Malta's unchanged underbelly
timesofmalta.com reports:
Dog found nailed to wooden cross
A priest walking along Mosta’s Main Street was yesterday confronted with the macabre sight of a dead dog nailed to a cross made of wood – both upside down – on the front door of a vacant residence.
The police said a shape of a halo had been placed on the poor creature’s head. A note had been left by whoever carreid out the hideous act saying the hardship he had gone through was worse than that suffered by the dog.
The police are investigating.
There are several things about this story which point to the real, unchanged underbelly of Maltese society. And I don’t mean just the attitude towards animals. I think that with this incident, that’s actually the least of it.
48 Comments Comment
Reply to R. Camilleri Click here to cancel reply
Sad story. Such people need mental care not jail sentences.
[Daphne – That’s what I mean. And if you stop to think long enough about what a crucifix effigy is, you wouldn’t want one in the house either, just like me, especially not when there are children around. When I wrote about this, some people said that it is because I am immune to its significance. But it’s the precise opposite: I am hyper-aware that that is a cruelly tortured man nailed to a cross. It is those who think it is all right to have it hanging in their home who are immune to what it means. If they weren’t immune, they wouldn’t blank it. I hate to think in what kind of home this person grew up.]
I remember the day I went to watch The Passion of the Christ. One of the most violent films I ever watched, and there were throngs of children on school outings. Horrifying stuff.
It’s the action of a desperate mind who has thoroughly misunderstood the meaning of crucifixion or, perhaps, has tried to make it his own in a spectacular show of bad taste.
Your normal household crucifixes this side of reality aren’t gory at all. You have an immaculately clean Christ with mildly scraped knees and a dribble of red ink oozing politely from the nail wounds. I don’t like crucifixes as a matter of taste.
But I do have a stylised one at home in a relatively prominent place.
And as I’m sure you’ll have gathered from my “contributions” so far I’m not quite immune to its meaning.
[Daphne – You must be, unless you’re the sort to have on wall a picture of somebody being, say, flayed alive. But I don’t want to argue about this. Each to his own and never mind the difference. I draw the line at depictions of torture used as decorative or religious symbols anywhere, still less in the home.]
I remember when I was younger and still lived in Attard, a bunch of friends and I were walking down from Three Villages and found a bloodied parcel outside the back door to San Anton Palace. A more courageous (or gory) friend opened it, to reveal a dismembered rabbit. This was during Eddie’s presidency.
Between psychiatric care and imprisonment, some people shouldn’t see the light of day.
I hope the perpetrator is discovered soon. He/she needs serious psychiatric help.
Many of the comments below the timesofmalta.com report are nearly as disturbing as the act reported on.
I was going to comment there, but my better judgement told me I shouldn’t bother.
I have a feeling that all of these brutal and cruel stories to dogs in the press is enticing others to do more of the same to get a kick out of being in the news etc.
“A note had been left .. saying the hardship he had gone through was worse than that suffered by the dog.”
There is a danger in looking for logic where perhaps none exists, but is this a revenge killing connected to the owner of the house, or is the perpetrator leaving a message for the authorities ?
If FKNK hadn’t brought up the issue of trappers suffering mentally from the delays in bringing in the trapping season I wouldn’t have connected this to that issue, but maybe some linkage?
I think it sounds more like a cry for help.
It’s what I was thinking. Crucifixion is the depiction of salvation from natural sin.
The dog was living memory to be sacrificed.
In reply to your question asking for specific examples and chapter and verse and all, why people writing on this wall are confounded and how their criticisms are way off target I would like to make the following points:
1. There is more to human welfare and wellbeing than comfort/and income/levels. Happiness is not engendered by any of these (and i am not talking of misery and squallor, which are two totally different things.)
2. Bhutan for example, puts Gross National Happiness far before it’s Gross National Product.
3. I never expected perfection from any political programme but I am totally put off and unimpressed (and history is my witness) by any political party or individual who claims that change is imminent and will happen when they are in power.
4. As such, my choice of a political party is not solely based on the hype and hoopla and the bombastic rhetoric of politicians. I vote for the party, which in my opinion is the lesser evil and my assessement also includes the attitude of a party to moral issues.
