mysteriously materialises unbidden to harangue the unwitting net-surfer with his pitiful plea. He is then succeeded by his female colleague, with whom I imagine he is immorally cohabiting, as is the fashion among this "compassionate" sort, who exhorts the visitor to spell Stop Poverty with one 'p'.
What good do these wretched people think this is doing anybody?

The Poverty of Nations

2006-03-12T17:33:00.000Z

It is reading articles like this one by Manuel Borda that tempt me into jacking it all in and taking up the cause of National-Bolshevism once and for all. Luckily, the cause of the market will probably not hinge on the substance of this kind of incoherent gibberish, so I will not forswear liberal democracy just yet. As the beginning is the best place to start, that is where I shall do it:

"Max Webber, in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, maintains that Britain succeeded to become the workshop of the world because of its religious values and practices, which forced the people to carry out their duties scrupulously. J.A. Tickner, in Self-Reliance versus Power Politics, based economic development on the blending of traditional values with economic exigencies."

As Borda's by-line has it, he is "an economist specialising in the economic development of small states". And in the typical fashion of a contributor to The Times, he attempts to bolster his alleged academic credentials by name-dropping some intellectual heavyweights, such as Max Weber, whose surname he manages to misspell.
So far, so good, if one is to be magnanimous. Where newspaper commentary pieces should ideally be concise and breezy, Borda strives to show off the breadth, if not the depth, of his reading. If you can only manage an undergraduate-style essay like his, it is probably only fair to concede that he doesn't too bad a job. But as any fools knows, all students need guidance and supervision, the same way that all journalists need an editor. Perhaps that way this sentence could have been phrased differently:

"Apparently, the only common denominator that runs across countries in our day is that governments are appointed through periodical reference to the electorate."

By which he means, "Most countries today are democracies". Not that that would be a particularly accurate way of putting either. And the essay, or article, continues in just this vein, though it gradually slides from University student paraphrasing set texts to sixth former copying and pasting out of Encarta. This frankly childish exemplar is indicative of just that:

"Whereas [Adam] Smith was balanced and objective in his analytical approach, Marx stressed that it was labour that created wealth and propagated the idea of labour power. This paved the way for a more extreme socialist atmosphere.
It found fertile soil in Russia when two formidable political leaders - Ulianoff, who called himself Lenin, and the Jew Bronstein, who had taken the name of Trotsky - initially assumed all political power after the Czar was forced to abdicate. Ultimately, it was Lenin who became the sole authoritarian."

Overlooking the distinctly dubious reference to "the Jew Bronstein", which has Merchant of Venice stamped all over it, the historical narrative is utterly sophomoric. As for what it contributes to the democracy as a complement to a strong economy argument, that's beyond me. Appropriately enough, Borda trudges on in this vein for a couple more paragraphs before realising that he's in over his head and gives, choosing instead to have a bash at Asian tigers.
In four linguistically tortured paragraphs he arrives at the heart of the thesis, which for those that do not actually want to read the original article (and who could blame you?) is that social welfare can be bad for the economy. At this point he forgot to remind the reader about the time he read that book by Friedrich von Hayek, though it is quite possible that his works have not yet been published in a pop-up version.
After 15 godforsaken paragraphs of this crud, Borda applies the sum total of his expertise on the economic development of small states by introducing the Maltese perspective:

"Over the years, particularly since the Seventies, this has also been seen in Malta. For decades we had a bloated public service and many government entities were created so that they could serve as vehicles for political patronage."

Well, duh! I vowed myself that I would never resort to such asinine interjections, but when you've got to, you've got to. I will say for Borda though, that he's too bad a student of the widely embraced belief that democracy and successful economies are necessary bedfellows to argue it convincingly. Expert ideologues are adept at being selective in illustrating evidence, but Borda throws the whole bucket at us and hopes that we don't notice the shortfalls. So he breezily pops this out, without expecting the reader to wonder how exactly it fits into the tidy formula:

"China, too, though not completely abandoning its political ideology, has introduced the market economy because it too discovered that the way it used to manage the economy was very restrictive and did not allow it to flourish."

Though this is missing the point. Which is, very simply, that although Malta continues to be cursed with a virulently clientelistic political order, we should not necessarily infer from this that democracy in the country is fundamentally compromised. Not that you can blame Borda for that. He does have to feed his family after all.

Method and Madness

2006-03-06T16:04:00.000Z

How many forms can foolishness take? As most readers of this blog would probably concur, The Times and its contributors are indisputably an overflowing cornucopia of ludicrousness, though it is not without some disappointment that latterly this has manifested itself in the drab ramblings of witless bores. Thus, when I (metaphorically) opened up Monday's issue of the paper and found Carmel J. Delia's nonsensical asininity, I was relieved to find that The Times has extended its retinue of loons to the category of good old-fashioned cranks.
Still, I am confused. Delia's style feels like it would be more at home amidst the litany of Americanate giddiness that is the unwholesomely titled basketball column "Take it to the Hole".
The irrepressible high spirit of Delia’s outpourings certainly doesn’t look comfortable alongside dog-impersonator Lino Spiteri's characteristically dull article. An image that comes to mind is of a clown at a funeral.
And the less said of Joseph Muscat's contribution the better. Though it would be amiss not to note that of the 1278 words reserved for this buffoon’s article, only 279 of them were actually written by him. The rest is a huge chunk of text lifted directly out of the Convergence Plan 2005-2008 to the European Union. I am lost for words as to how to remark on this unashamed indolence, other than calling for Muscat to be publicly horsewhipped.
So how does Delia fit into all this? Someone once offered me a fascinating theory for the proliferation of village crazies in Russia. At the height of the Stalinist purges, even personal behaviour was subject to the suspicion of authorities or officious neighbours. Consequently, talking out of turn would immediately be reported to the secret police. Likewise, anyone not saying anything at all could be reported, as they might be thinking subversive thoughts. The only solution was to talk rubbish all day, which meant that you were probably just an idiot. Which brings us back to Delia.
But is rubbishing Delia fair? To pursue the Russian thread, there is much in his writing that is reminiscent of the skaz genre, best executed in my opinion by Soviet humorist Mikhail Zoshchenko. This author in particular was best known for his coruscating commentaries on the absurdness of daily Soviet existence. To quote from The Literary Encyclopaedia, "skaz appeared quite widely ... as a parodic device, undermining narrative (and/or central) authority by invoking the discourse of the “other” (implicitly the “not-author”)". To put it crudely, by adopting this curious prose style, the writer contrives to obviate the appearance of dissent; a highly perilous activity in Stalinst Russia.
What Delia is so afraid of is not yet clear. Could the organising committee of the Malta Song for Europe pose as horrifying a threat as Dzerzhinsky's chekist menace? Surely only the prospect of their cruel repression could account for this inspired lunacy:

"As The Beatles once sung, money can't buy love, but it might be just the tool one needs to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. Unless, of course, a knackered microphone, or two, gets in your way!
Yessiree, one does get knackered microphones even in this day and age of face transplants and orbiting spacecraft!"

And the next quote is pure Gogolian madness, though the cavalier use of language leans more towards the poetry of Archy the cockroach:

"Now, everyone knows that these days going to a hairdressing salon is almost a must and so practically everybody does pay a visit to these salons, especially so women."

The choice quotes are far too many to include here, despite the commendable brevity of the column itself. So after my wavering indecision, I have decided that in Delia we have indeed been endowed with a subversive holy fool. A great day for The Times! A great day for Malta!

Natural Bore

2006-02-27T23:01:00.000Z

The prospect of it hovered above loyal Times readers' heads like a ghastly dread, and after an extended period of restraint Jo-jo Mifsud Bonnici has finally lashed out against Kenneth Wain's invective on constitutional affairs. Wain's original article was written such a long time ago that it is no longer available on The Times on-line archive, so curious readers wanting to know what it is that Jo-jo is on about now, will be obliged to pay a visit to the National Library, which will memorialise this ridiculous exchange among irrelevant geriatrics in perpetuity. It is not immediately clear why it has taken Mifsud Bonnici a month and a half to put together this crabby reply, though there are some hints that he may have spent some time hitting his books in a bid to thwart his opponent. He throws off a reference to legal theorists as though their work constituted his bedtime reading:

"I have to begin by stating once again that what I objected to with regard to the use of the cliché 'naturalistic fallacy' was and is based not on my likes or dislikes but simply because it is a false statement, as demonstrated by Finnis. E. Moore and other philosophers who use the cliché have repeated it without looking at it closely as Finnis does."

But cursory research throws up some worrying evidence about the regard that Mifsud Bonnici has for accuracy. Enthusiastic readers of this polemic may well wonder who exactly Finnis E. Moore is. Might he by any chance be related to legal philosopher John Finnis? Or to G.E. Moore even? You might expect a bit more from a man who taught law in the country's university, especially one that takes some pleasure in chiding philosophers for not "looking at things closely".
No further proof of in-depth investigation is suggested by the subsequent paragraph either. One would imagine that at this stage of this legal slagging-off contest that the sparring partners would have ceased what Anthony Licari would probably render as "going around the almond" and would have defined their respective premises. And yet Mifsud Bonnici offers a definition of entrenchment that has undergraduate essay written all over it:

"Coming to entrenchment. If Prof. Wain used it simply as a technical word I have to reiterate that indeed it is and it describes what is a juridical device or technique used by jurists who are looking for a form of legislative restraint for the whims of simple majorities who change and twist laws to suit their temporary hold of power."

I will be humble and concede that it may be my deficiencies in comprehension that made me read a sentence from the following paragraph about three times before even beginning to understand it. If I were a bit more confident in my abilities, however, I might suggest that the childish and careless (and rushed?) punctuation would have hindered the efforts of even the most interested reader.

"I do not see anything special or particular in 'our kind of entrenchment' which qualifies it as 'anti-democratic' unless, of course, Prof. Wain does not mean to single out our kind of entrenchment as being anti-democratic but holds all kinds of entrenchment as being so."

Or has Mifsud Bonnici been devoting the last six weeks to formulating new ideas? Judging from the number of references to earlier arguments (e.g. "I have to begin by stating once again", "I have to reiterate", "I also repeat what I said", "I did also say" etc.), there is very little that is original in this sour and academically impoverished nonsense.
The motivation for this article has, in fact, everything to do with an infantilism redolent of a schoolboy pissing contest. Which makes it all the more ironic when Jo-jo asks whether "we [will] ever reach ... maturity?"
And it is immaturity that compels him to perform what he must believe to be a masterful feat of rhetorical entrapment:

"Happily, I can conclude my intervention by noting that Prof. Wain, in his ultimate paragraph, in part at least, agrees with what I have just written. He in fact states, with reference to natural law: 'Today it is not worth keeping and unnecessary for sustaining human rights'. I take this to be an acknowledgement that, at least up till today, natural law was necessary to bring forward human rights and sustain them. It is only now, today, since the battle has been won, that natural law is not worth keeping as it is no longer necessary for sustaining human rights as they have now taken root and are entrenched in most constitutions."

If this is what passes for lawyerly bravado, then God help us. In the unlikely scenario that Mifsud Bonnici were ever to be defending me in litigation over a parking ticket, can I just put in an early request. Lethal injection please.

Dear Sir

2006-02-23T18:11:00.000Z

Fans of The Times letter pages will have been overcome with uncontainable joy over the last couple of days. On Wednesday alone the page featured no less than 23 missives, while Thursday's issue accommodated a no less impressive 20 letters. And as always when the harvest is this bountiful, the odd gem was turned up. Consider the gratitude of Lina Mangion of Gzira:

"I would like to say well done to the mayor of Gzira, Albert Rizzo, for doing his utmost to keep the Gzira Strand free of dog excrement."

The curious image of Rizzo personally walking around Gzira forking up turds with a swordstick is only superseded by the subsequent behaviour attributed to the local council by Mangion:

"However, what has been removed from the Strand has now been transferred to the side streets of Gzira, in particular the shortest street in the area, namely Sir Henry Bouverie Street, corner with lower St Albert Street and corner with Fleet Street."

Analise Cassar Farrugia of Qawra makes a seamless transition from talking about crap to talking crap with a censorious traducement of Maltese parents:

"I hope that ... parents of these children are made aware of the risks and dangers that an under-age child can face in areas intended for the entertainment of mature patrons."

By referring to "under-age children", Cassar Farrugia is presumably adopting the kind of high-handed moralism that alienates parents from their offspring. At any rate, I don't know what she means by mature patrons, but I can't say I've seen many around Paceville.
John Catania of San Gwann makes a not unreasonable argument for using the Maltese cross on the euro, though he is fatally let down by what is an obviously overworked and under-qualified letter editor, who chose to attach the title "Pope for euro". Aside from the fact that this sounds more like an electoral slogan than a headline, it completely misrepresents Catania's only slightly pious views:

"I do not see anything wrong in promoting our Christian roots even if the message were to be carried through our coinage, but we could retain our Christian image if we copied the Vatican's euro coins, which carry the image of the Pope, our shepherd, and simply insert the Maltese eight-pointed cross to differentiate. This way others stand to follow."

British reader Ray Boulton wins the prize for the most pointless letter of the day. Though the award would not be wholly deserved as if ever there was a man holding out for a discount then here he is:

"Once again we have decided to return to Malta, and specifically to the St George's Complex in St Julians. We return because we have always enjoyed our time among friendly staff who seem to go out of their way to ensure we have a most pleasant holiday. I would also like to mention the Eros newsagents who are also extremely customer friendly."

So that's two weeks accommodation half price and free copies of the Daily Mail fom Eros if you please. I'm more of a Phoenicia man myself. And have I ever said how fond I am of Sterling Jewellers of Valletta.
And because the Times has no dignity and does not deem itself to be much more than a glorified notice board, Michelle Laidman from Canada obliges by sending in a letter that looks like the prelude to the kind of dramatic reunion one might otherwise find on the Ricki Lake Show. As if she weren't writing to a serious (ahem) national newspaper she starts out with:

"Hi Nadine. It's been about 10 years since we've been in contact. So much has happened in my life as, I'm sure, in yours."

Against all conceivable odds, the image on the euro debate rolled on with tedious inexorability into Thursday with no less than five letters on the subject. Albert Ellul of Zurrieq, for example, "just cannot understand the fuss being made against the proposed image of the Baptism of the Christ on one of the euro coins". Which is presumably why he is one of so many to send in letters in support of the idea. His argument that dollar bills have the invocation "In God We Trust" written on them had already been put forward by Censu Galea in Australia on Monday and was subsequently rebutted on Friday by Joseph Bonnici from Rhode Island. If anyone could follow that sequence, they might have divined the fact that The Times's international readers appear to have the finger on the pulse better than people inside Malta do.
If one were to look for positive signs in The Times's utter lack of discretion in publishing the letters of all and sundry, it might be that they hold freedom of opinion in too high esteem to contemplate not doing so. So, while some newspapers are stupidly offensive, The Times can proudly claim to be offensively stupid.

