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Panamagate: Labour’s Fell Swoop

fell swoop _ akkuza

Occam’s Laser is a long-time J’Accuse reader who works in the financial services sector. In this article Occam argues that Labour is willfully muddying the waters over Panamagate, exploiting the concerns of conscientious liberals to further its own agenda.

The Labour Party is desperate. For three months it has tried to brazen out Panamagate, but despite its survival of various protests, no confidence motions and other crises, the issue simply won’t go away. Now it is hoping that by tarring the whole Maltese professional class with the same brush, it will cause enough of a distraction for people to start talking about something, anything, but Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri’s egregious misdemeanors.

This is clear from the recent PL attacks on Tonio Fenech and the private sector companies he works for, the attacks on the law firm EMD and its consultant Richard Cachia Caruana, and its general bewildering aggression towards any PN leaning individual somehow involved in financial services. What PL is trying to do is obvious; they want to conflate public concern about the disparate issues of global tax avoidance and its own internal governance disasters in order to dissipate public outrage. This is yet another of the PL’s dirty tricks, and the public shouldn’t allow the PL to wave this red herring in its face with impunity.

To start off with, Malta’s strategic decision to become a financial services centre is one which enjoyed (and below the surface, still enjoys) broad cross-party consensus. So PL is being maliciously disingenuous when it feigns getting its knickers in a twist over this week’s various pseudo-revelations. Secondly, while there is no denying the inherent link between a world order that allows international corporate secrecy, and the exploitation of that secrecy by persons such as Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the two problems require radically different solutions.

Regarding the problem of international tax avoidance, this is one which requires, at the international level, a global co-operation and a deep philosophical rethinking of the way the world works; and at the local level, a careful repositioning of Malta as a jurisdiction which adds value beyond its low tax base (this is already the case to some extent, but a truly well intentioned government could do much more to improve things). This is going to be a big, slow job.

The Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri situation, on the other hand, is a pressing governance catastrophe that requires urgent and immediate action. Every day they hold on to their position, they cause irreparable harm to our reputation, and indeed deprive us of the valuable time that we need to reposition and further diversify our economy.

Perhaps the most galling thing about this PL manouvre is the way it exploits the feelings and concerns of the country’s most conscientious individuals, those who genuinely worry about things like global inequality and corporate ethics, turning these noble concerns into tools to further its own ends. Worryingly, we’ve already seen PL try to exploit the concerns of the conscientious before, as with that other red herring about Joseph Muscat supporting gay marriage a few weeks ago. This is shockingly unscrupulous behaviour; the Maltese public deserves better, and PL shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 10 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Zolabytes

I dreamt a dream

fifa_akkuza

 

It’s been a long while since the last Zolabyte. When my friend put this status up on facebook with his reflections on the scandal that just hit FIFA and the possible links to global politics I could not but ask for his permission to reproduce it here as a guest post. Here is HB’s dream. Sometimes they are so close to reality that you need pinching to know if it is true.

Ho visto un film fighissimo, o forse ne ho sognato la trama. l’FBI, quelli vestiti come will smith in MIB e con il furgone dell’a-team, dopo che gli Usa vengono ingiustamente defraudati dell’assegnazione dei mondiali 2022, inizia ad indagare sulla FIFA massimo organo mondiale del calcio. La trama si infittisce gli stessi agenti devono prima fare un master in calcio, non avendo la minima idea di cosa si tratti e vanno a Boston da Mr Pallotta a chiedere di cosa si tratti, lui di tutta risposta li porta al Fenway Park a vedere una partita della ASROMA. Lì loro capiscono che si tratta di uno sport di squadra dove 2 team da 11 uomini giocano senza mazza (e senza palle alle volte) inseguendo il pallone su un diamante cercando di insaccarlo dentro ad una rete invece che di lanciarlo il più lontano possibile fuori dalla tribuna. Il tutto condito da gridolini di scherno e da gesti teatrali quali cadute in seguito a sfioramenti, sorrisi ammiccanti e competizioni di hair-style e tatuaggi.

