How I feel this morning (well, most of the time, really)
It really irritates me to have to live with the knowledge that when the stupid, the ill-informed, the opportunistic, the greedy, the self-serving and worst of all, the easily flattered, outnumber the rest of us, we end up having to live with their dangerous, damaging choices.
And what’s worse is that the duller the mind, the more arrogant the person, especially if they come from one of Malta’s more privileged socio-educational backgrounds. They talk and think and behave as though they have some special secret insight into people and situations while sounding as though they live in a parallel universe of stupidity.
It’s so obvious that many of them are operating on the Gattopardo principle, even if they are not quite aware of it themselves – though some of them are, and think themselves all the smarter for it: that even if your way of life has been shored up by the Bourbon kingdom, the march of history is relentless and to continue living as you did you must work with Garibaldi because he’s here to say. This is the essential meaning of the most famous line in the book, known even to those who have never read it and who have no idea of its source: as Garibaldi comes ashore at Marsala, the Prince of Salina says that everything must change so that everything can stay the same.
The mistake that the Maltese ‘Gattopardi’ make – largely because their thinking skills are stultified, or perverted by their greed and susceptibility to flattery – is not to understand that the Prince of Salina spoke of what he recognised to be a permanent state of affairs. The unification of Italy and the end of the Bourbon kingdom was foreseeable as permanent even at that initial stage, and so it has proved to be.
The Maltese ‘Gattopardi’ live in a democracy of sorts, with a parliament and general elections every five years. Their efforts are expended on a government that comes up for re-election again in just over four years. Unless they plan to grab as much as they can with dividends to be paid well after that – and some of them have done this already – their investment is poor for they have marked themselves out as individuals who will never be trusted again, not even by those who are using them now.
And they will certainly not be respected for their integrity or their intelligence, for they have demonstrated that they have none, and that they are easily tantalised by flattery and by promises of money and position.
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When he was Health Minister he was accused by the MLP of corruption. When he was EU Commissioner he is kicked out of office by the EU Commmission on corruption charges.
He is hired by the Maltese government as a silent health minister. Now he prepares a report and alleges corrupt practices in a ministry for which he was responsible just four years ago.
Well said. If they’re going down, it looks like they want to take us down with them.
Tal-misthija: Spiegel reports …
http://m.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/a-933279.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=
At least, towards the end, the report does state that most Maltese are against the sale of citizenship. Not that this exonerates the country in any way.
Do you remember Joseph Muscat in the election campaign saying that a Labour government would, “run Malta like a business?”
Well maybe this is what he meant. At the time that had really rubbed me the wrong way but most people seemed to have ignored it. So Muscat has set up the Malta Business – Now selling citizenship with a passport to your favourite travel destination.
I cannot but agree, Daphne.
I’m practically living here in Libya surrounded by lack of national security, regular gunfire, explosions and other crimes, but none of these do irritate me and cause cramps to my stomach as much as “the stupid, the ill-informed, the opportunistic, the greedy, the self-serving and worst of all, the easily flattered” you mentioned.
Give democracy to the stupid and they will hang you with it.
Dan il-gvern m ghamel xejn differenti min xi hadd li jmur jissellef bl-uzura. Biex rebah l-elezzjoni mar issellef minghand min ried jithallas b’prezz gholi u dan il-prezz ma kien xejn hlief il-passaport Malti.
I think on the same lines frequently too. Somehow, I try to reason out this situation or I try to convince myself that such a process is natural.
After all it happens in most or all of the world’s democracies. However, I have to admit that I have not yet discovered the potion of consolation for this reality.
What’s more, I find myself frequently rubbing shoulders, so to speak, with people who do not share my views (although I would not describe them as ‘greedy, opportunistic, self-serving…’ etc), but frequently share my sofa and my dining table.
Consequently, the only remedy is to let go and live day by day, hoping for the best to come out of humankind.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/1450323_568883086518051_1190055136_n.jpg
‘..And what’s worse is that the duller the mind, the more arrogant the person, especially if they come from one of Malta’s more privileged socio-educational backgrounds.’
Their life revolves around the next pool downing the indolence stiffling any courage with bottles of cheap Gavi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58zmqow2iz0#t=72
Actualy it is the nephew of the Prince, Tancredi Falconieri who says the famous quote :
” Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi”
Talking about integrity – or the lack of it. You may want to check out who bought quite a few tumoli of ‘worthless’ green land just before the election.
Name and shame that top echelon?
The cherry on the cake.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-11-13/news/secret-citizens-eligible-to-vote-3173777415/
Agreed, the EU was an attempt to shed the physical restrictions perversely used by Labour to hold us down.
I think the process, as usual in Malta, was traumatic, even because of there’s no real mass to speak of. Socail evolution is either forced or absent. The result tends to be a split down the middle everywhere, mindset included.
Voting Labour at this point in time was a mildly desperate move by those who didn’t catch up to restore Malta to their comfort zone. A place where everything is opinion, can be put to domestic use and its inevitable vice, approximation due personal relations.
The reflection of a people who’ve never had to match to the real deal.
Labour talks environment, planning, sustainability, energy, green economy reducing them to buzzwords. What matters is to chat ad nauseum without getting down to the real stuff, that which requires a paradigm shift, choices, sacrifice.
It will take time to realise that progress is inversely proportional to physical extent of consumption.
Or better, a smaller car is classier, shortening journey times is reducing physical distances, lightweight hi tech requires major knowledge base and so on.
Labour have intercepted the exact opposite, an idea that bigger is better. More money at all costs, consumption habits to rise if progress has to be registered.
Efficiency and individual capability never come into it. An individual isn’t potentially wealthy when their talent can be harnessed, that’s for the ruler to decide. Truly national socialist.
Double thumbs up also for that wife of a lawyer gaining a reputation for refusing to address a word to switchers.
Such is the calamity they have placed the rest of us in.
5 questions. One minute. Please complete this survey about selling Maltese citizenship:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8BFJVY9
Responses are anonymous.
Such a good piece about the subject:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/03/featuresreviews.guardianreview22
Joseph Muscat had been quoted saying that the Attorney General had advised the government that the revokation of citizenship acquired in a sales transaction runs contrary to the “European Charter of Human Rights.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131103/local/muscat.493074
“He insisted that despite what the PN said, a future government would not be able to withdraw citizenship, even with a change of law. That would be in breach of the Constitution and the European Charter on Human Rights, as confirmed by the Attorney General and the Dean of the Faculty of Laws.”
1. Joseph Muscat has not been asked to clarify what document he refers to exactly when he says “The European Charter of Human Rights.” There exists no document with such a title, so the Prime Minister is referring to a fictitious document and indeed is attributing that fictitious name to the AG. There are the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights of the EU and The European Convention of Human Rights, but not the document mentioned by the PM.
2. The written advice provided by the AG to the Prime Minister and to the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice – which was published yesterday by the Prime Minister and which he partly read out in Parliament – makes no reference to the “European Charter of Human Rights.” In fact, it makes no reference to any international law or international legal authority.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131112/local/attorney-generals-advice-about-withdrawal-of-citizenship-pubished.494453
Is the Prime Minister lying or bluffing once again?