You can no more be a part-believer in human rights than you can be a part-virgin
I am sick of idiots claiming that Joseph Muscat is a champion of human rights and civil liberties on the scant evidence that he piloted a civil unions bill through parliament (and did so only for votes and not because he believes in the cause in any particular way).
This is a man who doesn’t care whether his brinkmanship with Italy means that hundreds of children drown. This is a man whose illegal deportation of asylum seekers was stopped only by a European Court of Human Rights injunction obtained through the emergency action of human rights groups.
This is a man who campaigned against EU membership so that we wouldn’t have the freedoms we now take for granted.
This is a man who is aligning Malta to China, where the violation of human rights is the default position and where, The Telegraph reports today, a Christian church in Wenzhou is being forcibly demolished even as thousands of Chinese Christians try to form a human shield around it.
You can no more be a partial supporter of human rights – or a supporter of partial human rights – than you can be a partial virgin. Those who care about civil unions because it concerns them personally or their power-base but then don’t give a damn whether others live or drown, or whether there is freedom of worship in the communist dictatorship from which we take money, are not supporters of human rights and civil liberties at all. They are merely fatuous posers and opportunistic power-brokers.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10792386/China-accused-of-anti-Christian-campaign-as-church-demolition-begins.html
Very well said.
Can anyone imagine China acquiring an interest in the public hospital or in Maltese health services?
Who can trust the Chinese with his/her life and health or with the life and health of his/her dear ones?
Who can trust a PM who trusts the Chinese?
The Chinese are thrusting in him.
See what I did there.
I thrust that was a tong in chick comment.
Me govern you long time.
In an earlier post you uploaded a video of Cardinal Zen. He talked about compromise.
In Malta we practise the art of compromise to perfection in all spheres of life.
“PM admits government using illegal billboards
In the meantime Dr Muscat also admitted that the government is currently using illegal billboards, but laid the blame on the contractor. ….. Dr Muscat said that it would not (remove the illegal billboards) but it would make sure that the contractor is compliable with the law.”
Below are a series of questions that should be addressed to the PM.
Question 1: How was the contract granted by government? Was it through a direct order or call for tenders? If it was granted after a call for tenders, who were the tenderers?
Question 2: As for all contacts issued by government (direct or tenders), did the contact signed specify that contractor has to ensure that everything was carried out according to law? If not, why?
Question 3: How come some of these billboards which some days ago carried government propaganda and now are carrying LP MEP elections propaganda?
Question 4: On what basis did government grant use of a publicly hired service?
Question 5: Can the PM publish a copy of agreement reached between government and the billboard supplier for the service rendered?
Question 6: If it is the government that permitted the use by LP for party propaganda, can the PM publish the agreement signed, the resulting invoice and the settlement payment made by the PL to Government?
Question 7: Can the PM submit a copy of the application now submitted to MEPA re these illegal billboards?
If no answer is forthright, then an Mp should table them as a PQ. If no answer is again forthcoming, then through some slight rewording (i.e. asking for a document and not a comment or information) this should be submitted to the OPM under the guise of the Freedom of Information Act.
Strangely, I am getting this awkward feeling that the ToM journalists would never dare putting such questions to the PM. Why is this so?!
And then there also these simple questions:
Whose responsibility was it to establish that the contractor was in breach of the MEPA law?
Why was this breach not identified by those responsible, and who is going to carry the political responsibility for this omission?
Isn’t the Prime Minister the Minister in charge of MEPA?
And another question. How many of those billboards are the property of the Labour Party?
Some days ago Joseph Muscat said that “il-Kbir ghadu ġej!” freely translated “You ain’t seen nothin yet”.
Well, it is now a giveaway : Mrs Sai Mizzi Liang hit some communist aided jackpot to justify her €13,000 monthly salary.It seems that Chinese communists have become handy during electoral campaigns . last time we paid them with 30% of our energy provider next is Air Malta or mater dei Hospital. you know, these are considered to be a burden on the nation.
Muscat has to announce it now because he will lose the SURPRISE!!! effect which he really likes to dazzle his supporters with.
Xi dwejjaq ta’ ipokrita!
It is heartening to see you take such a holistic view of human rights and you are to be emphatically commended for it.
It will be interesting to observe your level of consistency when the issue of the rights of the youngest humans of all arises – as it undoubtedly will, if not during this government’s term of office, then in the next.
[Daphne – I have always been consistent, AAC. That is why I do not regard abortion in black and white, absolutist terms, and why I distinguish between the use of the morning-after pill and the abortion of a foetus at 28 weeks. It should also be pointed out to you that under the law – yes, even the law of Malta which regards abortion as a serious crime – human rights devolve only on the born and not the unborn. In other words, in any human rights situation that might crop up it is the pregnant woman, and not the foetus, who has human rights. Abortion is a very complicated issue in which blanket statements should not be made. The abortion of a near-term foetus is truly hideous, but it is equally hideous to see a girl or woman dehumanised in discussions or fact to nothing but a birth canal.]
