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Writing in J’accuse (and on the Indy) almost a year ago I discussed the court procedures against Norman Lowell, Malta’s token example of far-right politics.  In that article entitled The Cost of Free Speech I argued that cases such as Lowell’s are best judged by the public and outside the courts of law:

The man who advocates the use of eugenics, leaving Africans in Africa and speaks in “racialist” terms in the mistaken illusion that it is in any way different from “racist” should be left to speak his mind. So long as there is no incitement to hatred we should all be allowed to see the sorry plan as it is. The people have judged Lowell and I am confident that they are fully capable of judging once again without a court of law.

That was almost a year ago. The Lowell Court Saga continues and risks turning the outspoken rightist into a martyr. It’s not that the laws are wrong but that a heavy handed use of them undermines their very purpose of educating through tolerance. The UK is currently faced with a similar dilemma. Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing Freedom Party of the Netherlands has been denied entry into the UK.

The problem with Wilders is that he depicts islam as monolithic, monocausal and monomaniacal and claims that its founder is a terrorist while comparing the Koran to Mein Kampf. His is a fight against the “Islamisation” of Europe.  We’ve heard all this before and this time the UK chose to block entry to this elected politician from another EU member state. Once again the wrong message has been sent out. Here is what the Times (UK) editorial (Let Him In) had to say about the ban:

The Home Office judges that Mr Wilders’ presence in the UK would threaten public order and has banned him from entering the country. Last year Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim cleric with inflammatory views on Jews and homosexuals, was denied a visa to visit the UK. Mr Wilders’ politics are no less inflammatory.

But that is not enough to warrant a ban. Demagogic speech is a test of the liberal political rights on which the culture of a liberal democracy rests. Let Mr Wilders exploit them. His political posturing is so self-evidently preposterous that, if he is permitted to speak freely, he will be arraigned before the best court in the land – the court of public opinion.

No doubt here at J’accuse we agree. The struggle against intolerance is not won with the use of the same medicine. Let the people be the judge. They have spoken before and will do so again.

UPDATE: One hour ago (15.29 GMT) Geert Wilders tried to defy the ban and landed in Heathrow. He is currently being held and questioned by Immigration Authorities (BBC).

A few days ago I posted the attached video on my blog without adding any additional comments. A fellow blogger from Malta had drawn my attention to the documentary that I believe was made by a danish guy or guys eager to unravel the mysteries of the island that is second only to the Vatican in the very special Euro-Catholic results table. At least according to the myth or stereotype that is. For in the simplistic world of polish plumbers, Italian pizzas, French strikes and German sturmtruppen (did I mention the war?) that can only serve to feed semi-artistic works like Entropa, the Maltese come out as being quite the Jesus-addicts – you know… them who can’t bear to be seen without a cross or two.

The Danish producer must have been interested in uncovering the layers beneath the outer mask of knights, churches and festas that is presented to the world at large and ended up discovering an interesting segment of Maltese society. The main themes running through the documentary are divorce and abortion – two subjects that are unfortunately oftenthrown together in the discussion notwithstanding the fact that they are as similar as day is to night. We are introduced to two persons presented as mavericks of an almost inexistent “liberal” sub-culture who are fighting their war against the opressive forces of church and conservative government.

The mavericks lend themselves to this “Don Camillo and Peppone” scenario and their vocabulary hints not so subtlely to an all out war replete with bombs, attacks and whatsnot. I am not sure what condititioned the choice of “opinionists” interviewed by the producers of the documentary but these too lend a surreal tinge to an already surreal subject. The snippet of Daphne Caruana Galizia commenting on abortion would let an outsider believe that Malta regularly witnesses Salem like witch-hunts with women who slipped abroad for an unfortunate abortion burnt at the stake. I am sure it was not Daphne’s intention to portray that image but cut to Paul Vincenti the erstwhile defender of the Gift of Life and you may be forgiven for thinking that Malta is a hive for raving lunatics – still incapable of understanding the basic tenets of a working democracy.