********************************

Against my better judgement, I must pass some comment on this snippet from Anthony Licari's latest influential column:

"A different category of admiring proofreaders have been suggesting ways I could improve my Francophile English. These include portly buxom sad chicks teaching English, high-browed doctored doctors from Transylvania and especially very lonely blogging introverts with a pinch of agoraphobia - at least. I will try to cooperate - while you excuse my French."

I too have studied at three prestigious universities (two of them British, I might add), so I feel that I am within my rights to give some tips on how to write cogent and comprehensible English prose. When writing about something, will the author please not be so self-important and presumptuous to assume that everybody, or anybody, will have the slightest idea what it is that he is repining about. "Portly buxom sad chicks" indeed! And has he fallen out with commas or what?

Worthless Euro

2006-02-21T17:50:00.000Z

It is common to see utter lack of humility and foolishness on the pages of The Times, but to see them combined in such undiluted form as in Tuesday's column by John A. Consiglio is rare. To set the scene, the subject at hand is the once-boring and now thoroughly cretinous euro versus ewro debate. Supposedly, by his own boastful admission, Consiglio was one of the first to rattle this vacuous orthographical hornet's nest.

"Having been among the first to throw in my whatever worth in this argument about the correct spelling to be used for the single European currency to be hopefully adopted in Malta after January 2008, I have really enjoyed the contributions (including those of the hotheads) that have appeared about the subject."

The article is written in that extraordinarily smug fashion that only those that have actually achieved something should be able to get away with. By the end of the second paragraph, Consiglio contrives to make no less four asides, in what he must imagine to be convincingly vaudevillian wit. Note, however, that they serve only to demonstrate that like the standard village bore, Consiglio is interested in only his own fat-headed opinion, failing even to remember who it is exactly that he disagrees with.

"But the cherry on the cake was that statement by whoever (officially authorised, powerful, qualified or not, or whatever) who said (wherever) that in legal and official texts it will have to be spelt 'euro', but it's worth encouraging (how condescending!) its use as "ewro" in other Maltese texts."

After the prerequisite bragging, he then proceeds to make an argument that I would wager has developed no more since the first time he made. Namely, this is that the wise counsel of the Akkademja tal-Malti has decreed that ewro is to be spelling. It has gone strangely unreported that the same academy has pledged to issue a pox on any house that fails to assent to its edicts. Not that that's true, but it might as well be, since its the only way that any of their guidelines are likely to adopted.
Consiglio then dangles the threat of what he imagines will be the popular rage that will assail the National Euro Changeover Committee should it "kowtow to any EU body that happens to bleat at it". Talk about the pot calling the kettle black; though it would probably be more accurate to describe Consiglio's remarks as whinnying rather than bleating.
What I assume to be a new branch in Consiglio's thoughts on the matter, and does he appear to have devoted an unseemly amount of time to it, is described generously by its proponent as "tangential". Tangential being the English word meaning "slightly relevant". Not tangential as in frigging ridiculous as so inapposite a line of argument as to verge on the senile. The paragraph is daft enough to deserve quoting in its full unfettered preposterousness:

"On another note which, I know, some will describe as tangential thinking, I would like to point out that in this country we also happen to have an Interpretation Act. This essentially provides that where a Maltese legal text might clash in its interpretation with the interpretation of the English language version of the same law, then it is the Maltese interpretation of said law which should prevail. Now in the case of whichever court (Maltese or European or whatever) that might some day be required to deliberate on the meaning of either ewro or euro then I have no doubt that the learned judges will easily decide and interpret euro and ewro as exactly the same common currency of the eurozone member states of the European Union. So there really should be no problem in writing ewro in all Maltese legal texts and all other material written in Maltese."

And how can you rely on the cognitive and argumentative faculties of somebody who unconvincgly begins relating his tedious anecdote with these highlighted words:

"On a final note, and this if my memory serves me right, I distinctly recall the former Minister of Education and President Emeritus - and a sincere lover of both our Maltese and European cultural heritage - Ugo Mifsud Bonnici pulling me up at a packed Chamber of Commerce meeting to insist that when speaking in Maltese I should say ewro and not euro."

As a legal argument this is complete piffle. So returning to his opening gambit about throwing in his "whatever worth into this argument", my suggestion is that whatever the currency is eventually called, the sum should be zero. Or xejn, for the purists.

Open and Shut Case

2006-02-19T12:12:00.000Z

Sometimes, I wonder why The Times is sold to the public at all. The assembled opinionists of Malta are so fond of conducting their personal exchanges through the medium of their columns that reading them feels invasive and voyeuristic. This was further compounded on Sunday by the disturbing spectacle of Lino Spiteri's dumbfounding impersonation of a dog in what I believe to be some kind of veiled verbal assault on somebody. I say that I believe as it is very far from clear to me what Spiteri is wittering on about in his introductory paragraph:

"Dog Does Not bite dog.
This one certainly shall not as much as much as growl and bare one single tooth-gap at old friends who also sniff around the terrain of this newspaper and its sister daily. If I wuff wuff gently just once at two of them I do it not to pick a fight, more as a compliment: I did notice that they were around with compelling intent and make a rare exception to my not engaging other contributors."

As I have tried to argue before on this blog, The Times gives every impression of gathering material for publication by redirecting the content of their in-tray straight into the pages of the newspaper. If you are willing to write rubbish prolix enough to permit graduation out of the letter section, then the world's your oyster. Well, The Times is your oyster anyway. Deficiencies in style and writing abilities are, in what might perhaps be considered by some as appreciable democracy, no obstacle to having even the most deranged garbage stuck in.
Lino Spiteri is obviously, in spite of appearances, no amateur in the writing trade. But even he has no respect for basic style rules that even first-year University students are meant to be versed in. What follows is a slightly amended three-point tip "borrowed" from a web style guide on opening paragraphs, which Spiteri might find useful:

Give an introduction to the topic the article deals with; a general sentence or two will usually suffice.
Offer background information about the topic that will help familiarise your readers and generate interest.
Put forward the article's thesis statement, which is usually reserved for the last sentence of the opening paragraph.

But Spiteri imagines that we already inhabit the intimate space of his own thoughts. It is hardly for lack of space that he cannot concede even a single word to clarity of expression. Like many Times columnists before him, Spiteri assumes that the reader will be so fascinated by the debates among writers that no explanation is required. If Spiteri's design was literary, he may out of his depth.
Personally, I favour the first line of Anthony's Burgess's Earthly Powers:

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

The book is especially rewarding in a scene in which a pretentious and untalented Maltese writer comes to dinner at the narrator's house, an insult against the country that Burgess probably intended as retaliation against the local philistine censors that tormented him.
However, for some of The Times columnists I wonder if other first lines might not be more apt. I am thinking in particular of the opening Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, a work demanding intellectual and academic analytical rigour of the sort normally reserved for the pages of The Times:

"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man."

Or even more succinctly, for the paranoid and insane, who are certainly not underrepresented, is the stark first line from Ken Kesey's psychiatric ward novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:

"They're out there."

Anyhow, the point is that I fear that pending literary inspiration, contributors Times might be best advised against venturing into practices requiring wit, metaphor, pathos or even competence in the area under review. Of course, one could protest that this would make the newspaper too boring for words.
Now that would be funny.

Mickey Mouse Column

2006-02-14T23:17:00.000Z

When is an aphorism not an aphorism? Well, judging by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s column in the Independent, it’s when it’s a slightly pointless observation, strung out in such a way as to provide the building blocks of an equally senseless column. This epigrammatic approach, consisting of a cobbled-together sequences of barely cogent thoughts, is reminiscent of another writer whose name it would be unwise recall.
To the troubling issues of our day Pullicino Orlando proposes the constructive approach of inviting John Bundy to reprise the spirit of memorable Pajjiz tal-Mickey Mouse. This is not the forum to explore and reflect on the utter stupidity of that song and its creator, but the fact that Pullicino Orlando chooses to begin the segment of the article with:

Hunger, poverty, discrimination, disease, global warming, nuclear proliferation… the list of issues which humanity should be doing its utmost to tackle is impressive.

… and finish with…

Remember that famous John Bundy song, Pajjiz tal-Mickey Mouse? It seems Dinja tal-Mickey Mouse would be a fitting sequel.

… is telling in itself.
Yet he invites us to have a laugh at the stupid Americans; again, and this is really stretching the goodwill of even the most generously inclined readers, by suggesting that John Bundy provide a sequel to his ghastly song. Of all the things he could cite, of all the great satire of history, from Twain and Jonathan Swift to George Orwell and Mariella’s Diary, that he could have called upon, he invokes the cretinous spasm of a man whose cultural contribution to the world currently consists of driving cars into the studio during L-Istrina.
After a twee Biblical-style parable about the euro, a subject that promises to overshadow the meaning of life as a favoured topic of conversation, Pullicino Orlando wilily merges two current issues into this Mike Giggler observation:

"Since we are now officially the happiest country in the world I agree with those who suggest we put a happy face on our euro coins."

Just to recap, the article started out with poverty and disease, but with sleight of hand of such sagacious deftness that comes straight out G.K.Chesterton he rounds off his mongrel of senselessness with a cutesy anecdote that rightly belongs in a “The Funny Things They Say” column. Proper newspapers tend to pay their columnists, and Pullicino Orlando might indeed have been eligible for a £50 cheque had he sent in his story to a down-market magazine for bored housewives. As it is, if the editor of the Independent has any sense, he will have rewarded Pullicino Orlando for this story with a pat on the head and a boiled sweet.

"I’d like to round this article off by sharing an amusing incident with you. My youngest daughter, Marija, is seven and my partner’s daughter, Celine, is nine.
They often engage in heated debates about a wide variety of topics. They were watching Hocus Pocus this week, yet again.
There is a reference to virgins at one point.
'What’s a virgin?' I heard Celine asking Marija while I was preparing supper in the next room. 'It’s someone who only eats vegetables,' was Marija’s prompt reply.
I nearly knocked over the salad!"

Coughing Fit

2006-02-13T22:06:00.000Z

Had I been drinking something when I read the line below, from The Times' leader on Monday, I would certainly have sprayed it out hilariously in the style of a Hollywood comedy:

"Written in the desiccated style so beloved of academics and environmentalists, the State of the Environment Report for 2005, just published by Mepa, makes powerful - not to say disquieting - reading."

This singularly hypocritical characterisation of the report's prose precedes, however, a slavishly admiring article on the content. The worrying issue at the heart of this editorial is the withdrawn blandness of the newspapers position. It would be fatuous to expect this flabby newspaper to express any scepticism about the genuine commitment of this government to Malta's environmental well-being.
The Times idiotically parrots Lawrence Gonzi's plangent appeal for the conservation of the environment, though it reserves the right of not reminding its readers that the Prime Minister believes that "people [have to be made] aware the environment is their responsibility as much as it is Government’s." Which should be read as "We like nature, but we'll be damned if we're losing any votes over it."
As in other areas of political life, the Nationalist government relies on the moral and political expediency of EU membership to account for increased "standards and policies for environmental protection and awareness." And as if Parliament had been toppled by a Greenpeace-funded coup d'etat the Times codedly implies that the government has taken green values to its bosom, though local environmentalists may be of another opinion:

"The real wonder is that his government, and those before it, have taken so long to realise the parlous effects of the way we have treated our environment."

In spite of the at best lacklustre efforts at addressing these issues, The Times casts the Minister for the Environment into a gloriously Sisyphean pose.

"While the Minister for the Environment, George Pullicino, bravely points to vestigial improvements in reducing air pollution and bathing water quality, he has to admit that 'we must continue to improve environmental quality in these areas, as we must also do in the areas where the challenges are greater, as, for example, for waste management and nature protection.' These last words hide a multitude of sins."

The asthma sufferers produced by the Delimara power plant may well agree, though it may prove hard to convince them of the Nationalist government's commitment to their respiratory well-being. But The Times is rather too busy uncritically quoting extensive chunks to busy itself with critical insight. For the sake of statistical completeness, it should be noted that just under than 200 words of the 550-word article consisted of direct quotes from the report, which is probably more than necessary considering anyone that wants to see the flashy pamphlets can do so for themselves here (or here in Maltese).
As it is, the report is being trickled out into The Times, without any meddling comment, is bitesize easy-to-ignore installments. This way, everyone wins. Pullicino gets to play the enlightened hippie, Gonzi smugly intones his Confucian meditation on the balance of nature, and the rest of the country listens to all the bold announcements on their car stereos.

Minister for Boring Affairs

2006-02-11T20:44:00.000Z

On the day that Sharon Spiteri commented on her aspiration for more English-language literature, The Times began its own foray into redefining the boundaries of contemporary semantics. Consequently, under the rubric of the opinion columns, we found Michael Frendo's bone-dry and bone-headed exegesis of Maltese foreign policy. The article itself purports to be about a document about the recently published "Strategic Objectives of Malta's Foreign Policy", though it is in fact an exact copy of the foreword of the document itself. And speaking of purporting, there is something not altogether felicitous about this sentence:

This document purports to be a framework document that sets out the general lines of the strategic objectives of Malta's foreign policy.

So, where does the line lie, in the mind of The Times' opinion page editor, between publishing the self-serving bureaucratic twaddle of a man who has increasingly taken on the pallor of a Madame Tussuad's waxwork model and an actual opinion. The policy statement has already been reported as a news item in The Times, as well having been the subject of not one, but two other columns by Michael Frendo, whose dead stare has ever more acquired the glassy quality of somebody who has seen things you people wouldn't believe, such as attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
But since Frendo cannot offer anything but verbatim chunks of text written by some unthanked grunt at the ministry, I will have to proffer my own opinion on the so-called strategic objectives. They're rubbish. Consider the first two points:

1. Harness Malta’s geopolitical relevance to maximise political and economic benefits
2. Make a success of European Union membership and contribute towards the construction of a European Union which gives added value to its member states and its citizens

As opposed to what exactly? Would be too much to venture that these ridiculous statements have to be issued from the various ministries from time to time to persuade Castille that they are doing some work at Palazzo Parisio? That and that Frendo has not in fact departed to other world, in spite of his worsening appearance of cadaverousness.

***********************

It is obvious that Andrew Borg Cardona's indefatigable pomposity is specifically designed to consistently aggravate the readers of the Times, but his now regular spot on the restaurant of the week has gone straight from arrogant to ridiculous, and transcended into a whole new level of effrontery.
This week, the fat owl of the remove doesn't even bother denying that he has been given his meal for free, though he does not overlook reminding us that the latest victim of his gorging "is not a cheap place at which to dine out". Not cheap, that is unless the manager is sure that the customer in question is going to write a column about how great the restaurant is. Of course, whether the disinterested readers of the column should be taking the appropriately nicknamed Bocca's advice to heart, considering his faculties for judging taste will have been deadened by the decades of smoking he lobbies for so energetically, is a matter for them to decide.

Notes From the Moulding Darkness

2006-02-08T01:02:00.000Z

How sad that Fausto at Malta 69 Methadone has been so quick to scorn the insightful contributions of Anthony Licari on the evils of anonymous blogging. How easy it would be to demur that people are forced into anonymity by threats of being referred to "democratic legal and journalistic structures" for merely contesting the validity of someone's competence to write columns in a national newspaper. And not just any national newspaper; the newspaper of record itself, if you please. It's surely footling pedantry to raise Licari's sloppiness in managing to grievously misspell a word in the very first paragraph of his "column":

Zombies are very easily provoked. It suffices to utter the words "Fred" or "Tony" or to "dare" show displeasure at anything this administration is doing wrong to have them grunting under their protective tombtones.

