Category: Mediawatch

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Mediawatch

The Prude Miller’s Tale

One story thrown up in the Ferragosto heat is that of Miller Distributor’s refusal to carry an edition of Dazed Magazine. Apparently it is because of an osé picture of Azalea Banks blowing up a condom. This is the ultimate non-story that risks being blown out of proportion (apologies for the pun). Miller Distributors is a commercial enterprise. Not the Church. Not the Government. It’s a commercial enterprise. They import and distribute most of the international press that reaches the Maltese shelves (when they’re not printing it). So if Miller decides it will not import one magazine or another then it is a commercial decision. The basis of the commercial decision is irrelevant – it still should have commercial consequences.

An irritated consumer would probably have the ultimate luxury in a free market – that of opting to no longer buying goods imported by Miller. A boycott. Would it work? Of course not. Particularly given the lions’ share of the market that Miller enjoys. Alternatively you could switch to other ways of obtaining your fare – the internet has worked wonders for that: just look at the Newsstand app for ipads and its android equivalents. I am subscribed to the Economist and the UK Times online and do not depend on any distributor to decide what I can or cannot read.

It’s not censorship though. What Miller is doing will just reflect on Miller and that’s that. Frankly I tend to agree with most commentators – that Miller’s sudden bout of overzealousness is ridiculous. In this day and age it was inevitable that the blocked image would be given more prominence via the net and other media. So why bother with a selective ban when you are also carrying 50 Shades of Grey to your bookshelves?

I’ll just put it down to summer nonsense. Now go have fun… and blow your own condom.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Propaganda Pay-As-You-Please

Just imagine. The tax collector comes round and you tell him “Dude, I’m experiencing cashflow problems, mind if I pay you later?” No need to get that extreme. Just imagine checking out at the till of your supermarket and when the uber-bored guy at the till robotically announces the amount (and points to the five million packs of free water that you have just “won”) you tell him “Righto, I’ll pack the water but I’ll pay you next month… if I find the cash”.

It’s not done is it? You rent a place to run a restaurant or a strip joint, whatever, and you are expected to cough up the rent. Pronto. No rent and you are evicted. You don’t pay your water and electricity bills and you find yourself showering at the neighbours (if they can tolerate the mess you leave behind).

Except of course if you’re a political party. Ever since the PLPN decreed that “pluralism” (whatever happened to that word that used to be uttered like some magic mantra) would be showered on the expectant peoples, and ever since the likes of 101, SuperOne, Net TV and OneTV were unleashed on us the parties have had the lion’s share of broadcasting on the islands.

It is no secret that quality wise this increase in “competition” has been of no benefit whatsoever to the consumer. Given the talent gene pool limitations it would be hardly surprising should this island sustain one good quality TV structure (broadcasting corporation) branching out into specialised channels. Instead we have the two political channels lording it out and churning out Malta’s worst – thankfully in a language that is only intelligible to the island’s converted insiders.

Now we have the Malta Broadcasting Authority openly admitting that: “over the years, the Authority has taken cognisance of the fact that most national broadcasting stations face cash flow problems – from time to time situations have arisen on certain occasions where stations have fallen behind in their payments.”. Which is quite a polite way of saying that more often than not the public secret ends up being the factual truth: our political parties couldn’t give a flying armadillo whether or not they afford to pay the €15,000 or so needed annually for a broadcasting licence.

Why should they? Who will have the guts to shut them and their operations down? This is a country that constitutionally takes the existence of a bi-party system for granted. It encourages the obvious inefficiencies of an inexistent competition – and this battle for the mediocre ground spreads from values, to business, to ideas and creativity to markets.

As I said in a previous post – and I think this will be J’accuse’s seasonal motto:

In this country we do not solve problems. We nurture them.

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Campaign 2013 Mediawatch

Academic?

It’s unbelievable. Joseph Muscat has gone on record stating that AST’s article was “an academic exercise”. What exactly is that supposed to mean? Is it to be ignored because “academia” is just an exercise in mental masturbation? Is Anton Refalo’s article in today’s Independent academic too? Should academia be dismissed in favour of the more “erudite” rantings of Joseph and his clan?

Let’s face it Joseph. At the end of the day the political chessboard has spoken. The PN is fully aware of the fact that it cannot rely on the votes of some of its MPs for much longer. That is why it “survived” the pre-estival votes and parliament is now in recess. This recess has delivered the obvious reality that the country is in full election mode: just look at the recent Billboard War. This recess will end with a few attempts at legislating that will inevitably culminate in a vote of confidence sooner rather than later.