“She would be welcome here – but not her ideas” – that is Vincenti speaking of Dr Gompaerts, the woman who exports abortion to the high seas. Vincenti is blissfully unaware of how ridiculous his Catholic fatwa on people thinking different sounds. He is not only unaware but he is proud of it. Snap back to John Zammit and Emmy Bezzina, the two politicians interviewed for the greater part of this documentary. On paper Bezzina and Zammit are the faces of liberal democracy in Malta. In fact they would better fit a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party than anything else. In Malta nobody with his head in place dares make a strong argument in favour of the right to choose – not the right to abort mind you, but simply the right to be able to choose to do so. So it is left to the court jesters who form parties with weird names like Liberal-Democrat Alliance and Alpha Liberals to fill the gap miserably. Daphne is polite when she calls them eccentric. They are mad.
What does that say about Malta then? Will EP elections bring something new? The case for divorce seems to have made a few babysteps in the right direction – the right direction being consideration and discussion among politicians. It has been discussed in bars and cafes for ages but finally the leader of the opposition seems to be willing to say that time has come for politicians to take a vote on it. That is one babystep… clearly freeing marriage and divorce from the monofocal lense of catholic binds will be another.

I believe Peppi Azzopardi, another interviewee on the documentary, got it right when he said that the majority of Maltese still disagree with the right to choose. Malta is far from introducing legislation in favour of the right to choose and this in a more democratic manner than the divorce issue. The issue only risks permeating into the public arena whenever European scaremongerers threaten that introducing the right to abort is part of the Euro agenda.

The EP elections will not be about divorce or abortion. They cannot be because both subjects are beyond the remit of the European Union. However, as happens at the Eurovision Song Contest, at times of greatest public exposure some countries tend to expose the quirkiest, weirdest and eccentric elements of them all. John Zammit is Malta’s answer to Plastic Bertrand… get it?

 

This article and accompanying toon appear in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.

Landing

The investigations on the miraculous landing of the United Airlines flight in the river Hudson have just concluded beyond any doubt that the accident was caused by both plane’s engines hitting birds upon take off. With the engines debilitated the experience pilot, Captain Sullenberger, had to think quick and take action in less than a minute. We have all been in situations sometime in our life when panic takes over, the brain goes into overdrive and we try all kind of irrational solutions and say all kind of irrational things. In moments of heightened tension most of us could come up with a load of gibberish at most.

Not Captain Sullenberger. The tapes of his (very short) conversation with the control tower have been released and you would have a hard time believing that this is a Captain flying an engineless plane with his landing options vanishing within 20 seconds of noticing how bad the damage is. There is a part of the conversation that is unforgettable. If there is a prize for quote of the year this one has to win it. It’s the point where the control tower guy is still shooting landingstrip options on both sides of the Hudson (last option is a landing strip in New Jersey). Captian Sully cooly dismisses each option as impossible given the condition of the plane and then informs Mr Control Tower that he may have to land in the Hudson. “Can you repeat that?” is the baffled answer of Control Tower man.. and the last words (thankfully only for the purposes of the conversation) of Captain Sully is “We’ll be in the Hudson”.

All this is spoken in the same tone of voice of a man sleepily ordering his morning frapuccino on his way to work. Captain Sully is either a hero or someone who can develop a quasi-catatonic emotionless state when in the direct line of danger and death. He also must have inadvertently kicked off a new trend of life saving manouevres. The same day that the tapes were released, a private aircraft pilot in Darwin, Australia landed his dual-propeller Piper-Chieftain in the sea thus saving his life and the lives of six passengers. We’ll be in the Hudson, indeed.

Fasten your Seats
There’s some seats that are dearly won and none are more coveted than a seat in a parliament of a modern parliamentary democracy there to represent the people through wise debate and reasonable action. Parliaments have long been the symbol of the strongest check on the executive branch of government and much as we may quibble and dislike the manners of some parliaments to do nothing but disagree, their business it is to do so and the more space for disagreement (reasoned as it may be) the healthier the democracy.

It so befits the executive branch of government (which branch was inherited from or autochthonously created to replace a monarchy) to submit itself and its actions to the scrutiny of the representatives of the people so that the latter may have their say even if such say amounts to nowt more than a “Pooh pooh” here and a “tut tut” there. The performance of an executive throughout the years it enjoys the trust of the people is also examined in the light o its having operated with the leave and grace of the representatives of the people.

Many a monarch in the past has toyed with the representatives of the people and their right to scrutinise, propose and rightly represent. Louis XVI of France summoned what was then an equivalent of parliament and then tried to dismiss it only at his own peril. Charles the First of England also came up with the not too brilliant idea of dissolving parliament when its services were no longer required and they had become an obstruction to the general running of the land as His Majesty had intended. Dissolve the parliament he did, not without some trepidation of course.. he even issued a long-winded letter justifying his action to the people:

“Howsoever Princes are not bound to give Account of their Actions, but to God alone; yet, for the Satisfaction of the Minds and Affections of our loving Subjects, we have thought good to set down thus much by Way of Declaration, that we may appear to the World in the Truth and Sincerity of our Actions, and not in those Colours, in which we know some turbulent and ill-affected Spirits (to masque and disguise their wicked Intentions, dangerous to the State) would represent us to the publick View.”

