The Facebook crowd don’t actually know what a prosecution is
The tear-your-hair-out-they’re-so-stupid-and-uniformed Facebook crowd actually think that it’s the Zahras who are suing Erin Tanti and not the police who are prosecuting him for murder and multiple other charges.
They actually believe you can sue somebody yourself for murder. They can’t distinguish between a civil suit and a prosecution for a criminal offence.
They’ve noticed that the Zahras have lawyers advising them – they were standing at their side when Lisa Marie Zahra’s first cousin, Winston, spoke on behalf of his uncle, her father, who was clearly in no fit state to speak himself.
Obviously, the concept of ‘parte civile’ advice is way too complicated for the intellectually challenged to understand, so they’re sticking up for the little man by protesting against the fact that the Zahras qabdu erba’ avukati tajbin ghax ghandom il-flus u jridu jkissruh.
At this level of incredible stupidity, are we surprised that people swallowed all those ‘I’m in’ messages unquestioningly?
Their socialist envy and lanzit has blinded these Laburisti, for that is what most of them appear to be (why am I not surprised) to the fact that the murdered girl’s father – I refuse to say ‘allegedly’ – actively and publicly supported the Labour Party in the last general election, at campaign events.
Now they’ve rounded on him, because he has the bloody nerve – as they see it – to seek justice for the man who killed his 15-year-old daughter.
Astonishing, isn’t it, how lanzit can twist a mind.
The unquestioning ignorance combined with unshakeable belief in their convictions would be funny if it weren’t frighteningly tragic.
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I told you: l-injoranza qed teqridhom.
Excuse my ignorance, what is “lanzit”?
[Daphne – English has no word for it. It’s a very southern Mediterranean thing: a mixture of spite, envy, malice, hatred and a desire to see those you envy suffer and be deprived of what they have so that you no longer have to envy them and feel bad that you don’t have what they do.]
Lanzit is actually the very hard hair of brooms, especially those used by street sweepers (xkupa tal-lanzit). Fits your description perfectly as well.
Excellent explanation. The literal meaning of “lanzit” is, of course, horsetail hair. How it acquired the secondary or metaphorical meaning so well described by Daphne here is beyond me.
Every criminal action gives rise to a civil action and the Zahra family may file a civil suit for damages against the accused, irrespectively of whether he is found guilty or not. This civil action has nothing to do with “parte civile” representation.
You just described the Scots.
You’re all getting the Maltese definition wrong. “Lanzita” is a hog’s or boar’s bristle. The word has been around at least since 1843.
But the real meaning of lanzit is a type of “tiben” hence “xkupa tal-lanzit”. Since it became ruffled when used it was an expression to mean a lot of complications which one would do better without.
No. Lanzit is bristles. Always has been. Brushes (and Maltese brooms) are made with bristles, not straw.
I always imagine that “lazit” are slimy garden slugs that leave a sticky residue trail behind them while they munch away happily on your hard earned garden produce just before reaping time.
No, those are socialists.
Apart from the meaning of bristles (as in ‘xkupa tal-lanzit’), I was once given the explanation of ‘lanzit’ as follows. It is nothing but the accumulated dirt on pigs which is practically impossible to wash away. This meaning of the word ‘lanzit’ is not found in any maltese dictionary. But that does not mean that it never had that meaning.
“Lanzit fil-mohh” is an irreversibly brainwashed brain. And when that brainwashing is politicallly biased misinformation, then that “lanzit fil-mohh” becomes “a mixture of spite, envy, malice, hatred”.
Does “Schadenfreude” get any close?
Not quite. It doesn’t grow and mature through the generations, and only covers one part of lanzit, which is to delight in the other’s misfortunes.
Lanzit is like an office version of an Afghan blood feud.
So by your definition, the act of stalking a 17-year old on facebook, finding out his ask.fm account and askin him this question “I am Daphne. I think that it is lucridiously chauvinistic to have an ask.fm account. You should get a life and have regular ablations you perfunctory prat. Give me a call when you want to have a coitus, idiotic excuse for a man.” is being a ‘lanzit’. Am I right?
[Daphne – You are a real sucker to believe that anything like that would come from me. It is so obviously one of your mates setting you up. It fascinates me how complete nonenties think they have somehow attracted my attention – and I would, of course, never have written such a poorly worded sentence. You need to grow up. Whoever sent you that thing is now laughing at you for being suckered.]
