Author: Jacques René Zammit

YouFooled

Post author By Jacques René Zammit
Post date April 1, 2009

YouTube’s April Fool joke is somewhat cool. Sandrovella drew my attention to the fact that the Recommended for You section on YouTube was giving funny results once you clicked on one of the vids. In fact when I did try it I ended up with an upside down image. YouTube obliged with some tips on how to enjoy the “new YouTube experience”.

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Freedom Day Funk

It’s not even worth writing anything new. What follows below is a blog post from three years ago. Nothing has changed in J’accuse’s outlook. Freedom Day is still essentially a Non Sequitur in the list of days which Maltese call National. Freedom Day is about as much a reason to celebrate and as solemn as a pub crawl. Joseph Muscat apparently got the Freedom Fighters all worked up at the funny carnival float monument in Vittoriosa.

In a sort of seance sans ouija board he invoked the spirits of Mikiel Anton Vassalli and Manwel Dimech and spoke about the walking spirit of Dominic Mintoff the revolutionary who “freed” his country by letting a contract run out and refusing to renew it. The man who is fast becoming a champion of useless causes has now called for a serious debate on having one National Day. Screw that Joey! We need more National Days… I’d hate to come back to Malta to have less National Days than when I left. Surely you understand… without national holidays you could not run off to Sicily and neglect protocol duties (nudge, nudge, wink wink).

Free Malta needed to look to the future with confidence that it could be the best in Europe, formed of people of different beliefs who worked together. Dr Muscat concluded his speech with the cry: Viva Malta Indipendenti, Viva Malta Repubblika, Viva Malta Hielsa u Maghquda.. Earlier, PL deputy leader Toni Abela said this Freedom Day was particularly significant because the current problem of illegal immigration was an opportunity for the government to exercise its political freedom and to take a stand in the EU on the issue.

I’ve got German homework to do so I will not explain why the above sentences had me in fits. Joseph Muscat is probably naive enough to think that yelling “Viva Malta Indipendenti” is some sort of concession to the kind of kitsch reconciliation he has in mind. To most Labourites it’s a bit like a partitarju of San Bastjan yelling “Viva San Gorg”… which is probably the platform from which his serious debate is launched. Let’s not go into Toni Abela’s ideas on illegal immigration… best leave that to others…

So here’s to Freedom Day… J’accuse.. three years ago… still valid in this day and age (btw Fausto DID make a correction – go to the original post to check it out):

Happy Freedom Day
… to all those who still do not get the joke
…to all those who are free to vote MLPN
…to all those who still think that Mintoff kicked out the British army & NATO
… to all those who believe that the non-renewal of a contract merits some heroic medal
… to all those who love the carnival float of a monument
… to all those who will think I am a nationalist bastard just because I think Freedom Day sucks
… to all those who think I am an unpatriotic punk
… to all those who will not go watch the Regatta
… to all those who do not think Republic and Independence day are enough
… to all those who are tempted to start a string of apologetic comments
… to Fausto who will come up with some historic correction
… to diehard Labourites
… to anyone who once formed part of the Brigati Laburisti
… to anyone who once formed part of Dirghajn il-Maltin
… to anyone who thinks Mintoff’s thick black glasses and belt are funky
… to the cactus, the oar and the luzzu under a hot sun
… to the government
… to the opposition
… to the bloody rest

“sono troppo stitico per fare lo stronzo”
– Caparezza, Habemus Capa

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The Expense of Representation

Post author By Jacques René Zammit
Post date March 30, 2009

A period of economic crisis is a bad enough time for everybody – austere times call for drastic draconian measures and cuts in spending. Even the language of advertising is shifting to take into consideration the changing priorities of the consumer. We still want to spend, we still have the consumerist instinct yet we are all vaguely aware that endless spending backed by unjustifiable loans are a thing of the past.

One particular social class that will bear he brunt of this “spending awareness” is the political class. It’s one thing having your average David Beckham (yes, he can be average) prancing around with multi-million euro contracts because he is part of the Pan Circenses – distraction and entertainment for the people. It’s another for your most high of public servants spending their salaries and ancillary pay packets on anything like travel, accomodation or – god-forbid – light entertainment.

In the United Kingdom Labour MP Jacqui Smith is at the centre of a whirlwhind caused by some ugly discoveries regarding Expenses Claims by Members of Parliament. Smith’s sin was to claim the expenses of two pornographic movies from her MP expenses account. This forms part of an even greater scandal involving MPs funding second-holiday homes over the years thanks to expenses calculated on the distance from Westminster.