What does that mean in real terms? It means that the PN is very aware that the present legislature and government has its days counted. What the PN does not do is erode at the legitimacy of the rule of law and the foundations of democratic government by constantly farting spurious arguments about “undemocratic government” that betray a clear will to ignore the rules of the game. Labour on the other hand is lost repeating the mantra of the obvious – clearly more comfortable in the “non-academic” field of conjecture so long as that means staying away from presenting its plan for government should it get elected.

Now Joseph has no qualms in belittling the importance of “academic” arguments  so long as he can gain more brownie points in the land of spin, conjecture and away from the tangible battles that should be the real battleground in the run-up to an election.

Incidentally Joseph, if Sciberras Trigona’s exercise was an academic exercise in, say, constitutional law, he’d be sitting in his little study sweating out over his notes prepping up for the September resit. Yes, Joseph, even his academic piece was an abject failure.

From the Times:

Labour leader Joseph Muscat has sidestepped the implications of an article penned by his international secretary, Alex Sceberras Trigona, saying the piece claiming the government had lost its “constitutional legality” was an academic exercise.

Asked if Dr Sceberras Trigona’s analysis reflected his position, Dr Muscat said he would rather focus on the political implications of the current “unsustainable” scenario and added that it was up to the Prime Minister to make the necessary decisions.

Dr Sceberras Trigona’s was “a good academic exercise”, Dr Muscat said.

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Mediawatch

Anton Refalo & the law

Writing in the Malta Independent Today, Daphne Caruana Galizia takes another (well deserved) dig at Alex Sciberras Trigona and rightly points out the blatant incongruence of AST’s “democratic” arguments. It’s not just that AST has the barefaced cheek of calling the present situation undemocratic but also that he has got the basic constitutional principles wrong – as J’accuse has explained time and again, this government is legitimate so long as it does not lose a confidence vote in parliament. Daphne mentions the efforts of the Labour party to “rewrite history” and a quick look at the J’accuse archives points to how this effort at propagandist revisionism was predictable some time back (see The J’accuse 2011 Tag Cloud under “History Manipulation”).

The trouble (or one of the troubles) with Labour is that in their effort to counter the PN “30-years Back” propaganda they are coming up with the most brazenly offensive bits of propaganda with regard to the present government in an effort to picture its tenure as some dictatorial, non-law abiding clique in the style of an Army Coup in some tin pot democracy. Labour’s propaganda technique is simple: repeat a lie so many times that it begins to sound like the truth. We are not talking of legal nitpicking on some moot point that could go both ways but about a simple constitutional principle that yells in your face. A government is a government so long as it does not lose its support in parliament. The only way to gauge that support is by votes in parliament – not by declarations in MaltaToday or interpretations in MaltaStar or status updates on facebook. Simple.

Or it should be simple. Right beneath Daphne’s article (on the Indy Online) lies an article by Labour’s spokesman for Gozo Anton Refalo. The man’s reputation among legal circles is of an efficient lawyer – efficient does not translate to good and believe you me in this case good is very far from efficient. You see the laws of the land also include procedural elements and ethical components with regard to the functioning of a lawyer in assisting his clients. By abiding by these laws and procedures, lawyers form part of a wider system that does its best to mete out justice for all: blindly, impartially and equally. The rules of representation and chinese walls between lawyer and client in particular are very important for this functioning. I harbour strong doubts whether Anton Refalo, Gozo’s aspiring Minister even has a clue about how these should really work.

He gave us an example of his grasp of constitutional politics in today’s article. The bottom line is simple… the laws are just there for your aesthetic convenience. Follow the “social contract” (which one Anton? Should we have an Alfred Sant-like stunt every election with the Dear Leader signing some “social contract” for the fun of the people complete with Notary in attendance?) and forget the law.

The GonziPN can twist and spin the story beyond reasonable boundaries but the bottom line remains the same: That is, that the PN has lost the working majority in the House. Even if the Constitution still gives the PN the legal rights to remain in power, morally and politically it might not. There is no other way but to put an end to this situation by giving the people the right to express their view.

By refusing to take this step, the Prime Minister is putting himself in a situation where his legitimacy is being eroded. The Prime Minister must realise that ultimately any democratically-elected sovereign derives his legitimacy more from an unwritten social contract than from the written laws.

Well Anton. A democratically elected sovereign will go to the polls once it is clear that he has lost the working majority of the house. He does so when a vote of confidence is called in the house (as has been done over the past year) and when that vote of confidence is lost (as has not happened yet). In the meantime all the talk about legitimacy and undemocratic regimes is just a load of hot air, talk and bravado. It may work elsewhere Anton, but so long as the law is to be abided and so long as we have a modicum of decency in the application of that law then you’ll have to wait for the inevitable vote of confidence that will crop up in the last semester of this year.

