Category: Mediawatch

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Pardon their Frenċ

frenc_akkuza

The Għarb Local Council have gone all hot under the collar about what they call “allegations” made by Katie Holmes, mother of convicted Welshman Daniel Holmes. In yet another appeal to have Daniel’s punishment shortened from the draconian 10 years, Katie Holmes mentioned the fact that the man considered by many to be holy and known as Frenċ tal-Għarb had also used cannabis to cure people. Well, it turns out that hell knows no fury like a Local Council who deems that its Holy Man hath been scorned. The representatives of the tiny (and beautiful) Gozitan village whose name means “The West” resort to threatening Katie Holmes with a case of defamation/libel. In their mind it was the most they could do short of issuing a challenge in the village pjazza at the stroke of the midday bell.

A little aside here. By some twist of cosmic fate all this happened on the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo killings. You know the ones that I am talking about – the ones where the whole world asked itself whether a bunch of lame satirists had gone a step too far into “provoking” a bloody response from the fanatical and the ignorant. On a much lesser scale of cosmic importance I had also just blogged about the irrational and disproportionate reaction in Kyrgyzstan to a facebook post about a national dish.

Back to the West. The dramatis personae of this little farce makes raw material for a magical novel of the Garcia Marquez kind. We have the beleaguered mother of a man condemned by a hypocritical society to rot away in its prisons while former drug traffickers and conspirators hobnob with the leaders of the land. She could be pictured like the desperate Magdalene and Mary at the foot of the cross, heart torn apart by all the suffering caused to her son. Katie Holmes was hoping to inspire empathy with her story about the Gozitan faith healer and expert herbalist. Cannabis, she was saying, should not be seen in such a bad light in this country after all when it is so plain that some good can come out of it.

What of Frenċ? Well, I can tell you a bit about Frenċ the man and quasi-scientist. I have people in my family who, years before internet turned the world into a global village, had benefited from his healing “powers’. No marijuana was harmed in that particular feat since the stories I am told seem to have involved much more the power of conviction than anything else. Frenċ is known to have used herbs and plants endemic to the islands in order to help ailing visitors. That and a dose of Hail Marys and Our Fathers to be fair, but the latter part of the healing process are of little use in this story. We live in a world where we are oblivious to the fact that the ingredients in every medicinal we take find their origin in herbs.

You’d have to be an idiot though not to have heard of the medicinal effects of cannabis. It would be no surprise then were Frenċ to have prescribed its use to a suffering patient (that and a dose of Hail Marys of course). Cannabis just goes to be added to the long list of herbs and plants with beneficial properties such as chamomile (weariness, bowel inflammation), poppy (asthma, bronchitis, whooping cough), rosemary (headaches, epilepsy, circulation), sage (headaches, cough), primrose (rest, sedative) and lavender (fainting and nausea). Around Frenċ’s time on this earth, in London in 1916, Harrods were selling a kit described as “A Welcome Present for Friends at the Front” containing cocaine, morphine, syringes and needles. Also, heroin was sent to the soldiers in the trenches since it had the reputation of being particularly effective against tuberculosis and pneumonia.

So would Frenċ the man and herbalist (as against Frenċ the icon) have been so out of line had he really used cannabis as is alleged by Ms Holmes? Not really. At most he would have been a visionary and far ahead of his time.

Which brings me to the final actor in this dramatis personae. The Local Council. I cannot help but picture them as the Jewison portrayed the Sanhedrin in Jesus Christ Superstar. Standing on the scaffolding bare chested they pound their fists on the metal angry at the allegations and shit-stirring as they perceive it. “Must die must die this Jesus must die.”

There is no amount of WTFs that can be plastered outside their council door in order to emphasise the base stupidity of their actions. How on earth do they represent Frenċ in court anyway? Is this a class action? Did they ask themselves whether this is what Frenċ would have wanted? Again, from what I hear about the man he was blessed with an incredible amount of practicality and logic – which is probably what made him stand out so much in the first place. That such logic and intelligence was imbued with a heavy dose of humility must have been a great asset to the man. Such assets are alas lacking among the egregious members of the Gharb Local Council. They want their pound of flesh and they want it fast – all because it is alleged that Frenċ used the right herb to do the right thing.