Capite la basi continua la caccia all’imperatore del male Joao. Il brasiliano malefico non viene accusato di avere agevolato i mondiali nel suo paese, ma di averlo fatto in Russia e Qatar. Mentre per il Qatar si capisce l’astio degli USA, sconfitti nell’assegnazione proprio grazie ad un pugno di Petrodollari, per la Russia si fatica a trovare un movente che spinga l’FBI ad indagare. Sono noti i rapporti di stima reciproca e fratellanza universale che legano gli USA alla Russia. Il film si trasforma in un noir di altri tempi dove gli USA per vendicarsi dell’onta subita dal Qatar, grazie all’ausilio dei partner occulti arabi noti fan del calcio a stelle e strisce, indeboliscono l’economia Russa (in fondo gli USA sono signori non se la prendono con un popolo quello qatariota che ha già la natura contro ed il cui nome potrebbe far parte di ogni farmaco mucolitico della terra) pompando greggio come se non ci fosse un domani e portando in ginocchio l’economia Russa, nel frattempo il demone russo invade l’ucraina di cattivi propositi, concedendogli 4 miliardi di dollari di prestito e sconti a gogo sul petrolio. Per festeggiare si prendono a pallonate aerei malesiani come se piovesse.

Questi russi non sanno festeggiare in modo composto dirà poi “il portatore di luce” Obama. Gli USA ora si vedono minacciati. Non possono arrivare secondi anche nella gara degli aiuti Umanitari. Offrono 3 miliardi di aiuti della UE e Impongono alla UE stessa una serie di sanzioni economiche che sta mettendo in ginocchio non la Russia ma l’Italia, sanzioni che troppo non piacciono alla Germania (primi partner economici europei della Russia) ma gli interessi del pallone vanno salvaguardati e allora avanti tutta. Arrivano al gesto supremo cambiando la costituzione per permettere di vendere lo shale gas all’estero mostrando così tutto il disinteresse economico. Tale sprezzo viene notato e lodato dal mondo intero. A donetsk per festeggiare fanno saltare in aria l’aeroporto. Ahi ahi la vodka.
Nel frattempo in Italia disperati per la situazione economica venutasi a creare per colpa della Russia , lotito chiede di spostare l’ucraina perché dice che potrebbe, come bacino di utenza portare più vantaggi rispetto al frosinone, ma la ciociaria intera si solleva ed in forma di protesta solleva caci a mo di panuelada (il lancio del cacio va da se sia sport tradizionale delle terre che hanno dato i natali tra gli altri a San Gaspare del Bufalo, San Silverio e Sant’Ormisda). Lotito il moralizzatore offeso ma mai arreso medita vendetta.

Qui finisce il primo tempo, come ogni buon Action-movie americano la produzione nota di aver quasi finito il budget e tagliando di qua e di la, fa durare il secondo tempo 20 minuti. L’europa si rende conto che forse la Russia può tornare utile e la Merkel come una gattina inizia a fare le fusa, l’Isis conquista l’iraq, minaccia mezzo mondo ma gli Usa non centrano nulla e per imparzialità non intervengono. Assad resta il demonio, ma essendo i siriani troppo seghe a calcio bisogna fargli capire in altro modo che non è gradito, il verde rettangolo di gioco non fa per lui.

In ucraina i fascisti danno dei fascisti ai comunisti e viceversa.Si stanno organizzando tornei da oratorio alla memoria di Peppone e don Camillo. In Russia l’economia risale, in Italia la merda sa sempre di merda ma abbiamo l’expo (di merda mi dicono i ben informati). In finlandia si chiamano 1,5 milioni di riservisti, sperando di allearsi nuovamente ad una germania forte per distruggere la russia del pallone. Purtroppo per loro la federazione del pallone tedesca, per non farsi parlare dietro, immatricola solo oriundi da chiare origini non ariane. In svizzera paese neutrale per definizione, vengono arrestati tutti i vertici della FIFA escluso il diabolico JOAO. Il pallone è tondo, gli Usa sono il bene, il Qatar deve cambiare nome assad ha da mori.