European MEPs are not new to this kind of controversy as both Simon Busuttil and Saviour Balzan know. There was always an case for improved transparency among MEP’s and a better justification on how they go about spending the money of what is (not always wrongly but rather exaggeratedly) perceived as an automatic gravy train. The stroke of bad luck for MEPs is that now, more than ever before, the justified need to scrutinise expenses and funding is topped up with a vengeful, envy-driven motivation that is closer to issues of status anxiety than any moral or practical considerations.

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Forms of Wit

Post author By Jacques René Zammit
Post date March 30, 2009

Withering Writes

There’s a dearth of intellectual and semi-intellectual activity on the Maltese side of the blogosphere that has been as inexplicable as it has been sudden. Out of nowhere the various pundits that had been gracing the blogospheric world went mum and retreated to their self-constructed ivory towers without much ado. On the whole, the blogosphere is currently more akin to Paceville at around five in the morning – shabby leftovers of a big party and the occasional loudmouth breaking through the deafening hiss that still taunts your ears as they reverberate from the nightclub music.

This general hiatus makes me feel nostalgic for the agora-like feeling of the early blogosphere when everybody who was worth reading knew the difference between a blog, a newspaper article/column and a comment section. The ignorant masses have however finally got efficient access to the wireless and are tapping away to their hearts content leaving a bigoted comment here and a pompous remark there all the while harbouring the ever-so-mistaken belief that theirs too is the business of blogging.

Trust us to screw it up I say. Trust us to take a medium that has (fleetingly) been an efficient social and political phenomenon the world over and get it so damnably wrong. The people – that enigmatic mass of sheep who still thinks in Mintoffian formulae based on entitlement to pampering – are the ones to blame. For them blogging and discussing over the ether was not a fantastic mode of confronting and exchanging ideas but a more direct way to complain to the establishment about what was not done and what should be done. Not in a constructive way but in the moaning, complaining and general whingeing way only a nation brought up on cejca and false promises could know of.

Bored Witless

Try spending 18 months in an enclosed space with football and a short walk around the permiter of the enclosure as your only form of expression. Would you riot? The situation is desperate. The Dublin Convention does not help. The Schengen obligations do not either. Does that mean that we suspend our obligations in a sort of pick’n’mix of our EU rights and obligations? Do we threaten by becoming pariahs? Do we choose instead to hide behind the chinese walls of committees and counter-committees setting up actions and counter-actions within the current EU framework that is so evidently not working?

What DO we do actually? The latest UN reports on asylum seekers show us a clear picture that unlike Luxembourg, we are the preferred destination of the Human Rights Tourists from the Horn Of Africa. Excuse the sarcasm but I do find the words “preferred destination” rather ironic. These are not pleasure cruises, and Malta is almost certainly not a destination in any case. Malta, Cyprus and Turkey bear the brunt of asylum seekers in Europe. In our case it’s mainly Somalis, Eritreans and Ivory Coast citizens. It does not take a modern day Talleyrand to note that intervention and action in the Horn of Africa would mean less asylum seekers in the long term.

Locked Horn

Somalia and Eritrea are not oil wells, poppy fields or harbourers of supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction so the chances that the usual police forces or casual intervenors shift a tank or two in that direction are minimal. At most we might expect more patrolling of the seas to prevent Somali pirates from kidnapping another tanker. Where am I getting at? Haven’t you guessed? It may not be the only solution but I do believe that a big step towards solving our immigration problems is probably nagging on within and without the EU for concrete action in the Horn of Africa. Rather than putting the fear of God in NGOs and organisations fighting against all odds to deliver a better standard of living in sub-Saharan belt we could be devoting our resources to hosting and encouraging their activity. We could become a centre for a structured approach for the betterment of the Sub-saharan belt.

More than that we could put our belligerent, hot-head brains to good use and specialise in the matter. Possibly our foreign policy resources could be better used concentrating on problems that hit home than trying to bring about peace in the Middle-East single-handedly. Our relations with our African neighbours should become a door to a new specialisation making Malta a centre for expertise, dialogue and concerted international programmes. The international community’s attraction should never be caught by whinging, shoe-banging, tantrum throwing beggars but by a pro-active people working openly for real solutions.