Frenċ is Gozitan (ok, Maltese too) for Francis. Just like the Pope. You know, that man in Rome who is taking great strides in reconciling the church with the man in the street. He once said that a little mercy makes the world less cold and more just. If the councillors cannot find it in themselves to recognise the ridiculous nature of their actions and if they cannot realise that their quest is akin to that of any fanatic eager to exact his revenge upon anyone who they deem has insulted them, then and only then should they at least resort to being merciful and retract their pompous threats of libel and defamation action.

 

Categories
Mediawatch

Europe, Gender, Demographics & Shakespeare

gender_akkuza

Sex. There’s much talking about sex these days. For starters the immigration agenda has taken a bizarre sexual twist ever since the New Year’s Eve events in Cologne when males of an Arab/Middle Easten complexion assaulted a large number of women taking advantage of the cover afforded by the holiday celebration confusion. As if the immigration issue were not a problem on its own, the further twist in the tale has meant that new warning signs have been flagged as to the huge gender imbalance when it comes to the influx of refugees to Europe.

Most refugees, about one in four, are male and the prediction doing the rounds is that this will cause a huge demographic shift in Europe with an even worse male to female ratio than already exists. We were used to hearing how the new wave of immigrants were beneficial for the economy in the long run, how they would plug the holes caused by the low birth rate in Europe and how they could be part of a long-term solution to solve the pension time-bomb. The worry now is that there are too many men among them. The danger in this sense is sociological since it turns out that social scientists have long been telling us that violence is linked not to poverty or religion but to the failure to provide a critical mass of young men with something constructive to do.

Which is ironic really since Europe with its crisis-driven unemployment rate had already a large mass of bored young men who could have been easily attracted to violence. Little wonder really that the perpetrators of the Paris attacks were homegrown Europeans and not refugees from the latest Syrian conflicts. The warnings do not stop there. Skewed sex ratios in immigration flux means not only new dangerous masses in Europe but also the neutering of the countries of origin. Those left behind will never be able to recover and reconstruct. The Single Male Refugee risks becoming a new problem.

Funny then that the new director (Emma Rice, the first female artistic director) of the Globe theatre – the spiritual home of Shakespearean drama – has chosen her debut season to skewer the figures of acting on stage. She believes that more females should take up the male roles in theatre and has set a 50/50 numerus clausus for performances. It is not only Lady Macbeth who will be calling to be “unsexed” in the future – this banal effort at ultra-feminism threatens the foundations of Shakespearean drama but is set to mirror the absurd results we are now used to seeing when it comes to promoting feminist extremes.

It is dangerous to define the issue of immigration on the basis of gender. A refugee’s nature should not be determined by gender but by nature of his or her plight. While the perils of massing large numbers of unemployed men in Europe are understandable the solution should lie beyond a banalisation of some kind of gender driven numerus clausus. All the world may be a stage, but emulating the Globe’s new artistic director’s trends would be quite a comedy of errors.

Categories
Mediawatch Politics Travel

The Pastizzi of Kyrgyzstan

kyrgyzstan

Michael McFeat is a Scot gold miner in Kyrgyzstan. A couple of days ago, during the holiday celebrations, he posted a photo on Facebook showing his mates at the mine queuing up to eat a Kyrgyz delicacy called chuchuk that is apparently a sausage made up of parts of horse. In his caption to the photo McFeat described the national dish as resembling a horse’s penis. Which is when all hell broke lose. His fellow miners threatened to strike and began a petition for his arrest. Indeed, his arrest followed promptly and he is now accused under Kyrgyz law of inciting racial hatred and risks five years in prison. All this for comparing a national dish to a horse’s penis.

It’s one of those comic bits of news that tend to lighten up the New Years’ roll-call – comic that is, unless you are Michael McFeat. He’s unlucky this Michael. If luck had its way he would have been in Malta instead and snapped a photo of a queue outside one of our many pastizzeriji. He would then have been quite free to post it on facebook with a caption stating that Maltese tend to form queues in order to get their hands on a dish that resembles a womans’ private parts. It’s no secret either. There are parts of the country where pastizz is slang for vagina – and these tend to be parts of the country that tend to have a more real “feel” of the language.

McFeat would never have ended up in prison. Well. We cannot say that with absolute certainty can we? Not with the amount of crazy that goes into applying the law on the island of developers and salesmen. You can see it kicking off with a petition while the online barrage of attacks of “Go back to your country” and “Don’t touch my pastizzi” kick off.

