Look to Egypt to see what happens when you put a limit on political satire

Here is what happens when you go down the non-European route and start trying to put limits on political satire because a (considerable) number of your citizens are essentially non-European in thinking, attitude, spirit and socio-cultural upbringing, and so interpret any such (perfectly legitimate and even essential) satire as “spreading hate” or “attakk fahxi u moqziez”.

Read the BBC link below.

We are European in legal fact and so Middle Eastern in spirit. In Malta as in the Middle East you have individuals standing up for what the whole of pre-1989 (because as Hungary has shown, the post-1989 states remain a bit of a problem) free Europe takes for granted.

It is as though we joined the European Union for the material advantages only, failing to recognise that it is about so much more, including ideals, freedoms and values, and so that some of us with identity issues can prove that ‘we are not Arabs like those people there across the water’.

Nothing else matters to us but the material things. We want to keep our Middle Eastern spirit and our EU passport and refuse to see that the two are in conflict.

Yes, there are many, many people in the Middle East who espouse European ideals – European in the sense that they were developed in Europe over a long, long time, for they were also ‘exported’ across the Atlantic – but they are heavily outnumbered by those who don’t, and they have governments which are interested in perpetuating the status quo.