Sono curioso di vedere il sequel…

 

HB

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Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 10 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Campaign 2013 Zolabytes

Post Ranier – a zolabyte

A reader of this blog was inspired to write an essay-like comment after the post entitled “Your politics are ruining my country (and its future)“. I’ve decided to put it up as a Zolabyte in the hope that it provokes more conversation. Philip Serracino Inglott (currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Technology at Delft writes:

Thanks for pointing out Ranier’s article, which set my mind reeling. Here’s a brain dump of the thoughts I had after reading this and Ranier’s articles:

It’s nice to see Ranier put a wager upon PN’s technical ability. The implication of his argument is: if it should turn our that PL plan works, this would mean that Austin and Gonzi are either incompetent, or they intentionally deceived the population, or both. If the PL plan were to fail, Ranier would have to call for Muscat’s and Konrad’s heads, but equally, should it succeed he’d have to be the first to call for Austin and Gonzi’s heads.

Of course the corollary to that is that when the PL claim that they are certain that their plan will work, they are implying that they are equally certain that Austin and Gonzi are incompetent, or that they intentionally deceived the population, or both.

That much, I guess, they’d willingly do. But the implication is much more onerous than that for this case. The level of incompetence and/or deceit is variable. It finally depends on the magnitude of the project or importance of the decision in the context of which it was done, in comparison to how easy or trivial it would have been to see and/or avoid.

When PL’s plan is compressed to its raw basic essentials its basically this: borrow a bunch of money from private investors; spend that money switching from HFO to Gas; Gas can be bought cheaply enough that we can pay off the debt for the conversion, the past debts, and still have left over to pass on to the consumer as reduced tariffs. The private investor who lends us the money gets to keep on selling us the gas/electricity for a long time after we have sorted it all out. So, sure, he/she’ll get a tidy profit too, but that is why he/she’ll invest in the first place. It’s that simple really. Just that one basic idea — switch to gas — is going to solve of high tariff problem. The rest is details that require a lot of work to sort out, but should be run of the mill really.

But, if this is actually it, then Gonzi and Austin are not merely incompetent and/or deceitful. If the crux of it all is the choice between gas and HFO, then Gonzi and Austin must be stupid idiots and/or criminally fraudulent, if not both. And that would be very serious indeed. If the PL plan is to succeed on the basis of the documentation revealed up to now; if that is all a voter needs to know to be confident that PL’s plan will succeed; I can see no way that, once elected, PL is not also morally obliged to investigate the current cabinet for fraud and criminal negligence for their approval of the use of HFO.

Of course, the much more realistic scenario is that there are many more variables. The truth is that the analysis required to know if the plan is worth voting for is way more complex. Even if in the future the current government will, with hindsight, be shown to have made a humongous mistake by going for HFO, the matter is complex enough that one cannot draw a straight line from there to the claim that the level of incompetence would have been criminal.

But then, this means that the whole ‘energy solution campaign thing’ going on is just a charade. That there is no way that a deep enough analysis can be brought to voters until March, with sufficient detail, that they can make up their mind rationally. As Michal Falzon seems to have implied (from Ranier’s wording), voters with have to vote on an act of faith. And that is not democracy at all! That is merely herding behavior!

So PL and PN have put themselves in a rather sad position, unless they are willing to admit that the current trend in the campaign is undermining democracy, they have to up the ante, and imply that the other side is consciously and malevolently trying to deceive and de-fraud the citizen!

They have to imply that the others are not just “not as good as us” but that they are “evil!”. Since both sides play the game the election becomes a “final judgment” that determines who is on “the dark side” and who “has the force with them”. If any of the big 2 parties actually mean anything of what their garbled propaganda implies about their opponent, we would have to have a court marshal of the fresh opposition after every election.