Alas for the purveyors of modern government there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of ill-affected Spirits who would love to represent today’s government in a very uglie publick View. We might not end up with beheaded monarchs but the charade of motions and countermotions that were witnessed in parliament over the last weeks do show us the contempt for parliamentary dignity that government seems to hold. The debates and votes in parliament are strongly conditioned by number of parliamentarians. The machinations and philandering of past electoral bouillabaisses still have not sufficed to allow today’s governments to govern with absolute serenity.

You see they still rely on the “pairing” which is another way to say – you can debate all you like but in the end there will always be one more of our block voting selves than you so we can pass all the laws we like. They could still rely on pairing until Inhobbkom Joseph uttered the words “Forget Pairing”. That was because the nats had decided they could not wait any longer and they would condense the business of voting in Parliament to Wednesdays. They did this for pairing, they did it to avoid uncomfortable Private Members’ Bills, they did this to simplify that tedious process of having to risk losing a vote that could be passed anyway if only everyone obeyed the rules and voted only when there were more nationalist minded beings in the house.

Ah. Those bastions of liberal democracy & christian fanaticism rolled into one provoked a former leader to yell “fascist”. Well, judging by previous outbursts of the man I ‘d say he probably shrieked. His was dramatic hyperbole but there is much to be said about this nonchalant dismissal of most of the tools of parliament. This is an executive that stands on two weak feet and is tormented by the whiff of rebellion within its parliamentary ranks. No I am not confusing branches of state, the PLPN have gotten us used to the executive/parliamentary mix ages ago. What the nationalists want is to be able to follow Sun Tzu in his advice in the art of War: Do not wage a war that you know you can lose. Unfortunately this is not a war but the business of parliament…. and sometimes risking losing a vote is much more democratic than stretching the limits of parliamentary representation to oblivion.

In Flight Entertainment
The race to the other parliament of interest has long started. We have had a few interesting debates that still centre mostly around the Nationalist Party’s green credentials. I was going to print out the proposed National Policy on Climate Change for my weekend reading until I noticed that at 239 pages that would turn my ecoprint into that of a bigfoot. Early indications show that while the Labour Party will continue to blow its own trumpet about the “brilliant quality” of its candidates, most of the Nationalist strategy involves rubbishing the Greens and attempting to take over the green agenda. The Greens’ knee-jerk reaction will be crucial at this early stage – criticise the NP too much and they are labelled Labourite friends, react too little and get smothered by the Nationalistspeak.

Meanwhile Johnny Public who is really the one needing representation here is left to swim in a mire of propaganda trying to decipher which candidate best suits his needs. Thank God for blogs and bloggers then. Allow me to redirect you to http://themaltachronicle.wordpress.com in the hope that you will not only enjoy the reading but also try to contribute yourselves. Later in the day we intend to start asking questions of people who count (or who think they do). One item that was in the limelight this week insofar as the EP elections were concerned were the fringe parties. John Zammit’s ALD, Emmy Bezzina’s Alpha and the National Alliance all hit the (blogging) headlines for various reasons.

Even Stormin’ Normal is trying to get his walking stick back in the race by taking his case up to the Constitutional court. Spiridione Sant and tal-Farfett passed away to pastures new but they have found their rightful heirs in the hodge-podge of liberals who are peppering the net with videos that are worth an hour of two of entertainment. There’s the inimitable Jean-Pierre Sammut who splits his time between Mintoff like speeches to empty chairs and baffled European Liberal representations and selling his latest invention online. As if the PLPN Circus act were not enough we have the fringe entertainers. Really… you can never get bored.

I have posted an interesting ‘rough’ documentary that discusses Malta’s outlook on abortion and divorce (why do these two completely unrelated subjects get lumped together? … it’s the freak show parties that do it that’s why). I intentionally did not comment on it myself, preferring to see the different perspectives of different minded readers. It speaks volumes, not simply about the topics themselves but about the way Maltese (pundits, and freak show movements included) perceive others and themselves on this topic. Whatever happens I do hope Emmy Bezzina and John Zammit go a long way… not vote wise of course.. but we do need a pause from taking ourselves too seriously every now and again.