To be exact, it is hardly relevant to speak of zombies being provoked. Surely a better insult, or constructive criticism, might have been to refer to the noxious bloggers in question as jellyfish; attacking unannounced and utterly spineless. Zombies are of quite another species. Indeed, as wikipedia explains, zombism can be induced by:

"... the victim's own belief-system, possibly leading to compliance with the attacker's will, and causing quasi-hysterical amnesia, catatonia, or other psychological disorders..."

Not that readers should even begin trying attempting to cast anybody in that role. For as it says in the book of St. Anthony of Licari, "if you aim at nameless people say what you like". Yes readers, you're right, there should be a comma between 'people' and 'say', but isn't it too much to expect universities, any of the three you've been to, to teach such fripperies as punktuation and speeling. Faithful readers, your sadistic minds and stomachs disappoint me.
I might go so far as to say that your inferences are clearly criminal and are definitely not covered by freedom of expression. Are you not aware that you are not at liberty to offend, criticise or mock? Get ye to a dank buried hole. Can you have a buried hole? Does that make sense? Weeell, you get the point.

Laughing All the Way to the Euro

2006-02-02T20:14:00.000Z

As time does not allow, I shall not be able to blog as I would wish today. Not wanting to leave the day's spot empty, however, I shall yield the space to a rib-tickling corker appearing in letter pages of The Times today. Like Victor J. de Bono, whose impertinence has so angered the internee fan club, Paul Sant Cassia lives in England, or in Cambridge to be exact. He has the temerity to poke fun at the Maltese from his English perch, where he is probably studying Gay Studies, or something similarly immoral and unChristian. Sadly for him, the United Kingdom has not adopted the Euro, so his currency-based wit must be shamefully unused in those parts. Gratefully, he has generously obliged to endow the men and fishwives of Malta with his ribald largesse:

Here are my tongue-in-cheek suggestions for the euro designs, which may not make me very popular:

¤ The Erica decorating the Brittany coast

¤ A white taxi crawling along on the inner lane

¤ A Pisanello-type relief of a bus driver

¤ The recently resurfaced road to Castille as a contemporary cart-rut

¤ The Sliema Front as a World Heritage Site for our contribution to world architecture

¤ A slim child to represent that we have the greatest percentage of obese children in Europe

¤ The fish farms that mysteriously never make it on to the tourist brochures conceived by the ever-changing Malta Tourism Authority

¤ The Dockyards as an example of our contribution to European research investment

¤ Some elegantly attired youths in Paceville gazing philosophically at some auto-generated effluent on the ground

Readers will have their own suggestions. We have a rich repertoire to draw upon, and we should not be ashamed to propose them.

Chortle, chortle.

Sweet Dreams

2006-02-01T22:40:00.000Z

If mere mortals are deserving of a little pampering, then what concupiscent luxury should one of Malta foremost diplomats be allowed to lavish upon himself. The answer, as In-Nazzjon has discovered to its misfortune, is not safe to venture into. The diplomat in question is none other than that who the common man must cautiously refrain from insulting in any way, lest a lawsuit direct itself in the direction of the offending remark: His Excellency, Richard Matrenza.
It must be said that never has a finer man represented his country. Not for a moment could anyone suggest, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, that he is quiet and small, that he is black, from his ears to the tip of his tail; that he can creep through the tiniest crack, that he can walk on the narrowest rail; that he can pick any card from a pack, that he is equally cunning with dice; that he is always deceiving you into believing, that he's only hunting for mice. Indeed were "[these allegations] presented as [facts], it [would be] up to the defendants to prove the truth of their allegations."
As in the case of the Towelgate, in which Matrenza was maligned for spending a paltry Lm1,687 on sheets and towels, the offending journalist would be compelled the prove the truth of the allegation that he is cunning with dice. After all, the pejorative implications of cunning could certainly lend themselves them to hugely libellous inferences for a high representative of the Maltese government. As for creeping through tiny cracks, the less said the better.
So let's make this quite clear, Lm1,687 is about the most perfect sum of money that could be spent on bed linen for four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two lavatories.
Consider, for instance, that eight king-size sets of White 'Bed by Conran' Measure Fitted Sheets will cost £360 sterling. Four King-size John Lewis Hungarian Goose Down Pillows will cost another £360. Four John Lewis Hungarian Goose Down Duvets then set you back another whopping £1120. And so on. You get the picture.
Imply, suggest, or insinuate that Hungarian Geese were not necessarily the only alternative and you will be directed to the logic above. Prove that "the purchases were unnecessary" and you're laughing. But frankly, only a communist or a pederast could be so base as to suggest that Richard Matrenza, perhaps the most imposing statesman since the age of Charlemagne, should sleep in four "completely bare" bedrooms of the official residence. Only a sick mind could contrive to imagine that Matrenza should have bought some of his bed linen and towels at Marks and Spencers, where only African and Belarusian diplomats are content to do their shopping.
Another day of Maltese justice is over, and Matrenza gets an extra Lm600 to stuff his cushions with.

Why "W"? Zzzzz...

2006-01-30T23:10:00.000Z

The ewro debate continues inexplicably to drag on. Joseph Muscat, Labour member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, is even going so far as to call it the "w" controversy. As David at Lanzarote pointed out, however, the issue has been rumbling on and been debated about for quite some time, though Muscat sounds as though he's going to start claiming that the MLP is the only thing standing between Maltese dignity and EU indifference:

Labour is taking a proactive, realistic and sensible approach to the issue.

I admit that I did have to read the article a couple of times before I was certain what exactly was being discussed. Indeed, when you talk about sensible approaches, can you really spew this bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and expect to be taken seriously:

What we need to do is embark on a proper convergence plan, mapping out a vision for the country's economy and planning well in advance for the eventual adoption of the euro. The principles guiding such a plan should be economic rather than political. Once again I submit that Gordon Brown's tests are an ideal benchmark.

What this has to do with having a lampuka on the five eurocent coin, I'm not sure. Of course, it has nothing to do with the euro itself, but represents a clumsy attempt to criticise Maltese currency policies, but because Muscat is too intellectually lazy he rides an anodyne eurocratic line on the back of the frankly uninspiring ewro debacle.
To apply an analogy, all the quote above actually says is that if you want to drive to, say, Paris, make sure you have enough petrol. And also, check that you know where Paris actually is. As advice goes, it isn't wrong, but you could probably do without it. But it wouldn't be an MLP column if it didn't set forth this technical, well-informed attack on current government policy:

Excuse me, but I do not see any of that in what the Maltese government is doing. Instead, it seems to be dealing with the transition to the euro as simply a change in currency.

This is not to say that Muscat is short of questions, though he is a bit spare with answer. Consider the following list of queries:

Is 2008 - with elections and all to add insult to injury - the right time for a changeover? There is an even more important question. Is the rate of exchange, unilaterally determined by the Maltese authorities, the ideal changeover rate for an export-led and tourism-dependent economy such as ours?

Muscat's sophisticated consideration is worth its weight in gold:

I have my doubts.

As the reader drags through this tedious pointlessness and the will to live takes more blows than any 800-word article should be able to inflict, the question arises as to why anyone could be so conceited as to write this. But then Muscat gets to his aim, inspired by the most primitive sentiment that mankind knows: pride. His self-gratification in this instance is related to his momentous achievement of having an amendment entered into a European Parliament report on Promoting And Protecting Consumers' Interests in The New Member States. Hopefully, this exciting tome will soon be available for sale in the Malta International Airport, but in the meantime savour Muscat's earth-shattering contribution:

"Calls on the Commission, together with all relevant stakeholders, to launch a strategic information and education campaign to prepare consumers effectively for the adoption of the euro in the new member states; stresses that this campaign should build on both the positive and negative experiences of the adoption of the euro among the old member states".

To which I will say only this; if Joseph Muscat is the man proposing to inform the Maltese people, then God save us.

Criminal Idleness

2006-01-29T19:01:00.000Z

Can you imagine my surprise, not to speak of shock, when I went to The Times website on Sunday to find an article by Natalino Fenech, headlined "Drug police make record seizures", purporting to be some kind of shock scoop? The data will come as little news to those that read my post dating back to January 17, for which I expect to win multiple local blog awards. Yet the staleness of the "news" does not prevent Fenech from breathlessly divulging his information as though it had come from Deep Throat himself:

"Drug seizure statistics obtained by The Sunday Times show that in 2005 the police seized 15.5 kg of heroin, 6.4 kg of cocaine, nearly 17,300 Ecstasy pills and 21.5 kg of cannabis."

The use of the verb "obtained" is, I think, crucial to understanding what is wrong with so much Maltese journalism. To introduce an international parallel, anybody that has ever read an Italian newspaper will know how much space is taken up by interviews on topical issues. British and American newspapers also interview specialists, but they almost never transplant unexpurgated, irrelevant waffle into the heart of a news-filled page three. Their Italian counterparts have no such qualms and will happily devote 200-300 words of space to an interview with, say, Valeria Marini on the rise of interest rates. Indeed, interviewees need not be informed or erudite, they have to fulfil one simple prerequisite: answering the phone. Because if there is anything that Italian journalists hate having to do then that is doing research and leaving the office.
Well, Maltese journalists take this bone-idleness to new levels. Therefore, instead of finding stories and investigating them, they wait for the stories to come to them. Therefore, the implication of the word "obtained" here is that Natalino Fenech may have had to leave the office or make a phone call. Maybe the fax machine at the Ministry of Justice broke down, and he had to go and pick up the data in person. Maybe he couldn't read his own notes and had to call them back. The possibilities are limitless.
Perhaps this raises more worrying issues, such as why these statistics are not freely available on the Ministry web site. I searched for Maltese crime statistics a few days ago, but it was all in vain (If anyone can give me any tips on this front, it would be much appreciated). But I think it would be more interesting in this context to ask why a journalist for the most important newspapers in the country has reported the news so late, when all he had to do was pick up the phone and call 22957000, the phone number for the Ministry. Or there always faxes at 22957348. Or if he wanted to be really flashy, perhaps a quick e-mail to mjha@gov.mt. Indeed, after I complete this post, I will send the following e-mail to that very address:

"To whom it may concern,

May I kindly request the most recent statistics you have for drug seizures in Malta and Gozo. I am asking for this information in relation to a report appearing in the January 29 edition of The Times. Furthermore, could I also request data for seizures going back to January 2004 or the nearest date."

I will post on what response that garners, if any.
Incidentally, Fenech does not grace us with the knowledge of where it is he "obtained" his statistics from. Though he does do some maths for us:

"A total of 93 people were charged with drug trafficking last year - practically one person every four days - while another 333 were charged with drug possession."

And when he comes to analysing the implications of these findings, he stuns the reader with his startling powers of induction:

"Drug find statistics are interpreted differently by politicians: some interpret larger seizures as a sign of the police working harder to fight drug crime while others believe they are an indication of more drugs being available."

He fails altogether, however, to raise the issue of how the general population might interpret or react to this data. That will presumably be left to the moronic procession of self-appointed columnists. He hasn't bothered to interview any members of the public, representatives of drug rehabilitation centres, or, heaven forefend, drug users. No, he doesn't do any of those things, because they sound too much like hard work. And nobody likes hard work.

UPDATE: For a bit more sloppy journalism, note the front page story of this Sunday's Kullhadd:

"Meta Tony Abela kien imsejjah mill-Prim Ministru Lawrence Gonzi biex ikun mistoqsi dwar l-involviment tieghu ma’ Andrew Zammit, li jinsab mixli bi traffikar ta’ aktar minn 14-il kilo kokaina..."

Well, you can't say the MLP isn't striving to be overachieve. In a feat worthy of Jesus Christ's miracle at the wedding of Caana, the MLP newspaper has managed to transform cannabis into cocaine. Compare the sentence above with a line from an earlier report on the same scandal:

"Fil-Partit Nazzjonalista tezisti rabja kbira ghad-deputat Mario Galea wara li dan zvela li l-Prim Ministru Lawrence Gonzi baghat ghas-Segretarju Parlamentari Tony Abela u talbu spjega dwar l-involviment tieghu ma’ Andrew Abela li jinsab mixli bi traffikar tad-droga cannabis."

If Kullhadd had the same shady sources as Natalino Fenech they would know that only 6.4 kg of cocaine were seized last year.

UPDATE 2: Oh, and Andrew Zammit has been rebaptized Andrew Abela, possibly out of solidarity with the minister.

Green Bananas

2006-01-27T12:06:00.000Z

A mere 230 years after the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and 139 since the completion of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, Harry Vassallo has finally thrown his hat into the ring. In a solemn reprisal of Harold Laswell’s pithy definition of politics as “who gets what, when, and how”, he synthesizes in clumsy self-righteousness his understanding of the discipline he has thus far proved highly unsuccessful at:

“Politics is about the distribution of wealth in a manner that the majority can live with, social justice or as much of it as the traffic will allow.”

Perhaps it might have done him some good to try and amend the content of whatever A-Level study guide he is copying this stuff out of when he came to applying it to the Maltese context. Is it so surprising that AD are ignored when its ideological architect relies on such inappropriate economic constructs as the hackneyed neo-liberal vs. controlled economy dichotomy?:

“In the traditional oversimplification, the Right insists on economic growth relying on a trickledown effect to achieve social peace while the Left insists on jobs to ensure the basic dignity of the greatest number.”

Understandably, Vassallo might be nervous to call them as he sees them, as anybody who has eyes to see can. This is why he trots out the old capitalism nag instead of criticising the clientelistic rot that has truly lain in the very heart of Maltese politics for time immemorial. The Boissevan classic “Saints and Fireworks” published as long ago as 1965, perversely sold in the airport, should be a starting point of reference for students of political unaccountability in Malta. Of course, Vassallo has read that book and doubtless is infinitely more familiar with its contents than I am, but you wouldn’t know to read his portentous warnings about “political fragmentation on the right … nostalgia for fascism at one extreme and complete alienation from politics at the other”. By nostalgia for fascism I presume he means the Lowell crew of knuckle-dragging inbreeds. This is misguided as the two factors he cites are not so distinct from one another. The truth is that there are large numbers of Maltese people who would be fascists if they either knew what it was or could be bothered to. Luckily, political disaffection and Spanish practices have undercut the propensity for such worrisome proclivities among the homo Melitensis. Incidentally, this term, one that someone else must have coined already, is begging to be converted into an abbreviated form, in the style of sovok, a Russian term that this highly readable article explains in some detail.
Yet in a spectacularly early bit of electoral campaigning Vassallo has the temerity to pontificate on the political opportunism of the mainstream political parties:

“Which bogeyman will they conjure next time around? Or will it be an overdose of fabrications, spin, threats and promises to baffle everybody and drive us dizzy towards the "safe" option of doing what we have always done?”

