It's time to get a grip on ourselves before it all blows up in our faces
Published:
October 16, 2011 at 7:21am
While our newspapers report major issues of concern like 30 cases of scabies (about as worrying as head lice) and crashes between ‘Arriva’ buses and motorbikes, while chattering fools who have forgotten what real problems are bang on about needing a change for the hell of it because, maaaaa, ta, we can’t carry on as we are (not realising how bloody fortunate we would be to carry on as we are), this was the scene in Madrid last night, in a country where youth unemployment has rocketed to 40 per cent.
Get a grip on yourselves, people, before you wake up and find that it’s all over and you don’t even know what’s hit you.
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http://loubondi.blogspot.com/2011/10/eddie-fenech-adami-killed-45-million.html
The Doors…’This is the end…my only friend…the end’
Did you watch the scenes in Rome last night? Horrible.
It was urban guerrilla warfare in Rome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HgjUr0cY3M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQfwe8a6xg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2hx5oDXnCY
The usual left wing violence. Socialists, communists and anarchists. Reminds me of the Genoa G8, 2001.
Since a few months ago,we have been helping the Libyan people in their fight against their Govt. We have helped in all way imaginable in their cause.
[Daphne – We haven’t, but anyway. And I recall back in March some very strong arguments you made against helping Libya at all, on the grounds that it was too dangerous.]
This was and still is right, we must keep on helping them.
[Daphne – Silvio, there are six million Libyans and 400,000 Maltese. Let’s put things into perspective. This tone of ‘helping them’ is ever so slightly ridiculous, don’t you think?]
Now when it comes to the rioting that is taking place in Rome, Spain, USA, we condem them. Why?
[Daphne – Nobody is condemning them. And in any case, I trust you are not comparing the situation in Italy, Spain and the United States with that in Libya under Gaddafi.]
Aren’t they protesting against the corruption, the lack of jobs, the way that the large financial institutions have brought them to the verge of poverty just to satisfy their greed?
Why should we try to label them as thugs and provocateurs, unlike what we do with the Libyans, who we call heros and martyrs, and rightly so.
There comes a time when the people can’t take anymore and they are fed up with discussions and unkept promises, and what we are now seeing in Rome etc is the natural alternative.
What I said back in March was that it was not, at that time, in our interest to take sides because of our business interests.
That is exactly what our Govt did, in spite of the many who criticised Gonzi for dragging his feet.
Time has proved me right, and hopefully we are now starting to reap the benifts for being cautious.
It could have gone either way.
[Daphne – Hardly. But anyway…]
At that time we weren’t sure that Nato was going to impose the no fly zone and help with the bombing of military objectives.
[Daphne – Excuse me? That happened really early on.]
If it hadn’t, the result would have been different and we would now be witnessing people hanging from poles all the way from Tripoli to Benghasi.
[Daphne – The imposition of the no-fly zone did not change Malta’s position, even though the Constitution specifically allowed it. The facts are what they are and it is pointless using hindsight to argue them into a different shape. It’s not worth bickering about at this stage anyway.]
Here’s another example of a ‘major issue of concern’.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111016/local/Pet-was-killed-by-welfare-centre-family-claims.389290
Don’t get me wrong. I have a pet of my own and I can appreciate the distress of the family.
But to make a story out of it and feature it in The Sunday Times is way too much.
How lucky we are to be talking about these things rather than unemployment, national debt and bailouts.
And the headline of today’s The Sunday Times – someone had an allergic reaction after dying her hair.
A major health issue.
I remember seeing worse on grainy black-and-white tv way back in the flower-power sixties. The student populations in major European cities were all up in arms for one pretext or another at the time.
Il-hmar iqajjem lil denbu. What a farce, really. It takes hundreds of people on the streets across the globe to raise an alarm bell in that walled up brain. And they still know NADA!
Here’s a clue for dummies who only believe the corporate media: check out the free press LINKING to specific corporate media articles which you’d have missed. Then, jump-start your brain cells and start THINKING critically for once.
Yes Kev, and another thing the corporate media are not telling us is that aliens have landed and taken over all the big capitalist corporations and, of course, the EU.
We sorely need you to explain world history as it’s happening.
It’s OK, Antoine. The aliens have his number and are in the process of frying his last brain cell.
What a sorry state of mess your mind is in, Vella. If I remember correctly you were one of those who ridiculed me when I told you in 2008 that this was no ordinary ‘business cycle’ but the end of a well-designed ‘long cycle’, to use Keynesian terms.
My apologies for treating you like dummies, of course. But there you are. No one’s perfect.
(And by the way, do decipher the difference between ‘free market capitalism’ and ‘managed market corporatism’, Sur Vella… but then such an educated person like you wouldn’t even know where to start. Educated, yes, but erudite…?)
[Daphne – So tell us, Kevin, do you and Sharon believe that the solution is Karmenu Vella and his magic box of unseen policies? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1RpOT5zX6I
Has Sharon been allowed a peek at those policies or is he afraid that she will steal them too? I’m glad to see he’s noticed that she’s a woman. I was a little bit concerned about his powers of observation after that initial ‘kandidat validu’.]
I don’t do partisan bull, Daphne. You should know that by now. Lilliputian talk tends to put me off, especially when I see minions of both sides playing out their respective roles as rulers and leaders in a spectacle that is hardly related to reality – all for people like you to gossip about. The result is both entertaining and surreal, but sadly so.