The President of the Republic might deem it decorous to step in and defend the plate of the poor people launching a Pastizzi Telethon featuring all the VIP’s of the land in defence of the pastizz. Meanwhile the Prime Minister will immediately negotiate 25 pastizzi kiosk concessions along the islands shore (on ODZ land of course) dubbing it the Wignacourt Circle of Pastizzi. In a speech on National Television Muscat will stand on a custom made pastizz-shaped lectern and grind his teeth menacingly at anyone who threatens to instil the fear of the pastizz among the population. Anyone who criticises the pastizz is negative, and anyone who is negative has no point in living.

Is this too fantastical? Is it too far-fetched? Are you sure? As 2016 stepped in with an Alice in Wonderland message by Joseph Muscat framed in lie upon lie upon lie we would do well to ask more questions of whatever is fed into our heads – particularly whatever is fed into our heads about what it means to be Maltese. The danger is that the few values that are left that distinguish us as a nation risk making pastizzi out of all us.

Happy 2016. May it bring a heavy dose of critical-mindedness, may it whisk away any traces of gullibility and may it signify a return to the discovery of a set of values that define us properly as a nation within Europe.

It’s either that or pastizzi.

 

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

We are all an accident waiting to happen

accident_akkuza

Insofar as national tragedies go we had a couple of headline filling “incidents” over the last month that led to discussions on safety in different environments that are normally linked to entertainment. First there was the Paqpaqli incident where a supercar mowed into a crowd of bystanders causing injuries upward of three score and a mini-emergency crisis in our establishments of health and cure. A little later, and almost in parallel with the return of the ugly face of terrorism in Paris, we had an unhappy incident in an entertainment establishment in Paceville where a sudden stampede was once again the cause of much mayhem, much trauma and much panic. Finally we had a tiger on walkabout (in an estate dotted with planning illegalities) being provoked into attacking a little boy – said provocation consisting in said little boy running in the general direction of the tiger who did not appreciate this sudden rush of adrenalin. Still. Damage there was, pain even, and this was caused by a tiger in what is for all intents and purposes an establishment tainted with various illegalities.

This being the age of social media and the hashtag it is rather a surprise that the hashtags #jesuisPaqpaqli, #jesuisPaceville and #jesuislenfantdeMontekristo were not trending in yet another demonstration of pointless Pharisaical empathy that will be forgotten come the next hashtag – be it #goDestinyforEurovision, #lowunemployment or #CHOGMrocks. What should be trending in fact is a hashtag made out of those words used by the lawyer who lends his signature to Mr. Polidano for affairs legal when he said that most times these are “accidents waiting to happen”.

In fact, given the general institutional and public reaction to the sum of these tragedies we can safely say that the hashtag #weareallanaccidentwaitingtohappen should become part of the Maltese heritage. It fits nicely not just in the case of Paqpaqli, Paceville and Montekristo but also whenever your average fireworks factory explosion occurs, whenever there is the latest cowboy accident on the place of work, whenever political requirements bow to the avarice and greed of the building industry … should I continue?

Paqpaqli was one mess short of a babylon of cock-ups. It proved incontrovertibly that our nation is nowhere near being equipped for that kind of messy patchwork excuse for running powerful engines over short distances. Did we learn anything? Hell no. Prime Minister Muscat has announced that part of his panem et circenses programme in the coming year is the holding of the World Drag Racing Championships in Malta. Why? Our idea of what is and what is not suitable for an island slightly smaller than Manhattan is twisted beyond belief. I would expect us to hold the World Igloo Building Championships in Malta next August. It would be as stupid a decision as holding a World Cup in Qatar in summer. Only an administration as corrupt to the neck as Blatter’s FIFA could come up with that. Wait a minute…

Paceville. Poor old Paceville. Always the den of iniquity that has become synonymous with Malta’s Hell. Over the years it has been obvious that those who ever try to come up with some form of “regulation” for the place are really people who have a plan of transforming a brothel into some kind of centre for social rehabilitation. If we fail to accept that Malta has its own version of Las Vegas strip of entertainment and that it is of itself a possible touristic attraction then we will fail into obtaining some sort of sense of order. The distinction between imposing martial law and understanding that the entertainment must and can go on but for the instilling of a sense of responsibility when it comes to dishing it out.

