Category: Admin

This blogger heads off to the motherland for two days. It gets curiouser and curiouser on this isle of ours. Public toilets receive full-blown perm-sec inauguration complete with red carpet (lovely work Chris Briffa and Co.), we get our very own version of village porn pasted onto the church notice board and the blogosphere is still dominated by the gossip-boards. Global Village becomes local pillage when you eat the bit of cake and jump into the petri dish to examine life in the microcosm first hand.

This IS the 1st April and you’d be expecting some form of April Fool’s prank from the J’accuse, however we have established a mini-tradition of discovering a fool each April. April’s Fool. We discovered this gem of a speech from a local mayor in a village called Palomonte in Italy’s south. It’s not just hilarious it’s also nonsensical – sit down on the chair closest to you and listen. If this kind of speech rings a bell then feel free to weep.

Happy April’s Fool Day (can you really wish that?)

Votate X il Sindaco di Palomonte “la voce di tutti li popoli… coscienze dell’animo del popolo” … does he have a facebook petition too?

The next two days consist of a hectic whirlwind tour for this blogger, one worthy of any politician on a campaign trail. I’ve managed to compress most of the meetings I have had in mind for these eight days into two days (force majeure did play a heavy hand – you cannot really ignore Easter holidays). Anyways this blogger/reporter/lawyer/vacationist or renaissance man as DF likes to put it (cheers dude) is on the move.

Bloggable items will not stop and wait and we notice a whole niche developing on the use of libels and anonimity on the net. Perception of what blogging is about is still a shape-shifting animal on the island – one that deserves a discussion all by itself. The twisting of the libel laws by politicians have now led to a surreal situation when their very purpose has been diluted to the point that at the moment when they are most necessary and useful we might be surprised to discover that they have lost their clout. Between strip-searches and the road to using police for whatever private complaints we may have, we might also discover that 25 years on from the darkest Labour moments, the nationalist governments might not have done much to create a trustworthy (or in some cases not necessarily trustworthy but strong and independent) strong executive arm.

Then there is the poverty issue. We cannot agree with Franco Farrugia’s assertion that you cannot write about poverty unless you have lived it. The role of the blogger as an investigative reporter might just be that – asking the right questions to the right people to bring the realities of poverty closer to home. Which is one of the things I intend to do today.

The day will end in football at Floriana where I hope to team up with some members of Deportivo Estudiantes for a friendly kickabout. I am hoping to spend some time on campus around lunch so if you are in those whereabouts and would want to share a coffee or whatever food passes as standard fare on campus these days do drop me a tweet @jacqueszammit or an SMS on 7975 followed by four ones.

We interrupt current programming to remind you that five years ago today the blog called J’accuse was born. The first post on J’accuse entitled The Kinnie Generation was essentially an existential question: Why Blog? Well, it seems like the question answered itself since we have not stopped blogging since.

the lowdown on the Beta version of akkuza.com – guidelines on RSS – and the announcement of the “Austin the Hip Monthly Post”