Why "W"? Zzzzz...

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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?

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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.