Thank goodness, the only party that actually means all of the claims that it makes is the little green fellow with the good ideas but no clout or voice. After all, if AD had a bigger role to play in our political scene many of these silly charades would be quickly exposed, and we might have to actually think and evaluate substantial proposals before voting.

And who wants to do that?

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 7 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Campaign 2013

Manifestly Political – a zolabyte

AD’s PRO André Vella has submitted this post as a Zolabyte. In this piece and accompanying infographic Vella compares how the three parties square up before all the manifestos were published. 

A political manifesto is the official seal of approval of a party’s agenda when (and if) in power; but the truth is that certain policies and positions are already lauded in public before approved by any party executive or general meeting.

For any political party, there are two types of issues. The issues you want to avoid, and the issue you can’t stop to talk about. Then there are the not so clear issues which are somewhere in between. Let’s take gay civil rights for example. PL want to flaunt their stance of civil union (which is more liberal than PN) but they do not want to focus on their contradictory inequality of what they are proposing (by not granting gay couples full rights). PN want to talk about gay rights as well, to regain that conservative base by scaring them with the image of a little child having two daddies, doing so knowingly that they might risk alienating the few pink votes they have. For the Green Party, at least, this issue is not in the middle as they took the clearest path towards gay marriage, being the only party fully endorsing MGRM’s proposes.

Somehow, the bigger parties always have the greatest challenge to appease as many people as possible, a task which fails most of the time as you cannot bind a long-serving successful party to populism instead of an ideology.

So while we all wait for the three manifestos to be officially approved, here is a little Infographic, shedding light on some party positions depending on public remarks passed by party officials or press releases. If it looks biased, it is because it is. Until the manifestos are publicly available, this is the pre-manifesto showdown of Malta Elections 2013!

The author is the PRO of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party.

andrevellapic

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 7 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Zolabytes

The Absurdity of Football Time

Football fan Patrick Galea penned this piece as a facebook note. It could very well have been entitled “the Theory of Relativity as Applied to The Game”. He has kindly agreed for it to be reproduced here as a sporty/geeky Zolabyte. Cheers. (and Forza Juve of course)

It is not a secret to football fans that the working of the clock during a game depends entirely on how many times the goal nets have been favourably hit. And if your own team’s net is to be hit at all, just hope that at the very least it is hit favourably, that is, on the right side. The right side, as it turns out in these cases, is always the outside. The reverse applies to the other net, of course, and the inside of that net is where the biscuit is at. That’s football for you: try and score one more than them; and if you are a fan, hope that your team keeps your afternoon in tact and scores one more than the others, those gutless, hate-inspiring evil bastards.

And there’s 90 minutes of that.

Or so they say.

In truth, the time available for favourable net-hitting is like a new-age yoga instructor: exists in another dimension, and has a penchant for flexibility. Like the king of frustrating retorts when all you seek is a straight-forward answer: “it all depends”. It goes to show that whoever coined the term ‘like clockwork’ was not thinking of football time-keeping. Chances are he never watched a competitive football match either, because time during matches goes into Alice-in-Wonderland mode and changes its rhythm and tempo according to the digits on the scoreboard.

There is no news there. That the experience of time is subjective is hardly a Nobel-winning discovery. Indeed, this sentiment is captured easily enough by such common morsels of wisdom as “time flies when you’re having fun” and “clocks go slow at the place of work”. The ruling principle is obvious, time seems to speed up when you’re enjoying yourself, but drags on infinitely when you are not. But as well as this general idea has served the humans in their daily business, it just does not apply to football.

Masochistic tendencies aside, the general assumption underlying this point is that fans, being supporters of a team, should be enjoying themselves when their team is winning, and by obvious logic, should hate it when it is not. You would think then that a winning team’s supporters, being joyful of a favourable score-line, would hardly notice the time going by. But it doesn’t work like that. Time does not fly when your team is winning, especially when that winning margin is one measly frustrating goal and the contest has reached its final segments, around that 80 minute mark. No, time does not fly. It sticks. It lurks. It hangs around idling as if it were a sunny Sunday in a picnic park.