The law Anton, we are all servants of the law so that we may be free.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

The joke’s on you

I’m just back from a late night showing of a fantastic The Dark Knight Rises. It’s definitely my favourite from the Christopher Nolan series if only for the plot that jumps straight at you as a masterpiece of political intrigue. What happens to society if you give it the freedom to choose? What happens when you unleash the angry, when you release the envious and the underachieving and give them a free run to destroy those who they perceive as the elite?

It didn’t help me much that my current read is Francis Fukuyama’s “The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution.” It’s a highly recommendable exploration into how society comes up with its institutions and orders itself in order to survive. In particular it is a look at (1) the state, (2) the rule of law and (3) accountable government. But more of that later in future posts.

Before going out I thought of rehashing a photo that’s been doing the rounds about another smart and funny billboard that the PL thought up in answer to the as yet empty billboards that apparently cost the PN €200,000 to erect (tee-hee). You know the one… it points at an empty PN billboard and has the amazing two-liner “gonziPN – Gvern Bahh”. There’s something irritating about Labour’s complacent attitude with regards to the facile catchphrases that ultimately all point to the same baseline: “Gonzi Iggranfat mal-poter”, “Gvern bla ideat” and now “Gvern Bahh”.

Friends of this blog seem to identify a pro-nationalist streak in me whenever I take a dig at the immense vacuum that is Labour. It would keep Stephen Hawking busy for quite a while – the vacuum that is. Unfortunately when I weigh my reaction about such campaigns as the “Gvern Bahh” campaign I find that the anger element far outweighs the funny (oh Labour can be smart) element. Why? Because, as I have said a hundred million times before Labour is in a constant mode of denial whereby it assumes that simply pointing out the deficit of the incumbent will give it a free ticket to govern.

Labour assumes that the intelligent voter can be wooed simply by saying – hey you’re in shit so might as well have us be the new provider of daily fecal matter. The voter is in a bit of a situation like having to choose between two restaurants. The first is your traditional run of the mill Pizza & Pasta Italian that is having a bit of a down time with the chef having lost control of the kitchen.

The other restaurant just has the one guy standing outside pointing out how bad the plates in the Italian restaurant are of late. The only hunch is that we have no idea what the second restaurant sells, whether they actually have any kind of food on the plate and whether it is the type of cuisine that is to our liking (they claim they can cook anything but refuse the smallest of tasters). Yet we laugh at the jokes about the not too al dente spaghetti and the colour of the crockery in the Italian joint.

Yep. We only have two restaurants to choose from and sadly the only kind of joke there is to laugh at is a joke at our expense. You’ve got it right mate… the joke’s on you.

and a nice tune to finish this off… all the way from the free airwaves of 1991 (I recall a DJ Schembri if I am not mistaken)…


 

 

 

 

Categories
Mediawatch

Mistra Matters

The nationalist party had promised to present proof that it was Joseph Muscat who had given the game away about the PL’s targeting of JPO for the Mistra affair. We’re still waiting for concrete proof- if there is any beyond the words of PN officials. In any case though the whole story of Joseph’s blabbing away the news is not entirely new since Joe Saliba had in fact mentioned it in an interview four years ago. It explains why the whole business kept ringing a bell.

PN Secretary General Paul Borg Olivier told us all this in a press conference this afternoon. He showed a clip of Joseph Muscat warning of the hot news that would be out in the forthcoming days. Not exactly proof of blabbing in a party.

Well, the Mistra Leak saga goes on but J’accuse is interested in one particular bit of information. Towards the end of the Times article reporting the press conference we find the following:

The issue now was not Mistra itself, Dr Paul Borg Olivier said, but how Dr Muscat was now trying to hide his actions.

A very telling phrase that. A Borg Olivier slip I would add. Why? Because it betrays an eagerness to shift the focus of what actually happened at Mistra back in 2008 to the nonsensical charade of leak accusations that really gets us nowhere. In actual fact shifting the focus away from Mistra means shifting the focus away from the fact that JPO’s dealings were not exactly kosher – whether with or without the knowing connivance of PN officials.

That same non-kosher JPO was part of the team that won the right to govern (and he garnered over 5000 votes). That same JPO of the shady Mistra dealings now sits in an uncomfortable cohabitation with the PN government. Of course PBO would love us to think that the issue is not Mistra itself.

Otherwise we would be forced to realise that this government is now making pacts with an Independent MP who still has a lot to answer for with regard to his dealings in Mistra Valley.

Earl grey anyone?