As members of AD contemplate seeking fame, if not fortune, on shores foreign, Vassallo is on a whole different planet, where it “is dawning on more and more people that Green opposition to some developments is an expression of Green economics, that there is a need to articulate its principles and to make its rules known and accepted. None of it is utopian, all of it is perfectly rational”. Thankfully, he has the moderate sense not to expect “the whole country to support [AD] overnight”. No, that would be silly.
It would be remiss to overlook quite how it is that AD is proposing to inculcate its views in the minds of the droves of fishwives and yobbish louts that have infested the Maltese islands:

“The change we bring about is the internalisation of our values. It cannot be achieved by imposition, by political muscle but only by persuasion breeding conviction, not by slogans and certainly not by fear. It is altogether new and its method must also be different.”

For heaven’s sake, how far can he really believe his weekly column in The Times is going towards “breeding conviction”? Frankly, the only internalisation that’s going to help Vassallo’s political fate is that of cash into peoples’ pockets.

Thou Shalt Not Editorialise

2006-01-26T20:25:00.000Z

If there has been once travesty inflicted on the science of modern criminology, then that is surely the abolition of phrenology in the investigation of criminal cases. As the evil nuclear plant boss in The Simpsons, Montogomery Burns, retorts to his assistant's remark about phrenology having been proved a sham:

"Of course you'd say that...you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!"

And The Times' editorial on Thursday appears to suggest that this sort of technique may indeed be the way forward. It does not do so, however, before circumlocutory broaching the issue of how to solve a crime problem that it denies even exists. I would attempt to lampoon it, were the original not already such an Orwellian nonsense:

When Gavin Gulia, Labour's spokesman on home affairs, declares a "crisis" in law and order one should perhaps counter that if such a crisis does exist it is one that has to do not with law and order alone, so much as with our society.

Naively, I had always imagined that the Maltese police were lazy verging on subnormal, but it transpires that there are simply no thieves for them to catch. This, however, does not stop The Times from suggesting how the police might go about identifying these inexistent ill-doers:

We do not know the age group of those who committed more than 11,000 thefts. We do not know their background. We do not know whether they are literate or numerate, whether they left school early, whether they are the sons and daughters of thieves. We do not know whether they come form broken homes or from single parent families. ... We do not know how many of these crimes were accompanied by violence.

Indeed, it is a shame that we don't whether those carrying out burglaries, say, are illiterate, as this would greatly simplify the task of apprehending them. That would require the embarrassing exercise of cataloguing and routinely rounding up Malta's illiterate population, but you know what they say about omelettes and breaking eggs. And, of course, discovering if a burglar is unable to read is quite a simple exercise. If they take the television but leave the collection of Everyman hardbound books, you've got yourself a manhunt. And if they if they were the son or daughter of a thief, it would be shocking that they weren't in prison already.
But The Times is not so frivolous as to decline the task of advising how to pull up crime from its roots. In an echo of Tony Blair famous electoral slogan, "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", the editorial points the finger squarely at the parents, who the paper says must "take more responsibility for children in their care". Presumably, their own children, though it does not specify.
And what Times editorial would it be without some ecclesiastical input, which the leader writer expresses by urging the church "to play in its pastoral teaching on the fifth commandment". Now, maybe I'm being old-fashioned, but I'd have thought some more work on the sixth and eighth commandments should be given a slightly higher priority (for the heathens out there, You shall not murder and You shall not steal). What a shame then that the editorial ends of this thoroughly counterproductive note:

And bad parenting and bad schooling, as well as the drug business, must make a contribution to the thefts that are being carried out.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On the day that The Times poo-pooed Gulia's "hysterical declaration" it carried no less than eight crime reports. Don't they teach reading in Maltese schools?

Man jailed over 'wild west-style shooting'
Drugs found hidden in decorative candles
Accused of petrol station hold-up
Teenager arraigned after joyride
Thefts charge
Jailed, fined for drug pushing
Buskers fined
Jailed for cocaine possession

Bumble in the Jungle

2006-01-25T23:40:00.000Z

For those who have not been following the debate that ensued after the publication of my post on Eddie Aquilina’s column, I am reproducing it below. First, however, let me reject pre-emptively any suggestion that printing the contents of the comments section is somehow lazy or space-filling. The truth is that I’m a bit busy at the moment. And anyway, it’s late.

However, to get to the point; repeatedly, I have been vilified by this sonorous popinjay, who goes by the name of cyberdigger. I have been pilloried by his incessant insinuations and slander. Here, in this public forum, I call for him to join me in a public debate, which we can hold in a place of his own choice. I suggest a neutral territory, perhaps New York, though my antagonist should know from now that I have no intention of paying for either the flights or the cost of accommodation.

By way of introduction into the debate, I should say that it was prompted by a rectification addressed, in absolutely civil terms, by the curator of the j’accuse blog. Here, therefore, is the full catalogue of his verbal assaults on my integrity, not to speak of the honour and dignity of countless young men and women:

Jacques René Zammit

Vlad,

One teeny point. Eddie Aquilina did not "author" that column but reproduced an email he received in his inbox. He counts himself among those who must believe that their inbox is the envy of all and sundry. We must all be grateful to be allowed a peek into this receptacle that is ful of God knows what knowledge and wisdom.
As for the nostalgia for times gone by that felt better than now.... somehow I don't think that the email was far off the mark... I normally delve (well delve sounds bombastic but there you are) into this in my Sibtijiet Flimkien corner.

Ereżija

I was about to make the same correction but jacques got there first. One other thing, why does the author refer to little leagues and soda pop? Perhaps he's referring to another childhood in another country...

vlad

Well, strictly speaking it wasn't Eddie Aquilina, but philosophically it was. Besides, for a person prepared to devote 90% of an article to someone else's writing and then put his name to it, he deserves the flak. That is to say, he as good as wrote it since he was prepared to put his name to it.

Ereżija

a poor defence, vlad, but an excellent post nonetheless. Keep them coming.

david

"Vlad shafted by Aquilina's plagiarism".

Now there's a good headline.

vlad

A poor defence?! My friend, if you cannot grasp the interstitial transtextuality upon which I operate I fear that you are going to get lost. As you seek a continuity that is merely implied, I explore the cyclical notions underlying the structural archetypes that define the fabric of Aquilinian prose. I reject the positivistic-deterministic notion that there is only a single correct given form for mediatic exegesis. I simply fail to understand your outdated fetishization of information processing theories that forcefully necessitate the monotonic (not monotonous, mind) assumption of a liner conception of "constructive reading". Intertextually speaking, criticising the message and chewing a brick comes much to the same thing.

Ereżija

I strongly disagree with the word 'prose'

cyberdigger

Hmm, this Aquilina piece has done the rounds on the internet. However, the last time I saw it, it was written from the perspective of people who grew up in the 70s and 80s looking down scornfully at the youth of today, rather than the golden Aquilina generation. He seems to have hi-jacked it for his own purposes.
I follow your defence with interest, but I am not sure what "liner conception" is. Is it something to do with cruise ships?
- the Titanic was not a successful "liner conception".

vlad

Cyberdigger,
Your intervention is a thoroughly foolish one, but let me take it on board, so to speak.
You argue that the Titanic is an example of unsuccessful "liner conception", in spite of extensive testimony that attests to the fact that it was the application of said vessel that fell short of desired standards. I suppose if one drove a Ferrari into a brick wall at high velocity, you would be taking issue with the car's engineering shortcomings. The fundamental issue here is one of misuse of technology at the hands of the foolish and the incompetent. And, sir, you are surely living evidence of this, as it is not for lack of opposable thumbs that you have failed to refrain from making ill-judged remarks in this forum. "Liner conception" indeed!

cyberdigger

The whole notion of "liner conception" was one which you yourself introduced onto this forum. In my Titanic paradigm I was merely seeking for an application for this seemingly anomalous concept in the midst of some sort of turgid Barthean treatise on the nature of authorship.
However, I now realise that you were not referring to "liner conception" at all, but instead equipping us with what is truly another sad example of the slavish addiction to technology in the form your apparently beguiled, botched attempt to use a spell-checking tool to cover up for your syntactic inadequacies.
You sir, are product of the very generation that Aquilina's original piece sought to condemn. An android generation who wish to forsake meaningful human interaction for the sound of a clicking plastic mouse.
Yes, we ate worms and mud pies. And they were not ordered "on-line" from "e-bay", lest we should miss even a second of joy derived from playing "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on our "x-boxes", whilst simultaneously sending horribly misspelt "text messages" on our "mobile phones", all the time plugged into our "i-pods" and "calculators".

vlad

Very well, now that your agenda is in the open, there is some scope for open discourse, a mode that we have thus far been denied by your coy deceptiveness as to your true intentions. In your craven devotion to the forces of reaction, you have contrived to throw the baby out with the bath water. Your refusal to engage with the modern world, which you strangely eschew when it comes to spewing your virulent Luddite ravings, has driven you so far beyond the edge of sense as to confound whatever shred of cognitive faculties you might ever have had in the first place. I suppose I could dwell on your misapplication of the word "syntactic", which is hardly at issue, but that would be at the cost of overlooking the sheer intellectual antediluvianism to which have resorted in taking shelter under the simpering words of Aquilina's fictive correspondent.
Yes, you too have "eaten worms", and good for you. However, it is not what has gone into your mouth that worries me, but what comes out of it. A bile-ridden panegyric against modernity and all its presumed evils. It is a shame that the faceless cowards that can hold forth on such views are not so bold in their resistance to the less suspect candidates of modern progress. Sir, why not attack the cure for polio, why not attack the invention of the airplane, why not attack the democracy most of us have come to cherish so dearly. Your ilk are the last rotten bastions of an era that has long since died: an era of bigotry, ignorance, superstition and racism. Good riddance!

vlad

Though on reflection, that should be philippic and not panegyric. At least I am endowed with humility. Look at the humility! Look at it!!

cyberdigger

I am looking, but I am afraid that I do not see it. It does not surprise me in the least that you, coming from a generation raised exclusively on marijuana, Diet Coca-Cola and Crazy Frog, do not exhibit any of the true qualities of humility that were prevalent in my day. Back then, an uncouth whippersnapper like yourself would be brought into line using the back heel of a slipper. Nowadays, they probably give you Mars bars as disincentives to unruly behaviour. Or cans of Diet Coca-Cola.
I doubt that the workers on the top floors of the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 would have shared your enthusiasm for the invention of the aeroplane and if it is democracy that allows such oafish elements as yourself to carp and arrogate publicly then it is indeed a badly flawed concept.

vlad

Well, I can well believe that you must have had a fair of amounts savage beatings applied to your head, if your inane observations are anything to go on. If nothing else, this exchange has lead you up the morally vacuous cul-de-sac in which you rightly belong. Keep your boiled sweets and hypocrisy to yourself, why don’t you.
Perhaps if you can pull your head out of the fusty cloud that you appear to inhabit, you will see that there is more to the world than your pathetic dog-eared memories of an unfulfilled youth and the bitter scorn you see fit to heap on modernity. Look around you and see how much better this reality is than the petrified, ideological aridity of your past. We have achieved so much, seen so much, and want to do so much more. But you persist in your sad ruminations in your sad little room; broken black-and-white TV; cracked 78s lying abandoned in the square of sunlight that the tiny window allows for; cigarette burns in the carpet; a creased postcard from Greece that you never got round to sending.
Yes, today’s world may be the world of Crazy Frog and Diet Coca-Cola; but it is also the world of Internet, of open horizons, of freedom and democracy. It will mean nothing to a relic of the bleak MAD generation to hear that we dream of tomorrow, we strive for it, and know that it is within our grasp. So what if we enjoy ourselves on the way? Sir, all I can truly say to you is that I pity you, you who have nothing but an endless procession of cheerless yesterdays to look forward to.

cyberdigger

How convenient in your assessment of our sad modern era that you fail to omit the rising rate of crime at bus-stops, estates sinking under a tide of hypodermic syringes and soaring teenage pregnancy.
These sir, are the true legacy of our era, and not the internet or democracy. On the contrary, in a world driven solely by the twin forces of instant materialistic gratification and rampant individualism, many are turning to the internet as a means of establishing human contact with other lost souls in as far-flung places as Tonga, Rhodesia and the Phillipines, while at the same time not knowing the name of their next door neighbours and being afraid to find out, lest he should turn out to be the new crack dealer who has just moved into the neighbourhood.
Your description of my home leads me to believe that you have actually broken into it, which does not surprise me given the moral ambivalence of your generation, combined with the fact that house-breaking has probably been added to the national curricculum.
I will send that postcard from Greece however. I will send it to the proprietors of this blogstation, instructing them to remove you and and your poisonous views posthaste.

vlad

Heavens above, you might do well to pull your nose out whatever tabloid comic you rely on for your news. What would it take to convince you that the dystopian nightmare you envisage is little but a figment of your febrile imagination?
But then again, it is only your warped mind that could believe that Rhodesia still existed; perhaps a not-so-subtle indicator of your sympathies for the brutal colonial past with which you obviously identify. In your ideal situation, you wouldn’t have neighbours, just an army footmen-wallah to fan you and keep the natives off the lawn. What you are less keen to acknowledge is the legacy of injustice and intolerance that stoked the social aberrations that you saw fit to grotesquely caricature. If it isn’t hypocritical that in one breath you slate the oppressed proletariat, while in the next you hark back to the values of your superannuated generation, then I don’t know what is.
I despair at the myopia of those like you, sir, who will themselves to see everything upside down, back to front. Where you see alienation and loneliness, there is community; the global community of a new generation seeking to give meaning to their shrinking world. You may remember the fall of the Berlin Wall (a sad day for you, no doubt), but ever since then yet more frontiers have fallen. National frontiers, trade frontiers, communication frontiers, cultural frontiers, linguistic frontiers, and so much more. You, however, turn in ever-diminishing circles, cut off from a world that you no longer understand, eaten away by a cancer of hatred, consoled only by the opportunity of heaping abuse on that which you cannot comprehend.
Seek recourse in front of any tribunal you see fit. I am ready for you. Indeed, it may do you well to have your rancour aired, but do not fool yourself, for you will surely lose.

cyberdigger

Oh, I will not lose sir. If the forces who operate this blogstation have even a shred of human decency, they will acquiesce to my demand to have you removed. Your rose-tinted perspective leads me to the inescapable conclusion that your knowledge of the world around you is blinkered by the barrier of your computer monitor, upon whose screen you continue to dwell in some sort of virtual make-believe world.
When the streets of Paris were ablaze, were you holed away in some chat-room discussing the merits of this year's Celebrity Big Brother contestants? Maybe you were staging a google-fight between Jordan and Jodie Kidd while the bombs rocked Britain's capital. And were you watching a webcast of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! when the latest pensioner was attacked at a bus stop?
The moral decay I speak of us is all around us. It is in the tears of the teenage mother who must prostitute herself for crack cocaine. It is in the illiterate school child who subjects himself to public humiliation in the meaningless desire for the modern grail of celebrity. It is in the crooked smile of the tenement under-classes, devoted to the twin pursuits of living off the government and selling skunk. It is in the eyes of the war veteran who fears to leave his home as darkness spreads across this unhappy hemisphere. It is in the very particles of air that we, who knew a better world, must heave and breathe such wistful sighs. It is everywhere.