Lest some brave soul dares suggest that the sudden decrease in the pace of time is merely an illusion brought on by a heightened awareness of the clock, I can assure them that it is not. Proof: when a fan’s team is losing by a goal to nothing, or an equally gut-wrenching goal difference, when every bad pass, throw-in, or a millisecond stop is followed by glances at the clock, when fans are basically watching more of the clock than the game, time does nothing that resembles slowing down. It goes faster than you can say “Is that five minutes already”? Hail the absurdity of football time. Unlike other life situations, favourable circumstances in football do not always make time rush, and unpleasant ones do not sedate time into co-operation.

Substituting hyperbole with a dose of realism for a second (or an hour, depending on the score), I guess that the absurdity of football time owes itself to the perennial contest between optimist and pessimist tendencies inside the football fan. Indeed, none of the above applies if your team has a cushion of several goals or if it is losing by some. And most definitely, none of the above applies if your favourite team is Manchester United, who are practically guaranteed to score in the dying minutes whenever they need to (Fuckheads!).

The hazy optimism of the possibility of scoring and the reality of diminishing time to allow it, as well as its counterpart, the persistent pessimism of conceding and the slow and ample time that makes it possible, are only triggered by a vague sense of realism that anything can happen in football. Indeed, the optimist and the pessimist inside the football fan eventually synthesize to become the realist, the fan who knows too well about the possibility, or the probability, that their team concedes in the dying moments of the match, who has surrendered all hope, who knows that the elusive last second goal that would win points for the team will only ever happen if it is immediately followed by a ridiculous raised flag on the side of the pitch. This is the beautiful game. A game which constantly pits pessimism against optimism and the umpteenth triumph of one over the other leaves the loser mysteriously unscathed.

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Zolabytes

Walk to feed Guatemala

A Zolabyte with a difference. A friend of mine has asked me to plug this event that is raising money to build a project to provide food in an area of Guatemala. It’s a long, long walk for a good cause. There’s all the contact details you need at the end of this post. Picture shows the route for the walk.

As though last year’s 24hour walk wasn’t ENOUGH, TOUGH AND GRUELLING, this year we will be organising and attempting an even longer walk on the

9th April 2011
27 hours non-stop!!!

So keep it free…

This year we will be walking to raise funds for a MEGA good cause. The funds will be used to build a project to provide food in an area of Guatemala, This will not only help to feed families in the area of Lake Izabal in Guatemala but will help to create jobs. This project will leave long term benefits, since it is sustainable and will help the community, help itself.

The two of us seasoned walkers, will be volunteering to walk 27 hours NONSTOP around Malta, covering an approximate distance of 130km!!! Longer than running 3 consecutive full marathons!!! A further 3hours on top of last years tremendous effort, which left us feeling knackered with a few nagging injuries which lasted a few months but feeling extremely exalted.. We have been training even harder than last year to ensure that we are physically and mentally fit for this challenge.

The walk will start at 9am near ITS in St. Julians and will end…
27 hours later back at ITS

You are all invited to WALK AS LONG as you like 10min, 30min, 1hr, 3hr 8hr, 27hrs :))) or as much as you like. Get your friends to sponsor you for this mega good cause or register for €5. Click here to download the registration form.

Call us, Email us, or Facebook us for sponsor sheets and more info!!! If Walking is just not your piece of cake, you can just simply donate money by sending an sms on:

50618071 for a € 4.66 donation
50619203 for a € 11.65 donation

For more information contact us on:
email: 27hourwalk@gmail.com
facebook: 27 hour walk
mobile: 7994 2727

Please help us by inviting your friends to our facebook group, emailing this and passing the word around.

Looking forward to seeing you there, lets walk together for a good cause!

Lara Gerada & Brandon Pace

Donations may also be made at the following account:

HSBC ACCOUNT NO: 071017552051 /

IBAN NO: MT89 MMEB 4471 6000 0000 7101 7552 051

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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