The starting point of proposals about Paceville must be how to improve the value of entertainment there, not how to kill it completely. I have always advocated as a starting point that the transformation of the old enemalta building into a centre for civil coordination would be a brilliant way to kick off the games. Think a permanent V18 for Paceville – P2K as in Paceville for the third millennium. Policing and health needs would be centred around the entertainment zone that would be detached from the St Julian’s and Swieqi dependency it has suffered until now. Public-private charters and standards could be established – from common safety regulations, to common security training and common evacuation strategies in collaboration with civic defence. Campaigns on drink driving could be co-ordinated with the different modes of transport that get to the city. Those obnoxious white taxi drivers could be relegated into oblivion. Cleaning times, projects and promotions could be coordinated by all the stakeholders. Above all this should be done in a liberal manner and not with the approach of complete and utter sanitisation. There is no point in transforming Paceville into what it is not. Will the politicians move on this? Highly unlikely. Not when the powerful stakeholders in the area have them by their short and curlies.

Montekristo. Which brings me to Montekristo. The place should be shut. The animals should be exported to the closest zoos. Malta is no place for tigers and lions. No cage should be but their time in captivity might require gradual reintegration. Animal rights apart (Where was Marlene Bonnici by the way? Or are animal rights only useful to justify the Euro Parliament presence?) the whole Montekristo story is a clear example of how the authorities will continue to pay lip service to cowboys such as Polidano. Not only will they bark a few words about the animals (Muscat tried the Ali G trick with vegetarians – “you either eat a chicken or I will  kill another one” became “we would have to kill the animals if we closed the place”) but they will continue to patronise the place for their political activities. We are all an accident waiting to happen but who gives a flying feck?

There you go. That is what your politicians would do on average when it comes to accidents. They will tell you they are sorry to have seen it happen, they will tweet their condolences and support, but in the long run, we were, we are and we will remain an accident that is waiting to happen.

 

Categories
Mediawatch

Microexpressions

Nigi ghalik u nifqghek YouTube

Hollywood at times can give new insights. From Lie to Me – a series featuring Tim Roth – an exercise in the study of microexpressions.

Interestingly, at the point where Luciano Busuttil is giving his version of events in the Nifqghek Incident we can see both Deborah Schembri and Leo Brincat with expressions of sadness, the hardest microexpression to fake:

-Inner corners of the eyebrows are drawn in and then up
-Skin below eyebrow triangulated, with inner corner up
-Corner of the lips are drawn down
-Jaw comes up
-Lower lip pouts out

Debono Grech on the other hand is clearly still agitated and his microexpression is clearly and unequivocally concentrated around an expression of anger.

-The brows are lowered and drawn together
-Vertical lines appear between the brows
-Lower lid is tensed
-Eyes hard stare or bulging
-Lips can be pressed firmly together with corners down or square shape as if shouting
-Nostrils may be dilated
-The lower jaw juts out

As for whether MP Busuttil was telling the truth as to whether or not he heard Debono Grech’s words, well that is where Hollywood ends. The truth is that there is no clear way to tell if someone is deceiving by using microexpression detection: “For as Ekman, Frank, DePaulo, Burgoon, and Vrij have repeatedly told us, there is no single behavior indicative of deception. There are indicators of stress, psychological discomfort, anxiety, dislike, issues, or tension, but not deception.”

Still. Sadness and Anger. Clearly perceptible in this screenshot.

Categories
Mediawatch

Sales Report

salesreport

Chief Salesman Muscat was reporting from his business visit in Algeria. He told journalists that the Algerian authorities had laughed off any suggestion that something was amiss with the abnormal number of visas being issued by the consulate run by Muscat’s father’s cousin. Obviously the matter of visas being issued lightly and allegedly on the basis of a network of bribes is of no security consequence to Algeria. Why should it be? It is probably a laughing matter indeed. The arabs have a curious habit of referring to someone as “oncle” or “cousin” out of respect – much in the same way as some Maltese use the phrase “my friend” even if you do not know them from Adam. Muscat was reported to have replied sarcastically about his familiarity with the man running the Algeria consulate. “He’s my father’s cousin, that’s a very strong relationship,” Dr Muscat said sarcastically. Again, he seems to find these things funny. Brushing it all off as being a bit too much brouhaha.

Meanwhile. Malta’s Chief Salesman seemed positively surprised that the Algerian counterparts are eager to use Malta as a window to Europe’s pharmaceutical market. What stands out as strange is that given the linguistic and historical partnership with France, the Algerians would still need to use Malta to hitch a ride into Europe. The question really is all about standards. Is Malta becoming one of the weaker links of the European Union? Is this government once again peddling the rights and obligations that were hard earned in order to make a quick sale? We can only wait. Do not expect truthful answers from salesmen though, Their business is not governance but profit.