Duty-Free
Someone who takes himself too seriously is violinist, lawyer and TV presenter Joe Chetcuti. Somebody ought to tell him, and if the guy has no real friends who will do so then might as well be a passing acquaintance like myself. The video of Violin Joe performing “Kamikaze Lover” for the next Eurosong is fast becoming an internet viral. The presentation is horrible, the music sucks and the lyrics… well the lyrics are hopeless. It’s beyond trash – it’s beyond unprofessional… and as far as I am concerned the saddest thing of it all is Violin Joseph’s belief that he is the bee’s knees. No way Joe. Get out of it before it’s too late… unfortunately it might already be.

Joseph, Emmy, John Zammit, and i could add more… they are all products of the sieveless society based around that great theory of maltese relativism. It’s no secret that over 95% of the people in entertainment or politics have no place there. But they soldier on, firm in the belief that people love them and adore them. Oh of course some do. Which does not justify their existence but makes it all the sadder. We prefer freak shows to talent, we prefer voyeurism over cultured appreciation and we like to be told what is good by the merchants of kitsch, bad taste and ignorance that have long monopolised our lives.

Take-Off
Which is why we generally tend to get what we deserve. Why we can agree with a columnist saying a Parliamentary Secretary is not responsible for his brother’s actions, and then also agree with the same columnist a few months down the line when she says that a Minister is an achilles heel to his party because of his brother’s actions. Why we will vote for candidates who claim to be green when they run for elections in the name of a party that has little to show in green credentials. It is why setting up a popular blog like J’accuse on a new site costs me €20 plus €6 a month while it costs a local union €65,000 in eurofunds to set up a similar blog without as much as a reasonable post therein (thanks Fausto for the tip).

When the birds hit the engines and cut them out, some passengers will scream and some people will panic, some people will yell that they are far from the runway. We like to think that among us there are still some people who stand out from the mad, irrational crowd…. we like to think that we could stand beside them and say… come look for us… we’ll be in the Hudson.

Jacques is test driving his new site at http://www.akkuza.com/ … posts are not as frequent yet but he would appreciate your comments. Thanks to Karl Agius, Sandro Vella and LL for the tips and early feedback.

Ryanair’s inauguration of its latest flight out of Malta is in the news today (Malta-Trapani). Also in the news was Ryanair’s increible offer of one million seats at €5. People still question whether this policy of Ryanair’s is reasonable (not sure there). They also wonder whether Ryanair should be more clear about the fact that €5 does not include taxes and whatsnot (they should). Commenting on an online newspaper someone also commented:

By no stretch of the imagination can the € 5 cover all the Government and Airport Taxes. This goes to show that Ryanair is being aided and abetted to act in breach of competition laws and being given an unfair advantage over legacy carriers like Air Malta who have to collect and pay Government and Airport taxes making their air fares artificially inflated.

The usual rant you would say. His is not the full picture though. Ryanair’s is a commercial gamble – it has not got much to do with breach of competition of laws as it has with the defiance of costs, supply and demand. To an ignoramus like me the reason Ryanair can afford cheap flights is precisely because it cannot. Nobody can really. They are underpriced because Ryanair is gambling on slicing into huge parts of the market. It tries to get customers dependent on the “cheap” idea then runs up the ‘collateral damage’ – or extra costs.

There’s the amount of luggage, the weight of the luggage, the price of food on board, the transport to and from the airports of choice and more. Contrary to popular perception, Ryanair is not “doing well”. Rather it’s recent losses inspired newspaper titles such as “Ryanair got it wrong”. Their Shannon base in Ireland is about to have 400 jobs cut off in order to minimise losses.

The latest setback for Ryanair was during negotiations to order 400 new planes. It tried the usual tactic of bullying with numbers trying to provoke a price war between Airbus and Boeing. Airbus’ answer was simply:

We are not in discussions with Ryanair about aircraft. That is on the record. We don’t have plans to enter a sales campaign with Ryanair, which would be very expensive and very time-consuming.

Clearly Airbus sees this as nothing more than a ploy to negotiate with Boeing, and acknowledging Ryanair was likely never going to place an order with the company. The outlook is not so bad for the airline of the Harp. Despite gross incompetence over the past year with regard to hedging contracts for the price of fuel Ryanair is expected to recover though their plan for transatlantic flights might have to be shelved for now.