Short-Sighted

A centre of diplomatic excellence cannot be expected soon if we keep relying on our current political schools from which we expect some sort of vision. So long as we vote for and encourage the status quo of tautological opportunism there can be no hope that we become a pro-active thinking nation. Expect more (Un)Smart Maltas, expect knee-jerk reactions, faux green policies and “our-hands-are tied” declarations. Expect them to succumb to the loud uncouth voice of the intolerant right. Constructive visions of alternate futures are not for parties who are comfortable ensconced in the reality of alternate government by the incompetent for the incompetent.

We now have a Palace of Thinking bang in the middle of Valletta, or so it seems. How about making intelligent use of it and coming up with a valid long-term project that can be measured against something more tangible than electoral success? We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our children. It could also be an opportunity of narrowly avoiding becoming the pariah state with a reputation of detaining humans in inhuman conditions and instead yelling one big “Yes, We Care” to the world. Little does it matter that the main inspiration behind such planning would be egoistic survival… it is of course a Darwinian reflex!

Wit’s End

Back to the politicians. EP election candidates have become a colourful source of entertainment on the net. We are witnessing first hand the culmination point of 15 years of hard work by the two behemoths – candidates now roll off the production chain of PLPN and they constitute a veritable paradox. On the one hand they fall over themselves to seem individual and different from the rest of the pack, on the other the style and substance is a package of electoral clichées and one-line wonders that would best suit a Miss World contestant. At this rate Simon Busuttil seems to be the only contestant who knows what he is doing. Pity he’s thrown his lot with that Pie in the Sky agglomeration known as the EPP which is about as good as the PN when it comes to generating coherent visions and principles.

At the risk of being accused of being an AD supporter (which I am not) I would say that a vote for the European greens (and consequently for Yvonne Ebejer or Arnold Cassola) is the closest you can get to voting for a determinate pan-European package and clear plan. They are the closest to a WYSIWG party – what you see is what you get – and that is saying much in a confusionary system where few parties can really tell you what they stand for. The European Socialists come a close second in the list of available parties though the local candidates one gets to choose from are not exactly the creme-de-la-creme. Pity the ALDR (European Liberals) do not have a real party in Malta (sorry I do not count the Alphabet Liberals) because they too seem to go about their European representation with a tad bit more coherence.

Libertas, the new kids on the block, are an idealist movement aiming at “democratising Europe” without having a concrete plan on how to do so. You’d expect a pan-european party to have more of a grasp of current global realities than that. The main EP issue that tickled my antennae this week was the PLPN agreement on the sixth seat. The Times Brussels Correspondent (Ivan Camilleri) ran a story entitled “Parties agree on ‘election’ of sixth MEP in June”. The issue here is that enigmatic seat which should be available for an extra Maltese bum if the Lisbon Treayy is finally ratified. So our good-willing constitutional guardians have “agreed” (which is where the inverted commas of irony and sarcasm should lie) on when this sixth MEP place should be decided.

They “agreed” when but not how. In the sense that now we know that PLPN are willing to consider the possibility of using the outcome of next June’s elections to choose the reserve MEP but they still cannot decide on the criteria. Of course the big issue is whether the quota for five candidates or six should apply. Now now, why do I smell another “Wasted Vote” issue on the way? I really hope I am proved wrong but I cannot help but think that the main consideration for both PLPN will be avoiding the close shave we saw last time round when Arnold almost made it to Brussels (just before opting to run for a seat in Rome instead).

Dreamers of the third way and multiple representation will in all probability see another chance for real representation wasted. There will be less and less of us complaining. After all now we have an outlet called “the comments section” where we can deceive ourselves that someone really listens and gives a damn. Oh they will… just you wait till election day… then a month later their websites will be down, the cheap slogans and puerile imagery vanished and an empty sign in their place “404 File Not Found”. Funny how the ether reflects more of reality as time passes!

In Brief

This has been the first attempt at J’accuse in Brief. By consensual agreement with the kind Editor I shall be trying to shorten the contributions by half to make for easier reading. Brevity, they say, is the soul of wit. This week I shaved off the first two hundred words. Not a bad start. I will do my best to limit to a thousand and a quarter come Easter. Have a nice rest of the weekend, a jolly Freedom Day, a creative April Fools Day and of course do celebrate the start of President Abela’s term by toasting to the jovial conviviality of our PLPN years. Le Roi est mort! Vive le Roi!

Jacques has been reading the UN statistics on asylum seekers on http://www.akkuza.com. What do you think of being constructive in our approach? Come tell us on J’accuse… the blog where witty insults are welcomed with equality of arms.

This article and accompanying bertoon appeared in The Malta Independent on Sunday (29.03.09).