cyberdigger

And besides, who can share your excitement at the fall of the Berlin Wall? An event which led to the proliferation of drugs and gangsterism across the eastern plains? Mafia, coups, oligarchs, Beslan, a beheaded journalist in Gorky Park, a war in Cechnia, prostitution...reasons to be cheerful indeed!!
Nay, sir, thou art a naughty knave whose very kind does not bode well for the future. In the words of Leonard Cohen, "I have seen the future, and its hell." Thankfully, I will not have to live to endure the culmination of the worst excesses of your age, while you must reap the tragic whirlwind that you and others of your ilk have sown, through your distraction and inaction.

vlad

The only unhappy hemisphere I can bring myself to pity is the diminutive one inside your skull. Your demented apocalypticism has now spilled uncontrollably outside the boundaries of rationality. It comes, therefore, as some consolation that you have promised to be absent at the culmination of this age, for we would not want our party to be sullied by a chronic manic-depressive such as yourself.
But brushing aside your ill-informed bombast about the supposed effects of the collapse of communism, let us look at the substance of your argumentation. For the record, I have never heard of google-fighting and I have little interest in the developments of the latest reality TV programs, matters on which you appear to be surprisingly well informed. But indeed I do listen to podcasts, such as Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, which allow me to broaden my horizons while walking amidst the terrified pensioners and addict teenagers that you suppose to exist from the confines of the shuttered fortress you have barracked yourself into. I am a regular user of the Internet, which I use to confront my views with others and test my prejudices. But I suppose your idea of reading the day's news is going on Google and typing in "drugs" and "hooligans".
As for moral decay, perhaps an old timer like will not have noticed the events of the Live Eight last summer in which the youth collectively demonstrated solidarity for global poverty, itself engendered by the heartless and vicious colonialism and exploitation of the supposedly moral past. Indeed sir, if anyone can be said to be wearing rose-tinted glasses, then that surely is you. How much brutality are you prepared to turn a blind eye to? How many more millions would you have been prepared to see die under the yoke of the communist visitation as you relived the drama of the Cold War through your James Bond films and Frederick Forsythe novels?
You sicken me with your false piety towards the elderly. In your day, they were given a boiled sweet and a pat on the head, as the doctors waited for them to die.
And you pusillanimously resort to the veteran card, while lambasting the celebrity culture of our age. You would think it would be reassuring that the youth of today have such superficial concerns, rather than having to work out how to put their lives back together after having their legs blown off in a war they don't understand. No more world wars, no more Korean wars, no more Vietnams, and no more Falklands!
You decry the inaction of the youth, but where were you when we marched for peace, against the cruel Iraqi war for oil? A war willed by your hawkish clique, pushing a new generation through the meat-grinder for their own ends. How many more will have to die before your bloodlust is satiated? Open your eyes, my friend, it is never too late.

cyberdigger

I do not know if I have space to attempt to construct for you a scaffold for the cognitive understanding of the concatenation that led to that sorry conflict in Iraq and I am not certain that it is relevant to this discussion. But let me say that while I am no passionate supporter of the likes of Rumsfeld or Bush (although I accord them the respect they command in their roles as distinguished statesmen. An odd Voltairian concept - to respect even those who have diametrically opposed views? Not in my day), their actions have to be taken not only in light of their nation's thirst for oil (although if this were the case it would be in no small measure to the present generation's dependency on the technology that fuels, to pardon the pun, this state of affairs) but also in a simple Christian desire to rid our world of bloody dictators and terrorists. In my day, these were given short shrift, rather than government handouts. While I feel that the war was a misguided one, I can not help but admire the unyielding tenacity of the American administration in wishing to weed out these elements.
As for Live 8, I did tune in for a while, and upon viewing the "duet" performed by Pete Doherty and Elton John, I found yet more confirmation of the superiority of our age. Doherty the young pup, rambling, incoherent and obscene, contrasted by the manly John, so graceful, poised and dignified. The gulf was there for all to see.
Let me tell you now about a book that has no yet been written. This is a book called The History of the 20th Century. And at its epicentre will be chapter about us - the golden generation. a golden generation who soared to incredible heights, who dared to dream and even dared to make our dreams come true. And when we were finished, we handed it over and said "Now its your turn." But that was our mistake. In our haste to build a better future, we forgot to look over our shoulders and did not catch view of the ghastly spectre that was rearing its head in the rear view mirror. Yes, we were the golden ones.
One prejudice that you may wish to confront is your outrageous, fit-inducing disrespect for your elders. We are not here to be mocked and patronised. We may have lived long and hard, but we are still here and we will not go gently into that dark night!
I am sure Sir Bragg remembers how we were the golden ones who laughed (but with each other, not at) and danced (but not in an ecstasy induced state of catatonia to three hundred beats a minute)and sang (of love and kindness, not lust and violence).
And we did not fear being beaten to death with an i-pod while waiting to catch the bus home.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

By way of a post scriptum, this cyberdigger fiend may rest assured that he has not heard the last from me. An appropriate riposte to his latest compendium of vilification will duly follow.

You're Not Welcome Anymore

2006-01-25T00:27:00.000Z

No post today, except to draw attention to this report carried on di-ve.

A 24-year-old man from Kirkop was on Tuesday granted bail on against a personal guarantee of Lm1,000 and on the condition that he does not go to Marsaxlokk.

Since when has not going to Marsaxlokk become a punishment?
According to MaltaMedia, the attempted robbery the bungling thief he has been charged with "failed due to unexpected circumstances", in spite of "the help of several persons". This is about the most ridiculous story I've heard so far this year.

Hell Hath No Fury...

2006-01-23T22:39:00.000Z

Why will this wretched woman not just shut up for a change? The saga over the war internees continues to drag on and it's getting nasty. Anna Xuereb has thrown everything she has at arch colonial apologist Victor J. de Bono, of Lancashire, in her bid to make sure he doesn't come back.
The most transparent gambit, the resource of the beginner polemicist, is her adoption of the moral high ground:

Let me make this clear. Contrarily to what Mr de Bono believes, neither I nor my ancestors were anti-British. We proudly were, and are, anti-Colonialist. Our ample respect for the great British people is only matched by our affection. We deem them as noble as we deem their lackeys ignoble.

By making a pious stand on her anti-colonialism, Xuereb can tacitly absolve herself of the charge that the debate is not merely a childish display of name-calling.
She also attempts to exonerate herself from the pettiness of her real agenda by feigning pity for her antagonist:

All in all I find Mr de Bono quite endearing - his blissful divorce from history, his nostalgia for a very deceased empire, his remoteness from the conscience of mankind, his collection of fossils any natural history museum would envy.

Xuereb though does have a point about de Debono's alien status, an issue she brashly mocks with a reference to a "Lincolnshire lending library". She raises this in relation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she imagines misguidedly to be in the collections of British regional libraries. Furthermore, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would have been of limited use to her beloved internees during the war seeing as it was adopted in 1948.
While dismissing de Bono's right to speak for the whole Maltese people, Xuereb cites the glowing testimony of Enrico Mizzi offered by Dom Mintoff and Gorg Borg Olivier, who called "the greatest of all Maltese". I daresay those two individuals would have a fair idea of who to elect to the post of second greatest of all Maltese, but that's another matter. And when Xuereb talks about a political dinosaur, she's not referring to Mintoff, as most of her PN companions might do, but to the beleaguered de Bono.
In making her historical case she draws on the questionable authority of Stewart Perowne, a classics specialist whose only book not about his preferred subject is about Malta during the war. The name of the book is "The siege within the walls: Malta 1940-1943" and can be bought here from prices as low £4.70 sterling.
Without wishing to enter the merit of this tired debate, would it be unreasonable to ask The Times not to enrol its self-obsessed letter-writers as columnists. And if it is necessary to linger on the subject of the infamous internees, perhaps it might do well to publish the views of credible historians, rather than the petulant hissy fits of this Megaera.

Roamer's Boring

2006-01-22T16:23:00.000Z

Year after year we have had to endure the braggadocio of this unaccountable boor. Is it acceptable that we have to put up with this religious fundamentalist, unswerving in his arrogant self-belief? Separately we can do nothing, we are helpless in his indifference to our plaintive pleas for him to mend his ways. There must be something that we can do in the face of this ecclesiastical bully-boy. I speak, of course, of serial recidivist dullard Roamer. But let us look at the evidence from this Sunday's column. First of all, he's a routine deceiver:

When I was first introduced to the British High Commissioner and his wife, then Mr and Mrs Vincent Fean, a rare thing happened. I found myself dropping the defences I normally raise when I meet people for the first time...

So startled is he at his own inability to disassemble before the presence of veteran diplomats that he attempts to tar his interlocutors with the same brush, effectively accusing them of being liars:

They were models of what BHCs and BHC wives should be - friendly, genial without dropping their guard - without giving the impression they were standing on ceremony.

But if sanctimony be the gods' delight, Roamer can certainly count himself an adept practitioner of the art, in which he excels like no other. Nobody will surely be surprised if the parents of Jeanette Mifsud fail to be consoled by his words, which feature in a section suitably entitled Tasteless:

It was a human tragedy not only because a young life had been extinguished. There was, in a most special sense, no need for a visit from Death at such a moment in her life.

As though these offences were not enough, he also attempts in his own inept way to formulate a justification for censorship, which he tactfully describes as gagging. Leaving aside the obvious corollary that derives from the impulse, which would be to lock away Roamer's computer and crayons, let us look at the merit of his argument. In a scene redolent the George Bush pretzel moment, Roamer sets the scene:

Did you watch last Sunday's Dateline London on BBC World? I managed ten minutes and, given the appearance and contribution of Jasmin something (no offence meant) Brown, not to gag.

If I have understood his catastrophically punctuated sentence correctly, the views of someone with whom he does not agree have made him physically ill. And from this it follows, apparently, that "gagging is surely in order when somebody can ignore the paranoid" and "cannot make appropriate distinctions". Of course, I may have been thrown by the fact that he confusingly used the word 'gag' twice in the same article without clearly explaining whether he intends it to have the same meaning on both occasions.
Finally he caps off his article with an extended passage lifted out of a recent issue of The Spectator. Because he has failed to explicitly speak about religion in the course of his column, he has fallen back on the more literate Roger Scruton to do so for him. If the readers have managed to struggle that far into Roamer's 2000+ essay, they may be confused at this segment offering such a fiercely theistic argument. Why would Roamer be so eager to dispel atheistic notions in a country where people overwhelmingly identify themselves as believers and regular churchgoers? Scruton's article was written in response to a TV series on Channel 4 in Britain which sought to disprove the existence of God. Consequently, Roamer's lift has the function of irrelevancy and making his own pained English look even worse than it is already.

Milestone

2006-01-21T15:24:00.000Z

What an amazing ride it's been so far. Starting from a readership in the low twos and threes, this blog has now boomed to draw a regular attendance of followers that sometimes requires two hands to count. Perhaps the most heartening statistic is featured in the pie-chart above, which contains information on the average duration of visits to my page. The green segment represents those visitors who stay on the page for five seconds or less. I am proud to have a site that can put so many people off that quickly. But I know I couldn't have done it without Louis Deguara. Thank you Louis. This one's for you.

Licari in the Stars With Diamonds

2006-01-21T11:03:00.000Z

In Brian Aldiss' 1969 novel, Barefoot in the Head, a young man wanders around Europe after it has been bombed with hallucinogenic gases. As the drama unfolds he increasingly gets caught up in the collective hysteria, which climaxes in a crazed messianic crusade. Predictably, the story is hard to follow at times as the hero's perception comes under the influence of the poisons in the air and the narrative drifts into a hazy stream-of-consciousness style. And that's what came to mind as I read Anthony Licari's column on Saturday. Dr. Licari is a lecturer of psycholinguistics at the University of Malta, which raises the very real possibility that he may be experimentally exploring the edges of communicative dynamics under the influence of indeterminate substances. Tramal perhaps.
His trip starts innocently enough with a stroll down his memories of Qui-Si-Sana, but the ears of anybody trained to the gibberish of drug crazies will prick at the claim that the proposed car park will result "illnesses and the unforgiving cancer". Just for the heck of I googled the words "car park" and "cancer", and in the first result I found words that might surprise Dr. Licari, who obviously isn't the kind of doctor you should go to with a slight cough:

The cost of the car park is estimated to be £11m and will be funded mostly by the Trust and Cancer Research UK.

Fittingly, after struggling to stitch together just over a hundred words of dewy-eyed reminiscences of his youth, he moves on to rambling, of which he is a fan and practitioner. This time he rails against the "arrogant" and "greedy egocentrics" who forbid crowds of birdwatchers from trampling over their property.
After that, it's Gonzi's ghost writer, habbaziz, human rights in Turkey, GWU, homophobia, and the cold weather. The erratic eclecticism of subject matter is bad enough, so you would hope a judicious editor would not inflict this on Times readers who will have already endured the flatulent silliness of I.M. Beck, who has taken a break from eating from kebab vans and gone for a meal at Wigi's in St. Julians. Since I'm on the subject, logically you would think that as you saw Andrew Borg Cardona waddling into your restaurant the chances were that you were going to get a mention in his column, and that therefore he should have the meal discounted. This matter requires investigation.
But after gustatory richness of Beck's prandial exposition, to fit in with the company, is Licari showing off. I list my own personal selection of favourite quotes:

"...Without militancy, trade unions would be kindergartens organising three-legged races and ring-a-ring o'rosies - at the end of which we all fall down..."

"...Opinions implying that most paedophiles are homosexuals are totally wrong and mix lettuce with wind..."

"...During this terribly cold winter, in order to beat the ear-lobe and prostate freeze without spending half your wages on artificial energy..."

And for sheer hypocrisy:

"...I don't believe that the article by Lawrence Gonzi in The Times of January 5 was written by himself but by a speechwriter. It is too full of barbarisms and other linguistic clumsiness to be worthy of a Prime Minister..."

It might be a good thing that there is nothing to put in the newspapers other than the mutual sniping between politicians and Licari's weird effete prating. Though it might be a little less maddening if one could even understand what is being written. I'm sure this segment on habbaziz means something, though I can't for the life of me work out what:

Rightist writers defending African irregular immigrants conveniently forget that demi-christian moralisers have always tried to mock the cultures of African peoples. Often they referred to them as habbaziz to make fun of them. The habbaziz has apparently turned to noble caviar.

The misspelling and disorientating context are certainly no help. The three sentences only barely follow on from one another. And has habbaziz has turned to caviar, or into it? Who are the demi-christian moralisers? Who is Dr. Licari and what does he want from me?

Smugscreen

2006-01-20T21:28:00.000Z

A picture's worth a thousand words, so they say. And by some happy coincidence that's the amount of words that Loius Deguara wrote in his Times column on Friday. For the statistic fanatics out there, not one of them was health. No, it was all about comparing today, as he explained in bewildering Rumsfeldian style:

It is said that comparisons are odious. And the obverse, contrasts probably more so. On the other hand, drawing comparisons and contrasts is one of the solid ways of arriving at the truth. On a philosophical level one may question the concept of truth, since absolute truth is hard to arrive at and what we call truth is somewhat relative.