I would like to read their reactions had it been their daughter/cousin/niece who ended up at the bottom of Dingli cliffs. I know this is no argument but it’s probably one which might shut them up.
It doesn’t. I tried it on a sofaload of twittering gasbags who have daughters the same age. THEIR children are immune to sexually depraved teachers, apparently.
So tragically true.
You couldn’t have described the situation in Malta better.
Why does everyone, including law reporters, use the Italian expression “parte civile” when referring to the private party or the injured party to criminal proceedings? The expression “parti ċivili” does not even appear in the Maltese text of our Criminal Code. The expressions used in the English text of the Code are “private party” and “injured party”.
What these idiots fail to understand is the suffering the Zahras must be going through.
No matter the outcome of the court proceedings nothing will bring the girl back
In my opinion lanzit is too mild a description for these horrible people.
How certain people can actually defend such a ‘person’ is beyond me.
When I see stupid actions around me on a daily basis I tell myself over and over again: ‘mhux ta’ b’xejn hemm il-Labour fil-gvern’. But this is much worse; this is beyond stupidity.
People can’t actually be defending someone who took a teenage girl to the edge of a cliff to end her life, no matter what the circumstances were. It’s a disgrace.
It is horrifying to realize how dangerous it has become to be living in Malta. It is not a far stretch of the imagination to argue that had any of these unashamed defenders of Tanti been privy to any of the goings on they would not have lifted a finger because they seem to excuse all that happened in their twisted minds.
These people do not live in a vacuum but could be teachers, parents, bar owners, party organizers etc., who come into contact with youngsters and other persons who are in a position of lesser power than them. From their comments they are real champions of righteousness, one would really be (un)lucky to know them.
Lanzit aside, If these people truly find nothing wrong in the actions of Tanti, I shudder to think what they must have experienced in their youth.
After all much of the basic principles we hold dear in adulthood have been instilled in us at a young age.
What we’d really be saying here is that child abuse is rampant.
Kieku l-injoranza ta’ dan nies bozza kieku tixghel Malta kollha bihom.
Kieku l-luci elettrika b’xejn. M’hemmx bzonn pannelli.
It will surface in the end.
Malta Today didn’t come out with the ‘he was helping her through a difficult phase’ rubbish out of goodwill. They made an adult of her, bent on suicide, dragging him into it.
They also said the police ruled out foul play the day she was found, when in reality evidence was being pieced together.
We now know it’s plausible it wasn’t a suicide at all. The question remains why Malta Today chose to do a thing like that.
When an online news portal resorts to editing its articles and actually reducing certain content, manipulation is quick and untraceable. The implications are ramified, you just don’t cheat your way out of legality, it simply means you don’t even trust your own standards.
When internal methods fail, it’s the sure way of avoiding libel.
As for the meaning of lanzit , just look at Balzan; the embodiment of lanzit. Roger Degiorgio should have a long look at where he wants to go.
If any of these people commenting could even fathom what this family is really going through right now, they wouldn’t even open their mouths, but typical of our so-called Catholic citizens to gossip and comment on everything, irrespective of the hurt they may cause in the process.
And obviously any saga has to blended into an envious way of spitting venom, a family tragedy and the way they are safeguarding their late child’s integrity and justice, is all about people spitting venom as to them hiring four lawyers and being wealthy.
Yes you are right, Daphne – people lack intelligence and they would go to any length to be hurtful and spiteful in such a tragic situation.
If this is the situation we are in we might just as well pack up and leave for the Amazon. Unbelievable.
The crowd that shouts freedom, liberty, choice, minority rights and a thousand coined word or phrase, then comes out in public crying crap.
My doubt is whether such people would even know which of their two feet and two arms are the right and the left.
The problem I think is due to our eclectic legal system.
Maltese criminal procedure is mainly based on English law, however we have adopted the notion of parte civile from Italian law.
The parte civile is called so as the victim is entitled to be awarded damages in an Italian criminal court.
However In Malta damages are only awarded by the civil court. Therefore, in Maltese criminal courts, the parte civile lawyers representing the victim act as if they are the prosecution or aiding the prosecution.
It is the ‘parte civile’ that has primary interest in such and similar cases. They are the party that have the right to demand justice and they are the most interested party that wants to see that justice is done and served.
More on the strange notion of parte civile. In the UK legal system so called private prosecutions are permitted.