5. It has been said (and history has proved them right) that the moral demise of a nation is invariably followed, sooner or later, by it’s total economic and social demise. And in matters of morality, Malta degenerated so much that it is now in it’s moral deaththroes.
What does the message imply? To whom is it addressed? Surely not the old lady who was murdered killed or to her brother? Who is the owner of the house?
It looks like some kind of Mafia message.
[Daphne – Yes, right, because the Mafia uses puppies. When I was growing up, some of the local older boys – don’t worry, Pillars of Society, your secret is safe with me – worked out their anger and frustration at whatever by splitting cats open at the belly and pegging them out, exploding hamsters by shoving things up their butt, and setting cats on fire. Just because you’d never heard about something it doesn’t mean it never happens.]
Terrible , a crime is a crime regardless of how long ago it happend. If this is the case then you must notify the authorities regardless of who these scum are or their social and political standing.
[Daphne – Oh, for heaven’s sake. “Mr Policeman, somebody killed a cat 40 years ago.”]
Yeah, like the police would rush to arrest the suspects from 40 years ago when they cannot be arsed to stop GBH in front of their very eyes.
Actually , Adreena has a point. What you have listed here is a hideous account of animal cruelty.
Also you miss a fact here. You know full well the identity of these perpetrators who you claim are now ” Pillars of Maltese Society” and will not report it [biased]. I suspect these local boys hold respected positions Goverment , Business & Law .
[Daphne – Maaaa, how irritating. Honestly. The Baader Meinhof were stuffed full of people with your attitude, and you don’t even know what’s wrong with it. Totalitarian terror. Halluni tridux. Do you think I actually saw these things myself: “Hey Daf, come and look at us split a cat open.” And at this distance of time, who gives a stuff. It’s not like they’ve been killing cats for the last 40 years. This might strike you as reprehensible, but I distinguish between animals and humans, and the reason I’m fond of animals is exactly because they’re not humans. Mur gib il-xi kelb jagixxi bhal dak l-iffissat ta’ Jeffrey, jew jiekol sakemm jisplodi bhal dak il-hanzir ta’ Grima.]
Regardless of when this happend it still does not make it right not to report animal cruelty.
[Daphne – I guess you’ve never heard the magic words ‘time barred’, then. ]
,
I agree with Adreena and Felicity .
If a person splits a cat open then most right minded people would agree the individual is demented. Being appalled by this doesn’t make one a raving militant Marxist of some sort .
And to suggest that you know the identity of who did this and as you so clearly say , hold positions within the Pillars of Maltese society, speaks volumes about your mentality [sic] , how you see others and the mentality of so called respected individuals in Malta .
[Daphne – Yes, it does speak volumes about my mentality. What it says, most loudly, is that I know for a fact that people don’t stay troubled teenagers or angry children all their lives. And I know for a fact, too, some of the people who turn out to be the most confused, dangerous and unstable in mid-life are those who were ‘perfect’ while growing up. I have no doubt, for instance, that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando was some kind of class prefect type. I can tell. And now look.]
@ Adreena Attard and Felicity Francine Tabone:
Get real please. The police have enough of a hard time discovering evidence for crimes that happened yesterday, let alone 40 years ago.
The case would be thrown out of court in 5 seconds and the prosecutor would be chided for wasting the court’s time.
Joe Grima is a pillow of society.
Daphne is dodging whats being asked here or doesn’t understand what’s being said .
We can assume by what she has clearly mentioned – She is aware of a Cat killing event which occured some forty years ago , and in her own words the alleged boys are now presently Pillars of Society , which she dodges to name .
[Daphne – Ah, hysterical assumptions. I knew nobody as a child who is now a Nationalist politician. Next step: jumping to the conclusion that it was Labour MEP John Attard Montalto or Labour MP Michael Falzon, because I wrote that we were neighbours. I also know a woman, now a respectable matron with a family, who at the age of 14 parked herself at Sliema Pitch on a winter night and charged all-comers for having a go at her. Perhaps you’re suggesting that more than four decades on, I should report her to the police for soliciting and the boys who took up her offer for under-age sex. You must live such a sheltered life. Oh, and one of my neighbours – not Attard Montalto or Falzon, I find it necessary to add with people who think as you do – used to receive deliveries of hashish left in a matchbox in the on-street meter-inspection chamber in 1979. Shall I ring John Rizzo? For heaven’s sake, just grow up.]