No prizes for guessing that he was comparing the PN and MLP's respective records in government, which is a bit rich considering the Labour Party has been in power for only two years for the last twenty years. But when you're as smug as Louis Deguara, you don't let a little thing like that stop you from crowing incessantly. Which is why I propose that he should be locked into a padded room and be made to listen to this ridiculous speech by Stefan Buontempo on January 18 (from 46:12), who has just resumed parliamentary duties after completing a successful panto tour around Malta. Those unwilling to listen to the whole thing, though I advise it, should jump to 54:40 for the best bit:

"Kieku saru il-progetti, konnha nkunu, mhux l-aqwa fid-dinja!!! Le, l-aqwa fil-pjaneta, nahseb!!"

Il-Alla Madonna, what is going on in that place? Not content with a performance that rivals Lino Banfi acting camp, he proceeds to offer some patronising remarks about the limited critical faculties of the elderly (1:01:20):

"Jaqbu in-Net, jghidhu 'kemm qed jghamel il-gvern'. Ma jkunux jafu x'qed jigri bl-ezatt"

But if for Buontempo the old are just stupid, Deguara is sick and tired of their greed. He conveys a bizarre image of wrinklies literally pouncing on a tray of pastizzi (04:53), which is how he justifies taking their prescription medicine away from them.
Luckily enough for him they'll be dead soon, and it was fitting that a few minutes later exchanges had turned to the building of incinerators at the Addolorata Cemetery. After the ribaldry occasioned by prostitution, today the representatives of the Maltese people had a good laugh at death, burning corpses and eternal damnation (26:20).
And finally, Michael Asiak returns to his least favourite subject, sexual rights, which he describes as antipatiku (03:05:20). I say he returns, though it was in fact word for word reprisal of what he wrote in The Times the other day.
Another day of Maltese democracy in action.

Talkin' About Sex Baby

2006-01-19T21:49:00.000Z

If there's one thing more surprising about erotica suddenly gracing the pages of The Times, then it's the fact that has been penned by Michael Asciak, Nationalist MP. There are few achievements that the Nationalist Party has not scaled in its history, the crowning moment of which was the day the Mars bar began to be imported to Malta. Before that, people had to rely on the remittances of lucky relatives who could travel to Catania for shopping expeditions at the Misterbianco shopping centre. And even then, one was more likely to get those little novelty ones, or if very lucky, a squashed Kinder egg.
All this notwithstanding, the art of arousing literature is not yet at the fingertips of even that great exponent of Christian values that is the PN. If anything the very opposite is the case, as the well-publicised puritan ravings of Dolores Cristina comprehensively attest.
The Labour Party on the other hand does have more potential in this area. After all, Alfred Sant is no prude, if you will excuse the wordplay. I can only but imagine what dissipated pamphlets Joe Debono Grech would write, if only he could write. Perhaps a cross between Lady Chatterley’s Lover and an Istitut Kattoliku comedy:

"Ara Cens, x'pastizz ghandha!"
"Iii, kemm int pastuz!"
"Le, Cens, issa issa waslet minn ghand il-Maxim's. Mela x'fhimt?!"

Indeed, the Labour politician is closer to the working man on the street; he speaks his language, and feels his pain. And if he gets a chance, he'll be inflicting most of the pain as well.
But Michael Asciak can claim no such earthiness, and it is predictable that his attempt to speak in a relaxed and enlightened way about sex sounds as though he was copying out a biology text book:

First of all, one must underline that sexual reproduction involves a natural expression of communication and is a mode of reproduction that has evolved naturally in creation including in man, over another form of reproduction called asexual. But like all good things it has to be used properly to be beneficial. Otherwise it could have the opposite effect for which it was intended and that is why there are certain social and personal norms regulating its use, that people might not hurt themselves and others.

The beginning of that quote suggests somebody that is afraid of women, but by the end of the extract the fear has transmuted into unmitigated horror and disgust. Apart from that, the bloodless explanation is riddled with inaccuracies. For a start, it's a well known fact that Francis Zammit Dimech was conceived by asexual means. I am actually lost for words to comment about the rest, though. What was he thinking when he wrote those words? It is a shame he didn't specify exactly what he meant by the most beneficial use of "sexual reproduction". The "opposite effect"?

"Mike... Come to bed...”
"No darling, not tonight. It won't be beneficial. Indeed, it will have an opposite effect. We might hurt ourselves. Or someone else!"

Though that's not fair to his sense for legality, for as he notes in his conclusion:

The right to reproductive and sexual health is both an ethical issue and a national prerogative.

Well, good that that's been cleared up then.

Youthful Spirit

2006-01-18T17:12:00.000Z

For heaven's sake, has the work of Guze Stagno taught us nothing. Not since Xummiemu has any cultural actor been so instrumental in capturing the linguistic nuances and cadences of Malta's young people, aqqanna. And yet, on Wednesday I see this column opening with a letter supposedly written from the perspective of a youth torturing themselves over the pestilential curse of alcohol consumption. Christine Sammut, a pastoral assistant at the University Chaplaincy, is evidently at the wrong end of the telescope in joining this collective threnody of chest-beating about boozing. It is true that most Maltese University students would claim to be devout to some extent, though the pious goons could probably never completely account for the inconsistencies of their lifestyle. But anyone that would come within a hundred yards of a pastoral assistant can hardly be represented as the archetype of the Maltese youngster that Sammut's suggests. Yet Sammut purports to dupe us with this plangent whinge redolent of sub-Dawson's Creek dramaturgy. The moaning boob of the letter carps thus:

"So much has been said about the alcohol consumed by us young people over New Year..."

... suggesting that he (or she) has been reading the nation's favourite newspaper. L-Orizzont, of course. So it comes as no surprise when he bleats about how "the weekend is the only thing to look forward to - the rest of the week is pretty boring".
Surely, Guze Stagno can come to the rescue of Malta's disenfranchised 'youts' and pen his own "testimony". Though he is now thirty, which is not exactly young, he is surely in tune with the young who also "ma jhobbux jaqraw rumanzi ta' Kundera jew Rushdie". In fact, in my experience, Maltese students are not too fond of reading any rumanzi at all. When I told a former classmate of mine a few years ago that I was studying Russian literature he asked me to tell him the name of a famous Russian writer, which was a bad start. When I suggested Pushkin, he replied, in all seriousness, "Eh, dik mhux ditta ta' vodka?" When you're that stupid, getting bored isn't too hard.
Sammut's solution for the dullard Maltese teen is to "provide alternative activities" and to get them to "break away from stereotypical notion of 'having fun'". I'm sorry, but this is all footling do-gooding. The youths of Malta have more than enough to do: fishing; going to cinema, and talking and eating Twistees all the way through the film; painting a scantily-clad Red Sonia-type woman on the side of their souped-up Ford Escort; punching; waiting for Godot; watching television; writing letters to the editor; bird-trapping; dog-fighting; breathing; standing for parliament, and the list goes on and on. I fear that Malta is churning out more sociologists and psychologists then we know what to do with, and Sammut is just one such exemplary of this superfluous caste of charlatans. Aqqanna.

*****************************

And from the travails of the young to the arthritic gripes of the silver-haired oldsters. I believe there must be software out there which can produce letter like this. You type "old fart", "better in the old days" and "my hips ache", and this dribbling babble comes out. Oh for the days when...

"...baby cribs were covered with bright-coloured, lead-based paints. We had no child-proof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking."

The author of the column, old-named Eddie Aquilina, somewhat overstates his claim to seniority seeing that he was only born in 1951. Frankly, his reminiscing descends even further into pathetic pisspoor when he cites the marvels of the new age:

"We did not have PlayStations, Nintendos, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet or internet chatrooms... We had friends, and we went outside and found them there waiting for us."

Of course, even I in my geriatric late twenties didn't have any of those things when I was a child, unless the ZX Spectrum can count as video games. Frankly, there were abacuses with better gameplay, but anyway... there's more:

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits for such accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

They did that? What were they thinking? Actually, I can't say I ever eat worms or mud, but I suppose that was the era of post-war endurance.
Well, I have four words for Eddie Aquilina. Saint. Vincent. De. Paul.

*****************************

Courtesy of Jacques, I found this superb headline:

"Gulia demands apology of his own"

As a former headline-writer myself I was quite taken by the hermetic tautness of this gem. It sails so fearlessly into the territory of inconsequentiality; comprehensible and incomprehensible all at once. Childish, naive, stupid, mad even. Yes, a searing gaze into the eyes of insanity in its rawest form. Never has such an arrangement of subject, verb, object, preposition, possessive adjective and another noun been expressed so sublimely. I genuflect in genuine awe.

On Drugs

2006-01-17T22:32:00.000Z

I must say that when I recently got round reading Guze Stagno's trash novel (or is that rubbish novel?), I got the distinct impression that the jaded youth of Malta had finally got round to following in their European counterparts' fondness for drugs. And yet I heard today in an answer from Tonio Borg to a parliamentary question from 16 January that these are the paltry amounts of drugs seized in 2005:

Cocaine - 6 kilogrammes
Heroin - 15 kilogrammes

This is already worrying, as it suggests that Malta has a very low class of drug user indeed. Alternatively, the statistic might prove the opposite, that people using cocaine in Malta are so influential that neither they nor their dealers are ever hassled by the authorties. And if you think 6 kilogrammes is a large amount, that makes about 0.01 gram for every man, woman and child on this island, which is a risible amount. Frankly, I don't see how children are expected to pass their exams on such paltry rations.
Then, Tonio Borg says something very strange that suggests why the country might be going to pot, so to speak. If you listen here from 4:16 onwards you will hear the list, and when he gets to cannabis, he distinctly says "cannabis grass, kilt kilogramma". You heard it here first folks.
He then gives us the rest of the list, with a bronze face it must be said.

Cannabis resin - 5 kilogrammes
Cannabis plants - 3 plants (for God's sake)
LSD - 3 microdots
Methadone - 250 millilitres

But you know that Malta has really got itself a crack police force with the next stat. I mean, this is really FBI stuff. I don't remember this drug bust myself, but it must have been a sensation. Pablo Escobar must be turning in his grave. Will the Cali drug cartel survive? Will this break the back of international drug-smuggling? Has the scourge of drug abuse finally been vanquished? Sweet Halleluljah! Rejoice, rejoice, for as Tonio Borg tells us:

Tramal - 1 pill

In case my lonely handful of readers are wondering why I am listening to this stuff, the recording of the parliament has now become my iPod listening of choice on my daily morning bike ride. And I nearly fell of my bike with laughter when I heard this (from around 7:56); a grown man barely containing his peurile amusent at the idea of prostitution. The Deputy Prime Minister's badly disguised mirth falters badly when he cites the statistic on male prostitutes arrested last year, a measure of classy statesmanship no doubt.
So between the drugs and the prostitutes, Malta's in good hands.

***************

And on a related subject, from the same recording, maybe someone could sample a dance track with the clip (at 16:47) of Jesmond Mugliett saying "ma nafx il-frekwenza tat-trips". Just an idea.

Dear Sir, hic!

2006-01-16T22:18:00.000Z

Silly name, silly man. Have you ever such a foolish name as Ethelwald Emilius Vella? Or rather Dr Ethelwald Emilius Vella, MD, L/RAMC, the retired colonel from Manikata. Yes, that one.
A letter sent to the Times conveys his unfettered ardor for alcohol in all its forms. Among them, incidentally, is Irish poteen, which according to my dictionary is illegally distilled whisky. Beyond advocating breaking the law, it isn't clear to me what purpose it is that Brigadier Ethelwald, which is also the name of a minor character in Lord of the Rings, has in writing this curious letter. Though I have my suspicions, of course.
One of the curses of broadband is the ease with which one can stumble home after a few, switch on the computer, do some research on Albanian dialects, say, and then send some stupid and/or possibly offensive e-mail to one's grandmother. I doubt Colonel Emilius "Desert Rat" Strasser is in receipt of such modern technology, but I imagine the scenario was pretty much the same. After a dram of "old Saxon mead", several tankards of "liqueurs distilled by monks", all washed down by a pail of ever trusty poteen, he must have staggered over to his bureau, clasped his quill and dashed off his love letter to booze. But what doesn't make sense is why he would say that...

Taken wisely and in moderation alcohol is good for you...

...when he was clearly soused when he wrote this. Of course, it is unfair to pick on poor old Lieutenant Engleford when he can't have been anyway as drunk or high than Alan Pulis when he penned his belief that Malta's future as an oil power is just waiting around the corner. Forget it; Malta's more likely to be hit by avian flu than Dutch disease. And anyway, why is he bringing this us when it's nowhere near election time? The miserable old git can't even let Malta enjoy something it doesn't even have without trying to give it a guilt trip:

But then, apart from specific environmental impacts, how would Malta's eventual striking of oil configure with the need to encourage a shift towards the use of clean renewable energy? Rightly so, in his article Mr Muscat refers to the fair distribution of wealth derived from oil production activities. However, it must be ensured that any economic gains derived from oil production are also channelled towards the eventual implementation of clean energy alternatives.

Bah! Switch the light the out before you leave the room will you.

Comic Turn

2006-01-15T19:43:00.000Z

Somehow, reading the Sunday Times on the Internet just isn't the same. There's nothing like picking up that fat wad of foolishness, flicking through for the old favourites, opening the middle page for the third segment of a five-part instalment of a biography of Count Auguste Von Brockdorff de Languistine-Medoc, Knight of Malta and cartographer, quickly scanning through the consumer column and Adrian Muscat Inglott's amateurish cartoon, doing the trivia quiz, and so forth. The high points, of course, are the cartoons, which you have to read in the correct sequence. To begin with Islanders would mean spoiling the best too soon. Admittedly, today's vignette was not of the best, but I assume one gets the general idea.

After the exhilaration of Islanders, which it must be said has been going down hill since the late nineties, you have to wean yourself off with a dose of Nalizpelra. Poor old Nalizpelra has stopped even trying. Nonetheless, in tribute to his talent, I have created my own cartoon, which really lets Alfred Sant have it with both barrels.

And finally it's One Family, which subverts all the standard rules of cartoon humour. Garry Larson and Scott Adams have nothing on this Gorg Mallia; Malta's own Doonesbury. It is a shame that today's strip does not follow the usual formula, whereby a younger character is conversing with an older world-weary wag, or some variation on that theme. Expectations are trumped and the satirist's scalpel wounds those who need it.
Consider today's vignette. In the first frame, the set-up seems pretty unpromising, though the seasoned fan will sense the imminence.
"... this just in ...", a young newsreader announces.
Hmmm ... what can it be, wonders the reader?
"There's been a drop of rain."
A drop. Just one drop? I'm not sure about this Gorg. I think I might have a try at the quiz. Oh no, go on, let's keep going.
"All motorists be prepared..."
For what? Ah, the masterful weave of suspense is majestic to behold. Now, when you watch a Marx Brothers film, say, you know there are going to be jokes, but you don't know when. They don't tell you before you start watching. You know they're coming, but when? And when they hit you it's like... well, it's like...
"… for traffic delays of up to two hours".
Because the rain makes the roads impassable. Genius! Absolute genius!