‘Abortion is a very complicated issue in which blanket statements should not be made .’ However you can’t be a ‘part believer ‘ in whether abortion is killing or not; it either is or it isn’t irrespective of the age of the baby.
[Daphne – It’s not that simple, Spock. You can’t speak of killing the day after conception, or equate that with the quite obvious killing of a foetus at eight months. Religious instruction does not speak of killing but of the termination of life, which might seem mere semantics, but isn’t. Maltese law does not speak of ‘killing’ either. Babies are babies when they take on the form of a baby. Before that they are foetuses. A day after conception they are neither. You make a mistake in speaking of babies and appealing to sentiment, because neither religious nor criminal law does that. Both are based on the philosophy that life begins at conception, and neither appeals to sentiment about killing babies. If you concentrate on appealing to sentiment, you defeat your own argument because it is impossible for anybody to become emotional about whatever is terminated by the morning-after pill.]
It is not considered to be a worse crime to kill a three year old child than a two year old simply because the former is a year older.
[Daphne – Please do not confuse or conflate arguments or shift goal-posts. We are talking here of abortion and not murder/infanticide. Even Maltese law distinguishes between the two.]
If ‘human rights devolve only on the born and not the unborn’ then the laws governing this insufficient protection of all human life should be changed to do so.
[Daphne – Malta cannot change or add to human rights unilaterally. There is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a European Convention on Human Rights. Human rights by definition devolve on humans – which means the born and not the unborn.]
It definitly beats the gay adoption law , and would actually save innumerable lives – by far more serious and urgent than satisfying the perceived rights of this social group .
Daphne, seriously now – if they are not human, then what are they ? – Are they some sort of sub-species, upon which we are entitled to heap every abuse known to the human mind ? or are they another species altogether that somehow mutates into another at some vaguely defined moment.
Disappointing regurgitation of the standard generalisations. I look forward to debating the matter with you when the issue arises (I estimate 3 – 7 years from now)
Btw – have you checked what crime you would be charged with if you were to kill a pregnant woman ?
[Daphne – I am not going to allow you to hijack this post and subvert it into yet another fruitless, pointless, agitated discussion about abortion. Foetuses are of course human – in the same way that a severed limb is human. They are not, however, human beings until they are viable, which means at around seven months. I make the point not to suggest that before that their development may be terminated, but to correct you on the basis of status under the law and even in religion. Miscarried foetuses are not given a funeral by the religious rite, unlike babies. You will not be debating the matter with me because the matter has been done to death and Malta has abortion anyway – via clinics in Catania, a shorter distance to travel than many women have to travel in larger countries where abortion is legal. I would never have had an abortion myself and the process fills me with great sadness. However, not being a man but a woman, I also feel great sadness for the vulnerability of women in certain situations and great anger at the way women are talked about as subhuman birth canals to – ironically – emphasise the humanity of the foetus.]
By all means, don’t carry this. It is your blog and your prerogative. But the subject remains a natural sequitur to your absolutely-correct statement that human rights belong to all humans and it is a pity that you too choose to draw the line arbitrarily between humans who have rights and humans who don’t.. Incidentally, blacks, as well as Jews, as well as endless hosts of other random groups of human beings, have been defined, at law, as non-human at various points in history .. and it would be short-sighted in the extreme to assume, as legions have done before you, that we exist at a point in time where future generations will not be staggered at our legal myopia.
However, do yourself a favour, and don’t go about saying that pre-born children are not human. This is such a crassly ignorant statement that it dents your otherwise excellent credibility in the political sphere – which is your primary domain.
And, by the way, a severed human limb is not a whole human – it is a part of a human. A developing child is a whole human – until he is mashed up into various bits and pieces by your local friendly abortionist, that is.
I am certain you feel you have better things to do than carry on this discussion, so I will wish you a good day.
I do not think that abortion is the subject of this post. However, once that there has been an engagement on the subject, may I refer one and all to a recent publication by Italian MEP Carlo Casini entitled “One of Us — The First European Citizens’ Initiative” (Edizioni Cantagalli, 2014, Siena), where one can find all the reasons why the human embryo deserves all the protection of the law just like the “person”, and why the Roman Law concept of “persona”, which was tied to a viable birth, is no longer scientifically acceptable.
Joseph Muscat has lost his credibility. He can regain his credibility as much as one can unboil an egg.
Daphne, you are doing a great service to the truth, that same truth that the mainstream media has abandoned.
If the just one of the gaffes, unemployment rates increase, debacles, lies and other shameful stories had occurred under Gonzi’s watch (which never occurred BTW) all hell would have broken loose at Super One, maybe The Times, Malta Today etc.. It seems that the media have gone AWOL. Are they on Joseph’s paylist or what?
My first reaction to this post and to the accompanying picture was: “In quorum manibus iniquitates sunt, dextera eorum repleta est muneribus” – Psalms 25:10. But I am sure our Prime Minister does not give a damn, all the Jesuit education notwithstanding.