So , possibly there are Cat killers presently within the PN . If she knew it was a PL group of local boys she would be blogging herself silly with it .
C’mon , name them , you got the balls ?
He put a halo around its head, implying a residue of affection.
By placing it upside down, he hints at Peter’s request to be crucified in the same manner as a sign of his imperfect being. He chooses the address of a vacant house; no one in particular. And the note implies a fate worse than that of the dog.
Maybe we are reading too much into this … halo, inverted cross and the door of a house where a man murdered his sister … Yet it could always be nothing but some sort of initiation ritual into some stupid adolescent group.
There is nothing ‘stupid’ about this henious act.
It is more of a sick act even without implying any religious connotation to it.
The ‘stupid’ was a reference to the adolescent groups who uses this sort of initiation.
However, I spoke before I got to know that the murderer who used to live in that house is actually out of prison and word at Mosta is that this is most probably his doing.
I know what you mean.
I still get shudders every time I look at some crucifixes, and we don’t have any in the home.
Having said that we have several plain crosses.
However I also see some typical ‘lanzit’ in this case, a case of “if I am (allegedly) suffering then I’m damned if I’ll be the only one”
A murder was committed in that house some years ago. This may be why that puppy was nailed against its front door. As for the idea that this somehow invokes the way St Peter was crucified, I can’t say, but most people associate inverted crosses with satanic practice.
[Daphne – Would that be the house where an old man and woman, brother and sister and both unmarried, lived together in what was the old family home, with her looking after him like a servant until he finally shot her dead because she burnt his breakfast toast? Mosta – hot-bed of murders. It’s amazing.]
In that case, it’s a message to the murderer.
Or from the man himself. He got ten years in 2003. Is he still in prison?
According to The Times, he’s now 85 years old, out of prison and living in a different house.
That’s the house, yes.
Yes, Daphne, he was never the sanest of persons and word now is that since he has lost most of his belongings to pay for the legal services needed, this was some sort of message to … I will leave that up to the imagination of your readers.
That’s the one. As for why he murdered her, I don’t know but my suspicion is he suffered from some sort of mental illness which made him prone to vicious anger and uncontrollable violence.
Observe how he never married and his sister dedicated her life to caring for him.
Knowing village mentality as I do I would say that either her parents impressed upon her the necessity of remaining unmarried to care for him or the neighbours knew that mental illness ran in the family and she never received an offer of marriage as a result.
It was (and still is) customary to ask the local priest to check out the family of a prospective bride or groom to see if there is any good reason why an engagement should be cancelled.
In this case the priest would have had first hand knowledge of his mental condition because the man was a sacristan.
As you know, mental illness is a serious obstacle to marriage.
He is out of prison now but he never returned to his house. I don’t even know if it still belongs to him. The rumour going round is that he had to sell it to pay his legal fees. My suspicion, for what it’s worth, is that he put that puppy there.
If he/she was able to nail a dog to a cross is also able to nail a human. Humans and animals suffer the same pain, in this case there is no distinction between the two species.
[Daphne – I don’t think so, Cat.]
Am I the only one finding opinions like Cat’s increasingly disturbing? Some abhorrent things are being (and have always been) done to animals in Malta – and they do say a great deal about the people who do them and the society those people were brought up in – but the lack of perspective and sense being shown in response is worrying. And this by the ‘edukati’ of course, because no one from the underbelly would equate animal suffering with human suffering.
There are people on comments boards and social networks baying for human blood in retaliation for animal torture with no apparent sense of irony, scale or, for that matter, humanity. It’s almost like these people welcome the opportunity to decry Maltese barbarity without having to touch upon that bloody woolly mammoth in the room – the migrant camps. That’s the ultimate test of our humanity: not how we treat animals, but how we treat other humans.
Have you seen that shocking, numbing footage of the two-year old girl who was run over three times in a busy Chinese market and then ignored as she lay there in a pool of her own blood as she died? Are you saying, Cat, that someone who would torture a dog would also naturally be capable of that? Are you saying a dog and a girl are the same in this case? Please.
cat, people who hurt animals are weaklings not bullies. They prey on something that’s weak because they know that they’re safe from being challenged.