Man on the Moon

2006-01-14T18:37:00.000Z

In writing about Maltese columnists one is drawn irrevocably to the gravitational pull of Joe Grima's ego. It's a dirty business to write about, not to speak of reading, his articles, but I was tickled by his latest effort. His latest installment on the di-ve web site is the second part of a veritable catachrestic refrain of soothseeing. Part of the image of himself that Grima has always relished in creating is that of the insider, privy to the shady secrets that the public must beg him to be told. It's a pity this suave guise is so crushingly deflated by an accompanying picture and English that would not be out of place in the Albanian Daily News. However, though no-one is in any doubt of how many secrets Joe Grima has shrouded within his capacious skull, it is unfortunate for him that they are mostly of a variety he would rather remained unknown. That which he does know, he shares ungrudgingly with his adoring fans, of which I am one.
From the very sub-heading one begins to fear for the sanctity of the man’s health; "Joe Grima argues about the outcome of the forthcoming general elections.” Who he argues with, we are not told. Certainly not with himself, because if there’s someone that agrees with everything that Joe Grima says, then that is Joe Grima.

But better to get stuck in, because disassembling these things is no mean task. Grima breezily informs is that the country's boardrooms' are conducting a "visible manhunt" (I hope he means headhunt) for individuals close to Alfred Sant. In the next breath he tells us that "much of this is hidden from view". He is also keen to dispel suspicions that he might be trying to besmirch reputations, not least because he would be unwilling to burn his boats. And I have no intention of implying that he burns things, God forbid:

"I am not suggesting anything untoward by these MPs or by other Labour or Nationalist professionals. I am just stating what I have been reliably informed by people in the know who have seen boardrooms expand with Labour-oriented personages, who have evidenced companies take in Labour exponents when these companies are quite self sufficient and when these exercises seem to be purely ones of self preservation in case of change."

And this pained tergiversation segues into a delicious weaving of fatal disease into an analogy:

"One can bet one's bottom euro that if the reverse happens, these new people will be jettisoned as soon as the election results are declared, faster than if they were ascertained to be avian flu positive."

This all serves as a premise for the fanciful theory that the Nationalist Party have been trying to buy mercy from a putative future MLP government by offering a report by Chief Justice Emeritus Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici on the revision of the Standing Orders of the House of Representatives. If it sounds stupid, or even crazy, that’s because it is. The whole thing makes absolutely no sense, from beginning to end, and it’s difficult to suppress one’s malicious thoughts about whether Joe Grima has been reading all the recently published articles admonishing excess drinking.

Grammatically tortured paragraph after tortured paragraph, he finally crash-lands his gibberish with this thoroughly surreal image:

"There is one more sign that Labour may already feel that they are in. Some prominent members of the Opposition have turned quite cold and many noses are up in the air already. I would imagine that at the height of their nostrils the air must be freezing cold. Watch out for hypothermia guys!"

To quote the MasterCard adverts, "priceless".

Bottom of the Barrel

2006-01-13T23:09:00.000Z

The customary tradition at this time of year is for people to promise giving up drink, after a whole festive season of over-indulging. If journalists and commentators have stopped drinking, however, they certainly haven’t given up writing about alcohol. When the year kicked off with the tragic news of the death of Jeanette Mifsud, The Times had the short-lived good taste not to pin it on her presumed drunkenness, limiting the account to details of how she “was celebrating the arrival of 2006 at the Mediterranean Conference Centre when she went out at 2 a.m. for a breath of fresh air after feeling sick”. Logically, one would have assumed the most reprehensible aspect of the affair, what most people would voice their objection to, would have echoed the sentiments of a letter to the Times from Charles Caruana Carabez:

“Jeannette should never have died that way. Someone must be responsible for not putting up discreet decorative railings over the bastions at obvious points. But nobody shall speak out. Panic did make someone put up a pathetic board next to the place where she fell reading "sheer drop", so that it would be seen on the news after the event. Apart from obvious prevention, it sounded like a shrieking disclaimer.”

But good taste, not to speak of common sense, is a limited currency in the Maltese islands, so it wasn’t before long that indictments of the youth drinking culture began to pour into the opinion columns. On the eve of what has been a heavy drinking season since time began, the usual warnings were issued about drink-driving, a habit that most teenagers could hardly be guilty of. As Josianne Azzopardi, Sedqa's Safe programme coordinator, warned before Christmas:

“One should remember that alcohol has two facets. On the positive side, it could help a person to socialise. On the other hand, it could be the cause of harm - such as in traffic accidents.”

But even with the best of advice from Sedqa, nothing is going to save you from a 50-foot drop. And how much the retrospective advice of, say, Evarist Bartolo is hardly likely to save anybody’s life. Not that stopped him from writing Friday’s article in l-orizzont, and offering another contribution to the Times, tastefully entitled “What a gr8 party!” He sanctimoniously piles irrelevance upon irrelevance; asking why people were drinking so much, why there were so many people, if any of the drinks were spiked, and so on. Such idiotic and pointless questions, in fact, that you wonder if Bartolo has ever been to a party, much less a New Year’s bash.

But Bartolo is not alone in missing the point. The Focus column helpfully admonishes the under-aged by telling us “that people under 16 should not be drinking in the first place,” pointedly ignoring the fact that Jeanette Mifsud was a 19-year-old University student.

Meanwhile, Remy Damato could not “let the end-of-year events and, in particular, the horrible death of a young 19-year-old, pass without making a few remarks,” which he did in a 700-word letter about alcohol.

And more Alfred Mifsud and l-avukat Reno Borg, who gracefully makes only a passing mention of drinking. You’d think that all these people lived in a Carthusian cloister, where thinking is not allowed. With social commentators this obtuse, thank God that Paceville isn’t build on the edge of a cliff.

Useful Idiots

2006-01-12T20:46:00.000Z

From time to time, the Maltese simpleton is treated most generously to the wit and wisdom of a enlightened foreigner, more often than not an English pensioner from Blackburn. Occasionally, the topic of their letters to the Times will have something to do with Malta, though this is hardly mandatory. Indeed, the letters page of the Times is usually is a surrogate for their own British newspapers, which would not dream of printing these senile ramblings. On Thursday, Gerry Cowie from Surrey wrote in on the flimsy pretext of having recently visited Malta to rail against the evil of political correctness. As the completely sane Mr. Cowie argues:

Here, political correctness has gone mad in some spheres. While Britain has welcomed those of other faiths with open arms and allowed freedom of speech and freedom of worship, there are still people who would stifle Christian expression with the excuse that we must not cause offence to those of other faiths, no matter who got here first!

Sadly for Mr. Cowie, this sits uncomfortably with a more sensible, if overlong, letter from Stephen Farrugia, who lives in Ilmspan, Germany. Farrugia discusses what he perceives to be the growing scourge of racism on the island. It is sad that it has taken Lowell and his pathetic band of eunuchs for the Maltese to come to terms with the latent racism that has always existed in the country. I cannot imagine that there is a single person in Malta who has not at some time or other witnessed or taken part in a base display of xenophobic contempt towards some unfortunate Libyan, most of whom are respectable law-abiding people.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

On a lighter note Louis J. Bartoli of Iklin writes to complain about the slowness of Maltese postal services:

I am interested to know how Maltapost plc can explain why a letter I posted at 7 a.m. on January 3 in Iklin was delivered to a Balzan address, hardly two kilometres away, on January 6.

What I'm interested in knowing is why he couldn't just deliver this letter by hand, if its recipient was damned close to him. It's a shame this letter ever got to the newspaper. Mind you, if it hadn't that would have been something to write about. Except the letter would not have got to the newspaper. Louis Bartoli's life must be a never-ending hell of possibilities.

Fighting Words

2006-01-11T14:17:00.000Z

The brouhaha among Times readers over the thorny war deportation issue continues unabated. This time round, Tonio Borg offers his perspective on what he defines a "a blot in British colonial history." One wonders if, in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister, Borg will be seeking some form of reparation for this bold attack on the dignity of the Maltese people. Frankly, it seems a little odd that somebody in his position would be prepared to intervene in such a debate, but then the line social commentary and executive in Malta has long been blurred.
With customary clumsiness, the publication of this letter coincides with the latest salvo from Borg's putative antagonist, Victor J. de Bono. Indeed, Borg will hardly be placated by the suggestion that:

"This enemy [during the Second World War] were the very fascists some members of the Nationalist Party emulated."

The implication is a loaded one and is likely to throw oil on the fire, which is a worrying prospect in view of Maltese letter-writing unwillingness to give their opponents the last say. Of course, this desire to be proved right would be nothing if not accompanied by an attempt to adopt the moral high ground.

Finally, I am one of those who wish to see the end of this banal argument about a shabby part of our history. It is not because I support something I am ashamed of. On the contrary, it is because I am ashamed of some people, who, as far as I am concerned, are an embarrassment to Malta and the Maltese.

But now that even the second most powerful man in Malta (sic!) has decided to enter the fray what chance is there that this "banal argument" will end any time soon?

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

I reproduce the letter below in full to illustrate how editorial lassitude makes utter mockery of any pretence The Times may have to seriousness, if any. I have seen these unashamed adverts before in these pages, but this one is a truly fine specimen.

Licence to dive

Richard Ellul, Zurrieq.

Having just completed both my Open Water and Advanced diving courses, I would like to thank Diveshack Malta for giving me the opportunity to explore the fascinating world under the sea.

I never imagined that the waters around the Maltese islands would be so rich in all kinds of marine life. Course director Rita and instructors Sergio, Michelle and Shawn have always been willing to share with me their invaluable experience and knowledge, and for this I am grateful.

Behind the Times

2006-01-10T10:55:00.000Z

The Times editorialist has finally stuck his head above the parapet and written a proper editorial after spending the last two weeks wishing people merry Christmas and happy new year. Incidentally, this habit that our columnists have of wishing people happy new years is something that really needs to be stopped. Why do they, politicians in the large, deign to treat their forum as a giant notice board where they can put up their fatuous little notes? Next thing they'll be putting up their shopping lists and asking their wives to run the bath for them.
Anyway, the Times today writes about the resettlement of 33 refugees in Holland, a mere 20 days after the event. This is clearly unsatisfactory, as was the way in which response to the Depasquale report dribbled out over the festive season. Somebody remarked on another blog that the timing of the publication was cynically coincided with Christmas in the hope that it would be overlooked among all the merriment.
I fear this was overrating the abilities of the local press and "civil society" to respond adequately to fresh news. Well until the end of December slow-reading stragglers, many of whom have evidently never heard of skim-reading, were voicing their feelings on the matter. Pressure groups' inability to read at further than Year 6 level made sure that the report stayed on the main news pages till well after publication.
And now, after all this time, the top minds of the Times have endeavoured to synthesise these two month-old news items. The image that comes to mind is of a caveman bashing two bits of flint together and shrieking excitedly.
The intuitive account of Malta's immigration problems is similarly Neanderthal and is developed thus: "Malta small, ug, people many, immigrants many, ug (scratch mate and pick fleas), it is right and proper that countries in the Union better able to cope with an influx of immigrant labour ... help us out, ug." All this is editorial gold dust, no doubt about it.
This dull strain of thought is continued in the editorial's whitewash of the Hal-Safi incident, which is effectively a reprisal of the recommendations of the Depasquale report itself. No mention is made of the misgivings of Amnesty International about the report, or the fact that the report deems it worthy to spill out into a general study of the secondary problems of immigration as evinced by this passage:

"Problema ohra li tissemma fil-kwistjoni ta’ l-influss ta’ TCNs gejja mixxoghol. Bhal ma gara f’diversi pajjizi Ewropej dawn it-tip ta’ haddiema jidhlu ghal xoghol li c-cittadini tal-Pajjiz jiprovaw jevitaw; b’dana kollu llinja ta’ demarkazzjoni xejn ma hi cara u nsibu ukoll hafna minnhom jahdmu f’xoghol li normalment isir min Maltin."

Of course, if the Times did actually do some journalistic legwork that could upset a few applecart, and nobody wants that, do they?

Binge Writing

2006-01-09T11:25:00.000Z

I've spoken about Daphne-lite already in the form of Pamela Hansen, and for those seeking an additional dose of this frippery should be directed to Monday's Independent. If anyone has ever read the British satirical magazine Private Eye, today's column by Marisa Micallef will evoke familiar echoes of the Polly Filler character, busy mother and columnist. Just as an aside, her headshot on the web site makes her suspiciously as if she's posing in the nude, which might be a solution to flag up the Independent's miserable sales figures.
After a reasonable trot through the reasons of teenagers wanting to let their hair down, Micallef arrives at her innovative idea for curbing youth delinquency:

"... the government, the police and all the NGOs and others who deal with all the social problems in general, who should just take the plunge, and cordon off Paceville to at least anyone under 16, although some would prefer the limit to be 18."

The Daphne-lite alarm bells went off like crazy on that line. Imitation is the finest form of flattery they say, but when the opinions are this slavish to the bog-standard concerned but PC parent prototype, you wonder if it wouldn't be easier to read the original first. Which is how within two paragraphs of the extract above Micallef trips into the hoary old excuse for all teenage misbehaviour:

"The sad truth is that kids go to Paceville because there is nothing much for them to do. If you are lucky enough to have kids who are very focused on, say, sport or drama or dance, or – a few – their school work, you have a lesser problem, as these kids manage to go out but not be consumed by the horrible culture that is Paceville."

How mobilising the police in physically excluding the under-16s from extensive swathes of the country tackles the scourge of alienation is not something that Micallef explains, but she is unerringly insightful in her assessment that "we are very good at talk and platitudes."

Hansen Beast

2006-01-08T18:03:00.000Z

If there were an award for the most miskina columnist of the year Pamela Hansen would win it every year hands down. The graceful way to describe her would be as a poor man's Daphne, though in reality this is closer to the truth than just a put-down. Hansen was parachuted into her Sunday Times slot after one of Daphne's notorious bust-ups with the newspaper.
While Daphne appeals to the nominally sophisticated chattering classes, Hansen can only hope to captivate the fleeting attention of newspaper-reading housewife. I say fleeting, because her reasoning and prose is so cobbled together that it bears no scrutiny. This week, for instance, she has trod onto my territory by mocking the Independent for their boring headlines, in particular a recent story about the recent increase in local gas sales. Interestingly, she expresses her disappointment at the failure of what could have made the article more captivating, namely that nobody died of hypothermia:

"While it is true that it is sometimes not easy to get a riveting front-page story - and this time of the year is notoriously slow - Friday's Malta Independent was really scraping the barrel with the headline "Sale of gas increased fourfold in December" - surprise, surprise - and a large photo of gas cylinders, albeit an interesting one (a sunbeam hitting the top of a cylinder)."