Correction| ta’ bla pacenzja: “….hundreds of thousands of people…”
I can’t bear people’s parochialism any longer, which is one reason why I made my children watch the foreign news (again) today – to know the world around them a little more.
They wanted to know what the “Occupy Wall Street” protests are about, and I explained to them briefly. I couldn’t help throwing in the comparison with Maltese people’s trivial complaints here, especially university students’, who are paid (however small a sum) to go to university.
My under-10 simply couldn’t believe that people are paid to attend lectures, rather than pay to go.
Maybe that’s because they have been brought up to take nothing for granted, and to enjoy giving more than receiving.
Meanwhile, their schoolfriends rant on about Arriva … whilst probably never having caught a bus in their entire life. Such is the trivial world most people live in.
The OWS has long been hijacked by elements of state intelligence and their minions. Only those calling to end the Federal Reserve know what they’re talking about (these were the originators of the protests in the first place). Most of the rest are disgruntled voters (who are valid), socialist idealists and Marxist losers who believe that this is a result of the ‘free market’ without realising that what they’re up against is global corporatism. Oh, and the American Nazi party has prominently joined the fray, so the media can further demonise the protests.
Kevvy, what the hell are you smoking?
‘elements of state intelligence’, ‘global corporatism’, ‘American Nazis’? Of course, however, don’t twist and spin the real, mostly good world into your, whoefully naive, conspiracy bull shit.
Time to seek professional help. Really.
You’re coming across as an ‘out of it weirdo’.
Focus, and get real.
Purdie, just stick to what you’re good at and babble on.
On my part I know very well what I’m talking about. I would have been covering any such issue for months – sometimes years – before it eventually reaches you lot (through the mainstream media, of course, twisted to the core).
The fact that what I say sounds weird to you is only a reflection of your ignorance, Purdie.
Kevvy, if you’re such an excellent coverer and predictor of, I assume, unseen ‘issues’, why are you never taken seriously?
Must be frustrating.
Thank you for your daily updates reminding people what real problems are.
Although there certainly is pent-up anger amongst the people, I don’t think that most university students are as angry as Ms Abela Garret. I see them going quietly about their daily business every day. I think most of them are aware that had they been in any foreign university, they would have to pay a lot of money to read for a degree.
For the misguided anger (apart from the Labour Party, which is obvious), I blame none other than The Times, the most widely read newspaper in Malta. It loves latching onto big international news and trying to recreate them in Malta in miniature scale as if to say ‘We have big issues too.’
When the international headlines were about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, The Times looked for a local natural disaster and found… sand in Dwejra used during a film shoot.
When the international headlines were about trapped Chilean miners, The Times put the photograph of a man who fell in a hole in the countryside and was lifted up safely in a couple of hours on its front page.
When a Maltese lady on a bus reported an act of racism at a local police station, they compared her to Rosa Parks.
I’m sure others can think of more examples.
This time around the headlines are all about riots and revolutions. Sticking to its strategy, The Times scoured for a Maltese revolution. They did not find an unemployed graduate setting himself on fire or a massive crowd of rioting angry young people (no doubt they were too busy spending their stipend in Paceville) but they found a university student who can’t string a full sentence in good Maltese or English harassing a minister about the public transport. In the circumstances, it had to do.
None of the above stories would have got much column space in normal circumstances but because of the Times’s obsession with presenting local issues even when there aren’t any, these stories were inflated to undue proportions.
This results in the already insular Maltese having an even more warped sense of reality.
The truth is that since the Nationalist Party was first elected, Malta has been (and I say this in the most positive way) a very boring place where nothing much ever happens. The Nationalists have generally run a very smooth operation and had it not been for the masses of ignorant people, it would have progressed much more and faster.
Consider this; while other countries are introducing severe austerity measures, raising fees and taxes, cutting back on social benefits and getting ever more frugal, this week our government has effectively extended our stipend system to secondary school students by giving them a Culture Card (I don’t know why this hasn’t been given more coverage) and substantially increased the number of free medicines that people are entitled to.
North Africa is burning.
Much of southern Africa is starving.
Many European neighbours are on the verge of collapse.
Barack Obama is frantically trying to inspire job creation.
Amazingly, almost obscenely so, Malta seems to be in rude health. Austin Gatt alone always seems to be launching some big project or other. Unemployment is only 6.2% (fourth lowest rate in the EU).
Figures released a few days ago show that Malta has one of the biggest black markets in the EU. Just imagine how better off Malta’s coffers would be if these people were participating in the regular economy. I have no doubt that the people who are so heavily involved in the black market are the same ones who keep asking for the prime minister’s head.
Before I go, I would like to give a word of advice to all those who keep whining about the bus service. Get yourself a hobby. Whether you travel using your own car or by public transport, you’re going to spend a considerable amount of time stuck in traffic every day. Be proactive and do something meaningful with your time. I’ve never understood how so many people spend so much time staring out of a window or talking (mostly complaining) about the same things.
Personally, I love to read. I love travelling by bus (now in air-conditioned comfort) because it’s the quietest moment of the day I get. I often find myself wishing the journey to be a little bit longer so that I can finish the chapter I’m on.
I will try not to judge someone for not enjoying reading but with a plethora of gadgets available- from laptops to tablet computers – surely anyone who wants to, especially university students, can find something interesting and useful to do.