Hope that they will find the culprit…..when I heard the news it shocked me…how could anyone do such a thing? He is a monster not a person. I hope he suffers just as this poor dog (puppy) did…i hope he/she rots in helll ………I just cannot believe it…i am sooo angryyyyyyy :( and sad at the same time…. fines and few years in prison are just not enough to scare these monsters off …..we need harsher punishments and ppl who would protect these poor creatures :( the world is so unjust
If fines and a few years in prison are not enough, what would you suggest?
Perhaps bring back capital punishment, for crimes of this sort?
I admit it is something criminal, but please let’s keep everything in it’s proper perspective.
You must still be young if you have just found out that the world is so unjust. Prepare youself for more of same and worse.
Nobody deserves being hurt,but those who use violence on helpless animals must be punished.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111017/local/St-Paul-s-Bay-has-become-a-prison-Michael-Gonzi.389461
So we now also have have our own customised version of Stalag Luft 18; a remake of “The Great Escape ” could be filmed there with the valiant citizens of St Paul’s Bay digging Tom, Dick and Harry – the code names for the three tunnels in the film. Or St Paul’s Bay could be converted into a WWII theme park; as it is there are enough shotguns floating around and the frustrated hunters high on antidepressants could be roped in as camp guards to take potshots at the escapees and vent their frustrations.
Ir-riti satanici f’Malta huma komuni hafna. Ma nehodhiex bi kbira jekk dan kienx parti minn xi iehor. Povru kelb u satanisti patetici jekk dan hu l-kas.
Li ssallab kelb rasu ‘l isfel fuq kurcifiss hu insult ghall-Iben t’Alla li xerred demmu fuq is-salib biex jifdina minn dnubietna u ssawwat ghalina biex infiqu mill-mard kollu taghna. U dan aghmlu ghax l-aghar haga li teqred lill-bniedem hija d-dnub.
“F’Malta huma komuni hafna.”
As opposed to barra minn Malta, fejn huma rari hafna?
Ghadni rrid insib assurdita ikbar milli missier jibghat lil ibnu ghall-mewt bhala tpattija ghal dnub ta’ haddiehor, meta l-missier jista sempliciment jahfer minghajr ma jibghat lil ibnu ghat-tortura u l-mewt.
[Daphne – Oh, that’s straight from the Canaanite tradition of sacrificing the eldest son. Strange but true, one of the greatest pillars of Christian belief is actually pre-Christian.]
Not to mention the myths of Osiris and Dionysus, with their obvious parallels with Christianity. Religion evolves.
I don’t see those parallels. If anything it would be Ra, unless you refer to the use of symbols only.
Christianity evolved monotheism into a philosophy becoming a threat to all other polytheistic practices. Whereas Jewish tradition upheld a direct link between the people and their God, Christianity profoundly undermined any notion of polytheism through direct dialogue in the Greek tradition.
The main issue within early Christianity itself was the concept of the Trinity which put forward an idea surpassing that of multiple gods, and which also in part answers the problem. Modern Christianity relies on the message itself to provide this, uniting the faith.
I don’t know. I always thought the point of crucifixion was to show off Christ’s sculpted abs and encourage the faithful to work out. It certainly worked with me,
Arriva’s mishaps blown out of proportion.
Why all these – must be a sick mind etc. comments? People with mental illness and their families suffer enough as it is – you should appreciate that most psychiatric cases never venture in this territory. What you are dealing with here is antisocial personality and that cannot be medicated.
Whoever was hoping that Malta was becoming an open society, better give up in despair; if anything, online posts are showing what an inlooking, egoistic, gimme gimme, free free (remember “jew b’xejn , jew xejn” mentality advocated by an unelected prime minister ?) people we are.
Could it be due to inbreeding, everybody marrying his cousin twice removed?
[Daphne – That would describe me, so no.]
We should put a sign at the port and airport :Give up all hope all those who enter here. Not even the boat people want to remain here. Psychiatrists must be making a mint prescribing anti-depressants and tranquillisers to anybody from hunters and trappers to car drivers caught in the traffic at Floriana due to Hilary Clinton’s visit.
Ok, present company excepted but you get my arguement’s trend.