Implicit in her mockery is the suggestion that her own paper's track record on this front is in some way exemplary, which is a stupid enough assertion not to merit comment. Anyone unconvinced need only look at this doozy of a headline, featured as the only front page story last month:

"Changes proposed to original plans"

It will come as no surprise that the story goes downhill from there. You would have thought that a keen observer of Enemalta affairs Hansen might have picked up on this one.
Having run out of ideas for her article, Hansen then does what any self-respecting journlist does at such moments; she switches on the TV. And duly, she relates the contents of an edition of Hard Talk on BBC World and two news reports on Bloomberg and Sky News.
After what sounds like the work of a few minutes channel-surfing around the turn of the hour, Hansen concludes that it would be wise for WHO officials to keep a distance from headless chickens. I don't exclude the possibility that she is joking, though it is far from clear. As it is far from clear why she hasn't been given the boot.

Come One, Come All

2006-01-07T17:14:00.000Z

The There was a film I saw a few months ago, The Ninth Configuration, that I would recommend to anybody, if only for the hilarious range of characters in the lunatic asylum in which the story is set. One highlight is the theatre impresario attempting to put a Shakespeare production with an all-dog cast. Another patient believes himself to be a psychiatrist and keeps stealing the real doctors clothes, and so on.
In many ways the Times' letter pages has nothing to envy in its collection of oddballs, religious nuts, sociopathic pedants, narcissists, and the ever dependable bores. Before illustrating, I must say that I was impressed by the almost enjoyable opinion column in today's (Saturday) Times. Even I.M. Beck seemed on better form than usual, insightful and poignant, though he let himself down at the end by giving a tip on some kebab joint he's discovered. I assume that with the smoking ban and all, kebab restaurants are probably about the only places he'll eat in these days.
The letters page on the other hand was a bit more colourful. First, it was graced by a real celebrity, unlike those fools in women's wigs that annually parade on L-Istrina. Because Lili Gruber has some gumption, unlike Maltese politicians, she gets a person with good English to write her letters for her. Of course, it was all a bit self-serving, but a celebrity is a celebrity.
Meanwhile, Alfred Galea of San Gwann provided the pages with their necessary daily dose of religious mania. Mind you, he's either put the wrong address on the envelope or he has a very high opinion of Ray Bugeja:

"God, do not let the crucifixion of your son Jesus and the suffering of His mother Mary, queen of heaven and earth, go unnoticed and unrewarded to mankind."

He is not alone on the catechism front, however, and is suitably complemented by Mgr. Anton Gauci, Oro Pro Nobis, who suggests some light Marian reading, though I think be sticking to my Dan Brown thank you very much:

"The Divine Life Of The Most Holy Virgin by the Ven. Mary of Agreda; The Glories Of Mary by St Alphonsus Liguori; The Life Of Mary As Seen By The Mystics by Raphael Brown (compiler); The Mother Of The Saviour by Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange; Sermons Of St Francis de Sales On Our Lady, edited by Fr Lewis Fiorelli; pages 134-157 of The Faith Of Our Fathers by Cardinal James Gibbons and True Devotion To Mary by St Louis De Montfort."

No letters page would be complete without some whining ninny, and Elaine Azzopardi of Bugibba duly obliges by calling for the authorities to monitor the age of children going to watch King Kong. If I had my way, nobody under the age of 25 would be allowed into any cinema, but this is the price we have to pay for democracy I suppose.
We cannot forget, of course, the mandatory old fart complaining about things not being as they used to be. Bernard A. Vassallo of Swieqi writes what I admit is actually a rather interesting letter about the decline of Maltese, though I can hear him harrumphing from my seat hundreds of miles away.
Who needs TV when you have all this on one page?

Hello, Sorry, Thank You, Goodbye

2006-01-06T22:30:00.000Z

Before proceeding, I should say that I am a technical spastic, so I will try and do links to other blogs and such, but I apologise in advance if I am not capable of properly linking those kind enough to have linked to me. If that makes sense, thank you for reading, all ten of you.

Ring Piece

2006-01-06T21:56:00.000Z

The Lord be with you if you should ever need the Maltese health service, for as Louis Deguara’s column today shows, it is run by a Class-A nitwit. Truth be told, I’m not sure if I’m more disturbed or amused by the Ralf Wiggum-style flow of banalities, but I do know that it looks too much like a child’s scrapbook scribblings to be ignored. The message, however, looks suspiciously like it has been written on the basis of a checklist issued from the Pieta' HQ.

So, for any budding PN drones looking for tips on how to write the perfect start-of-year puff piece, of which you may find the highest puke-inducing expression here, some tips follow:

1) Wish your readers a happy new year, because this will endear you to the readers and make you appear more human than your political rivals. Also, make the new year a theme for your article, being sure to develop the concepts of renewal, continuity, improvement and change. However, suggest that as desirable as it may be to aspire to amelioration (a word we propose will make you appear more intelligent), this is hardly possible given how good things are already. Dr. Deguara gives an excellent example:

"On the local level, 2005 was not such a bad year. It is not only the government that is now convinced that it has mastered the budget deficit. The whole population is so persuaded. In fact, nobody is mentioning it any longer as a national problem. As all are won over that the programme of road upgrading is being executed according to plan, thanks to Italian protocol and EU funds! Those who still believe it was an exercise for the CHOGM event will have to eat their words this year."

2) Making sweeping statements like “the whole population” has the additional fringe benefit of making those who disagree with you look stupid, or just simply crazy. This dovetails neatly with the next task, which is to subtly undermine the credibility of opposition forces. Claim that valuable reforms are not being undertaken because the recalcitrant opposition refuses to agree with every single thing you say. When you're talking about the unions just say “social partners”, as this will make you appear like a consensus-building technocract instead of a party yes-man.

3) Speak about improvement, or amelioration, in the following areas, being mindful to disregard common sense when it inclines towards taking the shine off our achievements:

i) Employment

ii) EU money

iii) Electricity bills – They went up, but not as much as we wanted them to

iv) Restoration of democracy from the iniquitous dark days of bully-boy Labour Party thuggery to which we will never return. Never!

v) Boast about some infrastructure project we have executed over the last twenty years. Dr. Deguara offers a great, if unusual, example, along with a fragrant literary sleight of hand:

"Imagine confronting the challenges of the new economy without the investments in ... a perennially leaking and overflowing drainage system. It is true that the investment cost us hundreds of millions of liri but it was not money down the drain."

4) Try and end on some high-flowing note about the youth being our future, but if you will bring up education try not to make a tit of yourself, as Dr. Deguara did:

"Education aims not only at personal fulfilness..."

******************************************************************

My advice would be for the PN stooges that write this stuff for their ministers to take English lessons, or at least re-read their catatonic-prop. That might avoid the eventuality of Dr. Deguara appearing to express unbridled paroxysms of joy at this:

"The year was crowned with the announcement that at least a net Lm194 million will flow Malta's way between 2007 and 2113."

But don't worry, this guy is only some bigmouth journalist... oops, no, it turns out he runs the thing that might save your life, if you get get run over by a car racing along one those smooth, smooth CHOGM roads.

Grumpy Old Men

2006-01-05T20:22:00.000Z

There was a grimly humorous video that I once on the Internet of two pensioners socking it to each other over some trivial dispute. That’s what always comes to mind when Kenneth Wain throws himself into an unseemly scrap with another similarly senile old codger. The only unfortunate difference being that these encounters are far from funny, though attentive reading does reveal a veneer of cruelty and pettiness that rightly belongs in the playgrounds of infant schools, though the Times of Malta is probably an adequate surrogate.

The latest extended slinging match is between the self-appointed Renaissance man Kenneth Wain in the red corner and haughty sot Jojo Mifsud Bonnici in the blue corner. The dispute has gone back further than the Times archives serve one to link, but suffice it to say the unprompted exchange on constitutional reform has had nobody on the edge of their seat. What is interesting is the childish in which neither party is prepared to let the whole thing go. Today, Wain denounces Mifsud Bonnici’s own reply to an earlier letter by Wain, and so on. With the presumptuousness of a megalomaniac convinced of his own importance, Wain begins not by setting the context, but by launching a thinly and badly veiled attack on Mifsud Bonnici:

I regret that Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici was offended that I described him as a "dyed-in-the wool conservative". "Dyed-in-the-wool" simply means confirmed and unchangeable and that is what I meant.

As is fitting with these sub-academic squabbles, he proceeds by clarifying a semantic issue raised in an article he wrote as little as two months ago. After clumsily bumbling through cack-handed elucidation with his trademark leaden wit, Wain finally arrives at the fruit of his month-long labour; a cursory root around the Internet that almost certainly consisted of writing the word “constitution” in Wikipedia and Google:

Not being a constitutional expert I went to my on-line encyclopaedia to take his challenge up. It told me that constitutional amendments are made in different ways but "In jurisdictions with 'rigid' or 'entrenched' constitutions amendments require a special procedure different from that used for enacting ordinary laws".

If it were anybody else, complete ignorance on the subject under debate might defer the correspondent from venturing into a handbagging fit, but such modesty is ever the stranger to Professor Wain. The truth, of course, is that expertise comes a distant second in Wain’s priorities to the exigencies of flinging some abuse at someone. And why not? He excels even himself, however, when implying that Mifsud Bonnici is a closet Nazi sympathizer. His objection to Mifsud Bonnici’s affinity for the notion of natural law circuitously leads to the conclusion that such people’s “political descendants (Nazis, white supremacists etc.) have held similar assumptions in more contemporary times with tragic consequences.” Stuff like that must be dynamite for Mifsud Bonnici’s legal brain, which has all the processing abilities of a ZX Spectrum.

The letter that inspired this nonsense in the first place was no less picky and tedious, however, a fact happily signaled by the opening sentence, which almost invites the readers to mind their own business:

Looking at Kenneth Wain's article (November 1) in reply to what I had written (September 13), I have the following remarks to make.

I did say it is incorrect to call the derivation of "ought" from "is" the "naturalistic fallacy". I did so as I follow what Prof. Finnis says on this misnomer.

Where Wain gave page references to Kant’s 1992 edition of “an essay on Enlightenment” (ironically enough, not a very enlightening reference), Mifsud Bonnici directs us to Professor Finnis’s Natural Law and Natural Rights. At this point, you begin to sympathize for the two academic dames, as they have obviously not had the privilege of ever making the acquaintance of an editor worthy of that title. An editor, for anybody who doesn’t yet know, is that man or woman whose job it is to read the articles and cut, reject, re-write and/or amend as necessary. When these clowns are permitted to flaunt their supposed erudition at the expense of even a faintly structured column, you have to wonder why the editor is letting them embarrass themselves in this way. Without wanting to sound like a cheerleader for dumbing down, how is it that the Times editor cannot find anybody that can write in a comprehensible, or competent even, way on topics about which people could probably be made to take an active interest?

For now, we await the next salvo. Turn Joseph Mifsud Bonnici.

Prosy Prat

2006-01-04T23:22:00.000Z

Has anyone ever really paid attention to any of Alfred Sant's foolish novelty column past the third or fourth paragraph? If as I think, most have not, then what does it say for the fate of Malta that it might be soon taken over by a person that the majority of the population would prefer not to listen to, let alone read. Where some politicians, probably not Maltese, might stir the reader with some rousing prose about their vision of a bright future, Sant ploddingly trots out, week after week, verbatim comments that the dull could easily look up themselves on the parliament website, were they of a boring enough disposition. Resolving to trawl through this week's prosy prattlings, I soon came acropper on the distinctly un-Horation paragraphs 3 to 5:

In his budget speech for 2006, delivered on October 31, 2005, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi spoke as follows: "It is clear that the results being obtained in the labour market provide another positive indicator regarding the state of the economy. Up to end September of this year, the number of persons in full-time gainful employment had reached 137,813, an increase of 0.2 per cent on the previous year...

"It is relevant to mention that our economy also managed to generate a substantial number of part-time jobs. In fact, the number of persons with part-time employment as their principal source of work reached 23,138, an increase of 2,190, or 10.5 per cent.

"The number of persons registering for work under the two parts of the unemployment register stood at 7,210. Therefore, the rate of those seeking work stood at five per cent. This amounts to a decrease of 930 persons, or of 11.4 per cent, on the previous year.

This man is so godawfully bad at formulating his arguments that he laboriously sets the stage with all the flair of a health and safety executive. It is almost embarassing to witness the seams of the hastily-cobbled-together patchwork of contrarian mundanities.
"Ok," he thinks to himself, "first write what he said, then write what you think, but make sure you don't agree with him. That'll get him, I know it will."
Somehow, I imagine him writing this rubbish hunched over a vintage Remington to the light of reconstituted candle pedantically transcribing Gonzi's remarks in Dickensian bitterness. Only such niggardly sparseness could account for the aridity of his ceaseless and pointless whinging.
There is so little gristle on Sant's weedy laments that it is hardly surprising that the reader's appetite is ruined by paragraph 3. Indeed, this is an ominous harbinger of the type of government that we can expect from Sant's Labour Party; miserable, aimless, and hopeless in every sense of the word.

Who to Deport

2006-01-03T23:03:00.000Z

The Times maintains its parish pump function by publishing the late retort to a letter on a subject that pretty nobody gives a rat's cock about. This evident disinterest of the general population does nothing to diminish the enthusiasm of mental midgets first excited by the Voltarian "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". From time to time, the Times will publish letters by these clowns, and Anna Xuereb's overwrought drivel falls po-facedly into this category.
Because she is wary of appearing petty, she opens with a ridiculously unconvincing claim to possessing irony, which her subsequent undergraduate-level drivel serves well to belie:

"I am half-tempted to discuss amicably with Dennis Vella the merits or otherwise of an official apology to those Maltese citizens arrested without charges and imprisoned, deported and detained in African concentration camps without trial or conviction during the Second World War."

As her bullet-pointed philippic hits its stride, she helpfully gives a numbered framework to her curiously anachronistic argument. This is just as well, for few readers would be prepared to withstand her 1,134 words of sexless gibberish. Indeed, by permitting the long-suffering Times letter page readers to gloss over the paragraphs, Xuereb relieves them from having to put up with redundant pre-emptive and supposedly satirical claims of "misunderstanding", God save us from inverted commas;

...I would be delighted to learn I have misunderstood but, sadly, I rather think I have not...

...By his writing I seem to understand he is an ardent campaigner for ensuring to the police the power to detain persons indefinitely without charge - a view not really welcome in the democratic world. I just hope to have misunderstood...

...Once more, if I have misunderstood, I will of course apologise...

But because this about the Times's editorial policy about publishing letters, what has to be raised is the pompous pretense that inspired this letter, which Xuereb expresses with the desire to "map the moral distance" between herself and the unfortunate Dennis Vella. Though it might be graceful to let her off the hook on the grounds of her apparent grasp of English, her cretinous self-righteousness lets her intentions, whatever they might be, down.
Her reading of Marxist comic books leads her around some peculiar digressions on Imperialist iniquity and American indiscretions, and finally ends with a withering assault on "disgraced colonialism" and "the old colonial Raj". Her house-wife wit is directed more specifically at the loyal Maltese colonial hundred percenter, Dennis Vella, whose hearty letter is evidently on par with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its unmitigated propagandistic evil.
The one saving grace of the letter is that is that was not reproduced as an opinion column, though there is much to say on that subject.