Next time you are on a Ryanair flight with your knees rammed firmly into the neck of the passenger seated in front of you do bear in mind that your “cheap” trip is a result of a gambit that relies on numbers, numbers and more numbers. When you realise that the costs for your flight plus collaterals cost you much more than that €5 ad you saw don’t complain… just go “baaaaa”

After all the choice is yours… and that’s what matters really.

This video is an amateur video filmed in the picturesque fishing village of Zurrieq in the south of Malta. It was posted in 2007 and the scenes it depicts are becoming very common in Malta. A group of youngsters, probably waiting for the sun to set while sunbathing, end up being witnesses of yet another landing of a boatload of immigrants who must have set off days before from the North African coast.

The immigrants look disoriented and find it hard to shake off the dizziness which is due to the many days at sea. Once ashore their first aim is to run inland and ditch the boats. The crude comments of the youths only serve to enhance the spine chilling feeling of the scene and moment. A female voice is heard off camera asking “What have they come here for?” in not too kind a tone. One other female wonders whether they are in danger – them being the youths not the immigrants.  The guy filming discusses with an off cam friend whether they should go for the engine of the boat that is about to be ditched because it would be such a waste.

At one point a female voice is heard urging the group to call the “whotsitsname” and inform them that a group of “whotstheirnames” have arrived. That’s my best translation from Maltese. She cannot even remember the words army or immigrants. Scenes like this are the beginning of much anger and frustration in the small island of Malta. The swarms of immigrants arriving on boats come rain or shine are the reason of justified and unjustified worry. Politicians grudingly venture into this realm and normally only after being scolded by international organisations for atrocious conditions.

Solidarity from fellow European states has been slow in coming. The US has taken on a few of the floods of immigrants. Malta’s catholic shell has long cracked and the words tolerance and solidarity now sound less musical and holy than “send them back” and “crusade“. Will the European parliament elections have immigration on the agenda? Do the candidates have concrete plans on how to use their place in Parliament to get more action… more words from the EU? The Maltese might expect something. The stranglehold of the two main parties on this kind of non-politics seems to promise otherwise.

Meanwhile more boats are arriving.

It never rains but it pours. With guys like Pierre you’d hope that posts on his blog did more of the latter than the former. His blog, once a regularly updated landmark on the Maltese blogosphere witnessed a slowdown in productivity as Pierre shifted slowly to the printed medium. In fact he did develop a knack of making his audience twist and turn with anticipation before regaling them with stories that are written as finely and as carefully as Gozitan lace.

I read Pierre’s last book “Rih Isfel” with a feeling of relaxed contentment that could only be had by the pleasure of a revival of multiple memories and familiar landscapes safely entwined within a fertile vocabulary that immediately brings the reader close to home. (see, that’s the kind of off-putting long sentence that puts people off books – but then again how do you translate wens, hedla, sliem and saudade?)

And home is of course Gozo. There is something that binds all of us who in one way or another can call the Island of Calypso and free range marijuana fields (under the watchful eye of the police) home. Without Gozo there would be no Pierre, no Rih Isfel, and probably…. no Xita.

But this is not meant to be a eulogy for Ogygia that lapses into the one thousand and one clichéed descriptions of the island where time stood still. Rather it is a post that is meant to tickle your interest into reading the product of the new blood that left the island and immersed itself in the middle of Bruxelles La Moche, there to inspire newfound stories that blend the old and the new, the sacred and the profane.

Comparisons are odious, I know, but if I were to tag Pierre I’d think of France’s Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. I am still not sure whether it is the author’s style or some of his characters that inspire the comparison. Characters is what Pierre does best as in the short story Diabolus where he playfully keeps your curiosity on tenterhooks until the final twist.

Short stories flowed out of his blog. Now you can own them in this new book “Qed nistenniek niezla max-Xita“. Given my reputation for rubbishing hopeless blurbs I can tell you that I have seen the one on this book and it rocks… a guy from the end of the blogosphere has a lot to vouch for that.

So. I cannot tell you what’s in it. I can only honestly say that I would definitely stake a high bet on what’s in it being good.

This is not a review… it is a biased participation in book marketing by someone who has already been genuinely captivated by the previous works of the young author from Nadur. For more marketing ploys (re: book launch, etc) I suggest you check out these sites:

The Author’s Site: Pierre J. Mejlak

The Facebook Event with Launch Info

Happy reading!